Privldege doesn’t always have to be “corrected.” Most of the time, what is really being asked for is just acknowledgement.
Yes, exactly - it’s not like this information is hard to find. So I’m glad you finally did instead of continuing to expect me to accept your claim without it. Thanks. That’s all I asked.
My point for asking was that you can’t ever just look at numbers like the ACLU’s without something to compare it to. You can’t assume that every disparity is unfair or due to some kind of discrimination. The Washington Post item understood that, which is why it included both groups of data.
Exactly. That’s my point.
You seem to be assuming that men care that they’re no longer stronger than women, and that they would view their status as less because of it. But the men in the link you posted were saying just the opposite. They said they were perfectly willing to bring women up to their level.
Phil, I think you seem to be assuming that privileged people want to keep their privilege for its own sake - that they like feeling superior or something. That they would feel they were lessened by others having the same privileges, even if they didn’t actually lose anything.
Perhaps there are people like that. But it doesn’t matter. The actual policies that eliminate the privilege gap are all that matter. In most cases, you need not take anything away from the privileged, nor should you, in order to bring the other group to their level.
You’re asking for information but all you have to counter what I’m saying is that you don’t believe it. Where’s your information to back up what you are saying, that supports what you believe?
I expect you or anyone else to be informed about what it is that they are questioning. If I bring to you a link showing some information and then you say you don’t believe it, it’s kind of on you to provide a link of your own to support why you don’t believe it.
No, you think that’s what I’m assuming. 
Well, sure. I acknowledge that there is unequal privilege.
But when do you want this said? How often? And can I be sure that’s all you want? Is there a greater agenda? Do you want me to feel guilty? Or give something up? Those are some reasons people are wary when you talk about this - they have encountered others who want more than that.
If you’re not, fine. I’m just trying to figure out why you think that making women as strong as men, without making men any weaker, somehow diminishes men.
I’ve tried to be very clear with you, but it’s still not working.
I never once said I don’t believe you. Not once. I fully expected you to be right, and wasn’t surprised that you were.
I simply asked you to provide your data that proves it. That’s it.
If your privilege comes at the expense of another, and the privilege is extended to that person, you are no longer privileged. If you have a better shot at being hired because you’re white, and a race-neutral hiring policy is imposed, you’ve lost an advantage.
Yes, but I don’t view ending discrimination against women as bringing men down, only bringing women up. It puts men and women on a level playing field, where once only men were.
Yes, there are times when it is about one group getting a smaller piece of the pie so others can get a bigger piece. When you view it from the perspective of competing for jobs, that’s the case.
But in many cases of privilege, boosting women, or blacks, doesn’t hurt whites in any way whatsoever. For instance, if security guards stopped following blacks around stores to watch for shoplifting, that wouldn’t hurt whites in any way. And lots of those examples of privilege like the ones in the link cited are like that.
Of course it would. If they stopped spending all their time following blacks they’d catch more white shoplifters. Anyway, the point isn’t whether you think ending discrimination is bad for you. It’s whether a significant minority of the majority refuses to believe it isn’t bad for them.
This discussion reminds me of the Charles Murray book: Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. While controversial and you may disagree with much of it, it is worth the read. For a shorter version of his book, you may read his article in the WSJ, The New American Divide.
Here is an excerpt.
[QUOTE=The New American Divide]
When Americans used to brag about “the American way of life”—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.
Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America’s core cultural institutions.
[/QUOTE]
The irony is that the 1960’s “American way of life” didn’t include people of color.
But white privilege is not getting away with shoplifting. It’s about not being watched. Just like the lack of privilege for blacks means being watched when they are also NOT guilty of shoplifting. This has nothing to do with actual shoplifters.
No, it’ neither. It’s about whether it actually is bad for them or not.
Hmm. Thanks. The interesting part of the excerpt is that, without the context of race in the rest of the book, it’s a good reckoning of the gap between the wealthy (“the 1%”) and the rest of us, which includes most whites in the bottom.
Not being watched = getting away with shoplifting.
It does, actually. If store employees didn’t watch anyone, there’d be a lot more people getting away with shoplifting than there are now. Stores would have to raise their prices to cover the loss, and that would be bad for all non-shoplifters. If store employees instead kept an eye on people whose behavior was suspicious, without regard to race, then that means not only that white shoplifters would lose the advantage of being more likely to get away with their crimes (which is a part of white privilege), but that all white shoppers would lose the advantage of being less likely than black shoppers to get hassled for innocent but suspicious-seeming behavior.
If I go into a drug store wearing a big coat when it’s not very cold out and spend a long time in the makeup aisle picking things up and putting them down again, store employees probably should be keeping a more careful eye on me than they would the average shopper. My life is a little more pleasant if they don’t, though. If I get the benefit of the doubt in such situations just for being white then that’s not me being treated fairly. It’s me getting an unfair advantage because of my skin color.
But only for shoplifters.
If you have 100 white people, and none are watched, and one gets away with shoplifting, and 100 black people, and all the blacks are watched, and one shoplifts, the problem is the 99 black people who were unfairly watched because of their race, not just the one white guy who got away with shoplifting because he’s white.
Your comment hinges on what is a “normal” level of watching, I guess. Perhaps blacks are watched at a reasonable level, while whites are given a pass. But I think most blacks would frame it the other way - that they are watched more than is necessary. They would probably see the solution as blacks being watched less, not whites being watched more.
Okay, but nobody’s advocating zero security.
But you’re assuming that store employees ignore suspicious whites simply because they are white! Really? Of course not. They are out to stop shoplifting, period. The problem here is that they treat being black as suspicious.
Yes, and they WILL. Even if you are white.
But you wouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt in that case.
No store is letting suspicious whites off because they are white. It’s just treating blacks as suspicious even when they aren’t acting suspicious, just for being black.