I am not a fan of the term "white privilege”

In My Humble Opinion
81

Bullshit. When I went to school the black student ratio in HS was 10% (1970’s). To my knowledge not black person dropped out. School was not looked at as some insurmountable challenge but rather an expectation. None of us were rich. We weren’t poor but certainly not rich.

Not only is middle class black not a hindrance it’s a marketable commodity because of the educational disparity in the black community. There are literally not enough educated black people to go around to make corporate hiring numbers look good. I’ve personally seen managers beating the proverbial bush to find a qualified black person to work for them and then lower test standards to get them in.

All this goes back to educational failures in poor communities. And it’s not a lack of funding. My city poured money in the school system. They look like luxury resorts compared to my old school. The difference in success rates is not linked to money, it’s correlates to parental guidance. And while you can link that to wealth of the parent it’s not money driving it. Wealthy parents are more likely to teach their children the skills needed to succeed.

I’m not privileged because I had normal parents with the skills to raise children. They were dirt poor growing up and were held to the standards of their day to stay in school and get good grades. They were children of poor immigrants who struggled to speak the language and survived on a good work ethic.

82

WTF.

You’re disagreeing with me that a black person is more likely to be seen as poor and uneducated than a white person, and thus the discrimination black people face is often due to the intersection of race and class rather than just race or just class?

I just can’t see how this is a controversial statement. I especially don’t see how it’s “bullshit.”

Just the other day (because of the weather), I was thinking about how hard life must be for street panhandlers. There’s an old white woman who panhandlers in front of my office every so often, and I got to wondering how she fares compared to her black male competitors. Are people more inclined to feel more empathy and/or pity for her than they do other folks? My gut says “Yes”. I know when I see her, I don’t feel the same mixture of emotions I do when I see the younger black guys.

Naturally, I couldn’t help but think about how well I’d do if I had to panhandle. I don’t think I’d do all that well since there are so many negative stereotypes I’d be up against. Even people who belong to my “group” would see me through a filter of stereotypes–suspecting I’m a drug addict, lazy, stupid, criminal. An old white lady simply doesn’t trip all those wires like a 30-something black person does.

But Magiver thinks this is all bullshit. OK.

83

And many people, quite rightly, view that concept as completely fictitious.

I have worked at the Salvation Army serving meals to the homeless, and at a free clinic for the poor, and at several homeless shelters. I see a lot of poor people come in, asking for help. I estimate 80-90% of those people to be white.

Now generally, I have a tough time understanding how anyone could view those white people as privileged. I keep getting told that white people have automatic, institutional advantages in terms of hiring and education and a bunch of other stuff. If employers and educational institutions treat white people so much better, why don’t the white people in the homeless shelters go and take advantage of that automatic advantage that’s given to white people, and rise up out of poverty by getting the better jobs and educational placements that are available to only white people? The answer is that there aren’t any better jobs that are available only to white people, and everyone knows this.

But rather than acknowledge that homeless white bums are obviously not privileged in any way, we get a retreat to this argument. White homeless bums are more privileged than black homeless bums. How? In what way? Where’s the evidence? Homeless bums suffer a lot of indignities, such as being harassed by the police. But I have never seen any evidence that the police harass white homeless bums less than homeless black bums.

The standard line always seems to be that the superior treatment whites receives has already been proven and can’t be disputed. You said so directly earlier in this thread. But it can be disputed.

84

One of the weirder things to wrap my head around is how many people in my current upper middle class mislead assume that I have the same background they do-- Parents with professional jobs, beach houses, summer camps, private schools and brand new cars for their sweet 16th. I grew up in a housing project and ate from food stamps most of my childhood. Just yesterday a friend tried to get me to compare experiences with having high-powered fathers (hers was a TV producer). I had to dodge that one. My dad was a sporadically-employed day laborer.

But unless I go out of my way to tell them, nobody knows or even thinks to guess. I’m part of the club, automatically, no need to prove myself. My teeth grew in straight enough and my speech is generic enough that I don’t have any class markers to give me away.

That’s a powerful thing. I’ve had plenty to overcome, but the one thing I don’t have to overcome are people’s expectations of me.

85

Exactly; the term is used to essentially discount the experiences and achievements of white people, by implying that it was all somehow ill-gotten as a result of this privilege.

And that’s exactly why I was saying earlier that the term is terrible; I’m not denying the phenomenon of “white privilege” (for lack of a better term), but that the connotations associated with “privilege” call to mind country clubs, old-boy networks, and a degree of preferential treatment that VERY few white people actually enjoy. At best, most of us enjoy a lack of prejudice, rather than anything above and beyond that, which is what most white people think of as privilege.

So when someone uses the term white privilege, it’s often meant as a sort of instant 20% discount against the effort, time, trouble, etc… which isn’t fair at all- there are plenty of people who are white, and who DO bust their asses at school, work, volunteering, etc… and just because there are minorities who didn’t get the chance to do that, it doesn’t somehow diminish the effort that these people have and are putting forth.

THAT is the problem with the term as it’s currently used.

86

My problem with this way of looking at it is that, once again, it casts white people as the default – white people are treated the normal way, and everyone else is a special case or something. I’m not a minority, but if I were, I would imagine that it could feel utterly maddening sometimes to constantly see my circumstances and personal characteristics cast as other than the norm, and other than the default, when they are in fact the norm/default for myself and folks in my community.

Characterizing the benefits (or lack of disadvantages) that being white can confer in various circumstances as a privilege, rather than just characterizing it as the default or normal state of being, casts white people, for once, as the recipients of some sort of non-default treatment or circumstance.

87

My problem with the term is that it’s unfortunately and not infrequently used as a “yes, but” bludgeon to put allies in their place, to make them remember that it doesn’t quite matter what you believe, what you agree with, what you vouch for or fight for, white privilege or gender privilege or cis privilege or what-the-hell-else-privilege is always there to remind you that the circumstances of your birth have conspired to make you a minor villain.

It’s tiring, especially when you agree with the broad themes.

Sadly, I am a cisgendered heterosexual male and must be consistently reminded that I am privileged. By everyone. All the time. Lest my hubris overwhelm me, I guess.

88

I think there’s enough material here to debunk the privilege claim. And anyone qualifying it with ‘white’ is an idiot.

89

When is the actual last time you’ve been personally told this?

I’m as liberal as it gets, and travel in wildly liberal circles. I just finished grad school not too long ago, so I’m not too removed from campus life.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard anyone actually say “check your privilege” in real life. I’ve heard more about white privilege, but mostly in academic discussions and maybe on the occasional blog. I think I hear people complaining about the term five time as often as I hear the term itself. Is this seriously something that comes up often in your life?

90

Here’s a version of the reasoning: gangster rap started as a socially-conscious movement of people trying to vent their frustrations with broken systems. Once white people started listening en masse, the huge increase of money caused it to become more about shock value (and totally displaced the benign or explicitly socially-conscious rap acts that came before), which resulted in “gangsta” culture becoming the most visible element of black culture in the 90s. Folks would argue both that that triggered a new wave of racism against blacks (which, Hell, I sure heard people in my family say variations on “well, when they get money, they just buy jewelry and Uzis”) and that it led to more black kids turning to gangs and violence than they would have had white money not been involved.

Somewhat convoluted, but not crazy.

91

It can be disputed, yes, but…you didn’t do a good job. I anecdote anecdotes, too!

At best, you might be arguing that there’s cases where folks are SO DAMN DISADVANTAGED that racial inequality effectively comes out in the wash. Which, like, might be true? I’m not sure it’s a very interesting stance?

92

When I was in college, this sort of thing was big deal. I entered school right when my college had just created its Office of Institutional Diversity and received a million-dollar grant for increasing diversity. Freshmen were required to attend a series of lectures where speakers wagged their fingers at us about privilege and the administration occasionally sent campus-wide emails about related topics. Once someone put up fliers explaining why all white people and only white people are racist.

One could say all that’s not a big deal. Delete the emails, ignore the fliers, don’t take classes in Cultural Studies or any other BS department like that, and it’s not your problem. While there may be some wisdom there, many students and professors may fear that this type of thinking will gradually creep it’s way into more and more aspects of campus life.

Now it is certainly true that since the day I finished grad school, I have never offline encountered a single person who whines about"white privilege" or “cultural appropriation” of any of the other stuff that drives campus activists bonkers. The real world has a way of making people orient their priorities towards more practical things. Nowadays I follow such debates chiefly for their entertainment value.

93

Some white people are more white than others.

94

Live sven, I’ve lived abroad where whites were a tiny minority, and in some cases only me in a city or town, although mine has been for more than 25 years over a 35-year-period.

I really did not understand white privilege as a white male growing up in what was then damn near lily white east side of Salt Lake in the 60s and 70s.

I can’t pretend that even now I can completely understand what it’s like to be a minority in America, although I do believe that I can understand much better than I did before.

Maybe people with a greater gift of natural empathy than I have a better sense, but I was as completely oblivious as Marie Antoinette, even if the famous quote was fabricated. I wasn’t prejudiced so they couldn’t really be treated differently, right?

For me it took some experiences which provoked visceral reactions.

Without questions, the one which stand out the most was when my now ex-wife and I were hunting for apartment in Tokyo. I knew that there were barriers to foreigners renting, but had figured that I would be OK. I spoke Japanese, was married to a Japanese and worked as a professional in a Japanese culture. I had references and guarantors who would vouch for my worthiness and was as assimilated as well as anyone I knew.

Yet, when my wife and I would walk into a real estate office, all that was completely, one hundred percent irrelevant. I had white skin and they weren’t going to talk to us. Some wouldn’t even try to contact the landlord.

I still remember the rage I felt walking out of an agency where they sole proprietor had been kicked back in his chair reading his newspaper. As the door chimed as we entered, you could see his game face come on and he greeted my ex like a long-lost cousin, only to instantly turn stone cold with the realization that the gaijin behind
her was part of the package.

Without a word, his feet went back up, the newspaper picked up and with an extremely rude flick of his wrist, we were dismissed without commet. My face contorted with anger, we did an about face while I fantasized about throwing bricks through the window, or worse.

Fortunately, outside of trying to rent apartments out and out bigotry was rare, which is why I stayed there as long as I did.

(I did have an interesting experience with one Japanese girlfriend I met in a bar in the section of Tokyo where foreigners would hang out. She was divorced in her 40s, which made remarriage difficult as she would come to Roppongi to meet foreigners. She had several rental units, but would never rent to non-Japanese. We were good enough to fuck or marry, but just don’t rent to us.)

I ran into an issue with an European-led, African-based NGO which I had been helping do fund raising in Japan, getting donations in the thousands of dollars. It wasn’t a massive amount yet, but we were growing. Then they decided to put some fresh-out-of-school whizkid in charge of Japan because he was Japanese. It didn’t matter that he had absolutely no experience in Japan and as a kid, he wouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone, he was Japanese so he was suddenly in charge. I resigned and all the projects stopped as he wasn’t able to keep things going.

Most of it was for more subtle. People being surprised that we can use chopsticks, that kind of thing. Others was more irritating. I was a sales manager and restaurants could not believe that I was the host and not the guest and would try to give the bill to my clients.

95

It’s a buzzword term. Just like all the other buzzwords, it is trotted out by bigots and intended to immediately trump any rational discussion. The person using the term is pretty much admitting that they got nothing, so they are playing a supposed trump card. They do so, because if you dare to question them on it, they can then call you a racist.

96

Or it’s the totally different thing that many of us have been discussing.

97

Yes. That’s a rant not statement you can back up. You’re trying to project failures based on skin color when there is a clear and undeniable connection to drop out rates/poor performance in schools and job success.

Of course you can’t. Therein lies the problem.

Naturally you would feel this way. You’ve institutionalized your racial bias and project it forward as your “gut” feeling about how other people feel. You really need to take that talent of clairvoyance and buy lottery tickets.

It’s 2016, not 1950.

98

Dude, I don’t even know how to respond to this. If anyone is projecting anything, it’s you. I haven’t said a damn thing about “failures” in performance, academic or otherwise. It is undeniable that black people are stigmitized not just because of their race, but because their race is associated with poverty. You can infer from this whatever you want, but don’t put words in my mouth to score points in some fevered argument you’ve having against yourself.

You really need to stop talking to me if you can’t do better than this. Please answer the question I posed. Which kind of street urchin tends to solicit more empathy and pity from the average American? A white woman or a black guy? Fortunately, it turns out we don’t have to rely on any “clairvoyance” to answer this question, since current research indicates that most Americans are going to feel more empathy for the former, solely based on skin color.

White privilege is not about white people being blue-eyed devils. It’s about white people enjoying an advantage simply because they are the majority in both number and power. Refuting this is like refuting that the world is round.

99

What have I projected?

Here’s my answer. You didn’t read you’re own link.

“White observers reacted more to the pain of white than black models, and black observers reacted more to the pain of black than white models,”

Nobody cares about the color of street urchins. In my city the vast majority of beggers I’ve come across are white males and they all get the same amount of money from me. Zero. You want my money go to the shelters I support.

And being the majority in numbers hasn’t stopped other demographic groups from whatever privilege you think white people hold.

100

So you think being white is exactly the same as not being white?