White privilege isn't something people have by having white skin. Privilege isn't a merit/value they attain by a fact of having white skin, it's a material relation of different sorts of bodies within a culture. It is something the bodies of our society do. Whites do NOT have privilege because they have white skin. They have privilege because material conditions of society act to give groups of white people systematic advantages.

Privilege is describing the fact our society acts in certain ways towards people, it is not suggesting people attain advantage simply by having a skin colour.

Why is the idea an important piece of countering racism? It's recognition of systematic advantage people of cetain bodies have over others in a racist society.

When we pretend discrimination has nothing to do with the ways in which our bodies are identified, classified and treated, we miss the ways in which those bodies of a group are treated by society. We start making ignorant dismissals of systematic racial issues as simply some other force (e.g. crime), and ignore that a racial disparities are actually formed by a material condition of a certain body (e.g. a black body) itself. That's to say, racisms are not just defined by people intentionally acting to hurt or exclude a racial group, but also just by a mere fact which places a racial group in some kind of social disparity to others.

Please no racism on this forum, it is not appropriate.

I was not engaging in any sort of racism.

I was descirbing how there are bodies, which are identified and related to through racial or ethnic identities, which are subject to different systematic conditions in our society.

I was kidding but when you respond to me, admonishing me for not realising that white skin doesn't have special properties, it shows you just didn't read what I have been saying, therefore, I don't understand why you "responded" to me.

I'm saying that because it appears you are treating white privilege as though it were a judgment determined on the basis of someone having white skin.

Both myself and pro hominem acknowledge the reality of systemic racism and have always been talking about the white privilege concept within the context of the social, economic, political, judicial landscape of the US. Your comments only show that you haven't made an effort, you don't need to read the whole thread to participate but it is not good for you to make assumptions about me and my position.

Oh I know that very well (my point was you were calling "White privilege" a racism when it was not, rather than you were denying systematic racism occurred), which leads me to the next point: how can you deny white privilege when it is a literal description of what the given social relationship entails: that society is doing things which give white people systematic advantages at the expense of black people.

I'm not making assumptions about your position. My point is it doesn't make sense given what you would seem to agree with about social relations. In other words: you are unwillingly to call a spade a spade, out of concern for hurting white people by having their culture as identified as racist.

You are making assumptions though because you misrepresented me yet again, I am not denying the facts characterised by white privilege. As I said, you don't need to read the thread but instead of addressing me with whys, you addressed me with "this is your position and its wrong" when that's not my position. So what's the point of it? We just play this game until you finally say something valid?

That's because I have read the thread up till now. I've got enough information to describe what your positions are doing.

My point was never that you were denying facts of systematic racism, only that you were rejecting its factual connection to the concept of white privilege. You say accept systematic racism, but how does this fit with a denial of the description of the material condition, that white people have systematic advantages at the expense of non-white people (i.e. "white privilege")? This material condition, referenced/named "white privilege", entails the systematic racism you free is there.

If you assent to the systematic racism, you agree there is the social phenomena which others are identifying with the words "white privilege".

If you read the whole thread then your bizarre questions and comments become even stranger. It's impossible to believe actually.

There is no denial of the "material condition" and I do agree with the truth of the social phenomena that others are identifying with the words white privilege.

If that is true, what is wrong with white privilege? How is it a mistake or untrue?

Is there any way it would be enough for me to simply say you are completely incorrect? Could you then engage my perfectly rational arguments without having to resort to ad hominem projections? Or are you going to demand my bona fides and waste a lot of time before we get back to the actual point of the conversation, which is the general poverty of the term white privilege as a tool to help end racism? — Pro Hominem

Eh, you asked me:

do you have the impression that I am made personally uncomfortable by the term

And I answered yes and gave you a reason why.

You had previously stated you would not engage with me on the substantive content because:

Apologies if I'm shortchanging you by not responding fully, but it feels like I would just be retreading what I've already said. — Pro Hominem

it would be retreading ground you felt you had already covered.

I wrote a lot of polemical stuff at you, in my mind it's only fair to explain what motivated me to do it!

fdrake is just doing exactly what makes the criticism of the framing correct, by showing that those who see the world through it, are in fact most prone to race-based discrimination. How can something producing such an effect possibly counter racism? — Judaka

Oh, you got me. I was pretty lazy in my responses to @Pro Hominem - writing them as I did while being a bald white wearing a black t-shirt. If I put a bit more effort in and wore the steel-toed black boots as well that would've deffo upped my White Power creds.

The provocative remark that I'm "more prone to race-based discrimination" based on my support for the term "white privilege" is mostly unsubstantiated - do you really expect people who use the term to be more racist than people who do not use the term?

The only way I see that this makes sense is the series of equivocations:

Racist = uses racial categories in arguments = can think about people in terms of races.

I put it to you that there is no way to talk about racism and not be racist under that series of equivocations. That's pretty pernicious, as if indeed there are unique societal dynamics that involve race causally, race is a useful analytic category. For instance; a study on racially motivated hate crimes becomes racist for making race a factor in the analysis, irrelevant of the fact race places a causal role in the crime.

On a systemic level, the causality concept changes from billiard balls (if A then B is guaranteed) to comparisons based on what's analysed (here race) holding all else as equal as possible in the background. Billiard ball causality is uniquely determinative, systemic causality is strongly determinative. If there is a disparity in that sense based on race, it's reasonable to infer that race plays a strongly determinative role in that situation.

I'm sure you know that race plays a causal role in the following circumstances:
(1) Police violence - even if you control for economic+demographic variables, PoCs are at way more risk. @StreetlightX posted a paper a while back that established this (tagging for citation); summarised, whites are at comparable risks to PoCs for police violence in poor communities, PoCs are at higher risk everywhere else. It's not just a class thing.
(2) Sentencing rates and sentence severity for criminal activity strongly track race (I could find a citation for this if you demand one); if you're a PoC, you're both more likely to be sentenced and more likely to receive a harsher sentence if sentenced.

There's also the historical angle of white supremacist terrorism; Tulsa and Rosewood weren't attacked for being poor, they were attacked for being dangerous to the interests of the white race in America - simply by being prosperous communities of colour.

Those are things that are implausible to reduce to the class distinction. Race plays a causal role.

It might be a stupid conception of race that facilitates it, but regardless of how stupid an idea is, it still plays a role when people and systems act under its influence. So long as there are social+economic dynamics that are strongly determined by race, race will remain a useful analytic category. It's a shitty thing to have to make sense of some things on those terms, but those are the breaks.

Edit: so in that context of talking about race still being necessary, how does white privilege as a concept fit in? The disadvantages and history split along white/PoC lines, whites accruing relative advantages and avoiding risks, PoCs accruing relative disadvantages and being more exposed to risks. That it's whites that accrue the benefits is signified by "white" and that it's talking about relative advantages/relative risk reduction over a broad range of things is signified by "privilege", it contains the direction of advantage and gestures towards the character of those advantages. I can't think of a better two word summary of the effect, can you?

(7) White privilege being used to discriminate against the "white" experience and characterising white success in light of their advantages
(8) The privilege framing having an effect on causing things such as "white guilt", shame and so on. — Judaka

It's a sign of courage that complicity is uncomfortable. Not that being uncomfortable because of complicity, by itself, does much at all.

I don't think one can criticise white privilege without stipulating some aims or goals to establish what is at stake here. Firstly, the term "white privilege" is not a literal description of the social phenomena I agreed to, it is a characterisation and a framing by which one understands and describes society. As opposed to asking "does white privilege accurately describe reality" the question is "what does the white privilege description of reality produce?"

What are the various implications and consequences of a person using "white privilege" to understand society? If your answer is, nothing and it's just a name and it just describes reality then that would be when you and I started to disagree.

The second disagreement is whether the facts we're characterising are fairly characterised by the term "white privilege". I take issue with both words "white" and "privilege" and have talked at length as to why. Briefly, it shifts the focus away from the actual injustices taking place, which is systemic racism and instead puts the focus on those who aren't directly affected by systemic racism - white Americans. I don't believe that the correct way to understand systemic racism is how white people are avoiding problems or getting a leg up. The aim here is not to have white Americans experiencing self-loathing nor for people to view "white success" with anger or frustration. It is actually very hard to see what is constructive about this focus on "white privilege". It's not about protecting white culture (?) or white people, it's about asking what do you want people to focus on and why isn't it the actual racism or racist policies? Or at least the victims?

As for calling being exempt from racism a privilege, I disagree with it and once again, why is the focus here? If we accept that many white Americans find systemic racism to be abhorrent and detestable, why insist it's their privilege? Say a naive white American reflects on this and starts to inform themselves about all the ways in which they're privileged due to their whiteness. If we have any sympathy towards this individual or any plan for them, this is wrong. What we want is for this individual to realise how systemic racism works and, to ask, "how can such an unjust thing happen in the supposed greatest country on Earth? Why is nobody doing anything about it?" That's how I want them to get educated and involved.

When you describe the problem of systemic racism as white privilege, aren't you just arming those who might disagree with you with the means of your own destruction? When you are trying to convince someone of systemic racism, is the best way to explain to them how their whole life, their whole experience, is a result of how society has handed them all these privileges due to their whiteness? Is it effective? Or ethical? To do it that way?

Even after they agree with you, "yes, you're right, I'm so privileged" says the white American, a previously ignorant person is now convinced of systemic racism through the lens of white privilege. Which means what? They remain totally ignorant about systemic racism! Because it was never something that can be understood by looking at interactions between the government and white society, that's the one place it's actually absent.

What I want is to see a framing for systemic racism that brings attention to the various injustices which constitute systemic racism. To ask the individual, no matter your skin colour, is this right? Or good for the country? To encourage discussion about changes that would actually help improve the situation. Rather than leaving people to their own devices to conceptualise systemic racism through the lens of white privilege.

The last thing I'll bring up is whether you want to have every problem in society described as a race problem. There is both white and black poverty in America and a valid question is, should we view the two differently? Yes, there are historical reasons for why there is greater poverty among black Americans but nowadays, poverty functions the same for people of either race and the US government does the bare minimum to help regardless of your race. The term white privilege may not be helpful here, it creates unhelpful divisions between people of either race, rather than merely describing them.

My contribution to this thread has been talking about these issues and more and my basis for rejecting "white privilege" has always been to ask these kinds of questions and arriving at answers that make me conclude, we would simply be much better off describing and framing the conversation differently.

Racist = uses racial categories in arguments = can think about people in terms of races.

I put it to you that there is no way to talk about racism and not be racist under that series of equivocations.

...So long as there are social+economic dynamics that are strongly determined by race, race will remain a useful analytic category. It's a shitty thing to have to make sense of some things on those terms, but those are the breaks. — fdrake

Dunno why this is so hard to grasp.

whites are at comparable risks to PoCs for police violence in poor communities, PoCs are at higher risk everywhere else. It's not just a class thing. — fdrake

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/police-killings-black-white-poverty

I'm not entirely disagreeing. I'm warning that you seem to be placing the cart ahead of the horse.

Complicity and complacency are different things in and of themselves. Both require awareness of wrongdoing if one is to be held liable and/or responsible for being either. The account you've presented judges a group of people who are oblivious to the extent of systemic racism as if they were not oblivious.

Understanding and/or becoming aware of white privilege requires knowing about enough of the situations that non whites deal with because they are not white. White privilege is the exemption from just these sorts of specific circumstances and/or situations. Those situations are only thought about when a non white individual tells their own story. Until then, the white individual cannot know about all of the injustices that they are themselves immune to.

So, I disagree with characterizing such broad-based innocent ignorance as if it were not.

However...

After one becomes aware of the wrongdoing they can also become a willing and knowing accomplice of continued wrongdoing. However, at that time they are not yet willing accomplices to any wrongdoing, for let us not forget that they have just became aware of the wrongdoing. So, an otherwise unknowing white individual becomes aware of the residual effects/affects of racism that still pervade American society to this day.

What personal responsibility do they have? That ought be established by the amount of power they have to influence and/or effect change.

Oh, you got me. I was pretty lazy in my responses to Pro Hominem - writing them as I did while being a bald white wearing a black t-shirt. If I put a bit more effort in and wore the steel-toed black boots as well that would've deffo upped my White Power creds. — fdrake

What?

The provocative remark that I'm "more prone to race-based discrimination" based on my support for the term "white privilege" is mostly unsubstantiated - do you really expect people who use the term to be more racist than people who do not use the term? — fdrake

I couldn't possibly substantiate my claim, it's anecdotal and a weak claim but I certainly believe it is more likely that a person who uses the term white privilege to be more prone to making assumptions based on race.

Apparently defining racism is a controversial topic in this thread, what is your definition of racism? Isaac claims that it requires oppression, while I would say any race-based discrimination is racism, that's the definition I'm working on.

The only way I see that this makes sense is the series of equivocations:

Racist = uses racial categories in arguments = can think about people in terms of races. — fdrake

Wouldn't that make those who use the white privilege framing necessarily racist rather than "more prone"? Since white privilege is the argument that "you, white person, are privileged". I'm not going to call merely describing reality while identifying people by their races is racist, I do that and have done it many times this thread.

An argument like "white people are disproportionately more likely to be offended by the concept of white privilege", I mean, I totally agree. Who wouldn't? It's just obvious. Like saying people who listen to rap are more likely to be offended by saying "rap is awful". The issue is when you use that understanding to inform yourself about the individual. I will just repost what I said to Banno.

You want to be very careful about giving validity to the idea that you can use statistics, anecdotes, feelings about a race to inform yourself about or characterise an individual. Because it may even be true that white people are more likely to dislike the white privilege framing for bad reasons but once you start using that to characterise disagreement with the framing as a result of their race, you aren't really much different or really any different from what you're supposedly condemning. — Judaka

There are many reasons I think people who like the term white privilege are more likely to be racist but the main one is simply that the term is very race-orientated. It calls out being white in the US as a privilege and what I see people doing is using the idea of white privilege to presume the privilege of somebody who is white. Which gives you a lot to work with, a lot of assumptions that you can make about someone simply for being white.

...we listen to a person with a name, a story, a personality, someone was trying to live their life and had to deal with injustice because of a stupid reason like racism. — Judaka

And you do all this without placing importance upon the color of their skin too?

Seriously dude.

Actually the "white privilege" narrative doesn't only not help people to know how to change things, it instructs them on how to make things worse. It reinforces the importance of race, legitimises prejudice, leaves people to figure out the causes, characterises an injustice as a privilege for whatever reason.

I'm really excited to see a thread here about "challenging the mass incarceration", I think, that's something I want to see done, I am a huge supporter. It's so much better than reading about "white privilege" which is a totally useless conversation about characterisations, framing, interpretations, narrative and just a lot of not-actually-doing-anything useless bullshit. — Judaka

Yeah...

The exemption and/or immunity from the injustice(s) is the privilege.

You're making less and less sense as we go along. Focusing upon economic redistribution will not correct mass incarceration of blacks.

You're the only one returning over and over to focus upon characterizations, framing, interpretations, and narratives... I would love to talk about actual events. You seem to want to avoid them.

...white privilege is the argument that "you, white person, are privileged" — Judaka

Strawman.

And you do all this without placing importance upon the color of their skin too? — creativesoul

What is important was the discrimination they were subjected to rather than the colour of their skin. That's all we're trying to learn about. Of course, their skin colour made it possible but skin colour shouldn't be the focus. The focus should be perpetrator (cause) and victim.

You're making less and less sense as we go along. Focusing upon economic redistribution will not correct mass incarceration of blacks. — creativesoul

I didn't draw a connection between those two things.

Strawman. — creativesoul

It's a silly oversimplification which wasn't attempting to do anything but demonstrate a point.

You're the only one returning over and over to focus upon characterizations, framing, interpretations, and narratives... I would love to talk about actual events. You seem to want to avoid them. — creativesoul

I am not saying I want people to talk about the actual events in this thread, which is about the white privilege framing. I am just pointing out that white privilege is a distraction that detracts from real issues.

Insincerity offends me.

You're both all over the place. Perhaps I'll make fun of both of you by simply holding your own words next to one another and watch the squirming begin...

It seems there's been more than enough rope given...

Tell me some stories of how you, your friends, your family, and/or any of your loved ones have suffered racial discrimination...

I am just pointing out that white privilege is a distraction that detracts from real issues. — Judaka

Understanding white privilege requires understanding actual events.

Real? Pfft!

You're in quite the mood today.

Insincerity offends me. Especially about racism. This shit is important. My friends, my family, my loved ones' lives depend upon it.

You're making less and less sense as we go along. Focusing upon economic redistribution will not correct mass incarceration of blacks.
— creativesoul

I didn't draw a connection between those two things. — Judaka

Focusing upon the mass incarceration of BLACKS is to focus - in part - upon skin color.

:roll:

By your own definition... it's rather inconvenient... that you're guilty of all you rail against... when it's convenient...

Insincerity offends me.

...a totally useless conversation about characterisations, framing, interpretations, narrative... — Judaka

You're the only one returning over and over to focus upon characterizations, framing, interpretations, and narratives... I would love to talk about actual events. You seem to want to avoid them.
— creativesoul

I am not saying I want people to talk about the actual events in this thread, which is about the white privilege framing. I am just pointing out that white privilege is a distraction that detracts from real issues. — Judaka

I am saying that you are the one doing the stuff which you say is useless... You are the one talking about characterizations, framing, interpretations, and narratives. You are the one that keeps focusing upon those things. You are the one.

Insincerity offends me.

Tell me some stories of how you, your friends, your family, and/or any of your loved ones have suffered racial discrimination...

What do you know about suffering from racial discrimination?

What? — Judaka

I decided to use an exaggerated form of you insinuating that I was racist (more likely to be racist!) to satirise your insinuation that I was (more likely to be) racist. I took a few signifiers I have that are associated with white supremacist terrorists (skinhead blackshirts with steel-toed boots) and highlighted them, along with allying myself with the use of "white privilege" as a concept. I could explain the joke more.

I couldn't possibly substantiate my claim, it's anecdotal and a weak claim but I certainly believe it is more likely that a person who uses the term white privilege to be more prone to making assumptions based on race. — Judaka

Making assumptions based on race; depends a lot of how it's done, no? Is it in intellectual act of critique which highlights socio-economic-legal disparities ("privileges")? In this context assumptions based on race are neutral on the metaphysics of race ; it doesn't have to matter what race is for the purposes of showing what it does. You don't hold any opinions of any individual, you hold opinions of a population based on disparities that the population has been shown to face.

That is much different, I hope is clear, from holding a negative opinion or treating someone badly in a manner rooted in their race.

Apparently defining racism is a controversial topic in this thread, what is your definition of racism? Isaac claims that it requires oppression, while I would say any race-based discrimination is racism, that's the definition I'm working on. — Judaka

In my head I distinguish between racial prejudices and systemic racism. Though the two interlink systemically.

A discriminatory prejudice is a negative judgement of a person that results in holding an unsubstantiated negative opinion of their character, capacities, and possible behaviours causally derived from an agent's recognition of (or assignment to!) their membership in a group, and then possibly treating them differently based upon that opinion. A racial prejudice is a discriminatory prejudice where the group assignment mechanism is race. This is a reduction of person to how they are racialized at the same time as an act of racialization.

By systemic discrimination I understand a socio-economic mechanism that increases the chances of negative outcomes for members of a group based upon their membership of that group. In other words, when belonging to the group is strongly determinative of the increased chances of negative outcomes relative to non-group members. IE, when the disparity in relative risk is not dependent upon what you do, but is strongly dependent on what group you are assigned to. Systemic racism is systemic discrimination that is strongly determined by race.

In a system that is discriminatory against a group, discriminatory prejudices against that group become more likely. If risks (eg, economic, criminal) are associated with group membership societally, the belief that explains those risks on an individual level in terms of group membership becomes more likely. Eg: "disabled people are scroungers", the black "welfare queen" stereotype. An agent's negative judgement by embodying the group assignment mechanism is different from explaining the group membership by the assignment mechanism; eg, highlighting racialisation vs racialising someone, talking about racial profiling vs racial profiling someone.

Inversely, if a person in a system acts in a manner that engenders a negative outcome upon someone based on their group assignment (eg, a hate crime, a prejudicial hiring decision, calling refugees dying in Mediterranian "cockroaches"), it engenders a systemic discrimination in that system to the extent they have determinative power over it (the extent to which an individual's actions are systemically causal). If you found a country weaponising racial prejudice, the prejudice of the founders shows up in systemic racism against their target groups of prejudice. This is a good reason to demand higher standards from politicians and lawmakers than ordinary people; their prejudices and lack of attention show up as prejudices and lack of attention in policy, law and individual outcomes so affected.

There are many reasons I think people who like the term white privilege are more likely to be racist but the main one is simply that the term is very race-orientated. It calls out being white in the US as a privilege and what I see people doing is using the idea of white privilege to presume the privilege of somebody who is white. Which gives you a lot to work with, a lot of assumptions that you can make about someone simply for being white. — Judaka

I think this is the equivocation I wrote about above; talking about the group assignment mechanism and its associated effects (highlighting racialisation and systemic racism) vs embodying the group assignment mechanism (racialising someone and having a racist prejudice).

What is important was the discrimination they were subjected to rather than the colour of their skin. That's all we're trying to learn about. Of course, their skin colour made it possible but skin colour shouldn't be the focus. The focus should be perpetrator (cause) and victim. — Judaka

What utter nonsense!

Racial discrimination is all about the color of one's skin. You cannot correct racial discrimination without focusing upon it. You cannot focus upon it without focusing upon skin color. Focusing upon skin color does not make one racist. Devaluing someone based upon skin color does.