someone admits it.

always have, before I ever heard the term. But then, I grew up among a very mixed community and have ever strived not to live with illusions, especially the harmful ones of the willfully blind.

It's going to be a tough sell to get somebody who hasn't thought about it to admit to it when his own experience has been of shitty jobs with increased hours and decreasing wages and benefits and no way to retire while he watches his kids get crushed with debt. He's just not going to see the privilege.

However, if you talk to him about the different way black people and white people are treated in stores, by the cops, and just about anywhere you want to mention, he's going to listen to you and chances are he'll think of an example. You've got a chance of allowing him to see there is a difference and that difference is a problem.

Last edited Mon Jul 20, 2015, 06:58 PM - Edit history (1)

over ignoring the inherent advantage of being white in our culture. If someone had put me in charge of picking the phrase to describe that, I wouldn't have gone with 'privilege' but it is the coinage and we can work with it.

The last thing they will do is either think or talk about it.

It can be disorienting when you go from your voice being the default to not. It can be alienating. It can make you angry. And it absolutely needs to keep happening, over and over again, until it sinks in.

EDIT:

I take back my original claim that white discomfort is the main reason it needs to keep being used. That's not the main reason it needs to keep being used. Discussions of white privilege aren't really about or for white people but for the people who have to pay the price of white privilege. If it opens whites' eyes, so much the better, but I guess a better way of saying it is that white people's hurt feelings are probably the least important aspect of this discussion.

So, the white discomfort is an excellent bonus, but the purpose of the discussion of white privilege is not to "redeem" white people.

The concept is simply rejected.

The fact is, white people aren't "privileged' -- People of color are relatively disenfranchised.

It's a subtle, but important distinction.

It is an exercise in futility to tell people they are something that they are not. So ultimately, the side not listening is the one refusing to accept the failure of the definition of the terms of their argument. I've stated many times that I get it that there is institutional discrimination. So we're being told the absence of discrimination is a privilege. Meaning the default social norm is discrimination. That's just fucked up logic.

And the default social norm is discrimination. Culturally, we are taught to seek ways to differentiate ourselves from others and part of that process is seeking out ways that we can perceive ourselves as better or more deserving than them. It happens across many domains, not just race.

I wasn't taught to discriminate or differentiate.

norm is discrimination".

You said it better than I could...fucked up logic, indeed.

You arent alone, I am not picking on you.

Wait , are you a Brown person?

I honestly dont know, I have to ask

I'll let you guess.

I am white, for an early time in my life I was almost black. But I could step back into being white. On the surface my daily experiences were not that much different than my friends and neighbors but the resources available to me were waiting for me where as that was not true for the people I cared about.
I have to say this a million times, it is not up to black folks to help white folks come to grips with white privilege. If it bothers white folks then ask yourself why?

Most white people, myself included, don't see themselves as "privileged". The unbiased ones see themselves

as being treated fairly, and PoC being treated unfairly. As the OP stated, privilege conveys pampering and

"special treatment", and most don't relate.

I think it's a question of asking yourself "what do I want"? If you just want to annoy white people, go ahead

and use that term -- Seriously, it will probably work, although it's efficacy will likely be short lived, as most

white people will just walk way.

If you want to start a dialogue, on the other hand, use terms that both groups can agree upon.

It's really just a matter of what your goal is.

I'm reminded of the Malcolm X movie where that white girl asks how she can help, and Malcolm X says "you can't." Awesome. And end of story!!!!!!

because I can assure you the conclusion drawn by Malcolm X would work just fine for most white folks.

to what actually is being said.

That's where you start, instead of just complaining about it.

Look at it in terms used around here: "It's a dog whistle." You don't have to hear what's said if you're convinced there's something more true that is suggested but not said because, well, it's impolite.


It is a complex topic. However both sides love simplicity.

Dog whistles are a beast of a rather different nature, though.

My experience is rather different from that of the author in the OP. It isn't that I've never encountered white people who react defensively to white privilege as a concept or a term, of course, but that initial reaction hasn't always (or even usually) made it impossible to have a productive and interesting discussion.

TBH I'm shocked

Just try complaining about that to anyone who isn't a liberal, usually the very same people who don't like and understand the term white privilege. They'll claim you're trying to start a class war and you just need to work harder. This is nonsense. There's no reason why some white people can't be made to understand what privilege means, the same way every other avenue of progress have been made. Will all of them come around immediately? No, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

A privilege is something that can be taken away or granted. A right is something inalienable. We all have rights, but those rights are denied to a substantial portion of the population because they are not white in skin color. When you start calling my rights (and your rights) privileges, then none of us have the right to enforce them in court, they are mere privileges.

We have a right to free speech, and a right to not listen to someone exercise their free speech. Those rights are not privileges, they are legally enforceable rights. This country has failed miserably to enforce those rights for all people with even-handedness: that is not cause to cede those rights as mere privileges so that you can score a few points shaming someone who is fighting for your rights.

Things like being assumed to be trustworthy, receiving kindness in more situations, being steered toward nicer neighborhoods by realtors, having teachers call on our kids more often. Tons and tons of things that are often (but not always) individually small but, when added up, create a different life experience.

I am currently 76 years old. I am the same person that i have always been.

I am treated differently in stores and offices now that I am 76 than i was a 22.

I was treated differently while I was in the Army as to when I was in uniform in a strange store than when I came in in a t-shirt and shorts.

I will be treated differently if I wear a suit with shirt and tie than if I wear shorts and a T-shirt.

These differences in treatment are caused by people's conception as to my reliability, responsibility, and potential based on their previous experience.

Some are based on experience, some are based on things like assumptions about things like age and race.

I think that you can't fully see the racism until you see the "white privilege" element.

It creates the full 3-D view of racism. I think that maybe we just need to talk about it a little more, and maybe white people might begin to "hear" something different.

about what non-whites do not have.

Like not having complete comfort in your son not being looked at suspiciously by a man with paranoia and a gun, just walking home through a white neighbourhood committing the crime of wearing a hoodie at mid-evening.

Like not having "the lecture" with teenagers.

It is not about you, it is about us, and all we want you to do is understand, to be aware of, the difference.

what non-whites may not have.

I used to live in South Jersey when I was young, and had a friend who lived in Camden, NJ which even today is the poorest city in NJ. His wife's car broke down and needed a ride home from where we both worked. He was actually concerned for my safety, driving away from his house alone after I dropped him off (naive youngster that I was, I wasn't thinking in those terms). What surprised me more, in later conversations, was finding out that he was afraid to travel ANYWHERE in the United States. It was only then that I started to really understand "white privilege", although at that time I had never heard the term.

When I think of the recent events in Texas with Sandra Bland, I am reminded again that I live in a different world.

When the mayor gets pulled over while drunk, we expect him to be treated just like anyone else who drives drunk. We want him to be treated just like us.

I am sure many minorities, especially African-Americans, feel the same. They'd love to be treated the same as white people, as opposed to the often excessive, sometimes deadly, way they are treated in "routine" stops. We should want non-whites to be treated like us, not the other way around, but many can't seem to grasp that simple concept. Yes, privilege can be tricky, because white people can be abused by a system because they are poor, gay, female...those are different forms of privilege being exercised, and, sometimes, one form, of privilege can trounce another.

When we say that someone has privileges, we are saying that they get treated better than they should be. And very few white people think that they are treated better than they ought to be treated.

No, "we" aren't saying that at all. "We" are saying we are getting preferential treatment, which often comes across as a "privilege." I agree that most don't think they are treated better than others because, like most humans, we tend to be egocentric beings. We can always find someone who was treated better/worse than us.

I do feel tone can be important, but it isn't the be all to end of all of discussions. Many times when I hear discussions against the use of the term "white privilege", I often wonder if they ever think there was a time where such a term was true, such as pre-Civil War US. There are multiple types of privilege, money is only one, others are race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, ability, and the list goes on. The true testament to privilege, not just the white version, is not having to think about the struggles, fears, concerns, hopes, and desires of the "other."

A normality that's automatically excluded from those who aren't white. Systemic white supremacy classifies everyone against a particular racially stratified standard. The standard is operated by and for those it serves the best. Those who are white, under this standard, are served best by it. This is what's termed as "white privilege."

As white privilege functions as a form of standardized normality, unless whites are self-aware enough to see how selectively it's applied, they're probably not going to be aware of its existence.

One way is to compare standards of appearance, beauty, dress, language. In media, be aware what's considered racially "universal" experiences versus those that are classified as merely "ethnic."

Don't forget that America was established as a white utopia and our entire history has been based on the struggles around that establishment.

Think for a moment what person a supposededly innocuous phrase such as "an All-American" usually describes. Consider the use of dog-whistle words, like "urban" and "thug."

Consider just for a moment how much of our social policy is geared towards punishing poor people, because of the perception that most are non-white.

If you look at how these things negatively affect each and every one of us, it should be obvious that all of should do everything we can to abolish systemic white supremacy and the system of priviledged normality that it bestows on only white people in this country.

Water is the normal they swim in each day and they never think about it - they don't have to think about it. It's their normal. Try telling them they are in water and they'll ask, "What is water?".

You have to be willing to step outside that normal to see the water.

White people walk around the store and don't get followed. They're swimming along in their normal. Not giving a thought to how that isn't the normal for everyone. Never giving a thought as to why that isn't the normal for everyone.

White people driving along the roads without fear of being targeted for their skin hue. Still swimming along in their normal.


You'll hear white people say that they know racism exist. That they know PoC are targeted because of racism. They'll tell you they disapprove of racism and racists. That it's wrong and evil. But it's an exercise in the abstract for them unless they also recognize that the exact same racism that targets PoC has benefited, and continues to benefit, them as white people.

The exact same racism that kills young black men at the hands of the police is the exact same racism that allows white people to walk around the store without being followed. That allows white people to drive without being targets for racial profiling.


It's the same racism. Racist institutions are created by racist individuals. You set up a government and governmental bodies that favor white people then you've set up a framework (or institution) that is racist. You set standards based on the belief that white skin is superior, then you're forming a culture that favors white people. A nation whose norms and mores will be based on what racist white people find acceptable.

Nations can evolve, people's thinking can evolve, and things can change for the better - BUT - those long held racist beliefs and standards based on white superiority created the water white America still swims in and the current still favors them because of it.

Some people just refuse to swim against the tide.

Some fish don't want to know they're in water.

later.

Great posts in this subthread, btw

Thanks.

It's not the phrase, it's the usage of the term in racial conversations that stops said conversation. Most use it to attack white people (not the racist whites or white surpremacists but whites in the actual conversation) who are simply trying to participate and understand the exact meaning of the term and/or react defensively to it. I've seen it so many times here on DU, someone posts about white privilege and white members get defensive; instead of explaining the concept and making them understand that "hey, you do have privilege but you're not a bad person" - it turns into a snide passive-aggressive argument where some black members make fun or outright dogpile onto that person, shutting them out completely.

Me personally, I too get tired when I see some white DUers fight against white privilege because let's face, white people do have privileges that blacks and other minorities in the US don't have. Thing is this, I don't vilify or join in the pile because I don't believe any white DUers here are racist or hate black folks. Problem is, when the dust settles everyone is pissed off and no longer wants to listen or participate in the discussion. It's a cycle of defensiveness, passive-agressiveness and outright prejudice on BOTH sides if I can be just frank.

I've said this so many times; instead of making white privilege a demonizing term, we all should turn the concept of it into a privilege that EVERYONE can posess. That means fighting systematic racism and championing equality for all races; for white liberals (and white folks in general) it's admitting that "I have this privilege, but it doesn't make me a bad person. It means I can help out and call out other whites for racist behavior".

That seems hard for some to understand.

They are okay with the concept on the group level, just don't make it personal.

http://mic.com/articles/122149/new-study-explains-the-denial-of-white-privilege

... that no one wants to think that their "success" wasn't their own hard work or that there's someone else that is better but just didn't have the advantages.

My best example is Caroline Kennedy. Could I have gotten published or got any of the jobs she got if I'd been born in her bloodline? I tend to think I could. Maybe she is hard working and smart but she'll never really know. Chelsea Clinton might be another example.

Maybe putting it that way would get more white people to see it. But with the average middle class or poor white person, it's a non-starter as far as convincing them to be less racist. They even think black people have an advantage now due to affirmative action. Convincing these people of their privilege is one tough job.

And that the college grad with a good career in a nice area and with lots of contacts having something very similar to "privilege." What's missing is family wealth that might be accumulated over a few generations. Then again, it's unclear that it's really "family wealth" or just "a few generations" that's missing.

It looks, smells, and acts the same. The only difference is there's still a drag of racism, but it's not "institutional" for those kids, it's still personal. Which is where, I'm told, you don't get "racism" but "bigotry." (Until, of course, the people insisting that racism is institutional need an offensive term to describe interpersonal bigotry. Then it's "racism." Language games. Meh.)

It also plays out differently when the kids are nearly college age. Some push back against the demands to be "authentic". Some decide to be "authentic," and their grades plummet. Solidarity can be a curse. I teach at a school that is mixed and this isn't an uncommon interaction.

You also see bigotry (don't want to offend, here) in how lower-class whites perceive those mid-upper-class AfAms. But you also see resentment in having the lower-class whites be told by middle-upper blacks that they have all the breaks.

it's been noted that while there's still interpersonal racism, the kind that says, "Hmmm ... I can hire an AfAm with the goofy name or a white guy named 'John', same quals ... I'll hire the white," segregation and child-outcomes are increasingly patterning not by race but by class. In the hiring study people focus on the % difference, not the overwhelming majority of decisions based on just qualifications.

you even see it in blue collar people. People getting jobs at a factory because their dad or someone works there. For that matter, many a family business will hire family even if an outsider would do a good job. So people do have advantages.

Though people can have more than we do and yet not be treated equally. A good example: President Obama - nobody can say he did not do well or that being black got in his way, yet he gets more flack than other Presidents and is expected to do ten times as much in a tenth the time and with little support and a lot of griping at how he's doing things. Or that example of Oprah getting flack - she's rich as sin so one tends to dismiss it, but then a rich white woman wouldn't get treated that way. So we can still see racism there.

Your middle paragraph about being authentic is interesting - hope you will explain further.

You look at individuals, and you barely see it. The differences in opportunities, acceptance, etc., are there but aren't large. If you do analyses, you can get the stats to show huge differences--but you have to play games with the variables and assume that things like education, income, are consequences of race and not related. Racism's there, but not everything that can be considered due to racism is racist.

The overall pattern that's called "white privilege" emerges naturally from all the small things, but if you want to change the pattern that's where you start.

As long as there's a difference in college graduation rates, there'll be white privilege.

As long as there's a difference in high school graduate rates and achievement, there'll be white privilege.

As long as there's an income difference--related to the previous two, to be sure--there'll be white privilege.

As long as more AfAms are first-gen college grads and not evenly distributed through the system of majors and minors, there'll be white privilege.

Because white privilege can be analysed top down, and that's easy, facile, gratifying, and gives people levers to try to reshape society and coerce people, that concept's not going away. It lets some have power or flatter their messianic egos; it's an excuse for others. Ultimately, though, it's a set of patterns formed from the bottom up. Those patterns form from thousands of interactions and choices. Some are racist. Some are imposed on the disenfranchised by others, some by circumstances. Some are made involuntarily by the disenfranchissed because of lack of knowledge. Some are chosen voluntarily because they're deemed safer or more desirable. You teach school, you pay attention for years at college, you see these patterns emerging--and if you ask why, it goes back to constraints, external and internal, and choices.

I know language reasonably well. There are two particular objects of study in language worth pointing out. One is how sounds are made and their properties--this has been studied until it's hard to imagine a common language that hasn't been exhausted. Another is how sounds pattern. For decades, we studied how sounds pattern, the properties that we used to classify sounds. We played games, how moving the game pieces in this way and that way to come up with better theories on how to analyse languages and make sense of larger properties of language.

Then they started to study how those properties are perceived and decided on by the brain, how those patterns start to take shape, what factors were really important and which just seemed important, and they found that while the overall description of sound patterns was fairly good (esp. if you leave out some fuzzy data), the views of how you get the patterns were fundamentally flawed. The categories, in fact, those patterns, weren't as cut-and-dried as the top-down people thought, and you couldn't just teach the patterns and "learn" them like you could learn what a word meant. They weren't obvious patterns, but human brains given the same input would produce pretty much the same patterns. The linguists could imagine different patterns would be formed, but kiddie brains were pretty consistent. And the "fuzzy data" suddenly made sense, because the patterns weren't perfectly consistent and, over time, could change given more data. What the brain did, though, was absurdly simple. A set of simple procedures produces a complex system. Emergence in a nutshell.

So those top-level patterns were emergent: They weren't present in low-level data, you can't find them there. But as a child's brain sifts through a huge mass of data those are the categories that are seen, and are robust enough to be considered "the truth." The truth is the data and in the processes used to parse the data. The patterns are emergent.

Which is why, when President Obama invoked this phrase a few years ago, it was so controversial. Just as conservatives believe, contrary to all evidence, that any successful person gets their only on their own, many white people don't believe that they have built-in advantages.

Some of this is very much an American thing. We believe, irrationally so, in the myth of the self-made person. None ofuis are self-made; it's ridiculous on the face of it. But because we believe in this myth, it also makes the idea of white privilege, or whatever you choose to call it, a much tougher sell. The idea is that we are all self-made, whatever our backgrounds. Which also means that when people do not success, it is their own fault.

I should watch the video rather than responding to second-hand comments about the disrupted event itself.

I'm still grumpy Hillary gets a pass just by virtue that she dissedna major grassroots event in the first place. In fact, given how focused her supporters have been on painting Bernie's issues as being somehow a thing apart from social justice, a small part of my mind wonders if her campaign operatives set this up to perpetuate the notion economic justice does not help racial justice and #BLM regards Bernie as an "old white guy". Hillary was clear of the optics, and her campaign has tons of money to spread around. If such a set up were revealed, I hope #BLM supporters would do their best to repair the damage done. This is not to say all their points are tactics are wrong - just that they may may have been used in this instance.

I still think Bernie could have turned the "disruption" into a historiv opportunity. I will see what he actually did during the event. I'm still confused on the matter of whether he cancelled a #BLM meeting later and why. I don't think we should jump to conclusions about it, but given the importance of the topic to many voters - particularly young voters - he should be transparent on his every move concerning #BLM.

And as a generalization, perhaps true. But I think that if you took the term away, those who do understand it would just have to replace it with another term meaning the same thing. Nature, and language, both abhor a vacuum.

Sigh.

why would they make up a larger percentage of our jails?

Look, either Black people are inferior in every way to white people and this is why there is massive unemployment and incarceration in the AfAm community


OR

............................................................


Not to mention the wealth gap, white vs Black, income gap, etc.

Many people are never going to give serious consideration to a conversation that starts by generalizing all "white people" or "black people".

No one, absolutely NO one will.accept being stereotyped.

then it would not be privilege, it would just be standard operating procedure.

Not a stereotype, a fact.

It would be those of italian, or greek, or irish descent or something. We'd find some reason to keep someone down.

That isn't priviledge. If it were, BEING discriminated against would jbe the norm, the desireable way of things, which it clearly isn't.

To use the word "privilege" to refer to fair treatment that EVERYONE should be entitled to, lowers the bar for all of us. It shouldn't be a "privilege" not to be arrested on trumped up charges. It shouldn't be a "privilege" to register to vote. It shouldn't be a "privilege" not to be followed around in a store as if you're a thief.

It is true that white people are less likely than minorities to be treated unfairly. But being treated fairly shouldn't be a "privilege" -- it should be the norm.

Last edited Sat Jul 18, 2015, 02:24 PM - Edit history (1)

I mean, it's almost like the concept was coined by an English prof in the whitest part of the Connecticut Valley!

to be serious, there's all sorts of other racial theories out there, from transactional ones to color lines, plus a whole FIELD of "whiteness studies" on how it's generated and maintained, and I don't like seeing real discussion get subsumed into one buzzword that nobody's ever allowed to question, ever: it's just another way for suburban clicktivists to make it all about them

I jog all over Golden Valley -- a middle and upper-middle class suburb of Minneapolis that is probably 90% non-Hispanic white -- at least in the area I'm in. And I'm never stopped, or asked what I'm doing in a certain neighborhood. Years and years of that, 2 or 3 times a week down many residential streets all over the place.

I keep thinking if I was jogging-while-black in this neighborhood, I'd probably generate one or two 911 calls every time! The callers wouldn't see me as jogging, but rather running away from the scene of some burglary or rape I no doubt committed.

"white privelege" is not a conversation stopper for me. It's just reality.

and I disagree. So there.

It's a shit-stirring term, nothing more.

It's every bit as wrong headed as labeling anyone else based on their skin color. There are plenty of impoverished, powerless white people in this country. When are we going to move past the color of our skin?

Forced to sit in the backs of public transportation, denied access to colored only schools, had to enter buildings through the colored-only door or sit at the same luncheon counter as colored folks, never had to listen to the song Strange Fruit and remember the stories of how family members were terrorized and hung from trees, burned alive and have body parts broken off as souvenirs, stacked and loaded worse than animals in ships and carried across the ocean, were slaves AND whose ancestors must walk past the various buildings knowing full well that there relatives blood, sweat and tears are just apart of those buildings as the very morter and bricks used, I could go on and on...and it continues TODAY.

And let me tell you something else, those who REFUSE to eliminate racism or REFUSE to acknowledge that it exists are just as awful and just as pathetic as the racists themselves.

So you tell me when we can move on.

Now, how do you like them apples?

if you make it one or vice-versa, it someone uses it against you in an argument (which happen a lot on DU from the looks of it).

Thing is, white people - whether they're poor or middle-class - do have the privilege of not being racially profiled or systematically oppressed with racism. When I say systematically, I mean the criminal justice system is more lenient on whites in terms of petty crimes or drug related offenses. Police brutality as well (though whites can still be victims of corrupt cops as seen in several news cases).

That doesn't mean that white people can't be victims of individual racism from minorities or even other ethnic White groups (such as the discrimination against Irish Americans back in the day) nor does it mean whites can't be victims of racial hate crimes (there was an incident where a group of black men were jumping on a white guy, that damn well looked like a hate crime to me). When some say "Black people (or insert minority here) can't be racist" it's a half-truth. Blacks can't systematically be racist against whites but black people can exert individual racism against whites and other ethnic groups with slurs.

But to reel this tangent in; white privilege is REAL here in America, but it doesn't make you as a white person (I assume you're white) a racist or an evil person like some portray it to be. You just have it easy in the eyes of the law compared to someone whose brown or darker skinned. I hope this all made sense, I feel like I'm tasked with making this easier to swallow. *sighs*

The ability to finance stuff like houses, cars.

It goes so much further......

"White privilege" started in cultural studies, specifically AfAm studies and it's off-shoot, "white studies." (AfAm, ethnic studies in general, tend to focus on the good aspects of a culture, how bad aspects are the result of oppression, and studies how that oppression comes about. White studies is the same, but mostly, I tend to think, for people who believe that as whites they have nothing to say about ethnic studies; instead, they focus on the bad aspects of white culture and how it oppresses others while unjustly benefiting. A white studies program that paralleled an ethnic studies program would be shut down in short order as redundant at best--all the other departments are white studies programs, including physics and math, not just South Asian or Russian history--or racist at worst.)

In those fields, it's a common term. It has a very specific range of definitions. It's "jargon," which means that it's a technical term in those fields and not widely used outside of it. It can be used to describe; it can be used to castigate. It depends if the user is primarily a scholar or primarily an advocate. (No, you can't really be both.)

Like any jargon that escapes its pen, it gets misused and misconstrued. It gets used to provide prestige and authority to an argument, whether it's a valid, sound argument or lightly fermented pig crap waiting to be decanted. Its meaning changes in various ways. And, like any jargon, it doesn't just escape into the wild--it has a range of habitats it prefers. Typically a bit more than just "left-leaning", progressive, often among race-based civil-rights advocates favoring government intervention, often educated or educated-appearing. Once it escapes, the reasonably well-uneducated adopt it fluently, and often get the meaning skewed.

In those fields, it's not shit-stirring because everybody agrees that it's a real phenomenon. The fields self-police for this. I've heard perfectly sane people in those and allied fields say they don't discriminate. Then I've heard them, over meals, say that they'd never even short-list a candidate for an adjunct position who was _________________. Fill in "conservative, Republican, white, male, over 40, not a woman, not a person of color, not a recent graduate" or other "non-biased" term. It's also not shit-stirring because sometimes, but not all the time, the term is merely descriptive of the state of affairs, it's describing a snapshot. And if you look at Am society, whites in general have advantages that blacks in general do not have. It's when the term starts to describe a process things go pear shaped.

Outside of the field, it can be shit-stirring because it merges two loaded terms: "white" and "privilege". It's made into an absolute, not a relative term. It applies to individuals, and denies them any role in their success; if you're AfAm, Latino, etc., and succeed, it's through hard work (if you're SE Asian, also it's hard work; if you're E Asian, it's not--go figure). WP a dehumanizing term. Some like it because of that, and not just the reasonably well-uneducated.

Last year, in my high school English classes, I noticed the term "bipolar" being thrown around a lot. At first I thought maybe it was just cheating, but after a while, I realized that all the kids at that school had internalized the word to mean "angry woman."

So every time we read a story and a woman was angry, many of the students described her as bipolar. I was horrified.

They not only misunderstood the word, but thought it was a school-appropriate way of describing anger in women.

I dont know you.

Here is a fact.

White privilege exists, all white Americans enjoy it to the same degree.

Some take advantage of it in more productive ways than others or greedy ways.

A white person walks around blanketed in this privilege and doesnt even know it.

This isnt a matter of opinion, this is a fact.

So no. And I understand what you're talking about, I just think the term itself is loaded and not helpful to the cause of racial equality.

... that wont make some people react negatively.

are more important than having the conversations we need to have to heal this country.

This is not ultimately about white people or any other majority group's feelings. This is about effective communicating. The goal of communication is to get a point across. Really- no more, no less.

in order to communicate effectively because and only because of white people's feelings and how white people respond to certain words. That means it's about white people's feelings.

If part of the goal here is to make white people understand something, then white people's feelings are going to be a factor in the communication. But that is how it is with any communication. People's feelings and experiences affect how they receive information.

If you can get the same point across in a different way, I would think it would be advantageous to do so.

To the argument "but white people shouldn't react that way" (defensively, negatively) - I am not disagreeing with that. But I'm just saying you can only control how you communicate.

You're talking to a black student about his behavior with his parents present.

Do you focus on the behavior itself? Do you focus on the outcome?

Or do you mimic the language I hear my kids use, both black and white, say, "You have stop acting ghetto"?

"The assumption is that we have to be careful with how it's worded in order to communicate effectively because and only because of black people's feeling and how black people respond to certain words"?

I could *never* say "act ghetto" in dealing with a black student. But you know, I've heard teachers use precisely that phrase, without a negative reaction but with the kid involved just nodding because communication occurred. The difference was skin albedo. I have have relatively high skin albedo, the other teacher had relatively low albedo. I listened to one phone call where a teacher was obviously being chewed up by a parent and running into heavy interference, until he said the magic words: "I'm a black male and have your son's back." Then he said the same things that ran into interference without a problem.

If you want to communicate, the first rule is you don't piss off the person you're trying to talk to. The first rule is you establish a common bond and common framework. You show good will, and don't start off by attacking. It's about the interlocutors' feelings, not about who's better or worse, who deserves humiliating and insulting. You may walk into the situation with a ton of ill-will on the other side, and you get to defuse it. That parent assumed that teacher was a white racist until suddenly there was solidarity: "I'm a black male," so it wasn't a racist phone call, somebody from outside the group. (Mind you, I've run into precious few white racist teachers. I've run into some, but it's not the odds.)

That was Tsipras' grand error in dealing with the EU--you offend the person you need to talk to and then turn around and say, "Let's make a deal ... fucking bastard idiot imperialist hellspawn that you are." They needed a reasonable mediator. They got a nationalistic class-warrior. I call that foolishness.

I'll go with the second reason first. White people are in a position of societal power and African American are not, so saying something uncomfortable to a white person is not the same as saying something uncomfortable to a person of color. There's a different level of societal power, particularly if you're talking about a teacher and a student.

But the biggest issue is that "ghetto" the way you're saying it is a slur. "Privilege" is not a slur.

Done.

We ought to be treated equally, not better. You could see it from the opposite perspective, that black people are not treated as well as they ought to be. That's obvious, so maybe the black people got tired of putting it that way - you aren't treating us equally. So they resorted to "you are being treated better."

But I agree it does not work on ordinary white people and only makes them worse.

Minorities who encounter racism are treated worse than they ought to be.

not better than they ought to be but better than black people are and that is not just.

Take a group of people in a room who volunteered for a study. You tell them it's about the interpersonal effects of unexpected versus expected resource allocation on randomly selected populations and that the experiment will start in 20 minutes. You can manipulate them and make them mad and resentful easily, just by giving them money they weren't expecting. It's unclear (to me at least) if this is cross-cultural universal, but it's held for groups of Americans fairly consistently over time.

1. As they walk into the room, hand them each 5 $1 bills. Then, without warning, tell them they all have to pay $1 for the coffee and donuts in the corner--even if they don't like coffee and donuts. You actually remove money from their pockets. A lot won't like it.

2. As they walk into the room, tell them that they all were allocated $5, but that money for coffee and donuts came from the same pool of cash so they only get $4 each. Then hand them four dollars. Expectations are briefly raised. Some won't like it; most will shrug.

3. As they are talking, hand them 4 $1 bills and say that's what they get for participating in the study. No expectations were violated. They're the same $4 ahead that the other two groups are, but they're only happy.

Taking away something good people have is bad, never giving it to them is better. Giving them a small amount is better than giving them a large amount and taking some away. Even if at the end they wind up at the exact same point, the taking away leads to resentment. Taking it away and giving it to somebody less deserving is even worse.

Politicians do the same thing. So do all kinds of advocacy groups. It's how you manipulate expectations and use the attitudes you create. Let's look at how entitlements and taxes are dealt with by politicians.

Every budget that's passed has this game played. "They're taking away money from ______" by reducing a proposed budget increase, by not renewing some perk or benefit. The budgeted amount may well increase, but by portraying that increase as a reduction, as a taking away, you get outrage and indignation--even if the money had never actually been approved, much less allocated. It's even worse if they say, "They're taking money away from you and giving it to (insert disfavored group name)": it works if you put in "bankers," "the rich," or "the poor," provided that you find the poor somehow morally tainted and undeserving. Same psychology.

Same for taxes. If there's a planned tax increase that's reduced to a smaller increase, it's a tax cut or a tax increase depending upon who it affects. If you or those you're in solidarity with, it's unjust and a tax increase. If it would benefit you or those you're in solidarity with and not hurt those you don't like as much as it would have otherwise, it's a "tax cut."

It's also played in race politics in the US, in the same terms. We may say "white privilege," but the general attitude is that white privilege takes away something properly due to all POC, denies them their due. Saying that it doesn't produce resentment is pointless: it does in all other similar situations and the actions and expressions are the same as in other situations, but saying that some of US politics is based on "resentment" and not just principles and justice makes it sound petty and demeaning and therefore offensive. My resentment is always "a valid, natural reaction to injustice"; their resentment is always spiteful and petty ... "resentment."


To get people on your side, you never take away something good. That hurts the group you're talking to. You just tell them you're making sure others enjoy the same benefit. (In this case, hoping they don't realize that since it's a zero sum game when you look at the details it would constitute a reduction of some sort.)

White people have a social responsibility to acknowledge privledge. No it's not comfortable. It's facing square on how we are part of a racist system. I find it a very useful term, I could care less if it makes some white people --mostly the ones who pretend not to understand it--uncomfortable. We should be uncomfortable, and it has nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with acknowledgment and action.

It's about what the empirical evidence shows and white privilege is real

their discomfort of being privilege.

kinda sums it up

AN EXAMPLE of the privilege is a thread where we have to tread lightly so as not to hurt any white persons feelings

maybe white people need to be uncomfortable more often.

privilege

i think could be a sinister explanation why the 2 issues occur (discussion of WP and trade deals) simultaneously

make the people who are hit and losing feel like they deserve what they are getting - a page out of the neoliberal play book



In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is the "privilege" part, whites taking the term as a personal insult - "I earned my position fairly!"

Trying to explain a mental state created by cultural conditioning since birth and prevalent within the majority white culture in two words is impossible.

Even a white person being called "white" as a racial group is probably even a new thing to be grasped with.

Whoever coined the phrase "white privilege" as a definition for majority cultural advantage did everyone no favor.

that bad things are coming down the pipe

and the people who are hearing that term, have seen their standard of living stagnate since 1973 (42 years) while the wealth of the nation has exploded, all the wealth going to the very top

and these people have heard their party's neoliberal/3rd way/DLCleaders give lip service to all these ethnic issues, while at the same time taking trade deal actions that created the billionaire class that threaten to create complete oligarchy

so please excuse us if we dont see this issue as being promoted in complete good faith

Fee-Fees hurt? Too bad. It's time for some folks to remove their heads from their behinds.

Don't like it, then help us to correct the problems, sitting around in denial, walking around with rose colored glasses or having a fit because some people have created a descriptive label that hurts their feelings, is not the answer.

Or perhaps they don't care for the idea that such a thing is a real phenomenon in the first place.

Which is it?

We try our best to make others understand our experiences and feelings, "white privilege" does this very well and some people are mad because someone created an accurate descriptor?!

It is about US...about OUR feelings..."walk a mile in my moccasins".

Walk a block to the store to buy some soda and return home...walk a mile in my black mocassins, and see what I have to see whether we want to see it or not, that you are privileged to not see.

Frustrated that the battle for truly fair treatment seems to be neverending, after all these years.

Peace.

Dont bug me about my privilege, because my privilege means I get privilege and I dont have to admit it or talk about it

Then a Black man comes along and says

because it is undeniable that there are benefits that come to whites in this society, to even poor whites that they may not be aware of.

Come on, we all know that a "poor" white woman, or man for that matter, would not have ended up snatched from her car, having her head smashed into the ground, jailed and dead within a matter or hours for an "improper signal" like what happened to Sandra Bland recently in Texas.

Those are unseen privileges that whites enjoy without even knowing it.

Again, do you have a better term that doesn't euphemize this phenomenon that definitely exists.

Very true.

Only on Bizarro World.

If one hears "racist" when when others say "while privilege" , that is itself another example of white privilege.

It is not about you.

I got the sense you had a good point that you were trying to convey but maybe not.