Video: Whites are privileged, and that's unfair

[tomndebb]

Originally Posted by New Deal Democrat

If whites are privileged, why do Orientals perform and live so well in the United States?

If you go to any elite college or university you will find that Orientals are present out of proportion to their numbers in the American population.

Since it has been made abundantly clear, (to those who have actually been paying attention), that "white privilege" has nothing to do with wealth or hierarchical status in society, your question indicates that you are either not paying attention or that you are attempting a hijack.

White privilege is simply a phrase that indicates that whites get a pass in a lot of social situations and a few Law Enforcement ones where various minorities do not.

It may be true that Asians do not experience something similar to "Driving While Black" harrassment, but many of the other indignities suffered by blacks used to be inflicted on Asians, as well. However, once the Civil Rights movement became a significant social force, a number of whites began bestowing Asians with the status of "honorary white" people, usually so that the whites could claim that they were not really racially prejudiced. By treating the Asians, (whom they had scorned just a few years previously), as if they were white, they could pretend that the indignities they heaped on blacks was the result of innate inferiority of blacks rather than their own warped views of people based on silly features such as skin color. Up until the late 1950s or mid 1960s, Asians who stepped outside their own ghettoes could expect to be treated with the same condescension or contempt as blacks, having to listen to stupid jokes about their food not being substantial or jokes that they all ran laundries or that they could not speak English. The "honorary white" status was bestowed on them by racists trying to pretend that their racism was not mere tribalism, but it had the fortunate side effect that it reduced, (not eliminated), the amount of offensive behavior they had to suffer in the white community.

In places where there is a large American Indian minority group, those people, (who are from the same ancestral stock as your arbitrarily chosen "Orientals" which meant they should have similar IQs as if that meant anything), those people still suffer the same indignities as black people. Racists have simply not yet chosen to make them honorary whites, yet.