# White Privilage **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 9, 2018, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511 "2018-02-09T14:26:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/181 "2018-02-13T00:12:50Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > That is the after spin, but also ignores that New Mexico and other western states are based in Spanish law. > > It also ignores the ENTIRE justification for non-Asia directed immigration law in this country which was originally based on a desire to avoid Catholic, Eastern-European and Irish papist migration. I have no idea how any of this, or your complaint about Sessions’ comment, connects to the thread topic. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/182 "2018-02-13T00:19:08Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I have no idea how any of this, or your complaint about Sessions’ comment, connects to the thread topic. Is the thread not about throwing non-Anglos under the bus? Does this not relate to the systemic reduction in rights to “non-whites” in the country that were established post Bacon’s rebellion? Why shouldn’t it be considered a dog whistle directly aimed at some of the major campaign themes provided by the Trump administration? How about the convictions that directly relate to systemic bias that were handed down today related to Law Enforcement? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/183 "2018-02-13T00:21:59Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Is the thread not about throwing non-Anglos under the bus? > > Does this not relate to the systemic reduction in rights to “non-whites” in the country that were established post Bacon’s rebellion? > > Why shouldn’t it be considered a dog whistle directly aimed at some of the major campaign themes provided by the Trump administration? > > How about the convictions that directly relate to systemic bias that were handed down today related to Law Enforcement? This too. Perhaps someone else will be along that can make heads or tails of your post and give you a useful response, but I’m not that person. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/184 "2018-02-13T00:32:03Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > This too. Perhaps someone else will be along that can make heads or tails of your post and give you a useful response, but I’m not that person. Oh, are you unaware that “white” as a legal concept didn’t exist previous to Bacon’s rebellion? Or about just in the past few months where the POTUS made comments about how Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” and Nigerians would never “go back to their huts.” Are you unaware that accusations of racism have peppered Sessions’s career? > [@](#): > > Thomas H. Figures, a black assistant U.S. attorney who worked under Sessions, told the committee that Sessions said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was okay until he learned its members smoked marijuana. Is it that hard to see that a attorney general candidate is an important role? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/185 "2018-02-13T00:44:24Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Setting aside race for a moment, imagine you are the police chief in a town. If you were to divide the town into quadrants, and found that the northeast quadrant had 70% of the crimes, while the southeast, southwest, and northwest quadrants all accounted for 10% each, would it be appropriate to task additional police officers with patrolling the northeast quadrant? Assuming your answer is “yes”, would your answer change if the northeast quadrant happened to be heavily black? What if Black individuals were more likely to be stopped, charged and convinced of crimes due to their skin color. What if it is true that this happens despite no evidence that they are actually more likely to be breaking laws when income is accounted for? Would you admit that there is systemic racism and an inequitable application of the law based on a non-biologically meaningful categorization like race? Because that is what the data actually shows. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/186 "2018-02-13T00:46:29Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > … What if it is true that this happens despite no evidence that they are actually more likely to be breaking laws when income is accounted for? … I’d be interested in seeing your data on this point (although I think you’re missing some important links in your analysis). Anyways, cite? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/187 "2018-02-13T00:52:13Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I’d be interested in seeing your data on this point (although I think you’re missing some important links in your analysis). Anyways, cite? > [@](#): > > To quickly summarize our findings: blacks and hispanics represented 51% and 33% of the stops although representing only 26% and 24% of the New York City population. In comparison to the number of arrests of each group in the previous year (used as a proxy for the rate of criminal behavior), blacks were stopped 23% and hispanics 39% more often than whites. Controlling for precinct actually increased these discrepancies, with minorities between 1.5 and 2.5 times as often as whites (compared to the groups’ previous arrest rates in the precincts where they were stopped) for the most common categories of stops (violent crimes and drug crimes), with smaller differences for property and drug crimes. > **The differences in stop rates among ethnic groups are real, they are substantial, and they are not explained by previous arrest rates or precincts.** [http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/frisk7.pdf](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/frisk7.pdf) Your turn, can you provide a cite? Edited to add another cite, which is easier to read showing higher contraband rates for “white” stops. > [@](#): > > The Stanford data show that searches of white drivers yield contraband 32% of the time. By contrast, when the driver was black or Hispanic, the contraband hit rate was 26%. That suggests a significant amount of bias. > **[Measuring racial bias in police forces](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/06/22/measuring-racial-bias-in-police-forces)** > > Is driving while black really an offence? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/188 "2018-02-13T00:58:57Z")
> [@](#): > > We found that black and Hispanic drivers were often searched on the basis of less evidence than whites. > **[Police Data Suggests Black and Hispanic Drivers Are Searched More Often Than...](https://slate.com/technology/2017/06/statistical-analysis-of-data-from-20-states-suggests-evidence-of-racially-biased-policing.html)** > > We’re launching the Stanford Open Policing Project to facilitate discussion of police practices. I can keep going here…but can you do more than hand wave it away? As there is no biologically meaningful difference in the arbitrary socially constructed racial definitions we use, please provide any cite to explain these differences, or try to prove that there is a biological difference if you want to go down that rat hole. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/189 "2018-02-13T00:59:19Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > … Your turn, can you provide a cite? … You’re going to have a to be a bit more specific that that. What do you want a cite for? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/190 "2018-02-13T01:00:22Z")
None of these appear related to the point I asked for a cite about, which was this: “no evidence that they are actually more likely to be breaking laws when income is accounted for” ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/191 "2018-02-13T01:03:39Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > … As there is no biologically meaningful difference in the arbitrary socially constructed racial definitions we use, please provide any cite to explain these differences, or try to prove that there is a biological difference if you want to go down that rat hole. Of course there are biological differences. Things like life expectancy, average height and weight, rates of diseases, all vary between races. That isn’t intended as a claim that one race is superior to another, just an acknowledgement that there are real differences, ones we can measure via statistics, among our various self-identified racial groups. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/192 "2018-02-13T01:05:44Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > None of these appear related to the point I asked for a cite about, which was this: “no evidence that they are actually more likely to be breaking laws when income is accounted for” You didn’t read the cites, or you didn’t read them objectively. Here is another link to show the bias in policing. [http://www.princeton.edu/~fmg/JMP](http://www.princeton.edu/~fmg/JMP) I figured you would hand wave away this data, but note above post’s quote, with more selective bolding to see if you can see it better. > [@](#): > > The differences in stop rates among ethnic groups are real, they are substantial, and **they are not explained by previous arrest rates or precincts**. That directly contradicts your attempted strawman. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/193 "2018-02-13T01:12:30Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Of course there are biological differences. Things like life expectancy, average height and weight, rates of diseases, all vary between races. That isn’t intended as a claim that one race is superior to another, just an acknowledgement that there are real differences, ones we can measure via statistics, among our various self-identified racial groups. Provide a cite that shows those differences like life expectancy, average height and weight are due to DNA, and not due to social pressures or social implications of social realities like …white privilege… You are begging the question here, there is MORE DIVERSITY in sub-Saharan Africa than the entity of the remainder of the world, and there is more genetic diversity within these arbitrary groups than there is between them. You are making a claim that the eugenics era concepts of race are biologically significant, provide a cite. Here is mine: > [@](#): > > How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The “racial” worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called “racial” groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances. > **[AAA Statement on Race - The American Anthropological Association](https://americananthro.org/about/policies/statement-on-race/)** > > The following statement was adopted by the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association on May 17, 1998, acting on a draft prepared by a committee of representative American anthropologists. \[…\] Your entire argument is begging the question, and there is no biologically significant differences with pre-germ era, eugenics groupings of Negroid, Caucasoid or Mongoloid like you claim, provide a cite if you are making such an unsubstantiated claim. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/194 "2018-02-13T01:12:38Z")
You completely missed my question. Earlier, you said this: > [@rat\_avatar](#): > > … What if it is true that this happens despite no evidence that they are actually more likely to be breaking laws when income is accounted for? … I’d actually, genuinely, like to review whatever study you have that talks to this specific point. I imagine it’s probably titled something along the lines of “an examination of rates of criminality among races which accounts for income disparity” or something like that. Do you have something along those lines? I don’t care to read a bunch of generic studies about police bias, and I didn’t attempt a strawman of anything AFAIK, but I would actually like to read scientific literature that studied the rates of criminality among population subgroups that accounted for income levels. Do you have it? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/195 "2018-02-13T01:16:19Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Really? You have never seen any evidence that some police engage in making traffic stops for “Driving While Black”? > You have never noted the sort of discrepancies to which I have alluded in earlier threads on more than one occasion, as described in > [this report notes](http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/10/race_and_drug_use.html)? (And in threads in which you have participated.) I think that I’ve already stated my position plainly enough. I believe there are some places in the country where the court systems treats black suspects worse than white suspects. I do not see any reason to make up the term “white privilege”, much less to drive the hysterical obsession that some folks have with using that term in every other sentence. I’ve already stated why. Andrew Sullivan also has a good [essay](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/we-all-live-on-campus-now.html) touching this and similar topics that represents my opinion. There are races other than blacks and whites, though the blog post that you linked to doesn’t mention them. So to determine whether better treatment of drug crime suspects is exclusive to being white, one would need to investigate how Asian, Latino, Native American, multi-racial, and other groups are treated by the same court system. Absent any data on that, we have no way of knowing whether certain types of treatment are exclusive to whites. Further, the definitions of “white” and “black” are arbitrary, as is being discussed in another GD thread right now. The official definition says that descendants of original inhabitants of the Middle East and North Africa are white. Obviously some or all of those people could just as easily be classified as members of other races. So if the official definition changes at some point, would those of Middle Eastern or North African descent spontaneously become unprivileged? Some people don’t even know what their ancestry is. Are we supposed to believe that such people simply can’t know whether they’re privileged or not? And what about my cousin Daniel, who is both white and Hispanic? Is he privileged or unprivileged? Is everything easier for him, or harder? And then what about people who grew up thinking that they were white, but then took a DNA test and found out that they are actually black? Does everything suddenly become hard for them at the moment that they get the DNA results, or is their past re-written so that everything from birth is retroactively made harder? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/196 "2018-02-13T01:16:22Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Provide a cite that shows those differences like life expectancy, average height and weight are due to DNA, and not due to social pressures or social implications of social realities like …white privilege… I never made the claim that the differences were “due to DNA”. You seem to be imagining me making a lot of arguments that I’m not making. Please try to stick to the words I type. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/197 "2018-02-13T01:18:55Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You completely missed my question. Earlier, you said this: > > I’d actually, genuinely, like to review whatever study you have that talks to this specific point. I imagine it’s probably titled something along the lines of “an examination of rates of criminality among races which accounts for income disparity” or something like that. Do you have something along those lines? I don’t care to read a bunch of generic studies about police bias, and I didn’t attempt a strawman of anything AFAIK, but I would actually like to read scientific literature that studied the rates of criminality among population subgroups that accounted for income levels. Do you have it? Read the cites I already provided, they provide the statistical models that they used to correct for this. Still you need to come back with ANY evidence that the eugenics era racial categories are biologically valid groupings outside of the social construct of race. Until you can do so I will assume that you are hand waving away that reality. There is no biological basis for the common race groupings, they are arbitrary outside of accounting for the self created realities of the social construct (which are very real but not based on biology) ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/198 "2018-02-13T01:20:24Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I never made the claim that the differences were “due to DNA”. You seem to be imagining me making a lot of arguments that I’m not making. Please try to stick to the words I type. OK, if they are not based on DNA, they are based on sociological impacts like unequal opportunity, so do you concede that different outcomes based on privilege and not on inherited traits? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/199 "2018-02-13T01:22:56Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I think that I’ve already stated my position plainly enough. I believe there are some places in the country where the court systems treats black suspects worse than white suspects. I do not see any reason to make up the term “white privilege”, much less to drive the hysterical obsession that some folks have with using that term in every other sentence. I’ve already stated why. Andrew Sullivan also has a good [essay](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/we-all-live-on-campus-now.html) touching this and similar topics that represents my opinion. > > There are races other than blacks and whites, though the blog post that you linked to doesn’t mention them. So to determine whether better treatment of drug crime suspects is exclusive to being white, one would need to investigate how Asian, Latino, Native American, multi-racial, and other groups are treated by the same court system. Absent any data on that, we have no way of knowing whether certain types of treatment are exclusive to whites. > > Further, the definitions of “white” and “black” are arbitrary, as is being discussed in another GD thread right now. The official definition says that descendants of original inhabitants of the Middle East and North Africa are white. Obviously some or all of those people could just as easily be classified as members of other races. So if the official definition changes at some point, would those of Middle Eastern or North African descent spontaneously become unprivileged? > > Some people don’t even know what their ancestry is. Are we supposed to believe that such people simply can’t know whether they’re privileged or not? And what about my cousin Daniel, who is both white and Hispanic? Is he privileged or unprivileged? Is everything easier for him, or harder? > > And then what about people who grew up thinking that they were white, but then took a DNA test and found out that they are actually black? Does everything suddenly become hard for them at the moment that they get the DNA results, or is their past re-written so that everything from birth is retroactively made harder? Heritage is not Ancestry, and we are all African at some point, your entire point there is invalid. Privilege is not a simple True or False, is is multifaceted and how do we address if if we ignore that it exists like your post seems to suggest. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511/200 "2018-02-13T01:33:22Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > … Still you need to come back with ANY evidence that the eugenics era racial categories are biologically valid groupings outside of the social construct of race. > > Until you can do so I will assume that you are hand waving away that reality. > > There is no biological basis for the common race groupings, they are arbitrary outside of accounting for the self created realities of the social construct (which are very real but not based on biology) You seem to still think I’m making an argument about genetics. I’m not. Do you understand that? When I say that the average life expectancy for whites is 79 and for blacks it’s 75.5 ([cite](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf#015)), I’m making no claim about the _reason_ for that disparity, I’m just noting a fact. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-privilage/808511.md?page=11)