I'm going to catch it for this, White Privilege is not a thing....bear with me:

It’s logically incorrect for two reasons to look at a white person and say “You have white privilege.”

  1. As an American Indian, do I have Indian privilege? I can drive without worrying about being pulled over and shot. I can pretty much hold hands with anyone of any race and not worry about catching shit. Except in some of the most racist of places. Can not pretty much anyone of Asian descent also expect the same?So do they have Asian privilege?

So isn’t it pretty much Black people and people mistaken for Muslims who are at a disadvantage? Which is point 2.

  1. It is not logical to say ‘it’s a privilege’ to be able to get pulled over without thinking “I should unlock the door and put my hands up and sit on the curb.” That’s THE NORMAL. White people arn’t privileged. Black people are at a disadvantage. A HUGE disadvantage. And lately those mistaken as Muslims. That’s horrible and i hate it. But it’s a big mistake to say “You have white privilege” and it’s not quibbling over words or relativity.

Don’t attack white people. Attack the causes of the disadvantages. Protest over the cops. Peotest the laws that let a class of people say “I wuz scared fer ma life”

Fuck, Southpark had it right in like their second fucking episode. “It’s coming right at me!!” (BLAM)

Do i have ‘air privilege’ over asthmatics??? No, being able to breath is the normal and what everyone should strive for. Help the asthmatics, don’t attack allergen free people.

I just feel the ‘white privilege’ angle is a dead end street. It’s a fallacy and it’s unproductive.

Hope i don’t get too flamed for this. Mods you can move this to The Pit if you think it’s too incendiary.

Alas, you’re wrong.

Take high-tech startups. They tend to be started by white men…and those white men tend to hire other white men as their corporate officers. It isn’t vicious prejudice, just the relatively ordinary human preference to be around people who are “like you.”

White privilege exists, even in situations where it is not specifically malicious.

Liberals are often accused of wanting “equality of results.” In my opinion, damn right we are! The results are the only way of measuring the opportunity. The fact that there are very few black and women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies is, in my opinion, proof that the opportunity is not at all close to equal.

Hold on…you’re talking about inequality among MILLIONAIRES. In your last example. Your first is still 1-2%enters. Your points ARE valid, but i just wanted to point that out.

Obviously you’ve never worked at a high tech startup as you’re just as likely to see Indians, Asian type, working there as white guys.

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You’re more likely to be followed by Loss Prevention in a store than me, a white woman.

My white, female coworker married a Korean man. She is regularly asked “why did you marry an Asian guy?”.

You’re getting too caught up in the verbiage instead of what it means.

Sorry, but I’ve got a leg up because I’m considered ‘white’. I don’t get any special legislated favors but I’ve got lots of advantages anyway. ‘White’ is considered the norm, nobody worries about whether I’ll fit in with the other ‘white’ folk. Nobody wonders if I’ve got a subpar education due to affirmative action, even though I don’t have a college degree in field where it’s almost always required my resume is taken at face value and no one even bothers to ask. The majority of people assume that I’m just like them because I have a similar skin color, they don’t bother to think that I may be different in way. Nobody follows me around stores thinking I may be a shoplifter. Cops are always polite to me, at least at my house or in my car or dressed well because they assume I’m at least in the upper middle class and not a threat to them or a likely suspect in a crime. Just on the phone people treat me well because I sound like a ‘white guy’. The list goes on and on, most people suck, their prejudices run deep, they judge a book by it’s cover and I’ve got the cover that gets judged the best most often. I don’t like it, I’ve got too much pride to actively take advantage of it, but the only thing I can do about it is speak up when I see people treated unfairly in life and maybe once in a while I’ve changed a person’s mind, but I doubt that I’ve ever done more than convince anyone to moderate their behavior.

I don’t like the idea of harping on the subject, it just adds to the division, I try to stay positive and point out that we should judge people as individuals, but if you’re going to say the privileges I’ve had in life don’t exist then I have to tell you that you’re wrong.

“white privilege” as a term doesn’t mean that we have access to privileges that other dont.(except for one.)
As a white middle aged straight male, I get to live in the world that most people would call “normal.” I don’t have anything more than the average person should have, so in that sense, I am not privileged. But, I also don’t have to deal with an endless litany of abuses, from trivial slights to systematic oppression; and this is where I can say I am extremely privileged. I don’t have to wonder if the bartender is ignoring me because of my race, I don’t have to worry that the policeman is gonna shoot me.
Now maybe some people of color don’t really experience any negative consequences of being a minority on a daily basis, but the fact that they*** could*** is very real and is very un-privileged.

mc

Why the obsession with the treatment of people mistaken for being Muslim and not a mention of the the treatment of people who are actually Muslim?

Just about the only place I ever hear about white privilege is on this MB, usually by people complaining about other people using that term.

Not at all the case, for the reason that people are different.

Give two people an opportunity to be an airline pilot - telling them that will be no discrimination on the basis of sex, race, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability, etc. And indeed there is no such discrimination. Furthermore, they come from equally wealthy backgrounds, always went to the same school, etc.

But one guy has always loved airplanes, has played flight simulator games since youth, and has a natural aptitude for math, science, physics, and technology. The second guy is more of an artist-painter guy, not at all interested in anything mechanical, can’t tell the difference between a 747 and a Hercules, and is immediately bored with the subject of airplanes.
The two people have the same opportunity, but the first guy is far more likely to succeed in his bid to be an airline pilot than the latter.

I can see the OP’s point. White people do get better treatment than black people, and I think most (or at least, I hope, most here) can agree that that’s a problem. But the phrase “white privilege” makes it sound like the problem is with how white people are treated, not with how black people are treated. In the world as it should be, everyone would be treated in the same way that we currently treat whites.

Because the latter is a subgroup of the former usually

I agree with the poster up thread I may be getting hung up on the verbiage. If one thinks that (not be sarcastic here) long Slate/HuffPo think pieces and activists screaming at white people are going to get them to stop and think “maybe I should do more for those disadvantaged” then ok. But as its framed right now I think it’s a bigger turnoff/ divider then it is a constructive narrative.

Thank you everyone for the intelligent dialogue.

As a white person I have not received any unfair advantage because of that fact. Like, I’m guessing, most of white America, I have had to claw and scratch for every inch of ground I’ve managed to get. I can truly say my life has not been privileged. But that’s not what “white privilege” means; it’s a reminder that as hard as my successes have been, I have not had to deal with the things that people of color have had to deal with IN ADDITION to the everyday grind to eek out my existence.
It’s not an attempt to say that white people are oblivious to the hardships that others face. It’s not an attempt to negate the sacrifices some white people have made to eliminate the hardship others face. It’s just a reminder that we, as hard as we may have had it, didn’t have it as hard as others.
In the same way that “Black Lives Matter” is not an attempt to say that other lives don’t matter, It’s just a reminder that Black lives are indeed lives that belong in the group of all lives that matter.

mc

On the topic of white privilege, here is my 2 cents:

White privilege does exist, but mostly in countries where white people are a minority. In white-majority countries like the USA, it is more akin to a “treated like normal” thing that the OP describes.

I lived for more than 10 years in Asia. White people would get English teaching jobs that Asians with better English wouldn’t get. (Example: A German woman, who spoke poor English, getting an English-teaching job in Taiwan that an Asian-American teacher, who much better English, was passed over for – why? “Because you should have a white-skinned person teaching English” – so goes the local logic in Taiwan.
I’ve seen Asian locals go up to a white American woman so that they could pose for a selfie picture with her. Needless to say, this wouldn’t happen in America, since white people are the majority and there’s nothing noteworthy about a white person in America. Some white kids behave brattily in Asia with this “I’m special, much more so than the ordinary/nondescript folks around me,” and some locals actually encourage or promote their attitude. A white woman in Taiwan, IIRC, complained about her $40,000+ income being unsatisfactory (at a time when the local average Taiwanese graduating college pay is less than $10,000 a year.) I have seen Taiwanese locals allow white folks to get away with inconsiderate behavior that most likely wouldn’t be tolerated by another ‘fellow Asian.’
The concept of “internalized racism” is true. It’s not just that many white folks consider themselves superior to Asian locals. It’s that many Asian locals consider themselves inferior to white foreign folks. The two factors combine together to create this white-privilege phenomenon abroad that, IMHO, far exceeds white privilege in America.
The trope about white guys who can’t get laid in America and go to Asia and getting treated like a rock star by the ladies (there was a cartoon about this) isn’t entirely a caricature; the yellow-fever phenomenon is a real thing, and so is its converse, the oft-lambasted “Xi can mei” phenomenon in Asia where Asian girls will go for white men simply because “what’s foreign and Western is better than what’s local and Asian.” Now, Asian racism against white people does exist, of course, and is a bad thing, and there are indeed some bigoted folks in Asia who will oppose white-Asian relationships if it’s a white man and Asian woman (but will be cool with it if it’s an Asian man and white woman) - but the notion that white people are privileged in Asia (and also numerous other “brown” countries/regions in the world) is valid and substantiated.

Another semi-personal anecdote: There was a white man in Taiwan (whom one of my parents is acquainted with) who once took the approach of sending a long list of detailed instructions to someone he had never met (a local Taiwanese woman), but was residing at or owning the place he would be leasing, bossing her around with demands of, “You are to put this-or-that in the refrigerator,” you are to do things this-or-that way, you are to follow my demands to the letter, etc. Bear in mind, again, that to this Taiwanese woman, this white man, AIUI, was a complete stranger – and here he is sending her a laundry list of chores to do and errands to run, before they’ve even ever met. Now, it’s quite possible that this guy was simply naturally a jerk, and I can’t prove that race was a major factor in his bossing-the-Taiwanese-lady-around behavior, but I suspect he wouldn’t have done that to a white/American woman.
By the way, I don’t know if the OP intended this thread to be about America only, so if that was your intention, Dale Sams, then I apologize for the book-long hijack.

TL;DR = White privilege is indeed a real thing. It’s just that liberals are for the most part looking for it in the wrong country. The starkest examples aren’t found in America today; they’re found in white-minority countries.

I ran a business for 10 years. I went out of my way to deal with black entrepreneurs who were in the carpet manufacturing business, drapery business and construction businesses, also some developers. I lost several hundred thousand dollars on my belief that they just needed someone to have faith in them and give them a shot. I had a 100% failure rate in dealing with black business men. Does saying this make me racist? I continued with the same philosophy in my hiring practices throughout my life and had better results as employees. I still feel that the disadvantages they have suffered over the years will take some time to heal and I felt I did my part in the healing process. But as far as big investments. You can't expect people to do anything but hire the best they can find for startups. Statistically I don't blame anyone for minimizing risks using any criteria they feel they need to use to make decisions.

If you think that the color of their skin contributed to the business failure, then yes, in this instance you are being racist. There is another obvious feature here that all the business had in common (besides being black owned) and that’s that they were in business with you. Could it be that the white businessman was the cause of the failures? Could it be that the color of your skin made you bad at discerning what business to choose as a partner?

No one blames a business owner for attempting to mitigate their risk. But being owned by a person of color is not a risk; your claim otherwise notwithstanding.

mc

What is “white”?

I have olive toned skin, and I have been mistaken for Greek, Latino, and Middle Eastern. But according to the Far Left, I’m “white.” I live on Medicaid, and with help from Food Stamps. A Republican legislator is going to give as much shit about me, as they would about any other person under the poverty line. My ancestors never owned a single slave, and I know this because I’ve done ancestry as far back as the early 19th century. My ancestors never lived in the South. They fought for the Union.

It’s not that every single “melanin challenged” person has a leg up, it’s that people who are “of color” or perceived to be “of color” have a disadvantage. You want to fix that disadvantage, fine by me. But not by trying to make people hate their own skin color, or feel guilty for things they didn’t do.

But this constant cry of “PRIVILEGE” is really turning me off from the Left, and I can see why Trump won. People don’t like to be told they’re guilty of crimes they didn’t commit, or be socially pressured to feel bad for things they didn’t do.

Wait, so being white means losing out on stuff due to affirmative action – and then getting told, possibly with great disdain, that white privilege is a matter of folks not wondering if your education was the result of affirmative action?

That seems like a danged weird example to choose from among all others.

We’ve talked about this a million times when the conversation turns to privilege.

Let’s say you have a sibling. Your parents favor your sibling over you. They give your sibling money for the smallest achievements, while they only say “good job” when you do something. When the two of you get in trouble for the same crime, you get sent to your room, while your sibling gets rewarded with an extra dessert. You’re expected to do chores every weekend. Your sibling is allowed to do nothing but play video games.

You are obviously being screwed relative to your sibling, but not in any objective sense. Your sibling gets special treatment. You get “normal” treatment. Your hypothetical parents shouldn’t fix the inequality by spoiling you. They should fix the inequality by treating your sibling more like they do you.

So yeah, in a lot in situations, white people receive the treatment that you’d want anyone to get. I don’t think the police should start treating white people like they do black people just so we can be a more equitable society.

But I think we also need to confront the fact that sometimes white people are granted “extras”. If the security guards are too busy watching the black and brown customers that they miss the white shoplifters, then the white shoplifters are getting an “extra”. If a teacher overlooks little Johnny’s naughty behavior but sends little Jose to the principal’s office for the same naughtiness, then Johnny is getting an “extra.” If someone gets promoted because he was lucky enough to get invited to the very important and exclusive golf game that someone else who was equally qualified was not invited to, then the latter got something “extra”.

If doctors are throwing opiate prescriptions at white patients out of sympathy for their pain, while being more skeptical when it comes to the complaints of their black and brown patients, what’s the solution? Should they treat the black and brown patients like they do the white patients and turn everyone into addicts? Or should they maybe reign in some of their sympathy and start dealing with the white folks like they do everyone else?

I think it’s important for us to realize that dismantling privilege doesn’t translate into positives for everyone. Some boats are going to go up, some boats are going to stay at the same level, and some boats are actually going to sink. I think we’re politically hearing the outcry from a million sinking boats right now. People used to be able to rely on the “old boys network” to get them jobs. They scream “unfair!” when it comes to Affirmative Action, but they weren’t crying when they were able to piggyback on family connections for union jobs that weren’t as open to minorities.