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 Ouze wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Is it a privilege to walk down the street without being harassed?

If you are statistically significantly more likely to enjoy this advantage, yes?

So White women don’t benefit from white privilege seeing as how they’re far more likely to be harassed than men?

 Sinful Hero wrote:
The days that a black man walks down a street without being profiled, are they a privilege or just another day?

On days when a white guy and a black guy both are driving somewhere and the cops don't pull one over days when racial inequality as a longstanding issue suddenly ceases to exist?

I believe White privilege will dissapear from North America as the demographic changes the next decades. Whites will still be mostly the upper part of society for decades because they will inherit power even when they start becoming a minority in USA, but probably in 60-100 years the power will shift to another ethnic group. Probably hispanics.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
So White women don’t benefit from white privilege seeing as how they’re far more likely to be harassed than men?

Being harassed is only one element of the many factors that the concept of "white privilege" describe. The most easily used analogy is job callbacks because that's well researched and provable (at least, to horses that are thirsty) but of course privilege involves many things, and having less of one benefit doesn't somehow wipe out everything else.

 Polonius wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
If only there were some sort of academic concept for how different kinds of disciplines intersect with one another. We could call it, I don't know, Intersectionality. Alas, such a thing hasn't ever been thought of before, so sadly we must conclude that White Privilege can't be a thing because other people can be oppressed too. Oh well.

Accepting the validity of intersectionality, using the term white privilege is intellectually lazy and an oversimplification of the privileged social status. The whole point of intersectionality is that there are multiple and varied factors contributing to the creation of the privilege, including but certainly not limited to ethnicity. It can be argued that economic status is far more important than ethnicity in regards to the degree of privilege enjoyed by an individual. There are millions of poor white people in the US who don't have a high level of education and live in rural areas and trailer park type neighborhoods that have less access to services and benefits than millions of poor nonwhite people living in urban ghettos. Poverty strips away a lot of benefits and wealth bestows a lot of benefits, nonwhites that have wealth are able to overcome a large amount of the obstacles faced by nonwhites who lack wealth. Family structure also plays a factor, having a two parent household with one or both parents being college graduates and employed is a significant factor regarding income earned by the family, where they live and the degree of importance placed on education, all of which mitigates obstacles created by racism directed at nonwhite ethnicities. If you agree that intersectionality exists than you must also accept that "white privilege" isn't determined by "whiteness" alone and that therefore "white privilege" as a descriptive term is a misnomer at best and a deliberate obfuscation at worst.

As has been pointed out many times, not only does whiteness correlate with higher economic status, white people have a better chance of leaving poverty.

No matter what else is going on in your life, being white almost always makes it easier.

You’ve either missed or ignored my argument. It is not my contention that whiteness/ethnicity is not a favor or that it is not an ever present factor. My argument is that whiteness/ethnicity is not such a predominant factor that it always outweighs any other factor. The negative of being poor outweigh the positives of being white to the extent that poor whites have a less privilege existence than wealthy nonwhites. For example LeBron James’ kids enjoy more privileges than my kids because while his are black and mine are white his kids are in a household worth hundreds of millions of dollars whereas mine are in a household worth significantly less than 1 million dollars. The wealth disparity benefits James’ kids much more than their blackness disadvantages them and much more than my kids whiteness advantages them. Now Bill Gates kids are even more advantages than James because they are wealthy and white but that doesn’t change the fact that whiteness isn’t of sufficient benefit as to outweigh wealth disparity. Therefore I contend that the term white privilege is a misnomer because poor whites suffer disadvantages that their whiteness can not overcome and thusly do not enjoy a privileged life due to their whiteness. White privilege implies that privilege is merely a product of whiteness but intersectionality shows us that it is never that simple.

 Ouze wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
So White women don’t benefit from white privilege seeing as how they’re far more likely to be harassed than men?

Being harassed is only one element of the many factors that the concept of "white privilege" describe. The most easily used analogy is job callbacks because that's well researched and provable (at least, to horses that are thirsty) but of course privilege involves many things, and having less of one benefit doesn't somehow wipe out everything else.

If a black man with a “black sounding” name gets just as many callbacks as the typical white man in these examples, has he gained an advantage over other black men? Did he just dodge discrimination? Or would you argue a combination of both?

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
If only there were some sort of academic concept for how different kinds of disciplines intersect with one another. We could call it, I don't know, Intersectionality. Alas, such a thing hasn't ever been thought of before, so sadly we must conclude that White Privilege can't be a thing because other people can be oppressed too. Oh well.

Accepting the validity of intersectionality, using the term white privilege is intellectually lazy and an oversimplification of the privileged social status. The whole point of intersectionality is that there are multiple and varied factors contributing to the creation of the privilege, including but certainly not limited to ethnicity. It can be argued that economic status is far more important than ethnicity in regards to the degree of privilege enjoyed by an individual. There are millions of poor white people in the US who don't have a high level of education and live in rural areas and trailer park type neighborhoods that have less access to services and benefits than millions of poor nonwhite people living in urban ghettos. Poverty strips away a lot of benefits and wealth bestows a lot of benefits, nonwhites that have wealth are able to overcome a large amount of the obstacles faced by nonwhites who lack wealth. Family structure also plays a factor, having a two parent household with one or both parents being college graduates and employed is a significant factor regarding income earned by the family, where they live and the degree of importance placed on education, all of which mitigates obstacles created by racism directed at nonwhite ethnicities. If you agree that intersectionality exists than you must also accept that "white privilege" isn't determined by "whiteness" alone and that therefore "white privilege" as a descriptive term is a misnomer at best and a deliberate obfuscation at worst.

As has been pointed out many times, not only does whiteness correlate with higher economic status, white people have a better chance of leaving poverty.

No matter what else is going on in your life, being white almost always makes it easier.

You’ve either missed or ignored my argument. It is not my contention that whiteness/ethnicity is not a favor or that it is not an ever present factor. My argument is that whiteness/ethnicity is not such a predominant factor that it always outweighs any other factor. The negative of being poor outweigh the positives of being white to the extent that poor whites have a less privilege existence than wealthy nonwhites. For example LeBron James’ kids enjoy more privileges than my kids because while his are black and mine are white his kids are in a household worth hundreds of millions of dollars whereas mine are in a household worth significantly less than 1 million dollars. The wealth disparity benefits James’ kids much more than their blackness disadvantages them and much more than my kids whiteness advantages them. Now Bill Gates kids are even more advantages than James because they are wealthy and white but that doesn’t change the fact that whiteness isn’t of sufficient benefit as to outweigh wealth disparity. Therefore I contend that the term white privilege is a misnomer because poor whites suffer disadvantages that their whiteness can not overcome and thusly do not enjoy a privileged life due to their whiteness. White privilege implies that privilege is merely a product of whiteness but intersectionality shows us that it is never that simple.

Ceteris paribus being white is an advantage though. A poor white man, while not exactly well off overall, is less badly off than a poor black man, on average.

The fact that there are other factors that play a part doesn't change the fact that (perceived) race has an effect.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
So White women don’t benefit from white privilege seeing as how they’re far more likely to be harassed than men?

Being harassed is only one element of the many factors that the concept of "white privilege" describe. The most easily used analogy is job callbacks because that's well researched and provable (at least, to horses that are thirsty) but of course privilege involves many things, and having less of one benefit doesn't somehow wipe out everything else.

If a black man with a “black sounding” name gets just as many callbacks as the typical white man in these examples, has he gained an advantage over other black men? Did he just dodge discrimination? Or would you argue a combination of both?

It'd be a statistical outlier. Outliers don't change the fact that larger trends exist. The concept of white privilege doesn't deal with society on an individual level, it's a structural concept concerned with whole populations.

1-Wealth
2- Physical/Mental Dissabilities
3-Ethnicity
4- Sex

I would put in that order the relevant factors for how "Privileged" you are.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
If only there were some sort of academic concept for how different kinds of disciplines intersect with one another. We could call it, I don't know, Intersectionality. Alas, such a thing hasn't ever been thought of before, so sadly we must conclude that White Privilege can't be a thing because other people can be oppressed too. Oh well.

Accepting the validity of intersectionality, using the term white privilege is intellectually lazy and an oversimplification of the privileged social status. The whole point of intersectionality is that there are multiple and varied factors contributing to the creation of the privilege, including but certainly not limited to ethnicity. It can be argued that economic status is far more important than ethnicity in regards to the degree of privilege enjoyed by an individual. There are millions of poor white people in the US who don't have a high level of education and live in rural areas and trailer park type neighborhoods that have less access to services and benefits than millions of poor nonwhite people living in urban ghettos. Poverty strips away a lot of benefits and wealth bestows a lot of benefits, nonwhites that have wealth are able to overcome a large amount of the obstacles faced by nonwhites who lack wealth. Family structure also plays a factor, having a two parent household with one or both parents being college graduates and employed is a significant factor regarding income earned by the family, where they live and the degree of importance placed on education, all of which mitigates obstacles created by racism directed at nonwhite ethnicities. If you agree that intersectionality exists than you must also accept that "white privilege" isn't determined by "whiteness" alone and that therefore "white privilege" as a descriptive term is a misnomer at best and a deliberate obfuscation at worst.

As has been pointed out many times, not only does whiteness correlate with higher economic status, white people have a better chance of leaving poverty.

No matter what else is going on in your life, being white almost always makes it easier.

You’ve either missed or ignored my argument. It is not my contention that whiteness/ethnicity is not a favor or that it is not an ever present factor. My argument is that whiteness/ethnicity is not such a predominant factor that it always outweighs any other factor. The negative of being poor outweigh the positives of being white to the extent that poor whites have a less privilege existence than wealthy nonwhites. For example LeBron James’ kids enjoy more privileges than my kids because while his are black and mine are white his kids are in a household worth hundreds of millions of dollars whereas mine are in a household worth significantly less than 1 million dollars. The wealth disparity benefits James’ kids much more than their blackness disadvantages them and much more than my kids whiteness advantages them. Now Bill Gates kids are even more advantages than James because they are wealthy and white but that doesn’t change the fact that whiteness isn’t of sufficient benefit as to outweigh wealth disparity. Therefore I contend that the term white privilege is a misnomer because poor whites suffer disadvantages that their whiteness can not overcome and thusly do not enjoy a privileged life due to their whiteness. White privilege implies that privilege is merely a product of whiteness but intersectionality shows us that it is never that simple.

Ceteris paribus being white is an advantage though. A poor white man, while not exactly well off overall, is less badly off than a poor black man, on average.

The fact that there are other factors that play a part doesn't change the fact that (perceived) race has an effect.

"Look you poor sods! Those other poor people across the street have it better than you do! That is unfair! You must do something about that! Don't focus on us rich folks stealing your wealth and keeping you down, it is that poor white guy across the street, he is the enemy!"
Race has an effect, yes. But the question should be whether that effect is significant compared to the effect of class. Certainly, a poor white guy in the US faces less harassment and discrimination than his equally poor black neighbor, but that ignores the fact that both are pretty miserable and unlikely to ever get ahead in life. To improve the situation of Afro-Americans, I think it is much more important to focus on their economic situation and closing the massive gap between the lower and upper classes in the US. That will do much more to actually improve their lives than focusing on what in the end amounts to fairly low-impact covert discrimination. I often feel that the "race issue" is used as a proxy to distract people from the actual issue, which is economical. I believe that decreasing the wealth gap would also lead to a decrease in discrimination.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
I believe White privilege will dissapear from North America as the demographic changes the next decades. Whites will still be mostly the upper part of society for decades because they will inherit power even when they start becoming a minority in USA, but probably in 60-100 years the power will shift to another ethnic group. Probably hispanics.

And so will Spain ultimately have taken revenge for the Spanish-American War.

So what your saying is black people don't put your effort in changing the culture of discrimination that holds you back and elevates white people but rather let that be and try to just convince the wealthiest to redistribute their wealth and hope you come out ahead and not just you lose out to that discrimination you didn't address?

 BrotherGecko wrote:
So what your saying is black people don't put your effort in changing the culture of discrimination that holds you back and elevates white people but rather let that be and try to just convince the wealthiest to redistribute their wealth and hope you come out ahead and not just you lose out to that discrimination you didn't address?

Why no both?

 Galas wrote:

 BrotherGecko wrote:
So what your saying is black people don't put your effort in changing the culture of discrimination that holds you back and elevates white people but rather let that be and try to just convince the wealthiest to redistribute their wealth and hope you come out ahead and not just you lose out to that discrimination you didn't address?

Why no both?

I don't know why your asking me Iron_Captain made the one or the other argument.

 BrotherGecko wrote:
So what your saying is black people don't put your effort in changing the culture of discrimination that holds you back and elevates white people but rather let that be and try to just convince the wealthiest to redistribute their wealth and hope you come out ahead and not just you lose out to that discrimination you didn't address?

Yes, because it is not the 'culture of' discrimination that is the main culprit holding black people back. Nor does this culture of discrimination automatically elevate white people (as evidenced by the fact that a lot of white people aren't much better off than black people at all). What is really holding black people back is the unequal distribution of wealth.
In the extremely unlikely hypothetical case that black people would indeed be able to change this culture of discrimination (highly unlikely since it is mostly subconscious and gets perceived really quickly as 'reverse racism', which only makes matters worse rather than better), and they would face absolutely no discrimination anymore, they still wouldn't be really better off than they are now. Most Afro-Americans belong to the lower classes. And the vast majority of Afro-Americans that are currently poor would still remain poor. Just like most whites who are poor will also always stay poor. If white people, who face no race-based discrimination at all, can't work their way out of poverty, what makes you think Afro-Americans would be able to? The system would still be working against them, just as it is working against poor whites. Certainly, the success rates of poor Afro-Americans in escaping lower class poverty would equal out to those of poor white Americans. But they'd still be really low. It'd only be a marginal improvement. And overall, Afro-Americans would remain poor compared to white Americans simply because most Afro-Americans belong to lower classes while most white Americans belong to the middle classes.
The only way to really improve the situation is by directing efforts to the redistribution of wealth. Tax the rich and spend the money on improving social welfare programs that help people escape the vicious cycle of poverty. That would do much more for Afro-Americans than any campaign against covert discrimination ever could.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
If only there were some sort of academic concept for how different kinds of disciplines intersect with one another. We could call it, I don't know, Intersectionality. Alas, such a thing hasn't ever been thought of before, so sadly we must conclude that White Privilege can't be a thing because other people can be oppressed too. Oh well.

Accepting the validity of intersectionality, using the term white privilege is intellectually lazy and an oversimplification of the privileged social status. The whole point of intersectionality is that there are multiple and varied factors contributing to the creation of the privilege, including but certainly not limited to ethnicity. It can be argued that economic status is far more important than ethnicity in regards to the degree of privilege enjoyed by an individual. There are millions of poor white people in the US who don't have a high level of education and live in rural areas and trailer park type neighborhoods that have less access to services and benefits than millions of poor nonwhite people living in urban ghettos. Poverty strips away a lot of benefits and wealth bestows a lot of benefits, nonwhites that have wealth are able to overcome a large amount of the obstacles faced by nonwhites who lack wealth. Family structure also plays a factor, having a two parent household with one or both parents being college graduates and employed is a significant factor regarding income earned by the family, where they live and the degree of importance placed on education, all of which mitigates obstacles created by racism directed at nonwhite ethnicities. If you agree that intersectionality exists than you must also accept that "white privilege" isn't determined by "whiteness" alone and that therefore "white privilege" as a descriptive term is a misnomer at best and a deliberate obfuscation at worst.

As has been pointed out many times, not only does whiteness correlate with higher economic status, white people have a better chance of leaving poverty.

No matter what else is going on in your life, being white almost always makes it easier.

You’ve either missed or ignored my argument. It is not my contention that whiteness/ethnicity is not a favor or that it is not an ever present factor. My argument is that whiteness/ethnicity is not such a predominant factor that it always outweighs any other factor. The negative of being poor outweigh the positives of being white to the extent that poor whites have a less privilege existence than wealthy nonwhites. For example LeBron James’ kids enjoy more privileges than my kids because while his are black and mine are white his kids are in a household worth hundreds of millions of dollars whereas mine are in a household worth significantly less than 1 million dollars. The wealth disparity benefits James’ kids much more than their blackness disadvantages them and much more than my kids whiteness advantages them. Now Bill Gates kids are even more advantages than James because they are wealthy and white but that doesn’t change the fact that whiteness isn’t of sufficient benefit as to outweigh wealth disparity. Therefore I contend that the term white privilege is a misnomer because poor whites suffer disadvantages that their whiteness can not overcome and thusly do not enjoy a privileged life due to their whiteness. White privilege implies that privilege is merely a product of whiteness but intersectionality shows us that it is never that simple.

Ceteris paribus being white is an advantage though. A poor white man, while not exactly well off overall, is less badly off than a poor black man, on average.

The fact that there are other factors that play a part doesn't change the fact that (perceived) race has an effect.

I thought I had clarified my argument but apparently it’s still too had for everyone to see so I’ll try one last time and then move on.

Yes whiteness/ethnicity is always a factor but it is not always the most influential factor and whiteness/ethnicity is only one factor among a host of intersectional factors that create the benefits of privilege. The term white privilege implies that all the benefits of the privilege derive from whiteness which is not true. Does the term white privilege refer to only the benefis derived from being white or does include the intersectional factors of wealth, education, family, age, gender and location?

While I feel like the concept of white privilege so self-evident it's weird to pretend it's not a thing, I'd be happy to stipulate that on a literal, semantic level, the phrase "white privilege" could be more precise in terms of what it is describing.

 Ouze wrote:
While I feel like the concept of white privilege so self-evident it's weird to pretend it's not a thing, I'd be happy to stipulate that on a literal, semantic level, the phrase "white privilege" could be more precise in terms of what it is describing.

Who’s saying it doesn’t exist? Not me. Whiteness has benefits but if white privilege only refers to the benefits of being white then white privilege is just one subset of the host of intersectional factors that create a combination of benefits that elevate the level of privilege enjoyed by a person. If we want to refer to that privilege resultant of a host of factors (including ethnicity) then we need a better term than white privilege.

Terms should mean what they appear to mean. Whiteness doesn’t generate wealth for you or guarantee that you’ll have two loving parents or live in a nice section of town it doesn’t guarantee you a quality education. Therefore it is intellectually dishonest to ascribe the benefits of those things to whiteness and white privilege.

Yeah. But it has been researched and studied many times that race has a large effect on economic mobility. Or that race can have an effect on part to education levels. These studies have been done. Below is one of them:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html

If we were to call it, "Whites suffer fewer disadvantages than Non-Whites" instead of White Privilege, and then made all the points I tried to define earlier, could we avoid the semantic argument of calling it privilege and address the results?

 BrotherGecko wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
https://youtu.be/d9kuAEA3YB4

This quite effectively shows that white privilege is BS, citations are in description.

https://youtu.be/Crdd19AtoxI

You shouldn't cite a guy who quit because he realized his employer was getting him to say BS.

So it's rather a black guy used the average income of affluent immigrants from Asian and Africa who are slightly higher than the average white American household to not prove their point.

I think both those guys missed the mark. One is comparing household income, the other is comparing individual income. So, in a sense, they are both right, and they are both wrong. At least as far as comparing income.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
It implies a level of complicity even if you do not actively partake in acts of discrimination.

This is the problem I have with 99% of the modern discussion and rhetoric surrounding the various -isms. People can bleat "but the academic definition doesn't mean that" all they like, very often the actual words being used when read in the way they're used in normal, everyday, colloquial language have implications of meaning that go well beyond those academic definitions of the terms, and where that is the case any misunderstanding that results is the fault of the people defining the terms not the people reading them. It's even more infuriating when you do understand the academic definitions and agree with most of them in that context, because on one side the fuzzy wording around these concepts is alienating and angering people who could be persuaded and mobilised to support them but instead get turned off from the discussion or who misunderstand so profoundly they end up flipping to the opposition side, and on the other you have plenty of laypeople tuning in to "pop" -isms who take on the imprecise colloquial meaning of the terms and actually start seriously advocating them in that form, which just ends up causing infighting and provides examples the opposition can use to help flip the prior group.

You don't win someone's support by going up to a working class white guy who's just had the sack and telling them they should moderate their anger and/or disappointment because they have white privilege and if they were a working class black guy things would be much worse for them(which I've actually seen some gormless student twonk do at a union meeting). The incessant use of "privilege checking" on social media in situations where the concept doesn't even slightly apply but some smug numpty wants to remind everyone how woke they are by pissing on someone for expressing an opinion or lamenting some garbage thing that's happened to them is hideously counter-productive, but the only reason the phenomenon exists in the first place is the fact you can draw a meaning from the words that is linguistically valid even if it's not the one that was actually meant when the phrase was coined.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Aren't there black Brummies and Asian scousers? Do they face exactly the same discrimination as white ones?

No.

There you go.

And this is the other 1%. There has to be some point, some level, some threshold where we stop trying to tease out minute differences in exactly how garbage people's experience of life is, otherwise the whole thing becomes meaningless because there is always somebody worse off than you, or who could hypothetically be worse off than you. A British person of Afro-Caribbean descent in the UK is statistically more likely, in any given situation, to have more to deal with than a white British person given everything else is equal, but there are children in Africa that are starving to death so really all British people are privileged in relative terms; should that in any way impact how we address the relative imbalances within Britain? If the black Brit and the white Brit are both working class then the relative disparity between them utterly pales in comparison to the vast gulf of privilege between both of them and someone from the tippy-top of the professional middle class who went to a private school; is it of greater benefit to the black Brit to emphasise the former disparity or the latter one?

Privilege is far too broad, nuanced, and interconnected a concept for the blunt instrument it has become in the modern discourse, and more and more I see it used to undermine solidarity between groups who share a common interest in upsetting the present form of power hierarchy rather than for any useful purpose.

 Ouze wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
So White women don’t benefit from white privilege seeing as how they’re far more likely to be harassed than men?

Being harassed is only one element of the many factors that the concept of "white privilege" describe. The most easily used analogy is job callbacks because that's well researched and provable (at least, to horses that are thirsty) but of course privilege involves many things, and having less of one benefit doesn't somehow wipe out everything else.

Actually, the often quoted "callback" statistic by the National Bureau of Economic Research is a bit old, done in 2003. It was redone again back in 2015 using the same parameters of the original study. It still found that "black" sounding names were less likely to get a call back, but that the gap had significantly narrowed.

 AdeptSister wrote:
Yeah. But it has been researched and studied many times that race has a large effect on economic mobility. Or that race can have an effect on part to education levels. These studies have been done. Below is one of them:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html

That study still acknowledges that class has a bigger impact than race though. It proves that race has an impact, but class is still a bigger influence than race. The graphs make this very clear, since they show exactly the same pattern for white and black people, except with a gap between white and black men. The most interesting finding of this study is that the discrepancy between blacks and whites is entirely due to black men doing less well than white men. There is little to no gap between black women and white women. To me, this suggests there are other, psychological and cultural factors at work here that go beyond mere discrimination. Especially considering that this pattern holds true across races, though to a lesser extent. Black women for example are more likely to get into college than white men of the same income category, according to this study. Also interestingly, it shows that Asians do even better than white Americans. Is it time we start talking about the "Girl privilege" and "Asian privilege" problems now?
The big flaw in the study is that is perhaps too abstracted. It treats all income as equal, while that is evidently not true. What really matters is where you get that income from. A white family and a black family could both have the same income from example, but if white families' income is on average more stable than black families' incomes, then you would expect to see black people plummet down again more often purely for economic reasons. That would be something for a follow-up study to investigate. I think this may be significant because I suspect that a lot of wealthy white families in the US have a lot of inherited "old wealth", while most wealthy black families had to work their way up from the bottom only one or two generations ago, which may be a factor in their income being less stable. A lot of 'new rich' families in Russia also tend to crash again in the next generation. There is also plenty of studies that show that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth again in the second generations, and 90% of those left lose it in the third. Very few people who become rich, stay rich. Only the big bourgeois can manage that. What also remains unrevealed is the reason why men from wealthy families crash more often than women, and why wealthy black and native american men crash especially often. It can hardly be due to being discriminated against by employers, since people that wealthy don't need employers, they are normally employers themselves. Overall, the study suggests that the issue is a lot more complicated than simply "white privilege".

 Iron_Captain wrote:
[ Is it time we start talking about the "Girl privilege" ".

Actually, this is a thing. Women have documented advantaged in education (from preschool to college), societal advantages, and advantages in legal matters.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
[ Is it time we start talking about the "Girl privilege" ".

Actually, this is a thing. Women have documented advantaged in education (from preschool to college), societal advantages, and advantages in legal matters.

Men have advantages in different areas though, such as employment and salary. Not to mention the ability to grow beards. Which I sadly still lack.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
[ Is it time we start talking about the "Girl privilege" ".

Actually, this is a thing. Women have documented advantaged in education (from preschool to college), societal advantages, and advantages in legal matters.

Men have advantages in different areas though, such as employment and salary. Not to mention the ability to grow beards. Which I sadly still lack.

Men have a SLIGHT advantage in employment. Women under 35 still out earn their male counterparts.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
IDK if it's been tested, but it would not surprise me of there was more prejudice against non-anglo-saxon especially latin names in the USA than in Europe.

However all whites whether slavic, anglo-saxon or Italian have white privilege in circumstances where the key factor is whiteness rather than the pronunciation of their name.

What circumstances are the key factors whiteness? What do you mean by whiteness anyways. Are we talking about having a name that sound American?

Whiteness is the quality of being white.

Whiteness is a factor when you can judge if someone is white or not.

There's no such thing as a name that sounds american. All american names came from somewhere else, and there is a huge variety of them from many different cultures.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
If only there were some sort of academic concept for how different kinds of disciplines intersect with one another. We could call it, I don't know, Intersectionality. Alas, such a thing hasn't ever been thought of before, so sadly we must conclude that White Privilege can't be a thing because other people can be oppressed too. Oh well.

Accepting the validity of intersectionality, using the term white privilege is intellectually lazy and an oversimplification of the privileged social status. The whole point of intersectionality is that there are multiple and varied factors contributing to the creation of the privilege, including but certainly not limited to ethnicity. It can be argued that economic status is far more important than ethnicity in regards to the degree of privilege enjoyed by an individual. There are millions of poor white people in the US who don't have a high level of education and live in rural areas and trailer park type neighborhoods that have less access to services and benefits than millions of poor nonwhite people living in urban ghettos. Poverty strips away a lot of benefits and wealth bestows a lot of benefits, nonwhites that have wealth are able to overcome a large amount of the obstacles faced by nonwhites who lack wealth. Family structure also plays a factor, having a two parent household with one or both parents being college graduates and employed is a significant factor regarding income earned by the family, where they live and the degree of importance placed on education, all of which mitigates obstacles created by racism directed at nonwhite ethnicities. If you agree that intersectionality exists than you must also accept that "white privilege" isn't determined by "whiteness" alone and that therefore "white privilege" as a descriptive term is a misnomer at best and a deliberate obfuscation at worst.

As has been pointed out many times, not only does whiteness correlate with higher economic status, white people have a better chance of leaving poverty.

No matter what else is going on in your life, being white almost always makes it easier.

You’ve either missed or ignored my argument. It is not my contention that whiteness/ethnicity is not a favor or that it is not an ever present factor. My argument is that whiteness/ethnicity is not such a predominant factor that it always outweighs any other factor. The negative of being poor outweigh the positives of being white to the extent that poor whites have a less privilege existence than wealthy nonwhites. For example LeBron James’ kids enjoy more privileges than my kids because while his are black and mine are white his kids are in a household worth hundreds of millions of dollars whereas mine are in a household worth significantly less than 1 million dollars. The wealth disparity benefits James’ kids much more than their blackness disadvantages them and much more than my kids whiteness advantages them. Now Bill Gates kids are even more advantages than James because they are wealthy and white but that doesn’t change the fact that whiteness isn’t of sufficient benefit as to outweigh wealth disparity. Therefore I contend that the term white privilege is a misnomer because poor whites suffer disadvantages that their whiteness can not overcome and thusly do not enjoy a privileged life due to their whiteness. White privilege implies that privilege is merely a product of whiteness but intersectionality shows us that it is never that simple.

Ceteris paribus being white is an advantage though. A poor white man, while not exactly well off overall, is less badly off than a poor black man, on average.

The fact that there are other factors that play a part doesn't change the fact that (perceived) race has an effect.

"Look you poor sods! Those other poor people across the street have it better than you do! That is unfair! You must do something about that! Don't focus on us rich folks stealing your wealth and keeping you down, it is that poor white guy across the street, he is the enemy!"
Race has an effect, yes. But the question should be whether that effect is significant compared to the effect of class. Certainly, a poor white guy in the US faces less harassment and discrimination than his equally poor black neighbor, but that ignores the fact that both are pretty miserable and unlikely to ever get ahead in life. To improve the situation of Afro-Americans, I think it is much more important to focus on their economic situation and closing the massive gap between the lower and upper classes in the US. That will do much more to actually improve their lives than focusing on what in the end amounts to fairly low-impact covert discrimination. I often feel that the "race issue" is used as a proxy to distract people from the actual issue, which is economical. I believe that decreasing the wealth gap would also lead to a decrease in discrimination.

I actually agree with you, but class and race are intimately linked. African-Americans are worse of in a class sense because of a history of racism. It hasn't been the lower economic status of African-Americans that has caused them to be discriminated against, but rather the other way around. In a sense, the class issue is a symptom of the race issue. This doesn't change the fact that the class disparities in the US have to be worked on, but if you focus solely on class you're going to just have African-Americans pushed towards the bottom. Again.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
If only there were some sort of academic concept for how different kinds of disciplines intersect with one another. We could call it, I don't know, Intersectionality. Alas, such a thing hasn't ever been thought of before, so sadly we must conclude that White Privilege can't be a thing because other people can be oppressed too. Oh well.

Accepting the validity of intersectionality, using the term white privilege is intellectually lazy and an oversimplification of the privileged social status. The whole point of intersectionality is that there are multiple and varied factors contributing to the creation of the privilege, including but certainly not limited to ethnicity. It can be argued that economic status is far more important than ethnicity in regards to the degree of privilege enjoyed by an individual. There are millions of poor white people in the US who don't have a high level of education and live in rural areas and trailer park type neighborhoods that have less access to services and benefits than millions of poor nonwhite people living in urban ghettos. Poverty strips away a lot of benefits and wealth bestows a lot of benefits, nonwhites that have wealth are able to overcome a large amount of the obstacles faced by nonwhites who lack wealth. Family structure also plays a factor, having a two parent household with one or both parents being college graduates and employed is a significant factor regarding income earned by the family, where they live and the degree of importance placed on education, all of which mitigates obstacles created by racism directed at nonwhite ethnicities. If you agree that intersectionality exists than you must also accept that "white privilege" isn't determined by "whiteness" alone and that therefore "white privilege" as a descriptive term is a misnomer at best and a deliberate obfuscation at worst.

As has been pointed out many times, not only does whiteness correlate with higher economic status, white people have a better chance of leaving poverty.

No matter what else is going on in your life, being white almost always makes it easier.

You’ve either missed or ignored my argument. It is not my contention that whiteness/ethnicity is not a favor or that it is not an ever present factor. My argument is that whiteness/ethnicity is not such a predominant factor that it always outweighs any other factor. The negative of being poor outweigh the positives of being white to the extent that poor whites have a less privilege existence than wealthy nonwhites. For example LeBron James’ kids enjoy more privileges than my kids because while his are black and mine are white his kids are in a household worth hundreds of millions of dollars whereas mine are in a household worth significantly less than 1 million dollars. The wealth disparity benefits James’ kids much more than their blackness disadvantages them and much more than my kids whiteness advantages them. Now Bill Gates kids are even more advantages than James because they are wealthy and white but that doesn’t change the fact that whiteness isn’t of sufficient benefit as to outweigh wealth disparity. Therefore I contend that the term white privilege is a misnomer because poor whites suffer disadvantages that their whiteness can not overcome and thusly do not enjoy a privileged life due to their whiteness. White privilege implies that privilege is merely a product of whiteness but intersectionality shows us that it is never that simple.

Ceteris paribus being white is an advantage though. A poor white man, while not exactly well off overall, is less badly off than a poor black man, on average.

The fact that there are other factors that play a part doesn't change the fact that (perceived) race has an effect.

I thought I had clarified my argument but apparently it’s still too had for everyone to see so I’ll try one last time and then move on.

Yes whiteness/ethnicity is always a factor but it is not always the most influential factor and whiteness/ethnicity is only one factor among a host of intersectional factors that create the benefits of privilege. The term white privilege implies that all the benefits of the privilege derive from whiteness which is not true. Does the term white privilege refer to only the benefis derived from being white or does include the intersectional factors of wealth, education, family, age, gender and location?

How does "white privilege" imply anything at all beyond the privilege one gains from being white?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
[. African-Americans are worse of in a class sense because of a history of racism. It hasn't been the lower economic status of African-Americans that has caused them to be discriminated against, but rather the other way around. In a sense, the class issue is a symptom of the race issue. This doesn't change the fact that the class disparities in the US have to be worked on, but if you focus solely on class you're going to just have African-Americans pushed towards the bottom. Again.

As was sited earlier in this thread, when you compare Black vs. White women, race doesn't really matter when you compare to women on the same rung on the economic ladder. They have about equal chances of success or failure. For some reason the same is not true of men.

Define white? How does that work if their name is Cortes, or Khan?

 cuda1179 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
[. African-Americans are worse of in a class sense because of a history of racism. It hasn't been the lower economic status of African-Americans that has caused them to be discriminated against, but rather the other way around. In a sense, the class issue is a symptom of the race issue. This doesn't change the fact that the class disparities in the US have to be worked on, but if you focus solely on class you're going to just have African-Americans pushed towards the bottom. Again.

As was sited earlier in this thread, when you compare Black vs. White women, race doesn't really matter when you compare to women on the same rung on the economic ladder. They have about equal chances of success or failure. For some reason the same is not true of men.

To be fair, black men probably get discriminated against more than black women. I even notice it in myself. I hate racism, but when I am out in the city at night and I see a group of black men I get nervous. It is a subconscious reaction. I don't have the same reaction to white men or black women. The only other group that can make me feel nervous are Moroccan men (a large group of immigrants here in the Netherlands). What causes this reaction is likely the fact that both groups are overrepresented in crime (as a result of their low socioeconomic status), and I suspect that this causes my brain to make the subconscious equation black man = criminal and Moroccan man = criminal. And I am definitely sure I am not the only person who accidentally makes this association.
And that is what I suspect is the biggest source for discrimination against black men, and the primary reason why the gap between black men and white men still exists where between women it does not. Walrus is right in saying that racism is the original cause for the lower socioeconomic status of Afro-Americans, but when it comes to perpetuating this situation, I think it is then the lower socioeconomic status that fuels the racism. Basically, black people are disproportionately represented in the lower classes, leading them to be also disproportionately represented in crime, leading people to subconsciously associate black men with crime, leading to subconscious discrimination against black men, which holds black men back.
Again, I think that improving the low socioeconomic status of black people would also go a long way towards fighting discrimination.

I agree entirely. It's a vicious circle.