Differences exist. Duh! The problem with these arguments is that it's just the disparate outcome argument in different clothes. Disparate outcome does not prove discrimination, it only suggests areas to check for discrimination.
It’s the racism of the gaps.
Well, no. That's not what it is. It's not about disparate outcomes - it's about different measures and different rules being applied to different people based on an inherent trait rather than on their abilities and skills. It's about recognizing that we, as humans,
build our world. We don't exist in nature as it is, we alter our environments. And generally speaking, the people who design those environments tend to be the 'dominant' group within any given society.
Sometimes dominance is conferred by simple majority - the majority of people are right-handed, thus most hand-held items are built for right-handed people, and it can be difficult for a left-handed person to find tools that work well for them. The more specialized the tool is, the more difficult it can be to find tools that a left-handed person can use. The same thing is true with respect to height. Most things in the world are built to accommodate the normal height range of humans. For those of us who are quite a bit shorter than average, that can present a challenge that other people aren't even aware of. For example, when I'm at the grocery store, I end up either having to ask a stranger to get something off of a top shelf for me, or I climb the shelves. I'm 46 years old, and I end up scaling the shelves like a monkey because I can't reach the top shelf. It's embarrassing... and it's something that most people never even think about. Most people can reach those shelves just fine, and it never even occurs to them that the height could be a barrier. The same holds true for people with physical disabilities, who face very different challenges and barriers moving through the world. That kind of privilege - the privilege of "normality" is widespread, but at least it's not malicious or detrimental. It's mostly inconvenient, and most of the time people are willing to lend a hand to accommodate people who are otherwise barred from those social interactions.
Other times, dominance is conferred by the social status and power of the group doing the designing. And in that situation, the beliefs and perceptions of that group can be an invisible barrier that results in different
opportunities and different
measuring scales for people that are not part of the dominant group. Social stereotypes about sex, race, etc. end up playing into a lot of situations in ways that the dominant group are completely unaware of - because they aren't the ones who face those stereotypes. There are a lot of things that women experience that men never do, and that men don't even know exist a lot of times. The question asked in the other thread about "What if men had a 9:00 curfew" and how that would affect women is a good example. There are a LOT of things that women are aware of and deal with on a daily basis that just aren't a concern to men. It's not necessarily that they don't care about women, it's that men are blind to it altogether - they genuinely don't even know it's a thing at all.
That same concept is true when it comes to race. There are deep-seated conditioned stereotypes on the basis of race that are part of all of our upbringings. It's not conscious, most of them are things we're not even remotely aware of. But they're there. Some of us are more aware of it than others.
As an example, my spouse knows full well that he's got some grade-a white privilege going on. He likes fast cars, and he's not always great about following speed limits. Our friends are quite diverse, though. So when my spouse is out horsing around, he has little care about it. He's aware of his surroundings and very unlikely to hurt anyone (he always plays in areas without traffic). But he also has little concern if he does get pulled over. He has no worry that he's going to have his car searched, or that he'll be treated as a criminal. Most likely, he'll get a "tone it down a bit" lecture and maybe a ticket (more often a warning). On the other hand, our Puerto Rican friend would probably not get that same treatment. There's a much higher likelihood that he would end up getting his car searched, and he'd be approached right off the bat as if he were a suspect for a horrible crime. My step brother, who is black, has similar experiences, and I've witnessed them first hand.
Privilege isn't a matter of different outcomes. It's a matter of different rules and different experiences moving through the world.
