White Privilege?

[Anomaly]

pink,

you make those comments about the South because you live there, or it just sounds right and it was on TV?    I've lived and worked for decades in the rural south.   The same can be said of every race that lives here.   Societal success is dependent on mostly cultural aspiration.   Culture meaning the culture of the family unit, both immediate, extended, and to a lesser degree, your neighborhood.  Remove hope or expectations and you remove goals and will.   Speed bumps become impassible mountains and difficulties become fatal defeats. 

[Ice_nine]

See.  That's what's wrong with using the term.  It's so inaccurate.   It paints a picture that all whites share in the privilege.

​I wish you read the article I posted. It explained how people can be privileged in one area and not in another. Poor whites still have privileges because of their skin color. That doesn't mean they are more or less privileged than say, an upper class black man.

[hotpink]

pink,

you make those comments about the South because you live there, or it just sounds right and it was on TV?    I've lived and worked for decades in the rural south.   The same can be said of every race that lives here.   Societal success is dependent on mostly cultural aspiration.   Culture meaning the culture of the family unit, both immediate, extended, and to a lesser degree, your neighborhood.  Remove hope or expectations and you remove goals and will.   Speed bumps become impassible mountains and difficulties become fatal defeats. 

​I've done summer  "internships" down south, the longest in the Atlanta region but also Tenessee and other places.  I totally noticed the disparity, especally deep in the city and more rural.  There was lots of disadvanted but it did seem that blacks had a particular disadvantage over everyone else.

Edited June 2, 2015 by hotpink

[Anomaly]

​I wish you read the article I posted. It explained how people can be privileged in one area and not in another. Poor whites still have privileges because of their skin color. That doesn't mean they are more or less privileged than say, an upper class black man.

Please explain the point of using a phrase in general conversation that requires an article to explain what it is meant instead of what is typically interpreted?

[Anomaly]

this is a good article but it's written by a feminist so it willprobably be dismissed out of hand http://thefeministbreeder.com/explaining-white-privilege-broke-white-person/

@Ice_nine

I read the article.  Calling it "privilege" is still repugnant and misleading.   Advantage is a much better term.  Privilege infers you had material benefits by being white.   It definitely is an advantage, but you still may not experience any benefit from it because of class, poverty, education, geography, family, including effort, attitude,and will.  I've experienced too many successful people with few "privileges" to risk minimizing their efforts,including the author of the article.  

[little2add]

white, black or poke-a-dot, we live in the land of plenty.  White privilege is a fallacy

look around.  you have the freedom to do anything your heart desires, don't kid yourself...   the problem here is perception...

• count your blessings
• love and cherish your friends and family
• thank god
• follow the golden rule

 

 

[Didacus]

I've had several bosses, including my current one, as blacks.

There is no such thing as 'white privilege' and if anything, its a lingo being tossed around to offer anyone but whites an advantage over and above whites. The coined term itself is nothing more than a kind of 'reverse racism' against whites in my opinion and it holds no water under my bridge. 

[Didacus]

​I wish you read the article I posted. It explained how people can be privileged in one area and not in another. Poor whites still have privileges because of their skin color. That doesn't mean they are more or less privileged than say, an upper class black man.

​I would read the article you posted, but I instead dismissed it per your original recommendations.

[veritasluxmea]

Ok, this made me laugh. 

Edited June 2, 2015 by veritasluxmea

[Ice_nine]

@Ice_nine

I read the article.  Calling it "privilege" is still repugnant and misleading.   Advantage is a much better term.  Privilege infers you had material benefits by being white.   It definitely is an advantage, but you still may not experience any benefit from it because of class, poverty, education, geography, family, including effort, attitude,and will.  I've experienced too many successful people with few "privileges" to risk minimizing their efforts,including the author of the article.  

​Well the term probably rose from academia but it is now becoming part of the general lexicon. Maybe it's origins make you feel it's "elitist," and maybe you feel the word "privilege" doesn't fit but I don't find it so troublesome. I don't think the word necessarily implies material advantage.

I'm glad you can see whiteness is an advantage but where I disagree is that people don't benefit from whiteness if they are poor, uneducated, lazy etc although race is probably more salient when you get into the middle and upper classes.

How does conceding that white privilege exists minimize the efforts of those "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" types. They may work hard and all that but to be successful you need to get some breaks somewhere. You need to have people who are more powerful than you, more affluent than you etc to actually take a chance on you and give you a chance to succeed. Being White, in a mostly White-run place, is an advantage in this. It's that simple. That doesn't mean that white people who rise out of poverty, for example, did not work their ass off to do so, but all other things being equal it probably would be harder if they had a darker complexion.

 

[CatholicsAreKewl]

White privilege is totally a thing, but a big part of it usually gets left out of the conversation - classism. 

We all experience the world differently based on factors we can't control. Society usually makes certain cultural assumptions about me because I'm an upper-middle-class heterosexual Catholic white woman. Those would be different assumptions if I were a poor Black gay atheist man. The way society treats me shapes the way I see the world, though I can change the way I see it if I educate myself and listen to other peoples' experiences. 

Some (many?) of the bad things Black people experience differently than white people are closely tied to poverty and classism. That's one reason why some white people can say that they also experience some of the problems Black people experience, especially if they don't come from a financially privileged background. Maybe (almost) all of the problems of racism our country faces today have more to do with classism (with deep historical roots) than color. 

​I agree with your post and I think you bring up some great points. however, I think we shouldn't downplay skin color. Being black might not explain much of the problems discussed, but I think we should consider it at least somewhat important. People discriminate against skin color (specifically blackness) in much of the world. Even some (I can't speak for all) African countries discriminate against those who are darker shades of black.

What I mean to say is that if we take a white guy and a black guy in a company with the same stats (work ethic, people skills, hp, etc.), it's likely that the white guy have higher pay and/or be in a higher position. I don't think this is a problem that's specific to America, but it's still concerning.  

Edited June 3, 2015 by CatholicsAreKewl

[Kia ora]

it's interesting to see the almost total mismatch between the two sides here.

 to me, white privilege isn't something to beat white people over the heads with for the pleasure of beating white people over the heads with. put simply, i don't think white people are so important as to merit my interest, let alone my contempt, for that long, and i think anyone who thinks that the true target of the all black lives matter campaign is white people is hilariously egotistical or paranoid. actually it's meant to raise awareness so that more young black men don't die. not because white people are the centre of the world. 

and by white people, i mean the idea of white people as some kind of ideological boogeyman. contrary to what some people here have said, i don't think 'white people' actually exist, as some kind of nefarious organisation where you get cards saying 'here's your checklist of oppressing blacks today'

'white people' in my parlance is a way to describe the tendencies, practices, attitudes and ideologies of a lot of people. 

this reminds me of this pic i found which i thought was hilarious and right on the mark in depicting the attitudes of men who get way too fussed about 'not me! i'm not a rapist! i don't hit women!' and don't realise that the entire world doesn't revolve around them, even when we're talking about the patriarchy: 

[Kia ora]

as for reverse racism...

 

[little2add]

Q: What is the difference between a white man and a snake?
A: One is an evil, cold-blooded, venomous, slimy creature of Satan, while the other is a snake.

[Kia ora]

well if black people weren't so good christians, that kind of sentiment would be a lot more widespread. 

i want to modify that:

Q: What is the difference between a man and a snake?
A: One is an evil, cold-blooded, venomous, slimy creature of Satan, while the other is a snake.

we all know as christians that there is none innocent and all are guilty. 

but if we all know this, then i don't understand why people are so knee-jerky about the idea that they might have done something wrong, or might be doing something wrong, or that by their inaction they are doing wrong. if you know you're not clean in the eyes of god, then why don't you listen to other people when they tell you that you hurt them?? shouldn't we be MORE willing to listen to people who say they've been wronged by us?? this goes beyond white-black relations and i think is relevant to our lives as christians. if we know that we are stained with the flaw of sin, and that without god, all we do in this world is evil, then why are we so resistant to acknowledging our evil actions and confessing ourselves as evil people? shouldn't christianity make us more humble and more attentive to our wrongs? 

is this guilt-shaming? what does the CHURCH do everyday if not to impress upon us our FAILURE in being good human beings for which our lord died??? only when we acknowledge our wrong can we be forgiven, and forgiveness involves contrition and repentance. repentance involves 1) an acknowledgement of past crimes and 2) a firm determination to stop sinning. 

do we see that in the world? i'd say no.