What you are calling “privileged” is not the same thing as the concept that we’re talking about here. As others have pointed out, it’s a bad word to use for the concept. jsgoddess’s “invisible norms” is definitely better.
Here’s a very small example:
A white guy and a black guy, both lower middle class, go into a bank to apply for a loan. The black guy, either explicitly or subconsciously, may worry that his skin color will be a negative factor during the process.
This doesn’t mean that he’s assuming the loan officer or the bank are racist. It means that, as a black guy, he’s learned that the color of his skin may sometimes impact him in this way.
The white guy’s “privilege,” in this case, is that he will never have to consider any of these things as baseline concerns.
The concept of privilege doesn’t make the white guy a bad dude. It doesn’t mean he should change his behavior at the bank. It just says that he should recognize the dynamics at play.
There are a million tiny, almost invisible ways that black people are impacted in this way. The concept of privilege says that all of these tiny “invisible norms” add up to big systemic problems for black people and systemic advantages for white people.
There’s also plenty of room for overlap. A black guy is capable of benefiting from male privilege while still being impacted by the color of his skin. A white woman is capable of benefiting from white privilege while still being impacted by her gender. and so on.
The problems come when people start trying to quantify these things and use the number of ways they’re disadvantaged as a kind of scorecard for social justice points.
This doesn’t answer my questions. Do you disagree that black people are more likely to be assumed to be thieves by a shop employee? Or that they’re more likely to be pulled over for no real reason? Do you disagree that women are more likely to be groped on crowded public transportation, or raped on first dates? These don’t discount or eliminate other forms of privilege, including female privilege (like, say, not being laughed out or mocked if they cry in public), which can exist in various circumstances.
If you don’t disagree with the above examples, then you believe in white and male privilege, you just call them something else. If so, this is just a semantics disagreement, not a disagreement in philosophy or logic.
The only area I’ve seen there to be white-male privilege is typically in the realm of dating and relationships - it’s been well-documented that in online dating, for instance, that white preference skews very strongly, even in today’s society, and especially towards white men. Also in certain aspects of Hollywood, where the white savior trope still runs strong as well.
But in other areas, such as employment, academic admissions, academia, etc. - no.
But norm captures only a subset of privilege, doesn’t it?
A big part of white privilege, for example, is the disparate opportunities that were open to a white person’s parents, the even greater disparity in opportunities open to their parents, and on and on back however long their family was in the US. If you were born in the US to white parents, your parents had opportunities for wealth accumulation (principally through housing) that were less available to non-white people, regardless of their ability or personal characteristics.
Even that historical disparity (and even if you regard it as solely historical), reflected today in vastly different levels of household wealth regardless of household income, put lie to Shagnasty’s ignorant claim.
The word privilege has some baggage I don’t like, specifically from treis’s definition. But it defines a real concept. People who have take for granted things others do not. They are largely even unaware that things such as race and sex and sexuality and trans status afford them advantages relative to those who do not have those things.
Yes, it’s true that the issue is racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia. These people should not face these things. But they do, and our lack of experience in these things can leave us with an incorrect, biased look at the world.
That you have white male privilege doesn’t mean you are necessarily better off than those who don’t. Those advantages may be offset by disadvantages. I’m sure there are a lot of black women who would rather not be me, for example.
Still doens’t change that I am privileged. There are things I never faced that I didn’t know existed until I started listening to minorities talk about them, and then related them to my own different but similar (in kind if not intensity) experiences.
It is a white male privilege that allows white men to shit on those who fight racism and sexism, and declare them to be over. It is white male privilege that led those Bundy supporters to go free. It is white male privilege why these Nazis are not dead, and why Conservative statues are still up.
I can go on and on about the things that white male privilege has allowed. It is real.
You can do better than this What ignorant claim? I already said some people have “privilege” over others but it isn’t divided by race or sex. What specially are you disputing? I think it is mainly about wealth, looks and social status which are are loosely correlated with race and sex.
You already said you think white people are less likely to be mistreated by cops than black people. That’s privilege. So yes, at least in some circumstances, it is divided by race. If you agree that men are less likely to be groped or raped in some circumstances, then you also believe in some forms of privilege divided by sex.
You’re ignoring some thoughtful arguments in this thread so far. If you want others to make effort in engaging you, then please make some effort in replying to thoughtful arguments.
Yes, sometimes it sucks to be a white man, and in those instances we should strive to correct where we can as well. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying to right the other wrongs as well.
And sometimes when you try to correct an injustice it may seem to temporarily swing in the opposite direction, but that doesn’t mean the attempt was flawed just that we need to keep vigilant.
My sister works as a “friend of the court” as an advocate for minors in custody cases, and she says that when she started over 20 years ago, it almost always came down that the mother got custody and the father got the bill. Now it’s much closer to 50/50 alto the mother still gets the benefit of the doubt. So society is adjusting in favor of men in an area where they have long suffered. The war is ongoing and there are battles on many fronts.
It was a much bigger factor in the past, but now isn’t as much. However I don’t think you can write it off. 44 out of 45 of our presidents have been white men. White men make up 30% of Americans, but they make up 70-80% of major politicians and business owners.
But to me the main thing about white privilege is nobody holds your entire group accountable when one of you does something wrong. When that guy in Charlottesville drove into a group, people weren’t saying all white men are bad. But when a mentally ill person commits a crime, or a black person or a muslim people assume the entire group is dangerous.
“As long as they know how to behave around police.” So you don’t see privilege in the fact that African-American parents have to teach their children how to behave when stopped by police while white parents never feel the need to do so?
I listen to everything. I have been groped several times too but it was by gay businessmen in New Orleans and women in several workplaces. The difference is that I didn’t consider it a life altering experience that required years of therapy. I just pushed them off and went on with the night. There are pretty stark gender differences for such things and I grew up in a very biracial town so I am aware that cultural differences exist but that doesn’t mean any given individual can’t do something about it.
A black woman that I grew up with that came from the worst family you can possibly imagine is a full Colonel in the Air Force just because she wanted out. She was the last person you could possibly imagine to be successful but she did it. She gave the key-note address at her 20th high school reunion that was a huge success. If she can do it, anyone can and I have no sympathy for people with fewer hardships that claim they can’t.
So you don’t believe women are more likely to be groped or raped than men? That’s all I’m asking. If you agree that they are, then you believe in privilege. That’s not the only forms of privilege – there are privileges that women benefit from that men don’t as well. There are probably even privileges that black people benefit from in some far less common circumstances that white people don’t.
You keep sidestepping my questions – why not just answer them? Again: Do you disagree that black people are more likely to be assumed to be thieves by a shop employee? Or that they’re more likely to be pulled over for no real reason? Do you disagree that women are more likely to be groped on crowded public transportation, or raped on first dates?
So, you’re just arguing about the degree to which there is an advantage to being white. No one is saying that the white guy is at an advantage in every single situation you can possibly cook up. Yeah, there was a time when that might actually have been true. White guys ruled, literally.
Today, there are lots of things that give you an advantage, including being good looking or being able bodied. And one of those things is being white and male.
Special modifies the three things in the list. It is a special right OR a special advantage OR a special immunity. It is not a special right OR an advantage OR an immunity.
And I would love to see an example where special and normal can be used to describe the same thing.
It’s not just semantic quibbling either. By calling the advantages white people have privileges, it sets them apart as something special compared with all of the other advantages that certain groups of people have. Yes, Shag has an advantage from being white. He also has advantages since he is, as he so often likes to tell us, rich, well educated, good looking, and probably a dozen other things.
Being born to wealthy parents is something that is truly a privilege. You can be a stupid and lazy bum that fucks up over and over again and live in luxury without real consequence. Being white is nothing like that.
Yes, privileges (or advantages or whatever you want to call them) can vary widely in character and significance. This doesn’t discount anything I’ve said.
What that I’ve said do you disagree with? So far, nothing you’ve asserted conflicts with what I’ve said that I can see, apart from semantics about the word privilege.
How many CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations are ethnically Jewish vs. the overall population? How many millionaires do you suppose are Jewish vs. the population at large? Statistically speaking, who’s more priveledged?
If you’re arguing that there might be privileges many Jews benefit from, I don’t think you’ll get any pushback here. This doesn’t conflict with anything said so far that I can see.
Everyone needs to know how to behave around the police. It is fairly simple. Keep your hand in plain view, tell them what you are doing at all times and don’t make any sudden moves. Young black men sometimes like to antagonize the police with odd or erratic behavior and vice-versa. That is a recipe to get shot. Obviously, some police officers are at fault as well for bad judgement but it is generally easy to avoid getting into that situation. That isn’t isolated to young black men however. The majority of people killed by the police are younger white men engaging in the same types of stupidity (think rednecks and white trash). --Warning violent but not graffic.
So you believe that police officers are no more likely to mistreat black people who have done nothing wrong than white people who have done nothing wrong? Do you believe that any difference in mistreatment is the fault of the ones being mistreated?