White privilege isn't real - Jordan Peterson

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As a white person in Japan, I certainly have some deference towards me. A person with another race or ethnicity will have a harder time. But I do not share the privileges of most native Japanese.

Oh well it's just that if there is criticism of it in other nations, it's not making headlines near as much as the white privilege one. People just keep talking about white privilege a lot right now, but no one is talking about it in other places. So that is why I felt it wasn't getting near as much criticism because no one else seems to be talking about it other than white privilege.

Where do you get your news?

Just from CNN and Fox News, but also from people on here, and other social media such as Twitter. Everyone is talking about white privilege but not other types.

And how often does CNN and Fox do stories on discrimination in other countries? Those broadcasters have a specific audience.

That's true. But even on social media though no one is talking about it privilege other than white either though, and that's the internet where anyone in the world can join.

Really? How many Japanese do you interact with on social media? How good is your Japanese?

When I lived in Libya, most people treated me well. Non-white foreigners were treated very differently than I was.

I can't speak for everywhere in the world, however.

If you're getting your news from America, it's going to place a lot more focus on what's going on there than other parts of the world.



Yes. But Japanese is still > white.

What I don't understand is why do countries like Japan not get criticized for their immigration policies as much as Western countries do.

In a lot of countries they don't speak of privileged and under priviliged.
They speak of oppression, persecution, human rights violations, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The Uighurs in China aren't under-priviledged, they're rounded up in prison camps.
Muslims in certain parts of India are persecuted by the Hindu majority, and the Hindus themselves practice a serious social stratification in which the lowest ranks are de facto slaves. Most Indian labourers in the UAE are third and fourth class citizens.
The situation for Palestinians in the Gaza strip is atrocious.

If you want to call that Han-Chinese- or Hindu- or Arabian- or Israeli- privilege, it's technically not wrong, but I don't think they are aiming for a fair and equal society in the first place, with the prison camps and all....

Emirati Arabs are most certainly privileged.

That statement makes very little sense. Class/ethnicity-based privilege dynamics, systems and structures in a country are obviously dependent on what classes and ethnicities are present in the country.

In China, Han dominance is most definitely a thing. You've probably heard of the whole thing with concentration camps in Xinjiang, where they're "reeducating" the local Turkic population. (If you haven't heard of it, then... yeah, you're not very well informed on world matters.) The world is not happy about it. It is a very hot topic, and many diplomats and even some heads of state are labeling it as a genocide. That's only the most blatant example in China right now, but definitely not the only one.

In Japan, there's the Ainu (even if their numbers are small) versus the dominant Japanese.

In South Africa, you may have heard of the Apartheid Era (again if you haven't, then you're really not very well informed on world matters).

In North Africa, there's the Berbers (versus the dominant Arab-centric).

There are tons of separate ethnicities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and historically many of them don't get along with other ethnicities that they currently share land or borders with. There are many countries there where a minority composed of one of those ethnicities enjoys power and privileges that the other ones in the country don't. One name that comes to mind is the Kikuyu in Kenya (though it looks like the situation with them has reversed in recent years).

In Australia, there's Aboriginals (versus the dominant white).

In New Zealand, there's the Maori (versus the dominant white).

In India, there's Muslims (versus the dominant Hindus). Though that's just scratching the surface. India is a very complicated country.

In Bolivia there's cultural Natives (versus the dominant Christians, if I'm not misinterpreting it).

In Brazil, there's... a complicated mess. Hard to encapsulate in one sentence. Race is much less well-defined than in the US, but "white versus black" is still a factor, and increasingly so in recent years. People definitely do talk about it.

The list goes on and on and on and on and on. And on. And on and on.

It's not that the world doesn't talk about it or doesn't censure it. It's just that you don't hear about it. And, to be fair, you don't have to hear about it or know about it (you do live in North America after all, and not elsewhere). But it's not very sensible to assume that just because you don't hear about stuff from other countries then nothing's happening there.

Last edited by toadsnail on 20 Feb 2021, 11:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Probably because "everyone" you are hearing from is speaking English?

It is good to know that you aren't mocking all of psychology.

Also, remember, I did say I don't see eye-to-eye with everything JP says, in part because he is a theist.

Having said that, I am not in the habit of 'Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater'.
To do so would be quite 'binary', to my way of thinking.

Peterson gave the example of how, in the Chinese community in china, being white wouldn't usually be an advantage.
Can anyone genuinely disagree with that statement?
Wouldn't that suggest there would be 'Asian supremacy' issues in that scenario?

For starters, I think his point is, logically speaking, that 'privilege' may not only be something pertaining to Caucasians, but that is how it is portrayed.
Once again, we have a 'binary' that is being created where it is not justified.
This seems to be a tactic of the left, btw.

So, ultimately, the concept of white privilege is null and void, in an absolute sense, at least.

I may be wrong about this, but I have the impression that not that many people (refugees in particular, who would be the most relevant people in this case) are actually trying to get in there, simply because the country is well-known for being so culturally isolationist. And the country doesn't have any obligation to encourage anyone to move there. So the end result is Japan stays Japanese. I think Japan is a really rare exception in that it has managed to go a really long time with no mass immigration (as far as I know, the last one was when the Japanese themselves moved into the islands).

I wonder though what will happen in the near-future, when the country may find itself forced to actually encourage immigration (due to the gaping hole in their age demographics). The country is not ready for that...

(Please refer to my post above. Not the one immediately above. The other one.)



When Peterson says that kind of thing, he's stating the obvious completely out of context. Makes him sound both smart and relatable at the same time, and "yeah, I guess it makes sense" kind of thing. It's extremely disingenuous.