I think terms like white privilege drive resentment and are divisive.
"In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race..." Barack Obama.
As a white (and formerly working class) boy from the UK, I can confidently say that nobody has at any point in my life discriminated against me on the basis of my ethnic background. That is the extent of what this expression means – it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied is in a superior position relative to others, but only that they do not suffer from disadvantage due to one specific thing.
There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction, and the reason that these terms become divisive is because people are too often manipulated into misrepresenting them.
That's not the way it's taught to children. They're encouraged to think of their "privilege" entirely in terms of race, which determines whether they win or lose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg
> There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction
Because the distinction isn't made.
It's a fundamentally bad phase to use.
A lack of a disadvantage others have is a privilege. The point of calling it a privilege is to emphasize that white people benefit from racism against other groups even when they don't do anything racist themselves. Benefitting knowingly from discrimination against others while doing nothing to end it is complicity. The term "privilege" is not an attack on white people, it is an attack on racism. It absolutely does not imply that we should bring down white people or be racist to them. Privilege will end when discrimination against non-white people ends.
At least set up a monthly donation to an anti-racism organization, or something like that.
But the lack of discrimination isn't the norm. It would definitely be nice if it was, but that's not the case. White people experiencing better general overall treatment by society compared to those in the same situation who are black is just a fact. Complaining that it causes reverse discrimination doesn't make that untrue.
Men get harsher sentences than women for the same crimes, but we don't really hear much about "female privilege". If you want to point out discrimination, you don't need any concept for "privilege". The problem was never that one group has something. The problem is that one group does not have something. It's the inequality that needs to be addressed, not the "privilege".
Making blanket assumptions about people on the basis of their skin color is something we should be avoiding, not encouraging. Keep the focus on what needs to be solved and suddenly you avoid all the problems focusing on "white privilege" causes like resentment, defensiveness, blame, and guilt.
It's really hard to get people to realize that, and to see the different types of things they benefit from silently. Do you have better suggestions to get people to notice?
> Men get harsher sentences than women for the same crimes, but we don't really hear much about "female privilege". If you want to point out discrimination, you don't need any concept for "privilege". The problem was never that one group has something. The problem is that one group does not have something. It's the inequality that needs to be addressed, not the "privilege".
People do talk about both sides, but you're right that they don't use "privilege" there.
I think the word privilege is useful to point out when one group has a huge advantage over another, even when there are some advantages or 'advantages' going in either direction.
> Making blanket assumptions about people on the basis of their skin color is something we should be avoiding, not encouraging. Keep the focus on what needs to be solved and suddenly you avoid all the problems focusing on "white privilege" causes like resentment, defensiveness, blame, and guilt.
It's not really an assumption that if you're white you face a tiny fraction of the racism that a black person gets, for example. As far as defensiveness and guilt, etc... I feel like any language used to talk about this will get politicized and twisted that way.
Much of the time it'll have to be hearing from other people and their experiences. Then you can kind of compare that with how things go for you. It's nice in a "count you blessings" kind of way to have a list of advantages you have, but it's not important. What matters is that people understand that differences exist so that when they hear about one person's problems they understand that their own experience isn't representative for everyone. Without that someone might hear someone with complaints against police (as an example) and think back over their own long history of pleasant/helpful interactions with officers and dismiss the other person's complaints as overblown or even made up. We see the same problem with A/B testing. Some user complaints about something in a tweet or forum and other people dismiss them because their experience is different and they don't realize what they see isn't universal.
> I think the word privilege is useful to point out when one group has a huge advantage over another, even when there are some advantages or 'advantages' going in either direction.
Why is it useful? Won't it be more useful and productive to point out when a group has a huge disadvantage compared to another? That's something you can fix. If you are told, that simply because of where you were born and the color of your skin X Y and Z are going to be easier for you that isn't useful. You didn't cause that situation, you can't change where you were born or your skin color, and you probably don't want to make anything worse for yourself even if you could. If you tell someone instead that other people with a different skin color are unfairly treated in X Y and Z that's something people can and will want to change.
> It's not really an assumption that if you're white you face a tiny fraction of the racism that a black person gets
The problem is that it 100% is. An old white man accused of being "privileged" might be a holocaust survivor or come from a country or community where they've faced racism their whole lives. Maybe it wasn't even racism explicitly. The point is that you can't know what struggles a person has had to deal with and when people have suffered the last thing they want is someone telling them how great and easy their lives have been.
If you're going to make an assumption it should be that every person has had struggles and advantages at various points in their lives. What matters is that we identify areas of inequality and correct them to reduce all people's struggles. When you do that you aren't asking anyone to feel bad about how good they've had things, you're just asking them to help bring everyone up to the same place. Guilt. blame, defensiveness... those things aren't inevitable. It's all about framing the discussion constructively around the problem to be solved and not the people who, entirely by chance, don't have that particular struggle.
WRT the white working class boys, They are not being held back by terms like white privilege. They are being held back by the very white house of lords denying them opportunities.
In an American context, how often do you hear about social policies to round up Canadians who overstay work visas in order to deport them?
Now yes, obviously white privilege is not the only axis of oppression and both in the UK and US class privilege is overlooked to a massive degree but pretending white privilege is a racist term is stupid.
Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time, assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only useless, but misleading, because these "privileged" people were still in competition with other whites (and non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion.
>but pretending white privilege is a racist term is stupid.
>Racist: discriminatory especially on the basis of race or religion
You're playing wordgames to resolve the cognitive dissonance that comes with claiming to be anti-racist while using intrinsically racist terminology. Especially when the implication of "white privilege" is that there is an unfair advantage based on race which needs to be corrected based on race. Reverse racism is still racism, even if merriam-webster tries to redefine the term.
They absolutlely did derive a collective benefit, i'm astounded anyone can deny this. Are you just ignorant of just how badly treated black people were compared to white people in that period?
This is rhetorical sleight of hand, sophistry which conflates mistreatment with collective benefit to justify racial wealth transfer and power mongering, all on behalf of the so called anti-racists.