If you tell someone who grew up homeless or borderline homeless with a single parent who occasionally starved themselves for several days in a row so the kids could eat that they’re privileged because they’re white don’t be surprised if they’re less inclined to be your ally.
Absolutely. “Privilege” and “guilt” based on inherited characteristics is a horrible thing regardless of who it’s applied to. We should’ve learned this lesson several times last century.
Eh, there's no doubt that white people in America enjoy a certain privilege, all other things being equal when compared to non-whites. However, that privileges diminishes substantially as one descends the economic ladder, until at the bottom most rungs whatever "white privilege" exists is almost entirely washed out by all the other variables causing misery and suffering, in general.
the misdefined version of privilege is meant as “lack of some additional distractions” but the word is ambiguously paraded around as “everything handed out to people who are guided to use it all perfectly”
and that latter usage definitely loses supporters from the voting bloc that could do anything about it
> an advantage that only one person or group of people has, usually because of their position or because they are rich:
eg.
> * Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege.
> * Senior management enjoy certain privileges, such as company cars and health insurance.
Privilege means special advantage. Not “default” behaviour. Which is why it’s very difficult to be told a person is advantaged when they do not feel that they are.
right, which is why its the wrong word to describe the former.
I guess the sad part here is that many influential people promulgating the term "privilege" actually believe(d) that was relevant amorphously to all white people, who as a class theoretically enjoy(ed) some certain privileges (such as moving to Oregon, not being conscripted as a slave, access to credit), but as individuals did not necessarily become beneficiaries of them.
And as the relevance of those extreme explicitly codified exclusions disintegrated, it moved to hyperbole - an exaggerated reality that ignores class based inequality. But with such heavy segregation many people believe the exaggerations.
and finally, some academics are trying to retcon what the word "privilege" means by incorporating additional information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, retconning is typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.
how do we make this more obvious to people? I think there is a wide degree of support for programs that would disproportionately support disenfranchised people, as long as they are acknowledging its more of a class system now (and includes people of all race/ethnicities/colors in the program). And that's not the direction things currently are going, with the wrong words being used. Many would-be supporters are instead believing that there is an organized movement and threat to exclude them, as a form of payback, which is such an ironic and huge distraction, all from a failure to communicate. To that, I would just say its not organized.
Its just such a large potential population of support. "disproportionately affecting minorities" still leaves extremely large numbers of white people affected. whether its poverty, university admissions, dubious assaults and killings by law enforcement, domestic violence.
Many Americans understand slavery through color, though this view is US-centric. European history indicates slavery was theft of people when the opportunity was available. See "From Baltimore to Barbary: the 1631 sack of Baltimore".
https://www.historyireland.com/from-baltimore-to-barbary-the...
>>> more of a class system now
That is a useful perspective on the current issues faced by poor in US.
That was a very fascinating read, I'm not sure what it adds here. The US slave trade was color based. The colonies slave trade was through color. And anybody that studies north American slavery without being censored by their state is very aware that north american slavery morphed into a color based one in the 1600s. Every example I gave was 200 years after your example, far after this institution was enshrined as color based ones and extremists were trying to enshrine the US as a land for the white european race where possible. This level of enlightnment is unfortunately a distraction and deflection for what this land deals with now: 400 years of color based disenfranchisement that leaves a class-based disenfranchisements with a seemingly 90% correlation to color.
If you're interested in this topic I would suggest continuing to study it.
Yes as your article mentions, the "Barbary" slave trade was briefly bigger than the transatlantic slave trade, so what happened? Why did the obsession with subsaharan Africans prevail?
I couldn’t possibly agree more with everything you’ve said here.
I’ll only add that a lot of the class issues that affect white people seem to disproportionately affect black people, which is why a lot of “black issues” are shared with poor white people too, though certainly not all.
The men/woman thing is much more nuanced than that though.
Privileged doesn't mean easy. Even if you're poor and white, you will never be judged by a potential landlord, store security employee, or taxi driver on the basis of your skin. You may have a tough life for all sorts of other reasons, but that won't be one of your problems, and that is a form of privilege.
That abuses the word "privilege" to the point of making it useless to communicate the point you're (likely) trying to make (which I agree with, if it's what I think it is) effectively in general.
Agreed, this is an obtuse non-consensus definition that is conflated by disenfranchised, the beneficiaries of this phenomenon, activists, and casual onlookers.
Is there another word to convey this concept more universally?
That's assuming, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary (exhibit 1 is all of blue check Twitter), that there are no people out there who discriminate against white people.
