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.
— creativesoul

All your consideration is based on the racial premise of skin colour as the most fundamental socio-economic distinction and operator. — Number2018

To be clear:My publicly expressed considerations in this thread are not exhaustive of my overall consideration(s) regarding American racism and it's manifestation(s), which includes systemic racism and it's effects/affects, only but one of which, is white privilege. Nor does this thread reflect the breadth of considerations regarding redress.

With that in mind...

This thread is about privilege. It has evolved to be about a specific kind, aka white privilege. Given that my focus has been exclusively upon the exemption and/or immunity from being injured as a result of being non white that all white Americans share, regardless of individual particular circumstances, skin color is quite relevant. White privilege is a result of white racists authoring American public policy from birth of the nation itself through today(it could be easily argued). More specifically, white privilege is a consequence of systemic racism, and systemic racism is a consequence of white racist world-views and public policies based upon those world-views. The white racist world-views and/or belief systems are the origen.

These racist belief systems are perpetuated by oral/written tradition and/or language use and begin accumulating during language acquisition itself. These racist beliefs can 'run very deep', and often do. They transcend generations. The difficulty of driving a spade beneath such belief systems, so as to be able to turn them over and expose them to open air, varies according to the particular white individual and the real life personal exposure and/or interaction with members of the group being devalued by the community that that particular white individual is born into. However, I do not want to stray too far off topic here. I just wanted to say that there is much more to the story than what's been written here by the likes of me.

How can we know that non-white(s) deal with various situations exclusively because they are non-white, and white are exempted just because they are white? — Number2018

We can start by listening to those who deal with being non white on a daily basis, and then just giving it a little bit, just a little bit, more thought.

Do you know any white people who have ever been called "a chink"? "Hong Kong Fooey"? "Jap"? "Chineeder"? "Egg Foo Yung?" "Gook?" Etc. Do you know any white women who've been compared countless times to Yoko Ono solely because they were Asian and involved with a white man?

That's just a very short list right off the top of my head regarding negative, unbecoming, rude, unpleasant, and downright ignorant stereotypical racist language use that pervades America to this day, particularly regarding Asians. That ought suffice, but we could develop a much more exhaustive and/or inclusive list, if we need to.

Do we?

:brow:

One faces complex socio-economic situations, oversimplifies them, then transforms them into mere facts, and finally converts the descriptive truths into the ultimate prescriptive judgements. After all, the final truth has a binding ethical dimension. But who decides that we must accept this truth? — Number2018

We work from different linguistic frameworks. I would not put things that way. An example would help me to understand what you're saying.

Likely, one of the other dimensions is a political will and the intensive enforcement of this will. — Number2018

Agreed, hesitantly. The intensive enforcement part causes me pause. There are most certainly other considerations to American racial problems than the color of one's skin.

What if somebody disagrees with one of the stages of the operative process? For example, for a Marxist, the founding social dichotomy is not racial, but the working class and capitalists' opposition. — Number2018

Ah, I think I see what you're getting at now. I do not think that the color of one's skin(white and non white) is the founding social dichotomy. I also do not agree with the either/or characterization in popular American discourse regarding capitalism vs. socialism or communism. It's not nearly so simple as that.

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.
— creativesoul

Actually, you indirectly agree that here is a kind of ‘potential complicity.’ If one unintentionally takes part in systemic racism practices and/or benefit from them, to make it evident, and to make one aware of the wrongdoing or benefiting from “white privilege,” there is the program to develop the process of the enlightenment: the universal truth of systemic racism and white privilege should become widely available, it should become the integral part of the academic curriculum, sportive events, entertainment, the media narratives, etc. After such reinforcement, any dissent, disagreement, or the pretext of being unaware would become nonsensical and almost impossible. — Number2018

I'm hesitant to agree completely here, but I wholly support the idea of a well-informed American electorate. Unfortunately, that is quite simply not the case. I do think that that is by design as well as coincidental.

What about being white makes the moral responsibility to challenge systemic racism greater than having a different skin colour? Why is the onus on being white here at all? If you're going to say that it's because of power, wealth, political influence, social influence and so on, why not actually put an onus on the actual possession of the things which lead to your actions having greater consequences and therefore there being a greater imperative for you to do something?

Secondly, being the beneficiary here doesn't usually actually give you the ability to do something about it precisely because most of the time, you aren't actually even a beneficiary but rather just someone who is not targeted for disadvantages. Most of the time you aren't going to even be aware of it, even if you're aware of the reality. How can you tell if you got a job easier due to your skin colour? Specifically, you, as opposed to just "people generally of your race"? When is it ever the right time to stand up and say "no, you are just giving me a free pass here because I'm white" or "you wouldn't be so generous if I wasn't white"? Overt racism already gets obliterated, you can lose everything if you're caught.

What single instance can you point out that for a white person who has (not may) have been benefited by systemic racism or a lack of racism towards them where they should have stood up and done something but didn't? Perpetrator, victim, bystander, does it really change based on whether you are a beneficiary or not?

Even the differences of police treatment of races is an unbelievably difficult topic, few instances by themselves can be proved to be racist. We look at George Floyd case and the main reason that people say it's a part of systemic racism is because of the statistics. Elijah McClain, it's the same problem, you look at the individual incident and even though it's obviously ridiculously bad police work, did racism play a factor? It's part of a bigger picture but the individual case alone doesn't prove that. Even the most egregious examples of systemic racism within recent history, just by the facts alone, you would struggle to be certain of racism.

What we're already seeing from people who use the term "white privilege" is the results of it being obviously near-impossible to actually look at someone's actions and know with absolute certainty (they will deny it) that racial motivation was at play. Which means that in order to challenge systemic racism in your day-to-day you have to assume racism took place even though you are severely lacking in any hard evidence. It is so easy to be called racist in today's society because of that problem.

A rich white kid may acknowledge white privilege but that doesn't actually mean that he benefited from white privilege - you haven't proved that and you don't know that. We are just making yet more assumptions based on statistics. I think you are severely overestimating the framings usefulness, the concept will just create a generation of lost and confused individuals who know systemic racism exists but are woefully unprepared and uneducated on what to do about it.

This thread is about privilege. It has evolved to be about a specific kind, aka white privilege. Given that my focus has been exclusively upon the exemption and/or immunity from being injured as a result of being non white that all white Americans share, regardless of individual particular circumstances, skin color is quite relevant. — creativesoul

I know you're done talking to me but I have been considering the differences between your definition of white privilege and others and realised I may have really underestimated how different the two are. I am actually prepared to say that there is a white privilege by your definition. Where if I am a teacher in a class and gave homework to half my students but excluded the rest from having to do homework as some sort of special privilege, I think that's correct. I am going to backtrack quite a bit on what I saying to you, I think almost all of my criticism towards you is invalid, I think I really misunderstood your position here, sorry.

EDIT: I am not supporting that your version of white privilege is actually helpful. I am just saying that it's fair use. Not really trying to rebegin a debate but just to say that I think a lot of my criticism of your idea was invalid.

I have taken the Harvard implicit bias test, at least the one on race -- I assume everyone here has -- and got more or less exactly the result I expected: as a white man of my age who grew up where and how I did, I have a slight but noticeable implicit bias in favor of whites and against blacks. I already knew that -- though I'm not really sure how. — Srap Tasmaner

Same! Being a white from the UK predictably had my implicit biases be pretty strong against Muslims and blacks.

So now what? I'm not sure eradicating my bias is on the table, though I believe my children have less bias than I do and their children will have less than they do. I have even heard psychologists argue that "sensitivity training" of the sort businesses and schools and other institutions pay experts to provide is worse than pointless: not only does it not reduce implicit bias, it tends to make people defensive, resistant to self-examination, and thus less likely to modify their behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think it's possible to eradicate it, I think it's possible to try and mitigate it where it matters. I wish that there was a magical anti-racist technology of self that stopped me from having those blindspots and conditioned associations. But I doubt one could ever exist, outside of living in a society that does not have constant racist propaganda, xenophobic immigration policies and the socio-economic disparities that give the pretence of objectivity to naturalising/essentialising thought+behavioural patterns - ie in a society where race matters less, we will make it matter less.

Monitoring my own behavior is what I've opted for. I have decided -- rightly or wrongly I'm not sure -- that racism is acting upon bias, whether implicit or explicit, explicit bias is a failure of the intellectual conscience, but implicit bias you just have to live with, make the effort not to act upon it, be open to recognizing when you have, and improve. Not so different really from dealing with other cognitive biases really, except that other people may pay a price for your failings. — Srap Tasmaner

I've gone for much the same option. I'm not sure what else there is to do other than study, self examine, talk to people. I think it matters most to put in extra effort into being less prejudicial when the action will have tangible consequences; for me that's been who I answer/ask questions from/to in a seminar, grading something which isn't anonymised, or when designing an experiment trying to incorporate flags/checks for if the phenomenon in question has a demographic aspect to it (admittedly almost impossible with student based "convenience sampling").

Going back to the more general privilege concept the thread is about, I think there's a similar psychic debt when trying to navigate a romantic relationship - though if the privileged are already pretty uncomfortable with dealing with how they embody the mechanisms of systemic discrimination in public, trying to propagate the discussion into the bedroom is going to be even worse!

EDIT: I am not supporting that your version of white privilege is actually helpful. I am just saying that it's fair use. Not really trying to rebegin a debate but just to say that I think a lot of my criticism of your idea was invalid. — Judaka

As polemical as I am with you, I have a lot of respect for this attitude. :up:

I have taken the Harvard implicit bias test, at least the one on race -- I assume everyone here has — Srap Tasmaner

Same! — fdrake

I had never heard of it. I got "a moderate automatic preference for African Americans over European Americans". Does this mean I'm in the clear? Or do I need to work on eliminating this bias? I thought I hated all Americans equally.

It could have been because I didn't like the look of one of the white guys. I don't even know the guy but already I don't like him :roll:

I don't think it's possible to eradicate it — fdrake

I don't think it's possible to eliminate biases across the board, but the dimensions of bias vary, and I see no reason why "racial" bias can't be pretty much eliminated, while other biases remain common (fat/thin, tall/short, etc), largely because I think racism and its underlying biases are not transhistorical.

From a quick google search, the test seems to be very controversial. As far as I can tell, this Vox article seems to do a good job of describing the debate.

Without delving very deeply into this, I suppose my instinctive position might be closer to Judaka's than to yours. It looks to me like the focus on personal bias, while maybe not without value, is part of a tendency to essentialize racism, which in turn seems to encourage a kind of essentialism of race itself. This is vague, I know. I don't know if I'm going to get into it. Really I'm here just to show that I'm more woke than you guys. :wink:

I had never heard of it. I got "a moderate automatic preference for African Americans over European Americans". Does this mean I'm in the clear? Or do I need to work on eliminating this bias? It could have been because I didn't like the look of one of the white guys. I don't even know the guy but already I don't like him :roll: — jamalrob

I don't really like the implicit bias tests, I don't think they have much ecological validity in estimating the effects of racism; how similar are manifestations of racial prejudice to binning a black face into a "bad/white people" tag?. Nevertheless, I believe something like it makes sense to explain hiring disparities for equal cvs etc... I see no way to explain these two things conjoined without an implicit stereotype construct (1) that people aren't racist in general with their actions and words but (2) there are disparities like the hiring one for equal CVs.

I don't think it's possible to eliminate biases across the board, but the dimensions of bias vary, and I see no reason why "racial" bias can't be pretty much eliminated, while other biases remain common (fat/thin, tall/short, etc), largely because I think racism and its underlying biases are not transhistorical. — jamalrob

I should have been more precise. By saying "impossible to eliminate", I meant within the context of a society that's systemically racist. I don't intend to naturalise personal prejudices and implicit stereotypes; I intended to portray them as hard to circumvent entirely in a systemically racist society. Hard to mitigate partially? I doubt it. Hard to entirely remove the psychic influence of racialisation in a society that is systemically racist? I definitely think so.

Sounds reasonable.

I do find it plausible that the binning-by-reflexive-associations would be predictive in some circumstances though; whenever reflexive associations like that make a difference. Maybe in ascribing a frame to an article or CV based on reading gendered names at the top acting as a prime- like studies done on male privilege in hiring and peformance reviews and promotion etc - signifiers of gender changing how the same information is interpreted. I imagine that race has an analogous mechanism.

Let's just say I don't like politics, and it has adverse effect on me when people try to infuse their language so as to elicit some effect from me. Maybe I'm weird. — ChatteringMonkey

Can't say that I blame you.

Weird like me. I used to abhor politics. I thought that all politicians lie and will say whatever they need to say to get elected. I used to flippantly dismiss any campaign promises, because they never seemed to be kept. I believed for a very long time that my vote did not matter. What that candidate campaigned on and/or said did not really matter. Etc. I do not believe much differently now.

Political speech is supposed to elicit a response. That is it's very purpose. Generally speaking, a citizen's response is supposed to be to vote for the candidate that the citizen thinks will do what needs to be done to improve the nation, including that particular person's life and/or livelihood. Since the advent of cable 'news' channels(early eighties?), there have been concerted attempts to change the way American society thinks about the societal problems America is faced with. Mainly, what those problems are. Social media has only multiplied this.

I still do not like politics. The reason I've decided to become more active is because I just want the problems to be identified, and unfortunately America's partisan system has failed horribly as it is. That's another matter altogether and an entire subject matter in and of itself. Systemic racism is but one of those problems. Division of America is another, related issue, that is intentional and helps perpetuate the system's subsistence.

The benefit of being white in America is the immunity and/or exemption from being injured because one is not.
— creativesoul

This IS ambiguous. — god must be atheist

Mea culpa. Add "white" on the end. Interesting that you arrived at all these possible translations without ever hitting on that one! If you've been reading the thread, well...

I am not supporting that your version of white privilege is actually helpful. I am just saying that it's fair use. Not really trying to rebegin a debate but just to say that I think a lot of my criticism of your idea was invalid. — Judaka

I accept, appreciate, and value this. Now I do not 'feel' that it was all for naught. I'm glad I could help you to better understand what some people(like me) are getting at when they talk about white privilege.

I think there's some value in treating bias as a necessary but not sufficient condition for racism.

A few years ago I explained the idea of "systemic racism" to my son like this: suppose a loan officer has a very slight bias against blacks that he is unaware of and it hardly ever makes a difference, but every once in a while he denies a loan application that he shouldn't; imagine thousands of guys like that reviewing thousands of applications at thousands of banks over decades, and you get as a result blacks as a group starting fewer business, buying fewer homes, etc.

And I want to say that if that story isn't stupid, and if we reserve the word "racist" to mean someone who harbors explicit bias or who regularly (something between "often" and "always") acts on an implicit bias, then I don't see the loan officers in my story as racists, even though those acts are racist. That would make systemic racism largely a system of racists acts without there being, or at least not necessarily being, a large number of racists performing those acts.

But that also looks pretty self-serving. I get to say the system is racist without having to call out any but the real bad hombres as racists, and I'm certainly not one of those. All that's needed to get back on track is to deny this:

If the principal motivation for an act is implicit or unconscious, you're not responsible for it.

Stated plainly like that, it looks pretty fucking dubious, but I think something a lot like that can easily slip into how we interpret the story I told above about systemic racism. And because the system is described as the cumulative effect of pretty small, and for each individual perhaps quite infrequent, acts, one of my loan officers could say

Maybe I do contribute to the system being racist without even knowing it, but if I do it's certainly not much.

Of course that's "pretty small" relative to the aggregate of such acts -- for the person who can't start a business or buy a home, it's pretty big; and "small", again, only because that aggregate effect on society is so big. So there are ways to deny responsibility or to accept but minimize it.

If we then look at loans to white applicants as a proportion of loans approved (or of applicants, or of the population at large), we'll find that as a group whites get a bigger slice of the loan pie than they should. There is a "group benefit" even if each individual applicant is only receiving fair and not in any way special treatment. By comparing relative advantage at the group level to the aggregate of absolute advantage at the individual level (stipulated to be none), we get a result that is mildly paradoxical -- but no more than a racist system with no racists in it.

McIntosh's claim is that a white loan applicant actually experiences being a member of the group that does disproportionately well. (Here's the link again.)

If we then look at loans to white applicants as a proportion of loans approved (or of applicants, or of the population at large), we'll find that as a group whites get a bigger slice of the loan pie than they should. There is a "group benefit" even if each individual applicant is only receiving fair and not in any way special treatment. By comparing relative advantage at the group level to the aggregate of absolute advantage at the individual level (stipulated to be none), we get a result that is mildly paradoxical -- but no more than a racist system with no racists in it. — Srap Tasmaner

Spitballing here.

I think that's a pretty nice framing of it. I think there are a two interacting layers to the phenomenon. Say we're dealing with a situation in which privilege operates where a person X has some judgement of a person Y.

Layer 1:

(1) How is Y assigned to a be a member of a demographic class based on X's interaction with Y? I think there're three components:
(1a) The population level expectations (norms) that classify Y into their demographic class based on their relevant characteristics to demographic classes.
(1b) The population level assignment mechanisms (also norms) that associate those relevant characteristics to the demographic classes.
(1c) The individual level inheritance-with-modification of the population level expectations (implicit biases), mediating the relationships with the (1a) and (1b) mechanisms based on exposure + personal experience+history.

I don't think it's the case that individuals regurgitate population level norms and codes of conduct without change, I rather think that the norms in (1a) and (1b) form a prior that influence people's observed behaviour by reference to expected/normal conduct. A prior that can be reinforced through exposure to it. In a flowchart form - "society presents me with these associations" -> "I modify them through my personal experience and level of engagement with the norms" -> "I behave in some way".

To me Layer 1 is racialisation, how Y gets put into a racial category based on X's background and the history of construction of racial classes. I think (1a) and (1b) are typified by population level conflict over narrative in news, law and policy. All an arbitrary individual has access to at all times are control of their exposure, personal experience and what they do with their time. I could do as much mental judo and research as I like before grading, could it ever counterbalance Katie Hopkins calling the refugees dying in the Mediterranean "cockroaches" in a major news outlet? Doubt it, it's a question of reach and scope. That raises obvious tactical questions.

Layer 2:

(2) How are the demographic classes associated with negative characteristics? I think there are three components:
(2a) The socio-economic-legal mechanisms that stratify advantage and disadvantage in a way that distribute over the demographic classes.
(2b) The mechanisms that broadcast the stratification in (2a).
(2c) The narrative devices that are re/produced that engender interpreting the outcomes of these population level disadvantages (conviction rates, hiring differences...) in a manner that occludes their systemic character ("Anyone can make it if they try hard enough", "black people are lazy", "the disabled just don't want to work", "everyone has felt sad sometimes", "just lean in"...). Blame narratives, over emphasising the individual, being convinced that "your experiences" are in fact universal... These can be present in any (2b) broadcast or Layer 1 racialisation phenomenon.

To me Layer 2 is a base-superstructure dynamic in (2a) and (2b) - though (2b) can be critical, mere reporting, system justification or attempt to amplify prejudices; so the necessity of systemic criticism will persist as long as systemic discrimination does. (2b) and (2c) form a complex with (1a) and (1b), tying system justification and its narrative devices together with process of racialisation - unsurprising, as that was a strong strategic purpose of racialisation for Empire. I think the overall function of the complex between (2c) and Layer 1 is the continual manufacture of consent.

More obvious tactical questions; of special note here I think is that challenging system justifying devices intellectually is one way diminishing the impact of (2c) in that scheme in an attempt to resist the complex. As a corollary of the scheme, being super convinced intellectual acts that highlight race are ultimately racist confuses critical exposure and resisting the narrative devices in (2c) with being negatively influenced by the complex of norms in Layer 1. Between a psychic act that resists racial prejudice in general and one that embodies it in specific.

I think to be privileged, in terms of the above scheme, is not characterised by acting negatively to the unprivileged; that reproduces privilege and is a component part of systemic racism; to be privileged in some way is to be a member of the category that receives advantages and avoids disadvantages associated with that membership. It can't be 'denounced', it can only 'fail to apply', but you can try and mitigate how much you reproduce the conditions that perpetuate the advantage - through personal effort and activism.

@Pro Hominem, maybe this addresses your accusations too.

I think to be privileged, in terms of the above scheme, is not characterised by acting negatively to the unprivileged; that reproduces privilege and is a component part of systemic racism; to be privileged in some way is to be a member of the category that receives advantages and avoids disadvantages associated with that membership. It can't be 'denounced', it can only 'fail to apply', but you can try and mitigate how much you reproduce the conditions that perpetuate the advantage - through personal effort and activism. — fdrake

:up:

Basic.

to be privileged in some way is to be a member of the category that receives advantages and avoids disadvantages associated with that membership. — fdrake

But this is exactly what's at issue: are 'is white' and 'benefits from systemic racism' equivalent (in whatever sense)?

If we look at instances where whites and blacks compete directly (hiring, matriculation, etc) for a scarce resource, whatever data you can marshal won't convince someone who has an example of reverse discrimination to lean on.

What's more, if, say, the hiring manager acts out of bias, then you can still argue it's someone else acting badly that we need to worry about, not the white applicant's obliviousness. (At bottom this just says if there were no racist acts, no one would benefit from them.)

We could argue that the standard of fairness is wrong: that instead of some ideal we could look at how people are actually treated and then ask, 'Are you treated better than average? Then you're receiving a benefit.' I'm not sure how convincing it is.

None of is anything like what Peggy McIntosh was up to. The idea is, roughly, that whites learn how to behave as members of the dominant group, to have certain expectations, etc., without ever being told that these behaviors, expectations, etc. are underwritten by their group's racial dominance. A lot of it has to do with the world at large identifying you as white, seeing you as a member of the dominant group, without you doing anything, without you even being aware that the world treats you a particular way that recognizes your race. The attitudes and behaviors you think are just normal are in fact reserved for white people.

I'm still thinking through it...

↪Srap Tasmaner
1. There exists a system that at least intends to divide people according to a criterion it calls "race".
2. That system marks some members of our society as "black" and some as "white".
3. This system legitimizes violating the human rights of those marked as "black" but not of those marked as "white".
4. The system also legitimizes various sorts of unfair or inequitable treatment of those marked as "black" but not of those marked as "white".

I do not believe there is any disagreement here on (1)-(4).
— Srap Tasmaner

Should it be concluded from (1) - (4) that the society of the US is segregational and racist? — Number2018

@Srap Tasmaner

Pure thought question here. What if the following were true:
1. There exists a system that at least intends to divide people according to a criterion it calls "race".
2. That system marks some members of our society as "black" and some as "white".
3. This system legitimizes separating those marked "black" from those marked as "white" whenever and wherever possible.
4. The system also rigorously enforces fair and equitable treatment of those marked as "black" and those marked "white".

Again, this is a hypothetical, I realize these things are not accurate. Given the above statements, would we classify that system as "racist?"

How exactly are we to read (3)? Are we talking about mandating and enforcing separation?

In general, are you wondering whether it's possible for a system to be racist against everyone?

to be privileged in some way is to be a member of the category that receives advantages and avoids disadvantages associated with that membership. — fdrake

I was totally on board with all of it until here. It was like the photo negative of Billy Madison shouting "Knibb High football rules!" at the end of his Industrial Revolution speech. I am happy that there is some recognition of the subtlety of what I've been saying all along, so I give you credit for a well crafted post.

So let's not lose the ground we've gained and fall back to pointlessly trading jabs, ok?
These are the issues as I see them:
1. "the category" here means "all white people, everywhere, all the time". If you say yes, I think it's ludicrously overbroad. If you say no, then you are going to have to limit its compass somehow and there's a whole mess of considerations to doing that. Either way, just throwing out "white" here seems a bit lazy.
2. "receives advantages and avoids disadvantages" - When? How much? How often? Is segregation from people of color to be considered an advantage? Because I sure as hell don't consider it one. I send my kids to a magnet school in part because of its diversity. I don't want them completely surrounded by the children of basic middle class assholes who look like them, but with whom I want them to have nothing in common. In other words, you have to be really careful with this "advantage"/"disadvantage" system you are invoking. The case for the disadvantages is much stronger and more obvious than the case for advantages. To the extent there are "advantages", they appear more easily in connection with discreet acts of racism than with passive enjoyment of anything.
3. "membership" - this is semantic, I'll grant, but doesn't this word imply awareness? Do we typically describe people as being members of something without their knowledge? Is it even appropriately applied in a circumstance where one cannot opt out of membership? I feel that there are problems of attribution here arising from oversimplifying something complex.

In other words, I think that whole many-layered framework you created is about the minimum level of discussion necessary to try to understand this phenomenon. A two word slogan, while "handy" for street use, doesn't do it justice.

How exactly are we to read (3)? Are we talking about mandating and enforcing separation? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, but without any preferential treatment of any kind. Completely neutral.

In general, are you wondering whether it's possible for a system to be racist against everyone? — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe. Or would it be racist against no one? What is essential in the meaning of the word "racist?"

Forced separation means whatever this is it's certainly not a just society.

I'm not sure how to get around that to answer the other question. Specifically, if white and black philosophers are not allowed to meet to exchange ideas, then both groups are impoverished.

Given that, I'm going to lean toward saying this society is racist. But I'm thinking now that what you're really after is detaching the use of racial categories from the conferring of advantage and disadvantage based on those categories. I think you need a different thought experiment for that.

Pure thought question here. What if the following were true:
1. There exists a system that at least intends to divide people according to a criterion it calls "race".
2. That system marks some members of our society as "black" and some as "white".
3. This system legitimizes separating those marked "black" from those marked as "white" whenever and wherever possible.
4. The system also rigorously enforces fair and equitable treatment of those marked as "black" and those marked "white".

Again, this is a hypothetical, I realize these things are not accurate. Given the above statements, would we classify that system as "racist?" — Pro Hominem

If we look at point #1: first, the assertion is not categorical (at least intends to divide),differently from what is asserted in #2, 3, and 4. Next, # 1 does not state that "the system" divides all people into two groups. Therefore, we probably would not classify the system as racist. Yet, the next assertion is

I do not believe there is any disagreement here on (1)-(4). — Srap Tasmaner

Actually, the mentioned consensus functions as an indicator of the conventional understanding of the system. Conventionally, it is understood as racist. It looks like @Srap Tasmaner wanted to avoid the explicit labelling, but cautiously enacted the 'racist' understanding. Maybe, I misenterpreted him/her. Anyway, probably, the general framing and context of contemporary public debates
fails similar attempts to avoid the direct stereotypic labelling.

I can tell you all I was really trying to do was give a very broad description of systemic racism, specifically because of @Pro Hominem's position: he accepts systemic racism but rejects white privilege. I thought maybe we could stop trying to convince him to accept something he already accepts.

But I've ended up writing far more about systemic racism, which failing annoys me.

Anyway it was not meant to be contentious at all, just a summary of what we agree on.

ADDED: If there's a difference between 1 and the others, it's only that I wanted to allow the system to be imperfect, miss corner cases, etc.

But I'm thinking now that what you're really after is detaching the use of racial categories from the conferring of advantage and disadvantage based on those categories. — Srap Tasmaner

I've been arguing for it all along. The cause of the inequalities we are discussing is not addressed in this outcome-based labelling. Figuring who got what benefit when is not useful in addressing the underlying causes of racism, and probably serves to increase resentment, tribalism, and recrimination. I say this acknowledging that it is possible to disagree with my position, to say that the "white privilege" concept is useful for achieving "wokeness" in white people, and that that is a necessary condition of change. I don't happen to agree, although I want to see the end of racism just like someone arguing "white privilege" does.

I feel this way about religion as well. You're not going to talk people out of it. You have to conduct yourself as though it doesn't exist, hold people accountable who engage in bad behavior because of it, and push for education that will teach more people to see its falsehood. There is no silver bullet. Change takes time.

What about being white makes the moral responsibility to challenge systemic racism greater than having a different skin colour? Why is the onus on being white here at all? If you're going to say that it's because of power, wealth, political influence, social influence and so on, why not actually put an onus on the actual possession of the things which lead to your actions having greater consequences and therefore there being a greater imperative for you to do something?

Secondly, being the beneficiary here doesn't usually actually give you the ability to do something about it precisely because most of the time, you aren't actually even a beneficiary but rather just someone who is not targeted for disadvantages. Most of the time you aren't going to even be aware of it, even if you're aware of the reality. How can you tell if you got a job easier due to your skin colour? Specifically, you, as opposed to just "people generally of your race"? When is it ever the right time to stand up and say "no, you are just giving me a free pass here because I'm white" or "you wouldn't be so generous if I wasn't white"? Overt racism already gets obliterated, you can lose everything if you're caught. — Judaka

I do not understand if you talk directly to me, or this is just your rhetoric style. In the first case, almost all that you say is factually incorrect. In the second, you have constructed an imaginary white Other, possessing a set of crude features and straight forwarded attitudes. I think that this style is also the expression and consequence of the intensification of identity politics that we deal with in this thread. There is the identification's disbalance: one starts from self-identification, "I am white," then admits being against systemic racism, but does not like its consequence of "white privilege."
As @Pro Hominem wrote:

So where do I fit in? I am fully conscious of systemic racism, but I do not support its practices. Yet I am white. What now? — Pro Hominem

Various complicated solutions have been offered here to resolve a moral, cognitive or emotional dissonance. I want to provide another one. One of the latest achievements of gender politics (which is also identity politics!) was the appearance of individuals that have not to have a particular gender. So, in many countries, it become an institutional right. Paradoxically, due to identity politics' latest twist, we are necessarily obliged to have one of the two prescribed races. Does one have a right not to have a race?

What we're already seeing from people who use the term "white privilege" is the results of it being obviously near-impossible to actually look at someone's actions and know with absolute certainty (they will deny it) that racial motivation was at play. Which means that in order to challenge systemic racism in your day-to-day you have to assume racism took place even though you are severely lacking in any hard evidence. It is so easy to be called racist in today's society because of that problem. — Judaka

All of us are against racism. Yet, I think that the latest comprehensive definition of systemic racism has a few flaws. It often equips its proponents with the pretension for the possession of the ultimate universal truth of our society and the superior moral position. They oversimplify the complexity of our society and do not tolerate any dissent. So far, their primary achievement is the intensification of identity politics. As our recent history shows, the neoliberal capitalistic system has successfully incorporated various newly constructed identities.

I think you are severely overestimating the framings usefulness, — Judaka

The framing (the medium) has a decisive role today in almost all vital social domains. This forum shows how dramatic communication between people has changed: compare ours with what took place 30-40 years ago. Judith Butler even proposes that the media should be the leading constitutive part of ‘the people.’

If we look at point #1: first, the assertion is not categorical (at least intends to divide),differently from what is asserted in #2, 3, and 4. Next, # 1 does not state that "the system" divides all people into two groups. Therefore, we probably would not classify the system as racist. Yet, the next assertion is
I do not believe there is any disagreement here on (1)-(4).
— Srap Tasmaner
Actually, the mentioned consensus functions as an indicator of the conventional understanding of the system. Conventionally, it is understood as racist. It looks like Srap Tasmaner wanted to avoid the explicit labelling, but cautiously enacted the 'racist' understanding. Maybe, I misenterpreted him/her. Anyway, probably, the general framing of contemporary public debates
fails similar attempts to avoid the direct stereotypic labelling. — Number2018

Was that a yes or a no? It looked like you took both sides.

Was that a yes or a no? It looked like you took both sides. — Pro Hominem

the general framing of contemporary public debates
fails similar attempts to avoid the direct stereotypic labelling. — Number2018

I mean that the general context organizes and directs our apprehension of this system as racist.

Thank you for clarifications! Anyway, did you mean that the system divides all people into two groups, or there are some individuals who are not 'marked'?

I can tell you all I was really trying to do was give a very broad description of systemic racism, specifically because of Pro Hominem's position: he accepts systemic racism but rejects white privilege. I thought maybe we could stop trying to convince him to accept something he already accepts — Srap Tasmaner

Thank you for your efforts. Many people here seem not to be able to distinguish one concept from the other, which I could easily turn into yet another criticism of the "white privilege" terminology. As if it is not possible to say, "racism exists in this country, and it's attitudes and effects still resonate in many institutions in a sometimes more, sometimes less overt way," without saying, "all white people benefit from this feature of these institutions." One does not logically demand the other.

Then, even if one were to do all the work to try to define "white privilege" in any exact way, what would even be the effect? How would these now aware white people behave satisfyingly? Should they stop attending college? Should they stop buying houses? Should they antagonize police officers into mistreating or even shooting them? If one is told they are benefiting from an insidious privilege, what else could they do but try to stop indulging in these benefits. But how, and to what end?

Not marked, marked inconsistently, etc. Think of one-drop laws: only applicable in official contexts with access to records, etc. The rest of the time, someone officially 'black' might pass as 'white'. That's the kind of thing I was leaving room for.