Absolutely. What did I post that caused you to think anything else?
As a white male, I think it is an advantage. I have plenty of disadvantages that tilt the scale the other way, but I still believe it is a privilege. There are many factors and huge degrees, though.
The problem with using words in a way that doesn’t comport with their definition is that people will misinterpret what you say.
So you’re saying that because I use privilege in a way consistent with millions of liberals and social progressives, but different than you, you believed that I didn’t think that any other privileges or advantages existed other than being white or male?
That doesn’t make any sense at all.
So far you haven’t actually taken issue with a single thing I’ve actually posted aside from semantic disagreements about the word privilege.
They aren’t hard at all. The reason young black men and women are assumed to be thieves by a shop employee are because they are more statistically likely to be. I used to work store security a long time ago and a few of them will rob you blind if you let them. Some of them are very good at it but most aren’t so they get a free night in the local jail.
There have been some recent viral videos of people shoplifting enormous amounts of goods and stuffing it everywhere even in pockets of custom made dresses. That is nothing new. I used to bust people for that type of thing all the time. Oddly enough, the second most likely group of shoplifters was older white women. They will also rob you blind. Shoplifting is an established artform but only some people engage in it and it varies wildly by group. If you were a storeowner, would you want a Gypsy convention coming into town?
If I was black, I would be wary of the police but probably not too much because I wouldn’t behave in way that would attract extra attention. I don’t think that most police officers are out to get most black people. Most of them are just picking up on abnormal behavior.
Whatever the reasons for the differing treatment, you’re agreeing that privilege exists. I’ll strongly disagree with your reasons – black people have always been assumed by our society to be more violent or aggressive or criminal, but through the vast majority of American history, white people were far more likely to rape or assault or kill a black person than the reverse, yet white people were never assumed by society at large to be more violent or criminal or more dangerous around black women. Rather, black men were assumed to be dangerous to white women despite the fact that white men raped black women far, far more often (probably hundreds of times more, considering the genetic history of African Americans) than black men raped white women.
But your second sentence assumes that this privilege exists. Do you at least recognize this? If black people are assumed to be thieves more often than white people, then that’s an advantage (or privilege) that white people benefit from.
I think that almost everyone has some “privileges” which makes the overall term meaningless.
That first part was one of the points of my long post #8, which you never responded to. Pretty much everyone benefits from some privilege, and some privileges are more significant and more common than others.
Jesus H. Christ, dude. Do you know who you sound like? “Some of them are good”? “Most are not good”?
You are in a hole and need to stop digging.
It is just the opposite. It is just set theory. Most are good. A few are not. When I did store security, we targeted known individuals and not groups but they fell into statistical clumps. I don’t see how you can run any type of security without statistical profiling unless you want to get into absurd situations like we have at airports these days.
You’re missing the forest for the trees, whatever your point is. It’s clear that you believe that white privilege exists. I’m not sure about male privilege – you haven’t yet said whether you agree that women are more likely to be groped or raped. But I’ll assume that you believe that in some circumstances, men are treated better than women (and in some the reverse). If so, then you believe male privilege also exists, as does female privilege, in varying circumstances.
I think it’s reasonable to add all these up and conclude that white privilege is pretty damn significant, and so is male privilege. Black privilege might exist in some circumstances, but is much, much less common and less significant than white privilege. Perhaps female privilege is somewhere in the middle, depending on the circumstances. Police are probably less likely to assault a woman than a man, for example.
But so far it doesn’t appear that you disagree that these privileges exist – you just don’t want us to talk about them, or don’t think they’re significant, or something like that.
I believe that certain people have more advantages than others in any given circumstances but I don’t believe in the overall term “privilege”. OTOH, if you want to have some systems analysis done, few people can match me. My daughters beat me in overall luxury. Who has it best? I can’t say but that is the point. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses.
All things being equal, I would prefer to be white rather than black but all things are not equal. I would much rather be someone like Eddie Murphy or Will Smith than lots of white people I know. I don’t think I would have any problem being a woman either even though I have no experience with it. I don’t think being a female in America today is remotely disadvantaged. I also don’t think that being Jewish or Hispanic is a disadvantage. It is mainly about assimilation and overall culture. That applies to everyone in the U.S. and across the world.
None of this disputes anything I’ve said (or any of the other “privilege” advocates in this thread) aside from your quibble with the word “privilege”. The existence of privilege doesn’t mean that it’s always better to be white, or male, or anything. Some black people indeed probably have more privilege than certain white people. That doesn’t mean that white privilege (or its lack) isn’t generally more significant in the lives of most people.
What problem do you have, specifically, with any of the things I’ve posted? All your statements so far have been in generalities. Can you point to the specific concepts that I’ve posted that you think are incorrect?
It feels like you really want to disagree, you just can’t figure out what specifically you disagree with.
Your argument, such as it is, is a complete straw man. Yes, some blacks have it better than you do. No one says “white privilege” works such that all blacks end up lower on the socio-economic scale than whites. I’m not going to bother linking to the studies showing how resume selection works when you two equal candidates, one with clues to the candidate being white and the other black. You know about that stuff. You just don’t believe it’s “significant”, even though you admit you’d rather be white than black. Well, lots of people “believe” stuff that isn’t true, and if there was no significance, then it wouldn’t matter to you.
You’ve seen the evidence. You just don’t “believe” it. The horse has been led to water, as the saying goes.
Millions of liberals and social progressives are using privilege with its intended meaning. That’s why we hear over and over again about white male privilege but never didn’t come from a broken home privilege, for example.
There are nigh-infinite possible privileges – that we don’t talk about some of them very often doesn’t mean that they can’t exist.
Again, what, specifically, that I’ve posted, aside from semantic disagreements, do you have a problem with?
Here’s a quick way to think of “privilege” that works for me. Take the exact same situation you are in and change something about you (e.g. you go from disabled to abled, white to black, rich to poor etc) and decide if just that change makes life easier for you or harder or the same. If it makes life harder then, for that one item, your current state is more privileged.
As a white male myself, the reason why I’m blind to white male privilege is that it’s generally the absence of hassles and problems. You don’t notice that you’re not getting hassled by mall security, you don’t notice that you’re not being groped on the subway.
For example, I went to go pick up my sister from a subway stop a few years ago. I see her coming out onto the sidewalk in Brooklyn, so I honk my horn. I beep it again, and she doesn’t turn. Finally, I opened the window and yelled her name. She finally turned and saw me. When she got into the car, I asked, didn’t you hear the horn? She responded that she doesn’t turn for people honking at her, because it happens all the time by creeps in cars, so she just ignores it now. I don’t do that, and I never noticed the lack of horns beeping at me to get me to look at the creep in the car. I was totally blind to that very minor form of male privilege.
That’s a minor example, but I think it’s a good illustration of how you can be completely blind to all the ways that being white and male just makes going through your day easier.
So, ask your African friends and see if their experience in shopping malls is different that yours. Ask your female friends if they see subtle harassment that they just ignore, whether they get groped on subway trains, etc.
Your (the OP) example of getting groped by a woman or a gay man is interesting, but not apt. Sure, it happened to you a couple of times, but subways have to post signs to remind people that groping is awful, so don’t do it, and they are not about men being groped. Also, if you’re a normally sized man, unless the woman who groped you was a muscle builder or something, you wouldn’t feel the same powerlessness that a woman may feel, since you could likely protect yourself much better than she could.
You keep talking about individual people, but that’s irrelevant. Individuals have advantages and disadvantages, of course, and no one disputes that. Your daughters have advantages. A middle class black person living in suburbia has a much better shot than an ultra-poor white person living in an orphanage. So what?
My main point is that you don’t see the privilege because it’s the lack of daily hassles and problems that you experience.
Oh, it definitely does exist. [url=http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.htmlHere’s an example. Now this one was just “white names” and “black names” but it clearly shows a difference in treatment with regards to gaining employment (or opportunities for employment, since this was about callbacks).
I don’t have a problem. Being a white male is a significant advantage in many circumstances. I just don’t think that is the top of the hierarchy like many people assume. Pretty white females can get almost anything they want as long as they are semi-competent. That wears off after time but Asian men and women can get high salaries, especially in the IT field that I work in even if they can barely speak English.
My objection is the same as the one with “feminism”. The Left occasionally has a good idea but it is absolutely horrible with branding. I have no idea why they are so bad at it but it is the 8th wonder of the world if the world was turned into a sewage sinkhole. It is a PR nightmare. “Privilege” is a real thing but it doesn’t work as presented so it turns a lot of people off including me.
There is no doubt that certain groups have more advantages than others but the causes are multi-factorial. If you tell the daughter of a coal miner in West Virginia whose father that just got laid off that she is “privileged”, it is just going to piss her off. It is also true that individual circumstances differ and you can’t make any judgements until you look at them one by one.