White privilege

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, you're a ethnomasochist; which is a strange attribute of WEIRD people. No other population group behaves this way. (The Chinese don't bemoan their "privilege" in China; ditto the Nigerians in Nigeria.) But when you tell someone that what they have is ill-gotten, that they are part of a conscious or unconscious scheme which mistreats others, you are dehumanizing them. You are devaluing them. Their efforts are somehow less than the efforts of others solely due to their membership in the group. This is bigotry and to apply it to a whole population group is racism. It's essentially the same as the Antisemitism in Europe leading up to the second world war. Ya know, those Rothschilds controlled everything and their success due to mistreating the native European population.

Shut your mouth, I am Scottish and proud of it. I just don't have to beat and oppress others to feel that way. And you're also wrong when you claim that we are the only moral people ever to have or critique privilege. There are plenty of Chinese activists, for instance, who see the way their government treats the indigenous peoples of their Northern and Southern frontiers to be wrong, despite such protest being deeply illegal and fervently suppressed.

I can't follow your logic at all as far as one's efforts being worth less than others. The whole idea of privilege is that quite the opposite is generally true. We fight to level this relationship, not reverse it.

Sounds like he hit too close to home.

Telling him to shut up doesn't address the point that you know you have no rebuttal for.

There is a big difference between saying group <x> is mistreated and saying that all members of group <y> bear responsibility for the mistreatment of <x>.

 

[Politesse]

There is a big difference between saying group <x> is mistreated and saying that all members of group <y> bear responsibility for the mistreatment of <x>.

Is one of those differences the fact that I said that first thing, and not that second thing?

I don't think anyone bears personal responsibility for the existence of social privilege. That doesn't even make sense. If it were a matter of personal responsibility, it wouldn't be a social question at all. We do, however, all share a collective responsibility to do whatever we can to alleviate social issues. You reap the benefits of social life, you have a moral responsibility to confront social issues when needed.

 

[ronburgundy]

Other:

I am white, and I believe that "privilege" is an inherently relative and contextual term and thus a phrase like "white privilege" that implies a general privilege of whiteness is a invalid, misleading, and dehumanizes the experiences of individuals. I have privileges over some people of all races and some people of all races have privileges over me. And this it true of the vast majority of people of all races.

Like most people my level of privilege relative to various others has changed over the course of my live based upon near infinite events, mostly random. Yet my whiteness has not changed, thus further invalidating the concept of "white privilege"

It is true that at an aggregated level, ignoring individual persons, the average level of privileges of whites as a group is higher than the average level of blacks as a group. However, a term like "white privilege" does not convey this well and is rarely used in a way to limit its meaning to this. At best it is needlessly intellectually lazy.
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Of course. All white people don't live in mansions, therefore no white people enjoy unfair advantages over others as a consequence of participating in this society.

Everything you have came through your own hard work (and the fact that your forefathers stepped on the necks of others, but that shouldn't count because it might make us feel bad!).

As always, none or your rambling nonsense has any logical connection with anything I said or with what the term white privilege refers to.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

You expected his rambling nonsense to connect to something? You have more faith than I do.