What a complete non sequitur. Try and keep up: we’re discussing White privilege in modern Western society.
When someone suggests dealing with it by rounding up Whites and genociding them, your little historic aside would be relevant. Not before.
Don’t contribute to the hijack, it’s what he wants.
Sorry, but historical asides are commonly used in discussions without any suggestion of actual genocide. It’s called the slippery slope. In this case identifying a group that isn’t apparently doing anything in particular, other than existing and receiving some special privilege. Historically that has been a recipe for resentment and discrimination against that group.
As for the other post - I was responding to comments made up thread by John Mace. So your hijack comment makes little sense.
In retrospect, you’re correct, I’ll bow out.
It’s amusing that you know the name but don’t seem to recognize that it’s a fallacy.
There, I’ve highlighted the oxymoronic part of your argument for you.
Right. Whites collectively suffer so much discrimination, it’s inhumane.:smack:
The only problem I have with this definition is that it implies that there is some kind of authority granting it. We have gotten rid of the official granting of legal privileges based on race (unless you want to talk about AA). Perhaps that’s exactly why we need the term - to describe unofficial or extralegal advantages.
That only works if you are a store manager (and someone might come along and point out that maybe the answer is for a black person to be store manager instead of you). Is it necessary, or even possible, for a simple store customer to shrug off that privilege?
But now we’re back to the definition, and existence, of white privilege. If removing white privilege doesn’t involve whites losing anything, then was it really a “privilege” in the first place? Is it really a “privilege” to be treated like everyone ought to be treated?
I think that’s what can, and does, happen when the term is abused. It doesn’t have to be that way. Unfortunately, the same people use this to shun anyone who speaks out against it by labeling them racist or sexist, or by saying they are denying the existence of privilege altogether. And, of course, labeling every man as evil because he’s male is exactly sexism, as sexist as any sexism aimed against females.
I simply don’t agree that a suspicious-looking white guy will get less scrutiny than the average black person, or that a well-dressed black person would get even less scrutiny. You’re way overplaying this privilege thing. Store security is designed to stop shoplifting, not make life harder for black people. The problem is that they often define suspicious as black. They still look at suspicious white people too.
Perhaps, but my point is that the more you drill down to the individual, the less groups matter. And most cases involve individual behavior. To stick with this example, most people shop alone, not with everyone in their race.
That’s not a mistake. You’re making a mistake of NOT doing that. What is privilege in the real world, if not single incidents in life?
And I took this from the list in the article I cited.
Why not? The list may vary by person, but it’s still a list.
The heap is made of grains, that’s my point.
Here’s your last line again:
I didn’t say you have to pin them down, or restrict them to certain items. I’m just saying that talking about this without looking at real-world examples is pointless and not illuminating. It’s a way of avoiding critical thinking about it.
I am not rejecting your claims as vague - I am simply saying they are vague, and therefore not useful in this discussion. A robust argument is not vague. By looking at examples of privilege, I am not excluding other possible examples.
Drop this hijack immediately, and don’t do it again. For other posters:
This is correct. Please don’t respond any further to the posts Chen019 has already made.
I think I see what the objection to the phrase “white privilege” is; generally speaking, a privilege is something that is seen as being a peculiar benefit, advantage or favor.
A lot of what’s described as “white privilege” isn’t really a benefit, advantage or favor, but rather an absence of anything negative.
Meaning that if we were to put numbers to things, the default white position would be a 0, and various other groups may have negative numbers.
That isn’t privilege, as is commonly thought. Privilege would be if the default would be if say… a Hispanic person’s position was 0, and white people’s position was +5, and black people’s position was -3.
I realize you can spin that around, but it’s a matter of perception, not math. When you’re the default, it’s hard to see that as being “privileged”- you don’t get anything special, especially considering that your group makes up a huge majority of the population.
You’re “not agreeing” with something I didn’t say. I said “equivalent” Black person.
But they generally tend to define a broader class of Black people as suspicious, wouldn’t you agree?
But White privilege* isn’t *something that attaches to the individual, it’s something that attaches to the group. It’s something people participate in without any action by themselves.
Compare male privilege - do you deny such exists as well?
It’s the trend in incidents, not any one incident. And it’s a whole lot of things that don’t happen - non-incidents, as it were.
McIntosh’s work isn’t the be-all and end-all of defining White privilege.
The heap isn’t the grains, is my point.
But that’s the practical outcome of trying to decide whether this-or-that incident is “an example” of White privilege.
I’m not saying looking at real-world examples isn’t illuminating, I’m saying pretending there’s some sort of dichotomy between “incidents that are White privilege” and “incidents that are not White privilege” is a non-starter. An individual incident can be either based on context.
OK, that’s more of a stance I can get behind - so a non-exclusionary view of privileges. To answer your earlier question, I think freedom from “Driving while Black” stops is an example of an unambiguous White privilege. But freedom from being stopped isn’t an incident, now is it?
Exhibit A: Dan Quayle - If this man was black, he’d be washing dishes somewhere.
Exhibit B: John Boehner - " "
The opportunity to advance to the forefront of politics while being a tremendous idiot is perhaps the most color-blind career path in America, as many men and women of all races take advantage of it with ease.
That’s very funny and all, but why would you think it is true? I suspect that if you tally up all of the bumbling morons in politics and categorize them by race, you will find that a disproportionate number of them are white. The reason that I suspect this is because it has been widely demonstrated in many contexts that negative attributes tend to be given more weight by observers when the possessor of the attributes is a racial minority.
So. Got any cites for this, or are you just a comedian?
Fortunately, this issue will likely work itself out. Census: whites will lose majority by 2043. I suspect that white privilege goes hand-in-hand with being the majority of the population. Once we lose our grasp on this, we will also lose our status as the “default” and having white privilege.
Oh geez. :smack:
Just like that? How did apartheid ever happen?
Not due to the will of the majority or a result of democracy.
Yes, you’re correct, much of the problem is that people in America “define suspicious as black”.
Beyond that, it’s silly to claim that “white privilege” isn’t real simply because “suspicious-looking white people” will the same scrutiny that “the average black person gets.”
The point is that black people have to really work to not look suspicious to many while white people have to really work at it to look suspicious.