Mychal Denzel Smith in The Nation: White America Is Here To Stay.
Well, what then? Suppose we somehow make racism a thing of the past in America. What really changes? Nonwhites no longer have to fear getting pulled over for no reason, hate groups disband for lack of interest, but what really changes that makes a difference in anyone’s standard of living? Blacks are still living with the psychosocial effects of generations of poverty and ignorance and marginalization, and whites – middle-class and up, anyway – have all the social and jobhunting connections that matter. If we’re post-racism, now the semiliterate black kid from the projects, when he goes to apply for a good job, has roughly the same chance as the semiliterate white kid from the trailer park – but how much of a chance is that, really?
False dichotomy. There is no reason to ignore one problem because it fails to fix a different problem–even if the two problems share many aspects or outcomes.
Your question could be paralleled by asking whether there is any point in trying to eliminate diabetes since so many people will continue to have health problems due to obesity (the leading cause of type II diabetes).
For the most part the idea of white privilege is something that most people who didn’t go to college have never heard of. Hell, depending on the classes they took there’s probably plenty of people who went to college who were never exposed to the idea. There’s also some resistance to hearing the word privilege. “What do you mean I was privileged? My dad was a truck driver and my mom was a waitress. I had to work my ass off to get to college.” And it doesn’t hurt that there have been a lot of people who use privilege as a club in debates. I’ve heard people say “check your privilege at the door” during conversations which just seems like a good way to dismiss someone.
But, hey, I buy the concept of white privilege. Remember, folks, white privilege doesn’t mean that all white people have it good. It just means that we all have certain benefits from being white.
Vicksburg, Mississippi 1927: During one of the worst floods of the century a barge filled with African Americans fleeing their flooded homes arrives in Vicksburg. The dock master won’t let them disembark until they sing a song. They refuse. They remain on the barge until a member of the National Guard comes by and tells the dock master to knock that shit off because they have more people to save. This kind of thing didn’t happen to white victims of the flood.
Arkansas 1930: A devastating drought hit the state which messed up the food supply to the point where people started dying of pellagra. One member of the Red Cross wrote “We do not believe we should give enough food to be comfortable for this would destroy the incentive of our Negroes to work and might even ruin our labor force for years.” When African Americans came to pick up their rations in town they were sometimes made to sweep the streets or do menial work before they were given anything. Not something that typically happened to the whites who needed rations.
General Treatment: There are other little examples of white privilege. If I were a white man in 1930 I would probably address a woman I knew as Miss or Missus. If she was a black woman I might call her Miss even if I knew she was married. Or I might just call her Aunt if she was older. Imagine yourself a little black girl who has been sent to the butcher by her mother. You take a number and when your turn comes the butcher tells you that there’s no way he’s going to serve a little nigger girl before a white person and helps the old lady who took a number after you. Some of this might seem like small potatoes but it’s just an example of the benefits of being white. i.e. You’re treated with some degree of social respect.
I think you’re getting way ahead of yourself here. How might we make racism a thing of the past? Racism and its evils have historic and generational impact. So I think it would take considerable imagination to even figure out what that might look like. But let’s take this as a given…
I don’t think this is the end of racism. I accept that individuals hold prejudices and that will never go away. I don’t think anyone really cares about working to this level to eradicate racism - individuals are welcome to be as ignorant as they wish. The problem to me, though, is that it is socially acceptable to hold such beliefs. Now, the garden variety racist is obvious enough that (s)he is somewhat marginalized in U.S. society - at least, middle class, educated circles. The problem to me, though, is that there are any number of nuanced ways of expressing racism that aren’t name calling or burning crosses in people’s yards - that Danny Solorzano and others call “microaggressions.” The fact that this type of racism exists, that is not blatant, that even has the veneer of being couched in progressive rhetoric, is what’s most depressing. Because one does the right thing, gets an education, moves to a progressive community… and it’s still there. Furthermore, considerable psychological energy is spent trying to discern - was that just an awkward interaction, or is there some judgment being passed on me because of my race? Am I legitimately doing poorly at this task, or is the supervisor embellishing because of my race? And so forth.
Your first sentence here is really what the end of racism would mean - that we would somehow figure out how to eradicate the intergenerational nature of prejudice. That’s precisely what an awareness of White privilege starts to do - it is the most elementary, non-threatening step in the process of working on the much larger issues that loom ahead. The fact that we can’t even get to this point - acknowledging that White privilege exists - suggests that we aren’t going to be solving racial inequity anytime soon. 
Odesio, good examples, but I think the problem is that someone will look and say “well, that was generations ago, that can’t happen now.” Racism is like a retrovirus - when it becomes vulnerable due to social progress, it transforms itself. Today’s White privilege looks more like unequal sentencing due to race, educational disparities in schools that are predominantly minority, and even in those settings that are desegregated, the fact that kids of color are often dissuaded from opportunities to excel (i.e., advising a Black kid to take vocational or sports courses instead of the most demanding academic curriculum - this happened to me). Whereas a lot of White kids in selective programs (gifted and talented, AP courses) are there not because they met a certain cut score, but rather because their mom and/or dad applied pressure to school administrators to get them in (I’ve seen this too).
I would flip those, FWIW. Remember, women didn’t get to vote even in theory until 1920.
Come to think of it: STAR TREK had the first interracial kiss on American television, right? I’m talking about the episode where the white dude kissed a black lady, of course. Because I’m obviously not talking about the much earlier episode, where Ricardo Montalban kissed the daylights out of that white chick.
Because, really, who gave a crap about that in the '60s? America spent the '50s having absolutely no problem watching a Cuban bandleader spank his white wife and put a baby in her; it was the most popular show in the country, sure as José Ferrer – in between doing Oscar-nominated work and Emmy-nominated work – was busily knocking up Rosemary Clooney faster than you could say “Esther Williams, meet Fernando Lamas.” Who would’ve cared? We already spent the '40s watching Esther Williams hook up with – holy crap, Ricardo Montalban again? Is he like the Jackie Robinson of this stuff?
Not really, no; COPACABANA beat him to it in the '40s – back when nobody gave a crap that Carmen Miranda’s character was engaged to Groucho Marx’s character. Why would they? Anthony Quinn racked up awards for playing Paul Gauguin and Zorba the Greek. Rita Moreno had no problem getting work as Vincent D’Onofrio’s mom. Are you seeing where I’m going with this?
White males have privileges,people of color and women do not have.
You use desi arnez as an example. If he were a dark Puerto Rican, it would have been different. Also how many non Hispanic roles did Rita Moreno have?
I agree with you. Hence the bit on the census form about White Hispanic: we all know that Andy Garcia can play James Caan’s son in GODFATHER III despite neither of them being Italian, sure as Catherine Zeta-Jones can get her big break playing Eléna de la Vega – and it ain’t exactly Olivier in blackface playing Othello, it’s just Cameron Diaz showing up for work.
I dunno. She played Hetty Hutter in THE DEERSLAYER, and Zelda Zanders in SINGIN IN THE RAIN; got the Emmy for playing Ms. Capkovic on THE ROCKFORD FILES, and got nominated for another one playing Violet Newstead on NINE TO FIVE; had no trouble playing Belle Abramowitz in SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS, and is currently playing Fran Drescher’s mother on HAPPILY DIVORCED; for lack of a better phrase, she can pass.
White women enjoy the benefits of white privilege as well. And even when women couldn’t vote you’d be hard pressed to argue that wealthy white women didn’t have certain privileges that poor white men didn’t have.
I didn’t say that black culture was a part of white culture; what I tried to say was exactly the opposite. There’s a lot of overlap between black and white culture, especially in parts of the South.
Also, this may just be semantics, but privilege is usually defined as some kind of unusual prerogative or immunity or something that someone gets in terms of a positive deviation from the norm.
That’s the problem with the concept of “white privilege”; whatever awesome stuff white people supposedly get isn’t a deviation from the norm; it IS the norm. The opposite of “under-privileged” isn’t “privileged”, it’s just “normal”, with "privileged being a deviation from the norm in the opposite direction.
This is very likely at the heart of several of the disagreements, here. Nothing in my experience conveys the notion of “unusual” or deviating from the norm. Once one has established that it is bestowed based on membership in a group, it can be a tiny minority or an overwhelming majority and the definition stands.
You are missing the point. When a woman walks out on the street and is vulnerable to men it doesn’t matter whether she is wealthy or poor she is seen as a woman. Any one of great wealth has privilege.
It didn’t matter whether you were wealthy or poor if you were a female, you still could not get your own credit, you could still not go to the same country clubs, you could not sit on a jury, you could not fulfill your professional desires and the list goes on. Women, like African Americans are visibly different and that is where the discrimination comes in.. Sometimes sexism and racism and ethnicity is only felt by the person belonging to those groups.
I’m sure it’s the root of the vast majority.
And, for the record, I don’t deny that minorities have it worse than the majority everywhere in the world, including the US.
Calling it “privilege” is stretching it a long, long way, in my opinion.
No, I’m not missing the point. Nothing you said demonstrates that white women did not receive the benefits of white privilege.
There’s clearly such a thing as male privilege too, and so white men sit at the happy intersection of both privileges, whereas a black man only accesses male privilege, a white woman only accesses white privilege, and a black woman is denied both.
If you think being a bird in a gilded cage is privilege, so be it. Their whiteness didnt get them the right to vote, the freedom to walk the streets late at night, the privilege of for g to the best universities, and I can go on and on.
Right, because any two forms of negative treatment are equivalent. :smack: