Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm fairly educated on these things, and I'm a racial minority married to a white woman with mixed kids, and I'm still not sure I understand what people mean when they refer to "white privilege."

I get that there is a distinct cultural bias against Black people (what people call "anti-Blackness"). Living in the south this was quite apparent to me. This is structural in nature, and quite distinct from normal majority/minority dynamics.

But I don't perceive any similar "white privilege." To go to your resume example, I've got a last name that's definitely Muslim, but I've never perceived any sort of difference in response on that basis. (And in myriad areas, from income policing to health, statistically I'm likely to enjoy advantages compared to white people.) I think the concept of "white privilege" is actually a conceptual error that comes from generalizing Black-white racial dynamics to a multi-ethnic society.

Also, to address your point about the KKK member, the left uses "racism" to mean a lot more than just that. Based on that expansive definition of "racism" I'd qualify use of phrases like "unbearable whiteness" as "racism": https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/the-unbearable-white...

I can describe it. I'm Brazilian, very white, green eyes, brown hair that was lighter when I was younger.

About 30 years ago (wow!), in my late teens I organized a party on a house my aunt recently bought to become her medical practice. We had lots of drinks, some drugs, a DJ, live music and some guests walking over the roof of neighboring houses. Police got called.

When they saw me, young and privileged, they wanted to arrest me. I offered them a beer, they entered the house, one of them played the drum set with his service gun. They drank some fancy cocktails.

They enjoyed themselves for about 15 minutes until they were called on the radio. Then they told me, laughing, I should try to control my guests a little better. Then they went away.

If we weren't a bunch or privileged white kids in an upper middle class neighborhood, they'd most likely arrive shooting, as they do when there are parties in slums.

> they'd most likely arrive shooting, as they do when there are parties in slums.

Can you please link to the news articles about these slum parties that are broken up by officers who start shooting the moment they arrive? Seems like something that would definitely get reported on.

In all my time living in low-income housing, I never witnessed something like this. And I had plenty of sleepless nights when neighbors would throw ragers. Some got broken up (mostly when a fight would break out among attendees), and I'm sure some of the cops weren't pleasant. But I never witnessed cops jumping out of their cars with their guns blazing.

Although I'm one piece of anecdotal evidence, so I'd like to see the evidence you have of this event.

You can read about one such case, one that created enough social repercussion that the cops involved had legal trouble, here:

https://recordtv.r7.com/fala-brasil/videos/mpsp-ira-indiciar...

Most often nothing happens.

I see this link happened in Brazil. Definitely a horribly incident.

My comment, and my personal experiences, relate to America. At least here, I don't know of any events where police have opened fire on a pack of teenagers partying without reason. But they could exist, which was why I was asking for evidence.

Is that "white privilege?" From personal experience, I don't think police treat upper middle class asian kids any differently than that. (But I bet it would be different for upper middle class Black people.)

Statistically, and adjusted for age (which is really important because there is quite a big difference in median age between racial groups in the U.S.) asians are actually less likely to get shot by the police than whites. Latinos are about the same/a little bit more likely. Black people are twice as likely to get shot by the police.

In Brazil, it is my impression Asians are treated as white by the police.

The rule of thumb is that they will be more violent with poorer people, which has a high correlation with having darker skin, at least in southern Brazil. Asians are more often than not, middle and upper-class.

I think "racial privilege" and/or "class privilege" are the general terms that have more straightforward meanings, and "white privilege" is both a) a special case of race/class privilege, and b) sometimes used as a poor synonym for race/class privilege.

I agree with your third paragraph about the conceptual error. I think there are subtleties to the concept and racism is manifested differently. I've heard Muslim and Arab people talk about their experiences with racism and I believe them but they don't complain of the same things that happen to black people.

And yes I chose the kkk member as an obviously racist person but my point was that pointing out white privilege is just not racist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com