What privilege do I have for being white?

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Hardly. If I'm better able to recognise when someone from my hometown is undergoing stress than someone from (e.g.) Anchorage, that's a matter of familiarity and experience, not discrimination.

If the police are disproportionally targeting a specific group without legal justification, then they are discriminating... In this case, it doesn't matter *why* they are doing it...

It's called the 4th Amendment... look it up...

EDIT: And the 5th and 14th Amendment, while we are at it...

EDIT (another one): BTW, here was how the Baltimore Police Department would profile potential criminals:



Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download (see page 67)

Thanks for this reasoned response, Sweetleaf. I very much agree with you, particularly what you say about financial privilege regardless of colour. Yet the inescapable fact is that white people are privileged in a great many ways, so to ask this question is likely to be met with incredulity, scorn, or - as you say - anger. In the case of the OP, it seems ( to me at least) to have been asked in order to provoke an argument, not a sensible debate - which is what is needed, not only in the USA but in western society more generally.

And you have the detailed breakdown of people by skin colour in the locations where these stops are taking place? Are the police targeting based on skin colour or geographical proximity to high amounts of crime?



It's called nuance. Your graphs lack any.



You seem to be completely ignoring the word "hoodies" as well as partially ignoring "district". Was this lieutenant's district predominately white or black? Are hoodies associated (as they are in many other places) with the criminal element?

In a predominately black district, attire and location would be the distinguishing factors in that profile - not skin tone.

What Is 'White Privilege'? Among other things, and things previously stated ...

It's being repeatedly confronted with the lie that being white is synonymous with being racist.

It's being repeatedly confronted with the lie that non-whites can not be racist.

It's being labelled a racist no matter how hard you try to support equality, justice, and fair treatment of all races.

It's being repeatedly confronted with distortions of what you've said by people trying to prove racism where none was intended.

It's having to deal with non-whites who want to pick a fight with a white person just so that they can claim to be victims of racism.

So, it would seem that while "White Privilege" may exist, there also exists, on both sides of the issue, those who would exploit the situation for their own personal gain and ego-gratification.

To those people, I bid "Adieu".

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T minus 26 and counting.

In appearance, I look 100% white, though my paternal great grandmother was not white. For the first ten years of my life, other people and children did not know this; they assumed my peer whiteness and so I wasn't subjected to racist smears. Then it became known and the racist nastiness began, I suddenly had "bad blood" and "black blood". In fact I had the same blood as before. White privilege is a set of supremacist assumptions which may or may not be expressed in behaviour, and when institutionalised, operates as a preferential system from which white people unduly benefit. However that privilege is so pervasive and commonplace that recognition of it can be very difficult for the privileged beneficiaries, entrenched cultural bias operates as a blinding factor.

If you were, I believe, 1/32nd "black" in the South (United States) before the 1960s, you were considered "black."

I don't see how the concept of white privilege is racist. That's like saying that it's classist to say that rich people have it easier than poor people. Also, I don't think you as a white person are really qualified to dismiss the idea of white privilege. Try talking to some actual people of colour about the discrimination they face.

What do you believe racism means?



That would, indeed, be classist.



So, "people of colour" understand what it is to be white better than white people but white people can't possibly understand what it is to be a "person of colour".

If it quacks like a duck...

The belief that one race is superior to another, or the ascribing of stereotypes to a race.

I don't see how. It's pretty clear that rich people have advantages over poor people in the areas of food security, etc.

The problem is that white privilege isn't based on anything that happens to the white person, but on things that white people generally do not experience because of their race.

You don't get as much unjustified s**t (and sometimes actually justified s**t) directed your way as you would (all else equal) if you were non-white. Pretty easy.

Now, those who struggle with the notion see various anti-racist movements and campaigns and wonder, 'where's my campaign for the s**t I get being white? That's racist!'. Well, you don't need one. Or another way, the s**t you get isn't generally got for being white. this is referred to as 'intersectionality'. Colloquially, there's more than one way to be shat upon.

This is not white people bieng granted privileges but bieng treated as they should be and blacks bieng unfairly treated. I was thrown out of public school after 2nd grade probably due to my undiagosed autism. I was not recommended for institutionalization as was common in 1965 but the recommondation was for home schooling or private school. A private school did take me for 2 years before my public school took me back. I ASSUME the untypical response to my problems was because my parents were teachers. If my assumptions are correct I was granted a privilage which saved my sanity and probably my life.

The faux expansion of the defininition of privilege by some to include the race one was born with is to at best make up for past and current descrimination and to guilt trip whites into changing policy. Two wrongs do not make a right.

While I am on the topic of screwing up the language for political purposes saying Mexicans are lazy is a bigoted statement not a racist one. Bieng bigoted is not less wrong then bieng racist, using the language completely incorrectly is wrong.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 30 Aug 2016, 7:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Maybe it's a bit of a misnomer, but that's what is meant by white privilege--never having to face discrimination for your race.

This is what you are doing when you use the phrase "white privilege" as a catch-all.



And you are therefore characterising on the basis of class. This is classism.



Yep, that's the problem right there - your use of the word "generally".

I am genuinely baffled that people do not understand the inherent racism in making general assumptions about individuals based on their race.

I face discrimination, often----but, the common consensus seems to be, that it doesn't matter.

No, because it's not saying anything about the people, just the experiences that they face.


Do you believe the term "classism" to be meaningless, then?

Do you think, even in periods like the period of slavery in the US, that it would still be racist to say that white people were privileged?