For context, I'm Finnish and many of my ancestors were sold as slaves as well.
But in most contexts, white privilege doesn't care about your actual ancestry. A 2nd generation black immigrant from Africa to NYC will face some of the same discrimination as a descendant from slaves. And with your white skin you will receive some of the same privileges as a wealthy descendant of the Mayflower.
It doesn't really hurt to recognize this, and it doesn't have to "erase" the pain that your ancestors went through. It's simply recognizing that there are inherent subliminal biases in our systems and society.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wi...
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/new-lawsuit-exposes-googles-desp...
-MLK
It's a form a privilege. It doesn't make you bad. It doesn't mean your life is easy. But it's worth recognizing.
Now let's compare this theoretical white person to a theoretical black person with none of these privileges. One caveat though, the white person is poor and the black person is rich.
Now the question is, does the economic privilege of the black person offset the other privileges of the white person?
In my opinion and the opinion of the person you're replying to, the answer is yes. Economic privilege generally outweighs other privileges, so focusing on these other privileges seems counterproductive if we want to increase equality.
If you think a poor white person can drive around West Virginia in a beat up car without being pulled over and harassed because they look like they deal meth you don’t know what the average experience is like.
If someone wants to say my privilege was not living in that type of area then I guess maybe, though my situation wasn't too much better. This whole notion of having privilege is absurd.
In some cultures, the aspect of giving every single person inalienable rights and equality isn't explicitly valued like it is in the west. I wouldn't want to impose western values on those cultures.
However, your argument boils down to whataboutism. Yes there are other countries with other forms of privilege. Yes there are civilizations in the past with other forms of privilege. In the US we tend to value equality, and in the pursuit of that we must recognize all forms of privilege that exist in our society. It doesn't matter that it exists elsewhere.
FYI I am not at all talking about the original article. I was simply responding to this tangent comment thread.
Only because there haven’t been any large groups of white immigrants to the US in recent history. If there were, you could expect to see the same sort of intolerance you can see in Europe, where some people really do care a lot about your ancestry, even if you’re just as white as them.
its only the people that would be vicariously offended.
Its optimal for them to make up parts of houses and arbitrarily rename neighborhoods to attract the most people
There's nothing objectionable about this.
I am disgusted at corporations, companies and professionals tagging on the bandwagon with PC. It is just not genuine.
That's not what the Gestapo did.
This, too, is a bit of an overreaction.
Just wanted to point out there's a huge difference here. Black communities in America very much live with the legacy, and remanifestation (I recommend reading The Color of Law), of slavery in their everyday lives. At one point in US history, nearly 10% of american identified as KKK members. Do you think all of them suddenly disappeared.
There's also huge legacies in our academia. Just a couple decades ago sociology was essentially the study of eugenics in our own country while anthropology was the study of eugenics in other countries. Even commonly used terms in statistics (e.g. regression to the mean) root from the study of eugenics. There's been much scholarship dedicated to clearly tracing these roots and a constant theme of antiblackness
PBS has a great history documentary called "American Experience: The Eugenics Crusade" that I'd highly recommend if you wanna start to dig at the heels of how deeply rooted this is in our culture