So one can be white, be conscious of systemic racism, and be in opposition to it? If that is true, whither "white privilege?" If I denounce any claim to it and actively work against it, how is it properly applied to me?

Your point about reducing complex problems to simple formulations may be especially apt in this case. — Pro Hominem

What does it mean that one is white? This identity has been changing
so rapidly over the last time. @Judaka has presented this image of an imaginary white:

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

Likely, this identification's disbalance is expected now: one starts from self-identification, "I am white," then admits being against systemic racism, but does not like its consequence of "white privilege." It could create a moral or emotional dissonance. We should resist the current escalation of identity politics.Jordan Peterson offered one of the possible strategies: "Your identity is not clothing you wear, or the fashionable sexual preference or behaviour you adopt and flaunt, or the causes driving your activism, or your moral outrage at ideas that differ from yours. The continually expanded plethora of "identities" recently constructed and provided with legal status thus consist of empty terms." His thesis is that "traditional" identities have been created through continuous and long-term social construction; therefore, they have served as indispensable modes of social interactions and individual self-awareness.
Peterson aims to resist gender politics' intensification as the threat of the conventional social and individual order. It is one of the conservative lines of arguments. Another one is based on the juridical model, so that identities are derivatives of the Law, and "white privilege" is no more than exercizing a set of fundamental rights. Both strategies do not work against the latest revival of racial identity politics. The latest version of systemic racism incorporates the most archaic racial segregation as the essential premise and the final result of the complex social, economic, and cultural processes. Yet, our society is no more racial than it is a patriarchal society, class society or the spectacle's society. Our identities, and in particular racial identities, gender identities ("traditional" or not) are primarily not the derivatives of essential entities or the results of the long-term social construction and negotiation (social contract). They are moments of an open-ended, accelerating dynamics of the processes of individuation. In this context, one's whiteness, awareness of systemic racism, and the sense of discomfort due to "white privilege" could be considered synchronically enacted components of the newest transindividual "racial" arrangement. Sense of guilt, resentment and ressentiment are the secondary effects of the determinant affective register, generated by the various media. Please note that in most cases white people started experiencing the dissonance only after George Floyd death. We cannot ultimately eliminate our identities, but a proper apprehension of their production and function could help with our dissonance's situations.


.

The cause of the inequalities we are discussing is not addressed in this outcome-based labelling. — Pro Hominem

I don't think we've talked about causes much at all. I'm not even sure what that looks like. To me -- and I'm willing to be educated -- "systemic racism" is in essence just a label for differential outcomes. I think of it as something like "in effect racist", deferring claims about why various institutions are in effect racist, whether it's deliberate, etc. If you look at, say, a small town in the Jim Crow South, where everybody who's anybody belongs to the Klan -- there's certainly systematic racism there but probably no systemic racism at all, as I use the term.

Do you have a different understanding? You seem to suggest that outcomes are not part of the discussion until somebody brings up "white privilege" and that's just not my view at all. Systemic racism is first and last a matter of differential outcomes.

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


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... — creativesoul

Tua Cupa... :-)

Still won't work, because it becomes a nonsensical sentence, an absurd statement. If you add "white" on the end, your statement becomes:

The benefit of (being White) in America is the immunity form being injured because one is not White.

So the benefit of being White (by way of avoiding injury) comes from him being not White.

That is, a White person's advantage is that he is not White.

This is patently absurd.

(Incidentally, I have already covered this case in my first critical analysis of this statement of yours.)

I want to see the end of racism just like someone arguing "white privilege" does. — Pro Hominem

:up:

Still won't work, because it becomes a nonsensical sentence — god must be atheist

Evidently we work from different criterions for what exactly counts as nonsense. That sentence is perfectly fine. If you think otherwise, then more power to you. You have that right, I suppose.

Evidently you think that sense is a right that one has over his own utterances.

Well, no.

Sense is not a right. It is a cognitive quality that can be established with unambiguous judgement tools.

Yours I showed why it was nonsensical. You failed to show an error in my reasoning. If you still insist that yoru sentence was sensible, then your judgment is impaired.

So sorry. This is nothing personal. But for you to say "A white person is privileged because he is not white" is nonsensical. (I appreciate this was not an exact quote, but the semantic and syntactic details are of strict equivalence.) Furthermore, your insistence that your sentence made sense, despite the obvious analysis showing that it did not, points at deeper cognitive troubles you may encounter on a philosophy forum: not only are you incapable of seeing the difference between what's sensible and what's nonsense, but you insist that the nonsense is sensible even after a clear proof has been presented to the contrary.

...for you to say "A white person is privileged because he is not white" is nonsensical. — god must be atheist

Compare to...

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

Not the same.

Bugger off.

1. Some members of society suffer harm because they are not white.
2. Whites may of course suffer harm, but whatever harm they suffer cannot be down to them not being white, because they are.

We could even name the harm in (1) "harm-because-you're-not-white", and then we could say

3. White people don't suffer harm-because-you're-not-white.

2 and 3 would both be false if white people were regularly taken to be non-white and thus suffered abuse the perpetrator believed they were inflicting upon a non-white person.

Curiously, the United States does have some history of violence directed against "race traitors". This is a type of harm whites only inflict upon whites.

What a wonderful world.

I'm going to suggest (again) that folks have a look at Peggy McIntosh's original paper, not because I'm endorsing it -- there's a couple things in there that look really weird to me -- but simply because "white privilege" is a term of art and mostly people -- me included before I looked -- seem to be taking it as a normal English phrase they can understand just by looking at it.

For instance, McIntosh makes the point that "privilege" is a misleading term because it sounds purely positive, but white privilege is also the over empowering of members of the dominant race, and this is not a good thing, not good for non-whites obviously but also not good for those overprivileged. It's like having an overprotective parent: you are robbed of challenges which if faced would better you.

James Baldwin used to say things like this -- that racism imperils the soul of white America, of white Americans. That sense of danger is included in the idea of "white privilege". It's not about who gets all the good stuff; it's about being put in a position of power you should not be and then unknowingly projecting that power. This is not a recipe for righteousness.

2 and 3 would both be false if white people were regularly taken to be non-white — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, but the exceptions are too few and far between to worry about.

I think the sentence you quoted is worth thinking about a moment longer. Maybe not much longer, to be honest, but give it another few minutes, maybe something will come to you.

I am not supporting that your version of white privilege is actually helpful... — Judaka

On page seven I offered an argument that now seems quite relevant.

Could you please revisit and directly address that argument in it's entirety upon your return?

Looks like incoherence and/or self contradiction that can only be overcome by invoking some para-consistent logic, denying bivalence, or excluded middle?

Never mind, I agree that your definition of white privilege is necessary, as a premise for understanding systemic racism and for measuring it. What I am against is not your definition of white privilege but the way in which people use your definition, some of those ways you specifically condemned and you talked about using it in none of the ways I have criticised. I am very biased against the term white privilege, I used my bias to critique you, rather than the actual argument you laid forth. I am wavering on whether the word "privilege" has the implications that I have argued, your use is fair use. You don't seem to be addressing the "whiteness" of people as I claimed but the "whiteness" being discriminated against by systemic racism. Something which can be condemned as a component of systemic racism by anyone.

There is no point in me trying to search for disagreement, I agree with the basic argument as laid out on page 7.

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

If only it were true that whites aren't injured because they are white. I already showed that blacks commit hate crimes at higher rates relative to their population. If you want to use statistics of blacks being arrested and shot at higher rates relative to their population as evidence of racism against blacks, then the same applies to the statistics that show blacks committing hate crimes at higher rates relative to their population - that blacks are racist too, and then you have to ask, is this talk of white privilege just another way for blacks to exhibit their racism?

No one is talking about how these preconceived notions that blacks and cops have of each other that are exhibited when they interact and then someone is a bit to aggressive or resistant with the other and one of them ends up dead. I mean think about you're preconceived notion of me and my ideas and how that affects how you interpret what I am saying right now.

The problem is, and I know you're smart enough to know, that you're cherry-picking statistics to push your political/religious agenda.

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. — creativesoul

I get and can respect where you're coming from, but I went the other way. I used to believe in politics more, but have become progressively more distrusting of it since I had to deal with politicians professionally on a regular basis.

In the end I think my efforts to make a difference via politics would be largely wasted. I'd be just one more of a multitude of voices trying to out-scream eachother for that little bit of political influence. In short, I think I can have more of a positive effect if I focus on other things non-political.

:up:

Curiously, the United States does have some history of violence directed against "race traitors". This is a type of harm whites only inflict upon whites. — Srap Tasmaner

This 'race traitor' notion underwrites some of the vigilante paramilitary motivations against peaceful white protestors. Earlier I briefly touched upon such belief practices. They are still in use.

Never mind, I agree that your definition of white privilege is necessary, as a premise for understanding systemic racism and for measuring it. — Judaka

Ok. Cool. Although, I think "understanding" fits better than "measuring".

What I am against is not your definition of white privilege but the way in which people use your definition, some of those ways you specifically condemned and you talked about using it in none of the ways I have criticised. — Judaka

There's still a tad of misunderstanding. I have not condemned any use like my own. I have objected to using "white privilege" as an attack directly upon, or as a means to belittle and/or berate all poor white people. I have argued against holding it against a white because they are white.

Bob is white. Bob is immune and/or exempt from liability of being non white in America. Bob is immune to being injured as result of not being white. Bob is oblivious to this immunity. What sense does it make for anyone to expect Bob to use knowledge that he has been spared these injuries to his own advantage if he is totally oblivious to and/or completely unaware of his immunity and/or exemption?

Here's how you can know whether or not a speaker is using the term like me...

Substitute all of that speaker's use(s) of "white privilege" with "immunity and/or exemption from the liability of being non white", and view the results. If what they wrote no longer makes much sense, then it's not an example of the way people use 'my' definition(scare-quotes intentional). To quite the contrary, it is a definition/criterion/notion/conception and/or idea of 'white privilege' that is incompatible to my own.

So why not in me? Why not in you? — fdrake

I am still wrapping my head around that and the post I pulled it from....

you're cherry-picking statistics — Harry Hindu

Without ever having invoked or used stats...

Weird sense of "cherry picking".

I've only been directly personally involved and/or engaged in politics with those elected for doing so at the county level during a gubernatorial campaign several years back. I was not impressed at all. The candidate being supported was the challenger to a sitting nationally very well known Republican governor. The challenger was a well kept attractive nobody basically who did not have a finger on the pulse of any of the underlying problems effecting/affecting those he was being tasked to represent. I asked him a couple of questions after his speech of which he had no clue how to respond. Then I asked if there was going to be a primary challenger/contest. Of course, he took offense, and laughed it off.

The county vice president(chair?) of the party was intrigued and pleasantly surprised by my interactions throughout the event there. I left quite unimpressed with the overall event on several levels....

The candidate got trounced five months later.

I think with the issue of the name out of the way, your argument is a matter-of-fact stating of reality which must be included in any sensible understanding of systemic racism. That is what I have agreed to and what I felt was mostly what you were saying on page 7. Most of my criticisms that I've argued for are to do with the various dangers of certain interpretations or appropriations of the concept. However, the concept itself, though I was arguing against it before, I accept. I see now that my frustrations were placed on the wrong premise, which you noticed and showed me.

I don't know if others that I would disagree with, would define white privilege differently than you, Banno did agree with your posts with no amendments after all. The issue was with how I was conflating white privilege with the various ways in which the white privilege concept can be interpreted and applied.

There is too much zero-sum thinking in McIntosh’s argument. The idea that racism against a dark-skinned person is a benefit to a light-skinned person is seemingly born from this bias. Comments such as “In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable and alienated” is further evidence of this.

If this were true, it goes to follow that “decreases in perceived bias against Blacks over the past six decades are associated with increases in perceived bias against Whites”. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41613491?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents).

But since zero-sum situations are rare the existence of “white privilege” can be seriously questioned. I cannot see it as being true that resources gained by light-skinned people are matched by a corresponding loss to dark-skinned people, just as decreases in the bias against dark-skinned people cannot be shown to lead to increases in bias against light-skinned people. I think the opposite is the case. Emancipation, civil rights, justice, have expanded in tandem with the expansion of wealth, safety freedom and opportunity of our fellow citizens.

To me, it would have made more sense to argue the opposite: that no one benefits from racism, that it is pernicious not only to the victims of it, but also to it’s self-proclaimed beneficiaries.

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. — Pro Hominem

I guess this bottoms out in a question of who is white. And the kind of definition appropriate for white-ness. I think we're going to have to take the following features as premises:

(1) The colonial expansions that prefigured the modern world were more-or-less white skinned peoples invading more-or-less black skinned peoples.
(2) Even within the colonial powers, the category of whiteness is time varying - whether the Greeks, Italians and Irish counted as part of the white race was an issue. (can find citations if you want)
(3) The colonial expansions that prefigured the modern world still define power differentials today.
(4) Whether Jewish people (treated as an ethnicity) are white depends on who you ask and when for obvious reasons.

So "Who is white?" is answered differently depending on the historical period. There's also the question of how the idea of the white race entered discourse. It was a convenient strategic fiction for social control over "slave races" and consent laundering among the un-enslaved for that social control.

I think that complex of ambiguous status, historical variation and strategic convenience of whiteness is very well exemplified by the status of whether the Irish (celts who stereotypically have pale skin) are "really" white!

This fact was brought home to me recently in the aftermath of the Brick Lane bombing, at a time when there was widespread speculation that the Irish would be the next community attacked. I was discussing race relations with a friend who was telling me why, as an Asian, she found it "difficult to trust white people". When I pointed out that I was white, she exclaimed: "You're not white, you're Irish".

See also the context of the slur for white nigger - I believe what made the Irish white but not really white was their ambiguous status as embodying racial signifiers (Celtic pale skin stereotype) but being associated with a colonial diaspora and immigrant (mostly underclass) stereotypes.

In that regard whiteness has always been a strategic fiction to enable and justify exploitation and colonialism. So that's a potted history of it.

So in that context, asking for necessary and sufficient conditions as part of a definition for being white doesn't make too much sense; the concept is too fuzzy and was designed/emerged from a justification apparatus designed to create a fuzzy out group on the receiving end of exploitation. Whiteness as a concept annihilates historical differences for that purpose; it doesn't matter if your ancestors were Pharaohs, Moors or the citizens of the Iroquois League, what unites those is being a colonised out group.

These narratives have doubtlessly softened over time, but is still a big problem. Racial bias in hiring based on the racialisation of names on CVs (even when there's no other bias involved!) is sufficiently strong to show up in the aggregate. I'm sure you don't need convincing that this is a thing, but perhaps I can suggest that the kind of bias it highlights and the mechanisms consistent with it are commensurate with the privilege concept.

If all you need is a name to influence a decision like that, and since it is extremely implausible that such bias is a unique feature of names (skin, clothing - loads of racial signifiers) and also extremely implausible that the bias is learned immediately upon being made to make hiring decisions - what is a plausible explanation of these things? What renders them probable? What operates on an individual level, influences mental acts, and differentiates outcomes of judgements based on racial categories?

To me that seems to very much resemble the privilege construct. Negative outcomes of judgements and negative judgements being distributed preferentially along race lines. Perhaps you will balk at "preferentially" there for the same reason as @NOS4A2 does. And for that reason, in the context of hiring, I invite you to consider a game. There is only one winner of this game - one person can be hired for a position. You have two identical CVs, one is labelled with a name that engenders a higher evaluation of risks due to an implicit stereotype, one does not. If you want to make the rational choice there, you want to maximise the chances of having a good candidate based on your information. It does not matter that your information is biased; one person has a minor disadvantage the other person does not have, the dominant strategy there based on the information is to choose the one with the best creds and no other risks. That's the one that the biased information sides with; the one who is not racilized as non-white. Frankie Boyle made a joke with essentially the same premise a decade or so ago regarding the LHC - very paraphrased: "If your child came to you and asked for a bike, you would consider it, if your child came to you and asked for a bike with a negligible chance of destroying the world by creating a black hole, you would not consider it at all". And indeed, that is the rational thing to do given that framing of the decision.

You might want to say - you can choose another framing for the decision, and with the LHC there was a risk analysis involved and the DESTROY THE WORLD WITH BLACK HOLE theory was bollocks IIRC, but consider that the only difference between the two CVs is the name. That's already a frame, you are not free to choose the frame in the setting above!

We could get into a discussion here about racial signifiers, but I will assume that what they are and how they work is pretty obvious; "they've got olive skin, can't be a native Brit!", do-rags, white voice, accents... Is Latisha or Samantha more likely to have black skin, ask your gut? What about Matthew or Muhammed? Gut says...

Regardless, racialising bullshit in place, you cannot get extra information at that stage. The biased data+interpretation process changes what the rational agent would conclude to maximise their business' expected gains from hiring.


Now imagine the same thing applied more generally; pick your life model. You have two choices, in both choices you can get the same outcomes, but in one choice the chances of the better outcomes is lowered by a higher exposure to costly scenarios. If you chose wrongly, I'd be more likely to beat you. We don't need to say which choice corresponds to which racial bin, it is obvious.

In terms of privilege, I'd like to draw a distinction between cost imposing behaviours and non-cost imposing behaviours. Within cost imposing behaviours, distinguish between direct cost imposing behaviours and indirect cost imposing behaviours. The hiring decision above is a cost imposing behaviour, in it an agent associates a cost with being non-white -it's also directly causal, one agent's state imposes a cost on another. If you buy into system-justification as a system perpetuating behaviour an individual can do, and if you buy into systemic racism's distributing risks unevenly over races, then any behaviour you do that perpetuates systemic racism takes part in imposing its risks - a small part, but a small part can be a big deal. It's an empirical and contextual matter there though; "how much does it really change?" will always be a difficult question. It could be a matter of alienating non-white students in a class, it could be a matter of beating an unarmed teenager to death - if you behave in ways that propagate into either of those phenomena, perhaps a small part of the cost is attributable to your influence. A behaviour which doesn't impose costs at all is probably quite hard to find; there's sin in the agricultural production that enables every loud bean fart. That's hyperbolic, the costs have completed themselves before the fart takes place, but you get what I mean, you don't have too look too far back in the enabling/productive mechanisms of farts to find systemic feedbacks that propagate into systemic discrimination.

This is where the idea of someone's responsibility (the morally obligatory amount) for self checking scaling to their power comes in - power here being understood as the ability to influence the average state of members of a population (institutional leverage, policy, law, codes of conduct...) - the degree to which someone's individual biases are risky to others depends upon the influence they have over others. Highlighting police - that's every neighbourhood they work in and the power over life and death. How much work here is obligatory looks to depend upon the severity of costs imposed, the number of people effected etc etc...

The minimal "amount" of such checking is probably much higher than none, if you want to live in a world without systemic discrimination, aiming to think the kind of thoughts and treat people as they would be in that utopia is probably a good goal. But I'd rather be a racist grandpa in heaven than hyperwoke in hell.

...no one benefits from racism, that it is pernicious not only to the victims of it, but also to it’s self-proclaimed beneficiaries. — NOS4A2

Could you expand upon this?

So you also know that implicit stereotypes are both a relevant vector of oppression; contributing to the hostility of public spaces, differences in how the oppressed group are treated; and they are fucking everywhere. So panvasive that internalised racism is a thing - like Christians the world over praying to the miracle of a milky white ethnically Palestinian Jesus.

So why not in me? Why not in you? — fdrake

This is a good question. There is no adequate, simple, universally true answer that comes to my mind aside from personal experience. Given the matter at hand is of pivotal importance, I'm not content with such a simply put answer despite it's being as true as it is.

Since you asked...

To put it very mildly, I've actually given racism and it's many manifestations a considerable amount of time and attention throughout my life. But don't get me wrong here, it's not like I had much of a choice in the matter. Racism incarnate was loud, front, and center in my life from very early on. Suffice it for me to say that I learned how to cope with a dyed-in-the-wool generational racist, misogynistic xenophobe who had a strong propensity for violence, a very short fuse, and had not been able to come to acceptable terms with much at all in his own life prior to becoming a part of mine. The sheer amount of physical and mental damage that that man has caused while walking the face of the earth is astounding, but his ability to continue doing so now seems to be coming to an end.


Why not me?

I like to think that there are all sorts of different things that happened during my life that somehow all accumulated into(influenced) who I am today. Which is to say, who I've become. .

I spent life from the age of four through the high school years living amongst domestic terrorists(white racists) while having numerous hidden friendships throughout that time. In addition to explicit and implicit racism being a regular everyday part of my personal life, I've a few ongoing(long-lived) public and private conversation(s) with others about the sort of white racism that dominated many different community cultures throughout my life.

Here's what I understand about a racist belief system. They include fallacious belief about "black people". One readily available example of racism incarnate, that reeks havoc in young and old alike, is the belief that black people are lazy. That belief supports yet another; that's why they are poor. They won't work. Those yet others; what are they complaining about? They've no reason to complain if they would just go to work they would not be so poor(systemic justification?). Why ought anyone too lazy to work get something free... Etc. An all too familiar bullshit line of reasoning for devaluing an entire group of people based upon the color of their skin.

I more recently listened to a deeply disturbing narrative directed at BLM. It struck direct discord within every single fiber of my moral being. The 'line of reasoning' briefly described in the preceding paragraph was the rationalization underpinning condoning and/or assent to the idea of shooting BLM protestors from the tree tops with rifles. The idea of murdering BLM protestors was rationalized with that bullshit reasoning! Such internalized racist belief are operative in the sense that they largely govern and/or directly influence an individual's behaviour, typically when and if they find themselves in such circumstances, an they've developed such patterns in thought. These are the lands of self-fulfilling prophecy.

We all know the actual real life recent example. We all know what's happened and/or is still happening. These belief systems are fueled and perpetuated by openly avowed racists from the bottom to the top.

Are we not people affected by the structures we live in? — fdrake

Indeed we are. Why not me?

I know better. I know and love far too many non whites.

Without ever having invoked or used stats...

Weird sense of "cherry picking". — creativesoul

Then what evidence did you have for asserting this:

it is what white people do not have to deal with on a daily basis that non whites do. — creativesoul

if not some statistics? If you don't have anything to back it up, like statistics, then your whole argument doesn't have a leg to stand on does it?

But then, what should we expect from those that are unwilling to remove their politically partisan glasses? We should expect them to behave like the fundamentally religious - cherry-picking information, conveniently forgetting things that they said before and contradicting themselves, etc. Its a wonder that people are still trying to engage you on this topic considering how intellectually dishonest you are.

Are all police racist? I say some are and some aren't. What effect does a black man's belief that all cops are racist have on their behavior when interacting with police, primarily with those cops that aren't racist? Wouldn't it be similar to the effect on a white person believing that all black men are criminals? Or are you saying that black men possess a privilege that enables them to act on preconceived notions and whites can't?

I'm going to try this again. You both claim:

1. White Americans do not benefit from systemic racism in the United States.

Perhaps my usage of "systemic racism" is nonstandard, but I take it to refer to things like the Black-white wealth gap:

In 2016, white families had the highest level of both median and mean family wealth: $171,000 and $933,700, respectively (figure 1). Black and Hispanic families have considerably less wealth than white families. Black families' median and mean net worth is less than 15 percent that of white families, at $17,600 and $138,200, respectively. Hispanic families' median and mean net worth was $20,700 and $191,200, respectively. — The Federal Reserve

In American society, as currently constituted, whites have one hell of a lot more money than Blacks!

You can support (1) by also claiming:

2. A white household with a net worth of $171,000 derives no benefit from a Black household having a net worth of only $17,600.

The total wealth of Americans is not a fixed number to be carved up like a pie; white households don't have higher net worth because non-white households have lower net worth. If it counts as evidence that our system is racist, it's not because there is white benefit here, but because there is non-white deprivation.

But at any given time, the total wealth of Americans is a fixed number. As it rises or falls, the amount by which it changes is also a fixed number. If you were king, distributing wealth as you please, in order to have a racist result, your only options are dividing up existing wealth unequally, or creating more wealth, perhaps by fiat, and dividing that up unequally.

The only way to be racist is to confer relative advantage and disadvantage. If you wanted a racist wealth gap, you would do it by taking the total wealth of Americans, giving 80% to whites, 10% to Hispanics and 10% to Blacks.

In case the conclusion still isn't clear: if you want to benefit A and not benefit B, you do that by taking from B and giving to A, or by giving A something but not giving it to B. Either way, you're conferring relative gain upon A.

Without ever having invoked or used stats...

Weird sense of "cherry picking".
— creativesoul

Then what evidence did you have for asserting this:
it is what white people do not have to deal with on a daily basis that non whites do.
— creativesoul
if not some statistics? If you don't have anything to back it up, like statistics, then your whole argument doesn't have a leg to stand on does it? — Harry Hindu

Brilliant.

If I use stats, I'm cherry picking. If I do not use stats, my position is not well grounded.

Pathetic.

and now you're cherry-picking my posts and purposely misconstruing what I said. You're an exemplary example of what happens when sheep are incapable of thinking for themselves and why critical thinking, logic, and coding should be a required courses in grade and middle school. It appears that you skipped out or failed those classes.