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.