To ask you about 'White privilege'

[InTheBox]

I'm wondering if any of you know about this or have ever experienced it?

I've been reading a lot about this over the past weeks and I'm still working it out. I've only seen in the US, well actually on Twitter, the 'criming while white' hashtag which whilst humorous really spoke some home truths. I'm familiar with mixed race individuals being fetishised (I have one myself) but not necessarily earning privilege because of it iyswim. I'm not starting the thread to be goady but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

There was (is?) a Turkish bar on Denmark Street which I was asked to leave because some of the women in there complained that I was not Turkish. There is a takeaway in Dalston which suddenly is out of stock of every item if a white person goes in there. There are a number of pubs I could name in London which you would be made very aware you were unwelcome in if you were white. Ditto some nightclubs in the northern city I live in now and London, social clubs and also some churches which make it very clear white people are not welcome.

Also, for women going out in London it is a mine field. If you are too old, not posh enough, too overweight, the wrong class, not trendy enough or wearing the right trend for the right club, then you are not welcome regardless of colour. Put it this way, not many people from Croydon aside from Kate Moss would stand a chance of getting in Mahiki.

Ditto northern men, I know many friends who will not go for nights out in London because if you are male and have a northern accent you're just not welcome.

Exactly Booyaka, whilst White priveledge is a genuine thing, class is the biggest privilege in the uk at the moment. The recent report that the young white poor are being left behind is a thorn in the side of the White priveledge notion as it not only highlights being left behind in schooling but also due to positive discrimination they are genuinely left on the scrap heap.

Identity politics is trying to make broad brush statements, and when 'intersectionality' starts pointing to data that doesn't conform to bias it is generally ignored.

I have repeatedly had arguments online with people who profess some 1/8 Indian heritage that minorities cannot be racist, ignoring the fact that me, a Muslim woman (very liberal mind) have seen and heard being racist not only toward white people but towards other minorities, I don't care for the new definition that it's not institutional because it is plane old racism.

Although I don't class myself as middle class, I probably out earn most of those that do, I can see my wealth will provide my son more priveledge than the working class white boy from some sink estate and I know that if do suffer financial ruin there is more help for my son than there is for the white boy.

"if a white person is in the Caribbean where they're the minority then I'm sure they'd get the same treatment."

On the contrary. Remember, black people were brought to the Caribbean as slaves and are still dealing in a very real way with all the consequences—social, economic, psychological—of that fact.

So minority or not, white people enjoy massive privilege in the Caribbean, which is very conservative in many ways and far behind the UK in terms of equal opportunities and human rights.

Booyaka, the examples you give are of a minority group functioning within a majority environment, and forming rules predicated on their minority status. It isn't proof that white privilege doesn't exist.

white people enjoy massive privilege in the Caribbean

What a sweeping, and untrue, statement. If you make mass, uninformed statements about "people" based solely on their skin colour, that sounds racist to me.

Read this. There are 'white people' in the Caribbean living in (to UK observers) unimaginable poverty, at the absolute bottom of the social heap.

barbadosfreepress.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/irish-times-most-barbados-red-legs-have-bad-or-no-teeth-many-blind-without-limbs/

I was probably the pereson who started that aspect of the discussion - my son in London being the only white boy in his class, my living in an area where more people are black than white. I certainly accept that there remains advantages even then to being white which may not be the same if you are the only black boy in the rural Northumberland school. I don't think the Caribbean is a great example. I have often been there and I don't see it as comparable because of its history. Anyway I would certainly agree that even though I'm female because I'm white wherever I am just about there will be some advantage although I suspect some parts of China and Japan many people regard white people as inferior.

We would be silly to say there is no discrimination in favour of whites even in bits of London where most people are not white but the subtleties of this in mixed race cities like London are more complex and more about class. My daughter was the only one of two girls 10 years ago in her year at school (private school) with four British born grandparents.

I was interested in what someone upthread said about age conferring privilege, because you have picked up a lot of confidence. This is definitely true: I have reached that bolshy stage where I don't care what the badly-parked, street-blocking lorry driver thinks of me, I WILL go over and politely and assertively (and, in my case, middle-classishly) ask him to move. Twenty years ago, nope, would never have had the nerve.

My granddad was identified as "white", even though he was Euro-Asian
There seem to be a lot of us with mixed ancestry who 'pass as white' on this thread. Seems it's not only my twitchy nerve that it touches.

I absolutely agree that their is a group of working class boys being failed in the uk system. Be it education or work. One of the biggest things I would say is the biggest factor is lack of aspiration and also what to aspire to. This country should not have stopped offering apprenticeships. This would have filled up some of the gaps instead of being left behind. Don't get me wrong I think black boys have this problem too. But you would not be allowed to say that because it would sound like your putting black people down.

Something needs to be done. I would say, firstly, the way people talk in the media has to change. In this country what I have always heard is that you don't need an education to make it. But I do think that you do now. If all the factories are not taking 16 year olds or 18 and those who left schools with no qualification what do you expect them to do. We all know that your farmers are hiring migrants to pick fruit and vegetables below minimum wage. The young white working class person may not want that.

We do have experience of this from hiring people in the hotel where my partner runs. Young people being sent in, you know that they could do better but they don't even listen to the advice being given. The only ones that tend to stay are those that are off to university and want a bit more money and experience. Most of the time their parents ask us for the job.

Britain needs to look at its self really hard and listen to the statistics. I have been hearing about the failures for about ten years now. It's absolutely nothing new. We can't also say that other races failure is because of racism holding them back and for working class boys is laziness. Everyone in this country has a chance to succeed to a degree. It's the mindset sometimes that's the problem. That includes black men too. It's some times gobsmacking how irrational it is and the fact that they think every is out there to destroy them.

Sometimes, you need someone to show you the way and guide you. Parents are meant to do that.

Deo thanks for clarifying.

I agree it's probably not the best place to compare. I support a charity that tries to help the poor whites throughout the Caribbean and which is struggling to change the way are despised by and discriminated against by many, from neighbours and classmates to politicians, it makes a mockery of the idea of 'white privilege.'

I think in Europe, which is traditionally white, and the US, the concept is not ridiculous. But in other places around the world, there is discrimination against some whites.

I absolutely agree it is a class, not race, issue.

It's an interesting and complex issue, but I think that, for me anyway, it make more sense to teach my children to see the person.

We are lucky in that we've lived and travelled abroad extensively and their friends are of many nationalities and cultures so they know empirically that skin colour is secondary to friendship.

I get very nervous when I read 'all white people' or 'no black people'.

It strikes me as ignorant at best and racist at worst.

Olivepip, you're right, there are very small isolated groups of white people in the Caribbean who don't enjoy the same privilege as the rest. I was responding to an earlier poster who suggested that the situation was reversed in the Caribbean because the majority of people who live there aren't white. It's not that simple, of course.

Not read whole thread so I apologise in advance if I repeat what others may have said.

I see 'white privilege' as the default setting, like (if you will forgive a trivial analogy) the 'regular' length of trousers in a clothes shop. If you are white, it's just 'normal' and it's assumed you will have a certain 'normal' level of freedom and choice (all dependent on other limiting factors like social class, gender, age etc. which tend to get argued and picked over in discussions like these. Divide and conquer.)

Actually I think the word 'privilege' is slightly problematic, in that the everyday use of the word implies an actual feeling of superiority (I know that in its academic use the meaning is subtly different and often misunderstood). Sociologically, however, 'privilege' doesn't tend to refer to this crude 'king of the castle/dirty rascal' dichotomy - it's a structural term used to describe the way things have grown up to fit a particular race/gender/nationality/language etc. which might include a feeling or assumption of superiority, but more often is just a sort of unaware fitting-in. If you are white, you are very rarely ever conscious of the parts of the world that fit comfortably in your existence, until something happens that causes you to question your entitlement.