My white privilege

[JoeB131]

1. Symantics moron, reparations from the Mongols then. 2. Maybe you were home schooled. Germany was invaded in 1279--looked for a graphic that you might understand.

Okay, even at the 1279 extent, they still weren't in Germany.

you are slightly retarded, aren't you?

 

[TemplarKormac]

Two examples: race riots, that targeted thriving black communities and destroyed them. In an era of segregation, they would have little recourse to justice.

What about the black owned businesses that were destroyed in this past year's riots? Are they getting justice?

The other example is that black property was much more likely to be targeted for public projects and infrastructure, often without compensation or inadequate compensation. Again, destroying accumulated value that might have been passed on.

Don't know how to reply to that, except with this:

just-compensation

www.law.cornell.edu

 

[TemplarKormac]

And when poor or middle class black communities are more likely to be targeted then poor white communities, isn’t that an example of white priveledge?

No.

It is an example of piss poor municipal management. It has nothing to do with black or white.

 

[Uncensored2008]

One of the factors that has made black poverty so entrenched is through a systemic system of laws and of violence (white race riots) towards black property owners and businesses and homes and communities that destroyed wealth and the ability to pass it to their children and so on. So as a community - whites (in general) have not had to endure that. Poverty has a lot of causes of course, some in our control, some not. But I think that is one example how race was a factor.

Interesting.

But I feel as if black people already have all the tools they need to prosper. But instead of breaking free from victimhood they seem to embrace it.

"White people did X to my ancestors, therefore as a descendant I deserve Y!"

So, where does the privilege supposedly exist?

Do they? Prosperity, more often then is not created in a rags to riches story, though that does happen, it really isn’t that common. A lot of wealth is created and passed down, and grown through generations, and that includes not just dollars but property. What happens when that is routinely destroyed and every generation has to start all over again?

Two examples: race riots, that targeted thriving black communities and destroyed them. In an era of segregation, they would have little recourse to justice.

The other example is that black property was much more likely to be targeted for public projects and infrastructure, often without compensation or inadequate compensation. Again, destroying accumutated value that might have been passed on.

And when poor or middle class black communities are more likely to be targeted then poor white communities, isn’t that an example of white priveledge?

False;

Why Inheritance Is Mostly Overrated As A Reason For Wealth

Most of the world’s richest people are self-made—and many rich heirs lose their money.

www.forbes.com

The overwhelming majority of wealth is earned, VERY little is inherited.

You're just perpetuating another Marxist myth.

Or maybe not false. You are referencing a minority, a small segment of the extremely wealthy. What the middle and middle upper class?

Examining the Black-white wealth gap | Brookings

A close examination of wealth in the U.S. finds evidence of staggering racial disparities.

www.brookings.edu

Virtually ZERO percent of the middle class is where they are from inheretence.

One of the factors that has made black poverty so entrenched is through a systemic system of laws and of violence (white race riots) towards black property owners and businesses and homes and communities that destroyed wealth and the ability to pass it to their children and so on. So as a community - whites (in general) have not had to endure that. Poverty has a lot of causes of course, some in our control, some not. But I think that is one example how race was a factor.

Interesting.

But I feel as if black people already have all the tools they need to prosper. But instead of breaking free from victimhood they seem to embrace it.

"White people did X to my ancestors, therefore as a descendant I deserve Y!"

So, where does the privilege supposedly exist?

Do they? Prosperity, more often then is not created in a rags to riches story, though that does happen, it really isn’t that common. A lot of wealth is created and passed down, and grown through generations, and that includes not just dollars but property. What happens when that is routinely destroyed and every generation has to start all over again?

Two examples: race riots, that targeted thriving black communities and destroyed them. In an era of segregation, they would have little recourse to justice.

The other example is that black property was much more likely to be targeted for public projects and infrastructure, often without compensation or inadequate compensation. Again, destroying accumutated value that might have been passed on.

And when poor or middle class black communities are more likely to be targeted then poor white communities, isn’t that an example of white priveledge?

False;

Why Inheritance Is Mostly Overrated As A Reason For Wealth

Most of the world’s richest people are self-made—and many rich heirs lose their money.

www.forbes.com

The overwhelming majority of wealth is earned, VERY little is inherited.

You're just perpetuating another Marxist myth.

Or maybe not false. You are referencing a minority, a small segment of the extremely wealthy. What the middle and middle upper class?

Examining the Black-white wealth gap | Brookings

A close examination of wealth in the U.S. finds evidence of staggering racial disparities.

www.brookings.edu

Wow, what a steaming pile.

Claim that with the same income blacks have less wealth? Uh, can you say "spending habits?" Claim that blacks are less likely to leave anything to their children at the same income as whites? That doesn't speak to privilege, it speaks of values.

 

[JoeB131]

What about the black owned businesses that were destroyed in this past year's riots? Are they getting justice?

Did they have insurance?

Heck, I'll bet a lot of companies were HAPPY to have gotten burned out, as they were already losing money in TRUMP PLAGUE and TRUMP RECESSION, they could collect insurance from TRUMP RIOTS.

 

[Concerned American]

1. Symantics moron, reparations from the Mongols then. 2. Maybe you were home schooled. Germany was invaded in 1279--looked for a graphic that you might understand.

Okay, even at the 1279 extent, they still weren't in Germany.

you are slightly retarded, aren't you?
[/QUOTE Failed geography did you? STFU, you're cancelled.

 

[Winston]

I am white. If privilege applied to me because of my skin color, I would be earning a high 5 figure income with a degree from a college of my choosing on the back of a full-ride scholarship. My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life. I wouldn't be here dedicating almost 80% of mine and my grandmother's monthly income to bills and survival. We don't enjoy any privilege because of our skin color. Being white never made our lives any easier.

We are a lower-middle-class family who barely has enough money to make ends meet. If there was a privilege, we never knew about it. I am sure the billions of white people who existed in the world before me and throughout history who suffered from poverty, famines, genocide, murder, cruel dictatorships... would have loved to have known about the privilege their skin color supposedly imbued them with. Maybe it would have spared their lives and shielded them from unnecessary suffering. White privilege is hogwash. It reeks of jealousy and has no basis in reality.

My white privilege does not exist.

Sure it does.

The fact you didn't do anything with it isn't the issue here. Nobody told you to spend your life sitting on the couch, playing videogames.

The problem is that you didn't go to college, you didn't go out and get a job to gain life experience, and you actually think living off of someone else's disability is a life plan.

Brings 55 years of affirmative action to mind. Black privilege?

So, it is 1981 and I am in a political science class. The professor is talking about affirmative action. She asks for three volunteers to come to the front of the class. She tells one of the volunteers to get on the back of another volunteer, piggyback style. Then she has that couple, and the one without a piggyback partner, race across the room. Of course the one without someone on their back won the race. Then she said, this is affirmative action, and had the person riding piggyback switch partners.

I went flippin bonkers. I mean I was absolutely livid. I jumped up and with my thick southern hillbilly accent drawled, "Mama always told me two wrongs don't make a right". The professor looked a little surprised and asked me what I would do. I waltzed up to the front of the class, told the one riding piggyback to go sit down, and then said, "Go".

Martin Luther King expressed a desire that one day a person would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Affirmative action DOES NOT meet that standard.

 

[Winston]

One of the factors that has made black poverty so entrenched is through a systemic system of laws and of violence (white race riots) towards black property owners and businesses and homes and communities that destroyed wealth and the ability to pass it to their children and so on. So as a community - whites (in general) have not had to endure that. Poverty has a lot of causes of course, some in our control, some not. But I think that is one example how race was a factor.

Interesting.

But I feel as if black people already have all the tools they need to prosper. But instead of breaking free from victimhood they seem to embrace it.

"White people did X to my ancestors, therefore as a descendant I deserve Y!"

So, where does the privilege supposedly exist?

Do they? Prosperity, more often then is not created in a rags to riches story, though that does happen, it really isn’t that common. A lot of wealth is created and passed down, and grown through generations, and that includes not just dollars but property. What happens when that is routinely destroyed and every generation has to start all over again?

Two examples: race riots, that targeted thriving black communities and destroyed them. In an era of segregation, they would have little recourse to justice.

The other example is that black property was much more likely to be targeted for public projects and infrastructure, often without compensation or inadequate compensation. Again, destroying accumutated value that might have been passed on.

And when poor or middle class black communities are more likely to be targeted then poor white communities, isn’t that an example of white priveledge?

You are right about property. But here is the thing, Blacks owned far more property a hundred years ago than they do today, especially land. Everything, and I mean everything, east of I-95, from South Carolina to well past the Georgia line, was owned by blacks prior to the turn of the 20th century. We are talking Hilton Head Island and the South Georgia island. Myrtle Beach. What happened is simple. Tenancy in common. When a black person died they left their property to all their descendants. Smooth talking white lawyers only had to talk one of them into selling, and they forced a sale and white people bought up the land. The truth of the matter is those blacks have just as much responsibility for losing all that land as those smooth talking white lawyers.

 

[JoeB131]

So, it is 1981 and I am in a political science class. The professor is talking about affirmative action. She asks for three volunteers to come to the front of the class. She tells one of the volunteers to get on the back of another volunteer, piggyback style. Then she has that couple, and the one without a piggyback partner, race across the room. Of course the one without someone on their back won the race. Then she said, this is affirmative action, and had the person riding piggyback switch partners.

I went flippin bonkers. I mean I was absolutely livid. I jumped up and with my thick southern hillbilly accent drawled, "Mama always told me two wrongs don't make a right". The professor looked a little surprised and asked me what I would do. I waltzed up to the front of the class, told the one riding piggyback to go sit down, and then said, "Go".

Martin Luther King expressed a desire that one day a person would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Affirmative action DOES NOT meet that standard.

Well, obviously the professor's attempt at an analogy was lost on you. So let's try again.

African Americans have the weight of 400 years of being treated as second class citizens on their back. That's the point she was trying to make. You can't simply tell those disadvantages to sit in a corner. The problem is, nearly every attempt at trying to achieve equality has been fought against by white people.

Let's take education. So let's agree, we've always had an inequality in access to education in this country. Before the Civil War, it was illegal to even teach a black person to read. Then you had segregated schools all the way up until the 1960's. When government tried to integrate the schools, white people fought against it. They pulled their kids out of public schools or moved to lily-white suburbs.

So you are going to tell a black kid who went to a poor school district with three kids to a book to compete against a white kid who went to a well-funded school district and say, "See, this is equal, no really." ANd of course, the person making the hiring decision is white.

A story I like to relay is the one about the year where three women left my department.

A Chinese woman who had been with the company 9 years
A black woman who had worked for the company 2 years.
A white intern who had only worked for us three months during the summer.

Now- we had going away lunches for all three of them. Now, guess which one of them the General Manager (who was technically our boss) took time out of his busy schedule to go to lunch with? Come on. Guess.

This man never said anything racist in the seven years I worked for him. But merely by showing favoritism towards white people, it was clear he was setting a standard. The Chinese lady told me that the main reason she looked for a job was she thought he didn't like her. I doubt he ever gave it that much thought.

 

[Jim H - VA USA]

I am white. If privilege applied to me because of my skin color, I would be earning a high 5 figure income with a degree from a college of my choosing on the back of a full-ride scholarship. My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life. I wouldn't be here dedicating almost 80% of mine and my grandmother's monthly income to bills and survival. We don't enjoy any privilege because of our skin color. Being white never made our lives any easier.

We are a lower-middle-class family who barely has enough money to make ends meet. If there was a privilege, we never knew about it. I am sure the billions of white people who existed in the world before me and throughout history who suffered from poverty, famines, genocide, murder, cruel dictatorships... would have loved to have known about the privilege their skin color supposedly imbued them with. Maybe it would have spared their lives and shielded them from unnecessary suffering. White privilege is hogwash. It reeks of jealousy and has no basis in reality.

My white privilege does not exist.

Here is my White privilege...

My family immigrated here a few generations ago and did it legally. They were poor, but each generation was richer than the last, because they worked hard.

No one had anything to do with slavery. We were all raised that character matters more than anything. I grew up in highly-integrated communities and most of my friends were non-White.

I worked my whole life, starting with helping my dad move furniture for his second job, on weekends, when I was 12. I bagged groceries for tips only after school for many years.

My dad was pretty poor by today's standards, but he put me through college with the help of a student loan I repaid after getting my first professional job, after everyone wanted to hire me because of my GPA and work experience in engineering.

Then, I worked for decades, moving up the ladder, basically until I made it to the top, where I am now, and still helping to improve the world with innovation.

And now I am a 10%-er. Oh, but I was privileged, and need to pay reparations. Tell that to all of my ethnically diverse colleagues who accomplished similar things that I did, through their own hard work.

It's what you are supposed to do.

Race and ethnicity should be removed from every federal and state form, and every college application. The information can only be used to discriminate.

 

[Seawytch]

Because I'm a liberal helper

How to Explain White Privilege in Terms Simple Enough for a Child

The term white privilege is often misunderstood. But experts explain why it's important to teach your children what it means and how to do that based on their age.

www.parents.com

It Doesn't Mean That All White People Have Had an Easy Life​

​

The common misperception about white privilege is that it implies that being white inherently makes for a life of smooth sailing and that successes aren't hard-earned. People might associate the phrase with financial wealth or other types of privilege that they don't/didn't have, explains Dr. Garrett-Akinsanya.​

​

"Some white people deny that advantages are unearned," notes Erin Pahlke, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at Whitman College, whose research centers on how children form their views about race. "Often, these people see their own successes as entirely a result of their own hard work and others' struggles as a result of not working hard enough. And some folks mistakenly believe that they can't be privileged because they themselves have suffered personal life hardships."​

​

Denial of white privilege might also stem from another belief: that the U.S. operates as a meritocracy, or a system in which you're rewarded exclusively for ability and effort, as opposed to wealth and social class. "There's some research that suggests that white parents are more likely than Black parents to teach their children that the U.S. is a meritocracy," explains Dr. Pahlke. "And, for people who strongly believe that the U.S. is a meritocracy, white privilege can be a hard concept to accept."​

​

The misinterpretation of the term is fairly widespread. According to 2017 findings from the Pew Research Center, 46 percent of white Americans say they believe they benefit because of their race, compared to 92 percent of Black Americans and 65 percent of Hispanic Americans who believe that white people benefit.​

​

"Because the advantages are so structurally ingrained, privileges are often unconscious and perceived as being unremarkable," explains Dr. Garrett-Akinsanya. "White privilege has a legacy of racism and is a cause of it, too."​

 

[TemplarKormac]

Because I'm a liberal helper

How to Explain White Privilege in Terms Simple Enough for a Child

The term white privilege is often misunderstood. But experts explain why it's important to teach your children what it means and how to do that based on their age.

www.parents.com

It Doesn't Mean That All White People Have Had an Easy Life​

​

The common misperception about white privilege is that it implies that being white inherently makes for a life of smooth sailing and that successes aren't hard-earned. People might associate the phrase with financial wealth or other types of privilege that they don't/didn't have, explains Dr. Garrett-Akinsanya.​

​

"Some white people deny that advantages are unearned," notes Erin Pahlke, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at Whitman College, whose research centers on how children form their views about race. "Often, these people see their own successes as entirely a result of their own hard work and others' struggles as a result of not working hard enough. And some folks mistakenly believe that they can't be privileged because they themselves have suffered personal life hardships."​

​

Denial of white privilege might also stem from another belief: that the U.S. operates as a meritocracy, or a system in which you're rewarded exclusively for ability and effort, as opposed to wealth and social class. "There's some research that suggests that white parents are more likely than Black parents to teach their children that the U.S. is a meritocracy," explains Dr. Pahlke. "And, for people who strongly believe that the U.S. is a meritocracy, white privilege can be a hard concept to accept."​

​

The misinterpretation of the term is fairly widespread. According to 2017 findings from the Pew Research Center, 46 percent of white Americans say they believe they benefit because of their race, compared to 92 percent of Black Americans and 65 percent of Hispanic Americans who believe that white people benefit.​

​

"Because the advantages are so structurally ingrained, privileges are often unconscious and perceived as being unremarkable," explains Dr. Garrett-Akinsanya. "White privilege has a legacy of racism and is a cause of it, too."​

That's not what far leftists mean when they hit you with that term. It is a term made to foist guilt on someone for being white. The very phrase "white privilege" is demeaning and derogatory. It is tantamount to calling a black person a ni**er. And yes, I would have every bit the same right to be offended by the usage of such a term to define people of my racial background.

It is meant to minimize any and all suffering and hardship endured by someone of the Caucasian race.

I'm not falling for that garbage doublespeak you just cited.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Westender]

I am white. If privilege applied to me because of my skin color, I would be earning a high 5 figure income with a degree from a college of my choosing on the back of a full-ride scholarship. My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life. I wouldn't be here dedicating almost 80% of mine and my grandmother's monthly income to bills and survival. We don't enjoy any privilege because of our skin color. Being white never made our lives any easier.

We are a lower-middle-class family who barely has enough money to make ends meet. If there was a privilege, we never knew about it. I am sure the billions of white people who existed in the world before me and throughout history who suffered from

Are our personalities set in stone, or can we work on – even improve – them?
Read more
The study, which looked at 16 different ideological orientations, could have profound implications for identifying and supporting people most vulnerable to radicalisation across the political and religious spectrum.
... would have loved to have known about the privilege their skin color supposedly imbued them with. Maybe it would have spared their lives and shielded them from unnecessary suffering. White privilege is hogwash. It reeks of jealousy and has no basis in reality.

My white privilege does not exist.

For the sake of discussion...look at the possible other side.

"White privilege" doesn't mean there aren't poor white people...but maybe in can mean the difference between the frying pan and the fire.

I'm thinking, for example, of the justice syste

Your statement: "My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life."

Maybe, if you had been poor AND black....your "dumb" decisions would have landed you in the juvenile justice system and from their the adult justice system in a downward spiral hitting up against laws like 3 strikes.

It's pretty much proven that black youth's are much more likely to be incarcerated than white youth's for the same crimes. So, that might be a more realistic way to see what white privelege is even though for many it's not much of a privilege.

Another example might be one aspect of poverty itself.

One of the factors that has made black poverty so entrenched is through a systemic system of laws and of violence (white race riots) towards black property owners and businesses and homes and communities that destroyed wealth and the ability to pass it to their children and so on. So as a community - whites (in general) have not had to endure that. Poverty has a lot of causes of course, some in our control, some not. But I think that is one example how race was a factor.

Another one could be this. Even though you and your grandmother are poor? Do you live in a fairly safe neighborhood? Redlining, a practice of maintaining racial segregation in the housing market often relegated black families to the worse neighborhoods - neighborhoods more likely to have the town landfill and other nice amenities located nearby, areas that white people left when black people moved in. When those areas begin to reflect the changing home values, more renters than homeowners, crime increases, incomes go down, people are stuck. Maybe white privilege in poverty means the difference between being poor in a dangerous community or poor in a somewhat safer one.

Just thoughts on a different way of looking at it

I would move if blacks moved into my neighborhood, actually theres no blacks where I live. We had 2 come from God only knows where just recently and kill 2 people from Georgia working on a beach house they had just purchased. What were these 2 thugs doing at the beach other than to rob white people, nobody in their neighborhood have anything worth stealing

 

[Coyote]

I am white. If privilege applied to me because of my skin color, I would be earning a high 5 figure income with a degree from a college of my choosing on the back of a full-ride scholarship. My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life. I wouldn't be here dedicating almost 80% of mine and my grandmother's monthly income to bills and survival. We don't enjoy any privilege because of our skin color. Being white never made our lives any easier.

We are a lower-middle-class family who barely has enough money to make ends meet. If there was a privilege, we never knew about it. I am sure the billions of white people who existed in the world before me and throughout history who suffered from poverty, famines, genocide, murder, cruel dictatorships... would have loved to have known about the privilege their skin color supposedly imbued them with. Maybe it would have spared their lives and shielded them from unnecessary suffering. White privilege is hogwash. It reeks of jealousy and has no basis in reality.

My white privilege does not exist.

Here is my White privilege...

My family immigrated here a few generations ago and did it legally. They were poor, but each generation was richer than the last, because they worked hard.

No one had anything to do with slavery. We were all raised that character matters more than anything. I grew up in highly-integrated communities and most of my friends were non-White.

I worked my whole life, starting with helping my dad move furniture for his second job, on weekends, when I was 12. I bagged groceries for tips only after school for many years.

My dad was pretty poor by today's standards, but he put me through college with the help of a student loan I repaid after getting my first professional job, after everyone wanted to hire me because of my GPA and work experience in engineering.

Then, I worked for decades, moving up the ladder, basically until I made it to the top, where I am now, and still helping to improve the world with innovation.

And now I am a 10%-er. Oh, but I was privileged, and need to pay reparations. Tell that to all of my ethnically diverse colleagues who accomplished similar things that I did, through their own hard work.

It's what you are supposed to do.

Race and ethnicity should be removed from every federal and state form, and every college application. The information can only be used to discriminate.

Your statement....

My family immigrated here a few generations ago and did it legally. They were poor, but each generation was richer than the last, because they worked hard.

What if each generation were robbed of their wealth? Why do people assume they didn't work hard? It’s a fallacy. Some of the poorest people are some of the hardest working.

 

[Coyote]

Two examples: race riots, that targeted thriving black communities and destroyed them. In an era of segregation, they would have little recourse to justice.

What about the black owned businesses that were destroyed in this past year's riots? Are they getting justice?

The other example is that black property was much more likely to be targeted for public projects and infrastructure, often without compensation or inadequate compensation. Again, destroying accumulated value that might have been passed on.

Don't know how to reply to that, except with this:

just-compensation

www.law.cornell.edu

Just compensation means something different pre civil rights and even later.

 

[Issa]

I am white. If privilege applied to me because of my skin color, I would be earning a high 5 figure income with a degree from a college of my choosing on the back of a full-ride scholarship. My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life. I wouldn't be here dedicating almost 80% of mine and my grandmother's monthly income to bills and survival. We don't enjoy any privilege because of our skin color. Being white never made our lives any easier.

We are a lower-middle-class family who barely has enough money to make ends meet. If there was a privilege, we never knew about it. I am sure the billions of white people who existed in the world before me and throughout history who suffered from poverty, famines, genocide, murder, cruel dictatorships... would have loved to have known about the privilege their skin color supposedly imbued them with. Maybe it would have spared their lives and shielded them from unnecessary suffering. White privilege is hogwash. It reeks of jealousy and has no basis in reality.

My white privilege does not exist.

I'm gonna be brutally honest here. I consider myself an outsider although im a naturalized citizen who happens to be of a mixed race and can genetically pass for white, latino, african and so forth. Also married to a white.

There Is white privilege to an extent but denying it stems from the person not experiencing. I've seen it at many instances in my 2 decades living here (traffic stops, customer service, ....)

But I also seing a lot of bad behavior from our brothers and sisters african Americans that feeds to the stereotypes.

All or the above is a result of slavery, racism then segregation, to what we see now.

I actually was shocked when I first moved here to see people who live in the same city have different accents (white, blacks, latinos...) thay summed it up for me that there is deep disparities and fractions.

 

[WelfareQueen]

Jaden and Willow Smith are just SO underprivileged, don't ya know.

My personal favorite is when someone like Michelle Obama lectures whites about racism and white privilege. Bitch you have lived such a life of privilege as to stagger imagination, and yet in your mind you believe you are a victim and oppressed. Seriously, and I say this with love....GFYS.

 

[Batcat]

I am white. If privilege applied to me because of my skin color, I would be earning a high 5 figure income with a degree from a college of my choosing on the back of a full-ride scholarship. My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life. I wouldn't be here dedicating almost 80% of mine and my grandmother's monthly income to bills and survival. We don't enjoy any privilege because of our skin color. Being white never made our lives any easier.

We are a lower-middle-class family who barely has enough money to make ends meet. If there was a privilege, we never knew about it. I am sure the billions of white people who existed in the world before me and throughout history who suffered from

Are our personalities set in stone, or can we work on – even improve – them?
Read more
The study, which looked at 16 different ideological orientations, could have profound implications for identifying and supporting people most vulnerable to radicalisation across the political and religious spectrum.
... would have loved to have known about the privilege their skin color supposedly imbued them with. Maybe it would have spared their lives and shielded them from unnecessary suffering. White privilege is hogwash. It reeks of jealousy and has no basis in reality.

My white privilege does not exist.

For the sake of discussion...look at the possible other side.

"White privilege" doesn't mean there aren't poor white people...but maybe in can mean the difference between the frying pan and the fire.

I'm thinking, for example, of the justice syste

Your statement: "My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life."

Maybe, if you had been poor AND black....your "dumb" decisions would have landed you in the juvenile justice system and from their the adult justice system in a downward spiral hitting up against laws like 3 strikes.

It's pretty much proven that black youth's are much more likely to be incarcerated than white youth's for the same crimes. So, that might be a more realistic way to see what white privelege is even though for many it's not much of a privilege.

Another example might be one aspect of poverty itself.

One of the factors that has made black poverty so entrenched is through a systemic system of laws and of violence (white race riots) towards black property owners and businesses and homes and communities that destroyed wealth and the ability to pass it to their children and so on. So as a community - whites (in general) have not had to endure that. Poverty has a lot of causes of course, some in our control, some not. But I think that is one example how race was a factor.

Another one could be this. Even though you and your grandmother are poor? Do you live in a fairly safe neighborhood? Redlining, a practice of maintaining racial segregation in the housing market often relegated black families to the worse neighborhoods - neighborhoods more likely to have the town landfill and other nice amenities located nearby, areas that white people left when black people moved in. When those areas begin to reflect the changing home values, more renters than homeowners, crime increases, incomes go down, people are stuck. Maybe white privilege in poverty means the difference between being poor in a dangerous community or poor in a somewhat safer one.

Just thoughts on a different way of looking at it

Black skin color can be an advantage when it comes to hiring thanks to quotas and affirmative action.

or it could be a disadvantage in high crime black ghettos

but the primary difference in outcome is effort not race

in America any person with average intelligence can succeed if they try

Before I retired fifteen years ago I worked for one of the larger corporations in the United Sates.

The company was always searching for minorities and women they could promote into management. If such people really had potential they were fast tracked up the ladder.

I remember one black worker who was promoted from a work director to the department foreman. He discovered he suddenly had to go to parties and spend time on the golf course with other people in the higher management chain for the program he was working on. He felt totally out of place at the parties and he had never played golf before. Plus he was not all that good at brown nosing which was a requirement for someone at the lower levels of management. While he made a good salary he also lost money because he didn’t get paid time and a half and double time for working overtime as he had as a work director.

To say the least this black worker was not a happy camper.

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

I am white. If privilege applied to me because of my skin color, I would be earning a high 5 figure income with a degree from a college of my choosing on the back of a full-ride scholarship. My privilege would have shielded me from some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life. I wouldn't be here dedicating almost 80% of mine and my grandmother's monthly income to bills and survival. We don't enjoy any privilege because of our skin color. Being white never made our lives any easier.

We are a lower-middle-class family who barely has enough money to make ends meet. If there was a privilege, we never knew about it. I am sure the billions of white people who existed in the world before me and throughout history who suffered from poverty, famines, genocide, murder, cruel dictatorships... would have loved to have known about the privilege their skin color supposedly imbued them with. Maybe it would have spared their lives and shielded them from unnecessary suffering. White privilege is hogwash. It reeks of jealousy and has no basis in reality.

My white privilege does not exist.

White privilege charges are an excuse by certain people trying to rob you of your rights and give certain groups rights above and beyond what the Constitution allows.

 

[Street Juice]

One of the factors that has made black poverty so entrenched is through a systemic system of laws and of violence (white race riots) towards black property owners and businesses and homes and communities that destroyed wealth and the ability to pass it to their children and so on. So as a community - whites (in general) have not had to endure that. Poverty has a lot of causes of course, some in our control, some not. But I think that is one example how race was a factor.

Interesting.

But I feel as if black people already have all the tools they need to prosper. But instead of breaking free from victimhood they seem to embrace it.

"White people did X to my ancestors, therefore as a descendant I deserve Y!"

So, where does the privilege supposedly exist?

I spent a couple of years in China. You think white privilege is bad in the US? You would not believe the blatant Chinese privilege in China. The whole culture exists only for the benefit of Chinese people.