To be slightly fed up of white people doing this

[TacoLover]

Every time there is a thread discussing racism, there will be a mention of white privilege. Cue a flurry of hurt posters writing essays about how stupid the idea of white privilege is and how it doesn't exist, because their lives are so hard and they grew up on a few pieces of bread and a Red Bull

This really gets on my tits because after seeing this shit time and time again, THIS ISN'T WHAT WHITE PRIVILEGE MEANS. It doesn't mean your life isn't hard, it doesn't mean you don't face barriers in your life. What it does mean is the barriers in your life will never or hardly ever be a result of the colour of your skin. It doesn't mean you live in a mansion because you're white.

Just needed to get that out,sorry. I'm sure my only replies will be white people telling me how racist I am for only targeting them(Even though this is something that only white people do)

For the people talking about black privately educated black people over poorer white people - I went to private school and a Russell Group university, bought a flat in a lovely area of London, so immensely privileged in many ways, but I still get followed around Waitrose by the security guard, had a security guard physically grab me when I left a shop thinking I'd stolen something, had years of bullying at school because I was the only black girl (which has dented my self-esteem hugely), and often find myself in situations where nobody else looks like me and have to listen to the white women in the office being derogatory about other black women in a subtle way, as well as often feeling unsafe if for example I go to certain places outside of London or travel abroad

Thanks for posting this, I think I understand a little more now. So it’s not that your life, as a wealthy well educated black person, is worse than a white person who is homeless, disabled, living in care, going without food etc. You may have a much better life than these people but you still have a type of discrimination that they will never have because they are white. Is that correct?

So the Polish Maths graduate who works in my local Costa Coffee has more privilege than me because he is white and I am not? (I have a excellent job earning in the top 10% and own my own home with my wife and children?)

Divide et impera my friends.

Yanbu
Ok white middle class person here, grew up in a very white British area.
For some reason I had no problem recognising that I was privileged due to my class and able bodied-ness.
But when white privilege was first suggested to me I just wanted to reject it and got defensive. Why is that..maybe cos I have to look at our society in a different way and our history and realise that it is racist and that I have been a kind of unconscious racist. Don’t know if I’m making sense, just that it took me a while before I would accept it.
Makes me look at organisations I’ve worked for/am working at in a different way. Recruiting in own image, favour that I’ve had in recruitment that is just as much to do with my white british privilege as it is to do with my class and education privilege.
It’s not fair or right op you are right.

there is a whole dimension of unpleasantness that a white person will never experience no matter what other hardships they have in their lives.

I'm glad, surely that's the whole point of having privilege?

How do you propose to change it though OP? Bleating on about it in this fashion either puts (white) peoples backs up or they'll just shrug & move along.......

Yes. I have. I'm Irish

You've experienced xenophobia not racism.

YANBU. I really related to the book “Why I am no longer talking to white people about race” and as a result will comment no further .

DontBoreMe She’s trying to change it by creating discussion. Discussion is important. Look at Brexit, nobody created proper discussion, just nasty insults.

“No white woman knows what it’s like to be a black woman”

Exactly, Surferjet. But you think if I say that, as a middle-class white white woman, I am virtue signalling?

Those of you saying that the real issue is wealth and class are missing the point. Wealth and class disparities are symptoms of race/gender/health/etc privileges. We’ll never sort them out until we’ve sorted out the other ineqaualities and changing social attitudes has to start with recognising the barriers others face. That’s where admitting our privileges comes in.

But I too have been followed around and grabbed by security guards - I'm not black but I'm not white either. I'm mixed race and don't choose to say in what way, but I don't put this treatment down to not looking like your average Brit. I do have white, very British looking friends who've had the same thing happen too. It's not all, always about race.

I do understand white privilege, it definitely exists even if, as a non-white person, I don't feel it has disadvantaged me particularly.

One point I can't get past, however, is the memory of my best friend at school for many years. Both of us mixed race but different mixed races, if you see what I mean. We pretty much got the same treatment. Both of us got stupid names shouted at us by stupid kids on occasion etc., but we handled it very differently. I always felt it was obvious when a person was being deliberately racist as opposed to clumsy or insensitive in how they spoke to me - I found it a great way to weed out the dickheads from the people I might want to know, to be honest. I knew when comments were genuinely meant as a put down due to my race.

In the same situations my friend 'played the race card', every time. When last to be picked for a team I put it down to being shit at that sport rather than to looking different to the other team members whereas again, she wanted to make it a race issue every time, including sometimes and unnecessarily on my behalf. Funny how she didn't have a problem with people's treatment of her race when she was picked first because she was good at that sport.

I could give you a hundred examples. Decades later if anything goes wrong for her she puts it down to race. I recognise that it usually happens due to poor decision making on my part but I do also look at the way she lives and think that if she put as much time and effort into working/doing her housework/ whatever it is that's going wrong for her at the time as she puts into calling racism at every opportunity, then she would have had the time and opportunity to get it done properly in the first place.

No doubt there are plenty on this thread who will say that's my WP privilege talking (because part of my mix is white), but I have the same amount of whiteness she did. The difference I saw was OUR attitudes towards it rather than other people's.

I get that WP is a huge problem for many black people but what I don't know is quite what you want the rest of us to DO about it. I feel I don't treat others differently based upon the colour of their skin but focus instead on how they behave. Most decent people claim to do the same. Of course you get some arseholes who treat others badly and yes, that can be because of the colour of their skin, but you do also get black, brown, whatever colour arseholes. I try my best to practise colour blindness, I accept that white privilege exists and am happy to point it out if I see it and happy to (loudly) call out genuine racism when I see it but please be specific on what else exactly you want me to do!

I think the greatest privilege people have is money. If also come to the opinion that money (or lack of) is the route of all prejudice. Black people are discriminated against because they originated from Africa, Africa is more poor than Europe (where white people are from). I think Asians (Chinese/Japanese) experience less prejudice than black people because they are seen to be not as poor, also i think prejudices agaist these asians are declining as East Asian countries get richer. Women also suffer because we have always been poorer than men. I think money is also the route cause of prejudice towards eastern Europeans. Btw I know many (most) people of African or Asian heritage will have been here for generations.

I sometimes wonder, if the world had developed differently leaving Europe as the poorest place and Africa the richest (through whatever means, even pillaging and enslaving others) would white people be the most discriminated against and black people the least?

Fully accept that my view will be coloured by my own circumstances as a white British working class woman and so might be just plain wrong.

B'ah i thought this was gonna be about dancing

Fully acknowledge that this exists.

I'm just wondering, same as @namelessinseattle did, that the reason the concept isn't grasped, is down to the actual 'label'. People immediately think privileged means having more money, or step up (and of course you can put two families side by side and say one has more than the other of the above). But as we know, hence my earlier posts with the link and underpinning of the YouTube video, that's not correct.

So is it time to change the phraseology, to make the concept clearer?

Sorry rubbish typos.

Look at a law firm in London. The lawyers are generally white, or well-educated Asian origin - there will be a few black lawyers but generally from well educated African backgrounds, not Afro-Caribbean. The support staff eg secretaries will be lower class white and black Afro-Caribbean. The cleaners are generally South American or far eastern Asian eg from the Philippines.

There are exceptions, but that is the general pattern.

However, I do think wealth and class privilege are the main issues and I do think people will mask their racism for a rich black person because money talks.

The point of the discussion and Boopsy's understanding of it is still around five miles apart.

YANBU. I really related to the book “Why I am no longer talking to white people about race” and as a result will comment no further smile

and this is half the problem with the current 'White Privilege' narrative Blessthekids. You should not feel barred from having a point of view based on your ethnicity.

I'm mixed race, you are white (I assume). Your opinion on racism is just as valid as mine.

If you were commenting on what its like to be the victim of racism, then maybe I'd have an advantage over you (but maybe not if you'd spent any time living in China or Africa for example)

When people say you can't speak on a subject because of your race, that is literally racism.

🙄

peak I don’t think you really understand the concept if you’re saying things like this:
But how do you rank your rich black man in relation to a working-class disabled man? Or a middle-class gay woman? It just becomes a mish-mash of different identities, each claiming that it has it worst.

Privilege doesn’t mean that that particular variable trumps all others.

The question is, if all other things are equal, does that one variable relate privilege.

Would a white, homeless drug addict have more opportunities to get clean and get housed than a black person in the same situation?

Would a black guy driving a Mercedes receive worse treatment if pulled over than a white guy driving a Mercedes?

It’s absolutely disingenuous to suggest this isn’t the case.

White privilege is not a thing, we’re just white people living our lives. Stop trying To be offended by everything.

FFS. What’s the point?

Of course it exists. And intersects with other kinds of privilege: class, gender, age etc. So that people with privilege in all those areas get through life with astonishing ease: white, middle-class, middle-aged men are at the top in almost every place you choose to look. And those without: black, working-class, older women are at the bottom of the list.

Most of us have privilege in some respects but not all. A black working class woman will be discriminated against in ways a white working class woman won't. But that white working class woman will have things harder than a white working class man. And so on. Accepting that you have privilege in some respects doesn't mean that you are privileged in all ways.

Waht a load of bollocks Satsumaeater

Jobs in this country are filled by people based on their socio-economic background, their education and critically their ability to fit what is perceived as the 'norm', not on their skin colour.

How does your model account for the huge number of highly educated Poles and Slavs in the UK working in minimum wage jobs? Surely their white skin would have ensured they get to the top positions at a similar rate to other whites?

White privilege is not a thing, we’re just white people living our lives. Stop trying To be offended by everything

Oh so if you say it then it must be true!

Of course white privalige is a thing. Just like discrimination against disabled people is a thing, just like sexism is a thing.

Would a white, homeless drug addict have more opportunities to get clean and get housed than a black person in the same situation?

Deathgrip that's an extraordinary claim, do you have evidence that homelessness and drug charities are racially discriminating when they give assistance to people?

If not then why would you say that?