Evidence of systemic racism, implicit bias, etc.

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Here is how I learned about "White privilege" - it really should be called "majority/favored group privilege" because in other societies the same thing applies to their favored groups vs unfavored.

I was 20 and driving around my home city smoking weed. I was driving to a friends house on the other side of town, but in the center of the city is the "black" section of town. I was speeding through the black section while smoking weed.

I got pulled over, and the cop took one whiff and told me to go home.

The reason I was speeding at that moment was there was a car ahead of me that was driving erratically and I wanted to get by them. Ironic huh.

I don't know what would have happened had I been a black 20 yo, but I'm willing to be it wouldn't have been "go home."

Yes....things do happen that way.

But it's not all "cut and dried." Not every white person should be assumed to be "privileged."

That is a strawman. That is not what it means.

You totally put words in others mouths and said they think all white people are privileged.

It refers to specific things - like for instance white people getting called on the police less than black people. I have a coworker who had the police called on him because he locked himself out and went in through a window.

I do that a lot in my house and no one calls the police.

It refers to being able to go to a store and not being suspected of being a shoplifter.

It refers to being at a job and not having people default assume you can't do math or are lazy.

THAT is white privilege.

You totally redefined it to mean something that it does not.

The equivalent in the ASD world is people assume we are untrustworthy because we don't make eye contact. That would be an good analog.

^
I think I'd like the term "white privilege" dropping altogether. We've already got "systemic racism" which seems to cover it. The problem with the term "white privilege" is that whatever it's intended to mean, it probably doesn't go down well with white people who feel downtrodden themselves. It smacks of "you whites don't know you're born, you should try being black and then you wouldn't complain so much." I'm not saying it's deliberately been coined to have that effect, but the whole racism problem is a thorny issue and I don't think race equality activists always understand enough about how their words come over to people, so they won't win over the hearts and minds of the people they need to convince.

I know what “white privilege” is—I am able to go to the bathroom in restaurants while “minority” folks probably would be excluded from using the bathroom. I can quote a thousand examples, too.

I just don’t believe it’s applicable in many cases. I just don’t feel white folks living in shacks feel “privileged.” There is the assumption by some (and yes, it has been related to me verbatim), that white folks are “privileged” merely by virtue of being white.

I understand the historical aspects of the concept quite well.

I am not a conservative. My political orientation points to European-style “social democracy.”

It has applicability in my case…..but this is of recent vintage. I certainly didn’t feel “privileged” when I lived on rice and paprika for a week……and the many weeks where I was broke while working, and was late on bills, living barely paycheck to paycheck. I worked hard as a young person, and was not the recipient of any “privilege,” owing to my “whiteness.”

What “strawman” are you talking about?

In case you feel I’m some sort of “racist,” let me remind you that I’m married to a black woman, and that my supervisor at work is black, and that I live in a primarily Hispanic and (east) Indian neighborhood.

For some people that is what it means.
UNDERSTANDING WHITE PRIVILEGE by Francis E. Kendall, Ph.D., © 2002


Waking Up to Whiteness and White Privilege - By Ann Gleig, UCF associate professor

Not some whites, not most whites.
Everything you need to know about white fragility - Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, PhD, PsyD — By Jessica Caporuscio, Pharm.D

Again not most white people or a majority of white people

I can post many links like the last two where they say it is all white people without saying the exact words.

This article makes me really angry
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/nat ... n-country/

Can you give an example?

Wat?

I mean…..from the street, when you’re not a diner.

An example of where one form of implicit bias leads to another, The victim was picked on by this coward because he was an easy target as a special needs kid
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/video-m ... 18657.html

Other kids were allowed to be silly and goofy but whenever I did it, I had committed a crime. Even my mom called this out and told them I am right, they do only have League Girl rules. I dealt with this in high school too and on here for example, other users would be posting about fetishes or about diapers but whenever I did it, oh no I had committed a crime because I would get negative reactions while other users didn't.

Growing up I had always gotten different treatment than my peers and I learned the hard way aspies are not immune to this either and they will also single out other aspies and treat them different as well.

It is not NT behavior to single out people and treat them different and I think when you have an implicit bias against someone, you will single them out and treat them different. This is not exclusive to skin color.

I agree with you about unconscious bias being common - I would say it's normal human behaviour and often a useful survival tool when the individual doesn't have the time to think diligently - but I'm not so sure about the slippery slope. I don't see it as a thing that's in any particular danger of getting worse or more widespread.

I've been aware of the "us and them" thing - the tendency to prefer one's own group over other groups, to be suspicious or even hostile to those others - for decades, but I still get those gut reactions myself, and all I see able to do about it is to remain mindful that I can feel that way, that my gut reactions may be biased. I think that's my only saving grace, and that many people on this planet live and die without ever seriously suspecting that their gut reactions might not always be the objective truth.

Perhaps the difficulty is that bias has moral implications, and the more the "enlightened" people try to directly inform the "unenlightened," the worse they make things, because it comes over as bigot-shaming and so the "unenlightened" react by clinging tighter to their prejudices. And I suspect that even if the activist treads very carefully in this respect, the damage has already been done in many cases, that the "unenlightened" are now largely primed to smell the preaching coming. To make any headway at all I think it's vital to reassure the racists that they're not seen as evil people. But I think the non-racists very often do see themselves as a cut above everybody else, which ironically means that they've fallen into exactly the same trap - unconscious bias feeding their own egos.

The strawman is saying you think white privilege is poor whites being privileged economically.

The entire strawman is you are making it out to be about economic wealth.

A great example would be a poor white person smoking pot and not caring about voting for politicians to make it legal because they know the pot laws aren't aimed at them. That is "white privilege" even for a poor white person.

And yes, if you are a poor white person that doesn't worry about the cops arresting you for weed, then YES, that is white privilege.

I never once assumed you were a conservative - I narrowly stated that you defined the concept of white privilege to be something that its not. That was the strawman - you defined it to be something that is not, then easily knocked it down.

No one is saying white people living in trailers are economically privileged. But those same white people can go into a store and not be suspected of being shoplifters - that IS white privilege. And if they were arrested and caught, a judge is likely to go easier on them than if they were black, and a jury would go easier on them if it came to that.

When people keep repeating the mischaracterization then it gives that mischaracterization credibility it shouldn't have. No one is saying that poor whites in trailers are economically privileged. The fact that they hear that - it comes from people repeating the mischaracterization.

If you had said "poor white people misunderstand the concept because it is presented to them in a biased form from media sources with an agenda, so it is dangerous to repeat," then ok. I can get along with that. But thats not what you said, you defined it as economic privilege and worked from there.

The recent (yours) definition of white privilege describes a real problem ass backwards. The problem is that in America white people have a better chance of being treated as they should be or given unfair advantage and non white people have a better chance of being discriminated against.

Privilege implies having things that are unearned or undeserved, a negative when that is often not the problem. Discrimination and prejudice are the problem.

Those white people living in trailers you mentioned they will be profiled if they walked into certain neighborhoods in certain stores. They will also be profiled because of the way they look. Blacks have more of “opportunities” to be profiled but that makes the profiling of the white trailer people less bad because of their “white privilege”?

Trust me.....people who are seen as being "trailer trash" will be "profiled" in certain areas at least as much as black people are.

Even I've been "profiled" because I used to dress sloppily and, in general, looked disheveled.

My point is----is that it's really "not that simple."

I'm not saying "white privilege" doesn't exist. I'm saying it's not something that's inevitable.