For starters, the definitions and explanations of privilege that a quick Google search yields refer to privilege as special rights or permissions that are/were deliberately put in place, officially codified, deliberately preserved, and often deliberately and officially revoked. This is how most people use the term privilege in their day-to-day lives. White privilege refers to a phenomenon that (depending on how you prefer to split hairs) came to be without deliberate implementation, is not deliberately codified or preserved, and cannot be officially revoked. Indeed, the whole premise of white privilege is that white people don’t even pay attention to various inequalities. Come to think of it, in terms of the usual definition of privilege, white privilege is the opposite of a privilege (both in terms of effect and legal status), and happens to everyone except white people. I think you should cut people a little slack for assuming that white privilege refers to privileges that white people enjoy instead of a set of anti-privileges that non-white people endure.
In contrast, a quick Google search of “natural selection” brings you right to a clear, concise, and correct definition of the term, as used by biologists. Also, I can’t recall of any creationist getting hung up on the term “natural selection”. I’ll grant you that “survival of the fittest” is unclear and jargony, though.
(On preview, it appears that this thread is starting to get nasty. For the record, I’m just playing with words here.)
According to DianaG, being black is like having cancer in that both both will make your life harder. If you’ve got a problem with this, talk to her, not me.
Being treated reasonably is a right, regardless of race.
The first google result of “white privilege” is the wiki page which has an in depth explanation of the term. The next few are academic sites that explain the concept as well. As misunderstanding is with the person who cannot properly google something.
What you’re missing is that while cancer is a physical problem, the issues that come with being black (or a minority in general) are a societal problem. There’s nothing inherent to being black that makes it bad in the way having cancer is bad; it’s the fact that our society subconsciously assumes whiteness as the natural state.
No argument there. The entire point of the privilege concept is to bring the realization that not everyone is treated reasonably to the fore, and that it runs to a deeper level than being pulled over for Driving While Black.
Would you rather have it expressed in Louis CK terms?
And the Holy Roman Empire was neither a holy, roman, nor an empire. If a person is so intent on using an academic term, yet they can’t perform a basic google search to understand how the term is used, then they are not to be taken seriously. I don’t think the problem is with the academics because people might be confused.
IIRC, “survival of the fittest” was coined by Social Darwinists, and was meant to be unclear and jargony when you get right down to it.
Yes, it does; especially in an argument that supposed to be egalitarian. That’s the point of using the term. In an egalitarian worldview, privilege is something to be torn down and destroyed.
And when you get right down to it, that’s how I think that most people pushing the term “white privilege” actually feel. They don’t mean the term how it is “officially” supposed to mean, they mean it like it sounds.
Which is nonsense. For the vast majority of people, living in the past was a close approximation of hell. Claiming that being a serf under the lash was “fuckin’ awesome” is ridiculous. For most of history the fact that I’m an atheist would have gotten me killed if it was discovered; that isn’t “fuckin’ awesome” at all. This is just a variation on the attitude that human history started sometime in 1950s America.
The people using the term are the ones confusing others, not the ones being confused. And it’s amusing to hear “just google it” when complaining about privilege; you do realize that home computer ownership is nowhere near universal? Especially among the very poor whites whom users of the term are trying to convince that they are “privileged” despite being in poverty.
A political argument that needs to be googled to be understood isn’t a very good argument. And proponents can huff and puff how people should understand that “privileged” doesn’t mean what it sounds like, but most people won’t. Most people who hear the term aren’t going to bother googling it even if they have internet access; they’ll take the term as it sounds like.
…But it does fit the archetype of someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who never truly worked for anything. You know, the exact thing that some people mistakenly take issue with when they hear “white privilege”.
Hey, you’re the one who drew the parallel with the inaccurately and grandiosely named political entity.
And no, it’s not that complicated. Throughout today I’ve imagined myself having to say, “Look, I agree with you. You’re just saying it weird.”. I’m not here to debate the merits of the concept of white privilege; this is explicitly a thread about the language used to talk about white privilege. And the language leaves something to be desired.
Yes but I don’t see how it can be helped. At one time White Privilege did in fact mean the sort of privilege that whites enjoyed in Apartheid South Africa or Jim Crow South. And it seems like the entire AM spectrum of our radio waves are dedicated to misinformation (like telling people that this early form of white privilege is the same white privilege that people are talking about today) and making any conversation about race in America an example of blacks trying to get free stuff from whitey again.
These days it means something much more subtle.
Early in my career, I was seconded to a client in Hong Kong and the thing that I noticed the most was how much people didn’t notice me. It was like they didn’t realize that I was Asian. They didn’t even realize THEY were Asian.
Many white folks in America have a blind spot when it comes to racism. They can certainly identify and condemn overt racism but there is a racial advantage that whites enjoy in America that does not arise from racism. THIS is white privilege today. Perhaps a different phrase is more appropriate but I can’t think of a more descriptive word.
This society was built to be fair, but it was built by white people and it was built to be fair to them. I don’t know what you can do about it. For me the concept of white privilege is most useful in explaining institutional racism and explaining why minorities still see racism even though we don’t have laws against miscegenation or poll taxes.
I think that women have a better grasp of how racism might still exist even though you can’t legally discriminate anymore because there is a a gender corollary to white privilege. We’ve had much more success closing the gender gap (I can hear some women complaining that this is not true, but it is, just think what that means about the state of the race gap).
Its not just less persecution, its privilege. Of course not every white man is born on third base but when they get their turn at bat, they three swings and their strike zone is well defined. Thats not the case for minorities. Not because of some racist cop but because everyone (including blacks) have a more positive view of whites, because everything was built with them in mind.
It is a very understandable term that means just what you should expect. I think those arguing against the term really need to give some examples of its misuse.
I just want to commend Bosstone on the subtle joke here. Whoooosh, indeed.
As for White privilege, of course it exists. Or why else would White people be such whiny bitches when it looks like they’re going to lose it (see: immigration debate, any “English is the language of the US” thread, hijab issue in France)