The Shrine

kali o. wrote:

This is a term that's been kicked about a bunch in the last few years. "White Privilege", "Check your Privilege", etc. There are even conferences about it.

As a term I think it's counterproductive and unnecessarily combative. More productive is talking about "discrimination" and "racism". Where are people being treated poorly because of their race? That's where we should focus. Racism still exists and the legacy of past racist laws still scar. However, almost no one feels they are privileged and calling someone "privileged" is an insult for most people. Tell the poor white girl in the trailer park in Tennessee about her "white privilege" and she'll probably laugh at you. The average African American is "privileged" compared to the average African Mozambican.

People keep bringing this up on other threads and I thought it deserved its own thread.

Thoughts on the subject?

It exists the same way Indian privilege exists in India or the same such kind of thing in any other region/place in the world. The same way people make assumptions with dealing with men/women (i.e. male privilege) or people with foreign accents to your own (I guess this is just ugly nationalism). These aren't things that I would go out of my way to bring up myself. It certainly isn't productive to single out like this.

So, yeah, I think it exists, but there's more ideal ways to go after things. Basically even if I agree with someone in general, if they start saying shit like white privilege and meaning it then they're losing me.

We're just more open to people with stuff in common with us (class, race, religion, etc.) - the problem here is a need for us to be more welcoming of differences rather than needing to be less welcome to similarities, which is what I hear when I hear terms like this. Which is easier said then done in a lot of cases but discriminatory practices and things that promote them certainly weren't/aren't improving things. They're basically just a temporary fix for problems that should be dealt with directly.

It should be welcome to bring up how it feels like someone is getting a raw deal based on their gender/sexual orientation/race but using terms like "white privilege" is just a good way to start a conversation with people on the defensive. Not really worth the effort. People don't appreciate being singled out and who can blame them?

Also to clarify part of my point, I don't see privilege as the assumption that all white people (or anyone else "privileged") have it so great. It's about being born and having a better chance at things being better. It's about walking into a place and just having an easier time. It doesn't mean that everyone is always going to succeed, it just means they have a better chance.

Also posting rather than editing cause I see ManaMan as browsing the forum and I don't want to undercut a potential reply with an edit he probably won't see lol

I also think it's an awful term, a blanket term that more accurately describes at least two actual, separate and real things, both of which are causing problems and need to be addressed:

1) Cops still let whites off the hook and pin minorities to the wall in America a lot more often than they should. Institutionalized racism is still endemic in U.S. police departments, particularly since the "War on Drugs" which disproportionally targets poor neighborhoods with no other particular means of sustenance besides drug dealing, and has led to this modern race-war kind of mentality.
2) Economic privilege, which is not limited to whites. If you are rich in America you can still hire the highest-priced lawyers in the world to make sure you can get away with an awful terrible lot of terrible criminality. That one, however, is not particularly limited to white people anymore - ask someone like O.J. - it's simply the privilege set of wealth now. But it's still far easier for whites to make it to the wealth levels in question.

They both need to be addressed, and I agree, different terminology would help. Talking about "white privilege" inflames the passions and prejudices of rural and disadvantaged (and/or otherwise racially aggrieved) white Americans at a time when we should be talking more properly about racist cops and the privileges of wealth...neither of which will be less controversial, but at least they pinpoint the major components of the societal injustices more accurately.

Uh-oh, it sounds like we more or less agree on the issue!

Waiting for Kali to swoop in to play devil's advocate and call us all racists for not being fans of the term.

White privilege is a *real* thing. The problem is, the term is so nebulous and so broad and so dependent on the specific comparison that the term itself borders on meaningless at best; highly dishonest and divisive the rest of the time. With the metrics BLM/SJWs use to apply this term whites, there is a better case to start talking about Asian Privilege...and as we all know, Asians clearly were the founding fathers of the US, set up a bias system in government and enslaved black people....wait...

Male privilege, white privilege, black privilege, female privilege, Asian privilege, native privilege, jewish privilege etc are all real things in the right context; and all utterly stupid.

The white privilege thing is just one small factor of a trend in media, educational institutions and politics; tearing others down, using accusations of racism/sexism to stifle criticism and restricting speech/ideas. That's what spawned the alt right and a candidate like Trump (and things like Brexit).

PS - you are all racist beta cucks.

I have a black friend...