White privilege poll.

[ruby sparks]

White privilege: social, political and other advantages that derive from being white (that is to say, because of that, and not, for example, by being gained in another way). Privilege is generally considered to have been unearned through personal endeavour, for example.

Other privileges may exist. There may be black privilege, asian privilege, male privilege or female privilege.

In answering this particular poll, the idea is to indicate whether you agree that overall, there are more (or more valuable) advantages to being white rather than non-white, nowadays (as opposed to in the past).

Feel free to elaborate by posting a comment.

 

[Gospel]

I voted that it does not exist. Any apparent privilege today is a remnant of what was. It's lag folks. Giving enough time it will be clear that white privilege is gone and the whites that enjoy said privilege today gained it during a time when that privilege existed.

 

[Keith&Co.]

and the whites that enjoy said privilege today gained it during a time when that privilege existed.

So, it doesn't exist, and where it does exist, it doesn't really exist.

Sound like Uncle Darrin talking about systemic racism. It's over, ended in the 70s, and anyone still practicing it thinks we're living in the 70s.

 

[Elixir]

and the whites that enjoy said privilege today gained it during a time when that privilege existed.

So, it doesn't exist, and where it does exist, it doesn't really exist.

Sound like Uncle Darrin talking about systemic racism. It's over, ended in the 70s, and anyone still practicing it thinks we're living in the 70s.

I guess white privilege went the way of COVID deaths... having disappeared, they are both now due to pre-existing conditions.

 

[Gospel]

and the whites that enjoy said privilege today gained it during a time when that privilege existed.

So, it doesn't exist, and where it does exist, it doesn't really exist.

Sound like Uncle Darrin talking about systemic racism. It's over, ended in the 70s, and anyone still practicing it thinks we're living in the 70s.

I admit, my view lends itself to being insensitive to the impact racism still has on minority groups today. However, systematic racism is not as written (by law) supported by the system yet because it was supported by laws in the past, many white people made gains from it that are still enjoying those gains today and will for the near future. It's going to take time and persistence for the playing field to level. However it will level out only because systematic racism no longer exists as written by law.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, systemic racism only exists if it's explicitly legislated?
There cannot be an inherent bias in, say, policies? Or quotas?

Or, maybe in the way voting places are distributed? As long as they don't SAY 'black neighborhood,' it's not systemic?

 

[Rhea]

In answering this particular poll, the idea is to indicate whether you agree that overall, there are more (or more valuable) advantages to being white rather than non-white, nowadays (as opposed to in the past).

I’m confused by what you are trying to learn or how we are to answer viz “(as opposed to in the past)”
There is less white privilege than in the past. There is still white privilege, though.

 

[ruby sparks]

....the whites that enjoy said privilege today gained it during a time when that privilege existed.

That's as much of a contradiction as your answer in the structural racism poll thread.

 

[ruby sparks]

I’m confused by what you are trying to learn or how we are to answer viz “(as opposed to in the past)”

I am asking about now, not the past, because I am interested in what posters think the current situation is.

There is less white privilege than in the past. There is still white privilege, though.

Which is what I myself would say. So I chose one of the options other than 'does not exist'.

 

[ruby sparks]

I admit, my view lends itself to being insensitive to the impact racism still has on minority groups today. However, systematic racism is not as written (by law) supported by the system yet because it was supported by laws in the past, many white people made gains from it that are still enjoying those gains today and will for the near future. It's going to take time and persistence for the playing field to level. However it will level out only because systematic racism no longer exists as written by law.

(my bold)

This thread is specifically on the question of white privilege though. Somewhat related to the other one about racism, I admit, but also slightly separate.

...many white people made gains from it that are still enjoying those gains today and will for the near future...

I think at least some (probably not all) of those gains would be in the form of advantages that amount to privileges.

 

[bigfield]

"Small", "moderate" and "large" don't mean much to me, so I just went with large.

I wrote a few paragraphs explaining my choice, but I didn't think it would persuade anyone of anything.

The problem with the concept of white privilege is that it's a sociological phenomenon: you can see its effect across groups of people, but you can't definitely say how racial privilege affected the path some particular person's life took at some particular juncture. If you can't explain the effect of white privilege to people in terms of personal stories, then a lot of people just won't be convinced that it's real.

On top of that, people go out of their way to misunderstand the idea, by comparing wealthy blacks (e.g. the Obamas) to poor whites, or citing fringe examples of discrimination against whites. Such people cannot be reasoned with.

 

[Trausti]

"Small", "moderate" and "large" don't mean much to me, so I just went with large.

I wrote a few paragraphs explaining my choice, but I didn't think it would persuade anyone of anything.

The problem with the concept of white privilege is that it's a sociological phenomenon: you can see its effect across groups of people, but you can't definitely say how racial privilege affected the path some particular person's life took at some particular juncture. If you can't explain the effect of white privilege to people in terms of personal stories, then a lot of people just won't be convinced that it's real.

On top of that, people go out of their way to misunderstand the idea, by comparing wealthy blacks (e.g. the Obamas) to poor whites, or citing fringe examples of discrimination against whites. Such people cannot be reasoned with.

It’s like when people deny God yet evidence of God’s creation is all around them.

 

[skepticalbip]

In answering this particular poll, the idea is to indicate whether you agree that overall, there are more (or more valuable) advantages to being white rather than non-white, nowadays (as opposed to in the past).

It really depends on the situation. There is 'tribalism'. Those dealing with people more similar to them will have an advantage over those not similar to them. An oriental or white will be at a disadvantage in a black neighborhood. A black or white will be at a disadvantage in an oriental neighborhood. An oriental or black will be at a disadvantage in a white neighborhood.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

This is just me rambling. I have not studied the issue academically. I am commenting based on reason and life experience. I could be wrong in certain areas and I am willing to be open-minded to learn new things about white privilege...

I am not sure I agree with how white privilege is ordinarily explained in memes and social media....that it's some aggregate feature, like average income, and then the person posting it is like..."see?" I mean, personally, I grew up very poor in my early youth, was middle class later on, but because my father was a convict and I was a ward of the state, I always had a lot of differences from the aggregate. I really don't appreciate people discounting my real experiences.

However, the way I see white privilege is actually the interaction of the aggregate of everyone else and the person in question. For example, as a white person I am privileged with the positive perceptions of almost everyone in the country. Even when I was a poor youth, the average perceptions of people were that I was "cute" when I was a baby, that I had potential even as a poor adolescent, that I was accepted into an elite school because of ability, that I could easily fit in as I interviewed at jobs, that I was very professional at my jobs, that I am one of the people who deserves my residence and property in my neighborhood and won't cause problems or bring in the riffraff, and frankly I don't know what else offhand. So that's the first part of how I view white privilege. There is a constant perception by aggregate society at large that puts an individual white person in a different place and judged differently than the same person if they were of a different race in the same position. It's a relative, aggregate difference, but some part of it is extrinsic to the person in question. Let me coin this social white privilege.

The second type (IMO) of white privilege are the various racist and historically racist features of society that afford white people some advantage over others. These things may be very concrete, perhaps outdated laws, or seemingly neutral things that create greater probabilities for white people to take advantage of or utilize because they are dependent upon vestigial effects or inertia of past racism. I think it is proper to call such things white privilege. Let's call this type structural white privilege.

Now, I reckon, there is a third type of white privilege which is empirical but like someone else wrote, you can't sit down and prove it for every particular instance. (a) There were literally billions of interactions I had in my life with other people. (b) There were also many instances in which I was conferred benefits through structural white privilege, many of which I didn't even know about until recently. (c) Therefore, it is a statistical reality that perceptions and structure, i.e. social and structural white privilege played a role in positive treatment or skewed difference in my lifetime as compared to a theoretical person of a different race in the same position. I don't think it is proper to compare two aggregates and say, "see?" It's more like a paired t-test than an unpaired t-test, if you know what I mean? Let's call this broad privilege which is a synergistic combination of many instances of structures and individuals' perceptions institutional white privilege but keep in mind I am not sure if I believe that 100.0000000000% of white people concretely benefit from this statistically as opposed to say 99.999999999% due to chance.

Now, like I wrote I haven't studied this academically at all and really I am borrowing adjectives from descriptions of racism and could be using the words completely wrongly....but hopefully at least these are things that can be discussed and evaluated. I believe they are also true.

 

[ruby sparks]

In answering this particular poll, the idea is to indicate whether you agree that overall, there are more (or more valuable) advantages to being white rather than non-white, nowadays (as opposed to in the past).

It really depends on the situation. There is 'tribalism'. Those dealing with people more similar to them will have an advantage over those not similar to them. An oriental or white will be at a disadvantage in a black neighborhood. A black or white will be at a disadvantage in an oriental neighborhood. An oriental or black will be at a disadvantage in a white neighborhood.

Sure. Obviously. That's why I asked posters to reply on the basis of whether or how much they agree with the idea that overall, there are more, or more valuable, white privileges, comparatively, in the USA (and the 'west' generally). Clearly there will be counter-examples and nuance, depending on circumstances.

 

[ruby sparks]

This is just me rambling. I have not studied the issue academically. I am commenting based on reason and life experience. I could be wrong in certain areas and I am willing to be open-minded to learn new things about white privilege...

I am not sure I agree with how white privilege is ordinarily explained in memes and social media....that it's some aggregate feature, like average income, and then the person posting it is like..."see?" I mean, personally, I grew up very poor in my early youth, was middle class later on, but because my father was a convict and I was a ward of the state, I always had a lot of differences from the aggregate. I really don't appreciate people discounting my real experiences.

However, the way I see white privilege is actually the interaction of the aggregate of everyone else and the person in question. For example, as a white person I am privileged with the positive perceptions of almost everyone in the country. Even when I was a poor youth, the average perceptions of people were that I was "cute" when I was a baby, that I had potential even as a poor adolescent, that I was accepted into an elite school because of ability, that I could easily fit in as I interviewed at jobs, that I was very professional at my jobs, that I am one of the people who deserves my residence and property in my neighborhood and won't cause problems or bring in the riffraff, and frankly I don't know what else offhand. So that's the first part of how I view white privilege. There is a constant perception by aggregate society at large that puts an individual white person in a different place and judged differently than the same person if they were of a different race in the same position. It's a relative, aggregate difference, but some part of it is extrinsic to the person in question. Let me coin this social white privilege.

The second type (IMO) of white privilege are the various racist and historically racist features of society that afford white people some advantage over others. These things may be very concrete, perhaps outdated laws, or seemingly neutral things that create greater probabilities for white people to take advantage of or utilize because they are dependent upon vestigial effects or inertia of past racism. I think it is proper to call such things white privilege. Let's call this type structural white privilege.

Now, I reckon, there is a third type of white privilege which is empirical but like someone else wrote, you can't sit down and prove it for every particular instance. (a) There were literally billions of interactions I had in my life with other people. (b) There were also many instances in which I was conferred benefits through structural white privilege, many of which I didn't even know about until recently. (c) Therefore, it is a statistical reality that perceptions and structure, i.e. social and structural white privilege played a role in positive treatment or skewed difference in my lifetime as compared to a theoretical person of a different race in the same position. I don't think it is proper to compare two aggregates and say, "see?" It's more like a paired t-test than an unpaired t-test, if you know what I mean? Let's call this broad privilege which is a synergistic combination of many instances of structures and individuals' perceptions institutional white privilege but keep in mind I am not sure if I believe that 100.0000000000% of white people concretely benefit from this statistically as opposed to say 99.999999999% due to chance.

Now, like I wrote I haven't studied this academically at all and really I am borrowing adjectives from descriptions of racism and could be using the words completely wrongly....but hopefully at least these are things that can be discussed and evaluated. I believe they are also true.

I think one useful way to think about it is to ask if, all other things being equal (such as socioeconomic status for example, and many others) is it generally the case that being white in the USA has advantages, of itself. Obviously there are some black people who have more privileges than some white people. But we are talking about the general picture and also about privileges associated with the skin colour itself.

 

[Politesse]

Without any shadow of a doubt. My life would be very, very different if I had been born Mexican-American in the same town where I grew up. This is pretty damn well incontestable. I might have been able to claw my way up into the middle class somehow anyway, but it would not have been as easy as it was (and it wasn't easy anyway). Unofficial segregation was steep, and education and labor prospects nearly on different planets, as I see it play out daily among the folks who are now my students.

 

[SimpleDon]

While it may not be a privilege to be white in the US, excuse the play on words, there are many benefits to being a white male in the US still even after sixty years of progress for minorities and women.

An obvious one is that equality in opportunity is still limited to what white males are willing to grant. Take the supposed great equalizer, education. Whites, both men and women go to better schools than non-whites.

I realize that while I risk cries of derailing the thread, I feel that I have to point out that in parallel with white privilege, you also have to consider class privilege, which might be a much stronger support for the existing social order and a much larger impediment to a merit-based society than white privilege. Most of the advantages that white privilege is suppose to bestow on the favored are actually ones of class, not race. Upper class minorities have always been able to insulate themselves and their children from most if not all of the fallout from racism, providing an unearned advantage to be passed on to their children.

We have an example of what I am talking about, the recent thread on legacy admissions to top universities far outnumbering AA minority admissions, both under relaxed criteria, but without the conservatives' outcry in the case of legacy admissions of what they say is important, that the university is admitting less qualified candidates over more qualified candidates. The inescapable conclusion of the thread is that conservatives accept being disadvantaged by class privilege while denying the existence of white privilege.

 

[ruby sparks]

While it may not be a privilege to be white in the US, excuse the play on words, there are many benefits to being a white male in the US still even after sixty years of progress for minorities and women.

An obvious one is that equality in opportunity is still limited to what white males are willing to grant. Take the supposed great equalizer, education. Whites, both men and women go to better schools than non-whites.

I realize that while I risk cries of derailing the thread, I feel that I have to point out that in parallel with white privilege, you also have to consider class privilege, which might be a much stronger support for the existing social order and a much larger impediment to a merit-based society than white privilege. Most of the advantages that white privilege is suppose to bestow on the favored are actually ones of class, not race. Upper class minorities have always been able to insulate themselves and their children from most if not all of the fallout from racism, providing an unearned advantage to be passed on to their children.

We have an example of what I am talking about, the recent thread on legacy admissions to top universities far outnumbering AA minority admissions, both under relaxed criteria, but without the conservatives' outcry in the case of legacy admissions of what they say is important, that the university is admitting less qualified candidates over more qualified candidates. The inescapable conclusion of the thread is that conservatives accept being disadvantaged by class privilege while denying the existence of white privilege.

I agree with you about 'class' privileges (inverted commas because socioeconomic status has tended to replace class as a categorisation in countries without formal or even semi-formal classes) and it may even be the case that they are more advantageous than, say, white privileges, nowadays, in the USA (where, as Randy Newman sang, 'it's money that matters'). It's an interesting topic. Possibly off-topic here, even if related. You wouldn't be the first person to suggest that differences in skin colour have been used to divide disadvantaged groups that might otherwise unite in common cause against the wealthy, the powerful elite and the establishment. It's arguably a bit of an ongoing con job, possibly in the USA more than anywhere else in the world, though it probably exists everywhere. As Gene Hackman's character in the film, 'Mississippi Burning' said (about his father poisoning a neighbouring black farmer's mule), 'as a poor white man, if you ain't better than a poor black man, who are you better than?' Nobody wants to be at the bottom, so last place and second-last place fight about it, when they should both be fighting someone much higher up. Something similar could be said about the middle 'classes'.

This is one reason why at least a bit more socialism would probably benefit most people in the USA, imo, and quite possibly partly why it's been strategically labelled a bogeyman. Another con job, imo.

Maybe we should mainly stick to the issue of white privilege here though, tempted though I am to branch off.

 

[Politesse]

I don't think you can understand white privilege without incorporating the study of socioeconomic class. Absent class issues, the "white race" and "black race" would never have been invented to begin with. It is and always was a cynical idea, meant to divide the working poor against each one another and stave off rebellion against the aristocracy. The true power brokers have enough education to know that biology doesn't really work the way folk taxonomies of race would have you believe (and it shows, when you look at how they treat impoverished whites) but when you have a considerable economic stake in the perpetuation of a bad idea, it's not hard to convince yourself of it.