GAH! Yes, that’s fucking settled! It was your own fucking straw man! We keep denying it means any such thing; you claim, with no proof at all, that people use it to mean that; now you say it’s settled that it doesn’t mean that. May I repeat: GAH!
It also doesn’t mean “I’m a lucky bastard because it snowed here last weekend.” It also doesn’t mean, “Look at my sweet bleached tennis clothes.” It also doesn’t mean, “I love the color of the sand on North Carolina beaches.” I guess that’s settled too, then: there are literally trillions of things that the phrase “white privilege” doesn’t mean, because people don’t use the phrase to mean those things.
Edit: Holy shit. Immediately after saying it’s settled that it doesn’t mean that white people have it easy, you say, “Of course it does.” This may prove useful.
Now that I see as a legitimate use–as long as you don’t abuse it by saying the person’s opinion has zero value automatically due to being white, AND you verify that they’ve actually had a life that shielded them from such things.
AND you realize that such assumptions can go both ways - that you can look at a white person as assume they’ve had an easy life because they are white, without knowing them better.
It’s not necessary to point to the white person’s life, or privilege, or whatever to do that though. It’s irrelevant. I should care about those things independent of my own situation.
Wow, you really don’t get the point. Now I’m the one who has explained it over and over.
Gosh, maybe when someone says something that sounds incredibly crazy, it’s because he’s a complete idiot. Or maybe it’s because you don’t understand what he’s saying. You’ll pick the former, of course, since most people do.
It’s not an assumption, it’s a conclusion–a safely drawn one. I know lots and lots of people who use the term, I know what they mean, I have never seen anyone use it to mean what you say, I’ve seen in this thread from you a consistent misunderstanding even of the explicated meaning (through your drawing implications out of that explication that don’t actually apply, see above your attempts at parody), which further lends credence to the possibility that, when you have heard the phrase in the past, you have misunderstood its meaning, and I’ve seen you bluster about providing examples, while finally in the end pointedly failing to provide examples. I’ve got a pretty good argument going here that you have completely misunderstood the meaning of the term. The thing to do in such a case is say “oops” and learn from the mistake.
ETA: Post #209 is you beginning to realize all of this, btw.
I have personal examples - people talking to me - but I can’t prove those, can I? You have to trust me, and I doubt you’ll extend that courtesy.
I realize that trying to provide other examples will end up in a morass of “but that’s not what I wanted you to prove” back and forth. It’s not worth playing that game. I withdraw.
It’s so ironic that you are using the exact same “check your privilege” logic. You are telling me that my experience doesn’t count because you haven’t had the same experience.
It’s interesting how much of my post you skipped–the very part of the post that would undermine the point you’re trying to make. I said a lot more than what I’ve experienced. What I’ve experienced is a starting point, but a lot more went into the reasoning than that.
It’s not a matter of necessity, but of sufficiency. For some people, helping them see white privilege is sufficient for helping them to begin to take new actions to elevate the non-privileged. (And for some people, it may even be outright necessary, for all I know.)
Nothing in the years of your posting leads me to extend you the courtesy of taking on faith your understanding of what other people mean when they use words.
As for your providing other examples, it’s very simple: show someone who:
Uses the term in good faith (not deliberately criticizing the term),
To mean that white people “have it easy,” full stop, and
Not to mean that a white person in a specific way has it easier than a nonwhite person would have under otherwise identical circumstances.
Of course you don’t want to offer such examples. For similar reasons, I’m unwilling to offer you examples of iguanas singing La Traviata.
I would think you might be interested in going back through this thread sometime and figuring out why it is that things have to be repeated to you so many times.
What else does privilege mean? It means (and you can probably ctrl-f for these exact words a couple of other times in this thread) having easier access to certain goods than others have.
To say someone “has it easy” is to imply that they face no serious difficulties in life.
That is different from saying they have easier access to certain goods.
And the latter is the meaning of privilege, not the former.
Sure I do, although I won’t, and if I did I wouldn’t expect you to believe me, any more than I expect to believe you when you try to tell me what people used words to mean.
You do understand how arguments work, right? You can’t just snip out a couple of premises and treat them as though they are the entire argument.
“Your experience is inaccurate because it doesn’t match mine” would be a bad argument for me to make, for exactly the reason you say. But it’s not the argument I made. I did not say or imply that your experience not matching mine is sufficient for me to reject it.