I am white and I am privileged. I recognise there’s a correlation there and that POC in the UK will have had obstacles in life that I won’t have had, but equally white people from deprived backgrounds will have had obstacles that I won’t have had too.
Take Blackpool for instance... it has eight of the ten most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK, with only 3% ethnic minorities (far lower than average).
Does the typical white resident of Blackpool experience privilege deriving from their whiteness? Nothing tangible. They remain poor and struggling with low educational attainment and poor prospects, worse even than the poorest of areas with highest numbers of BAMEs.
Even the belief that despite their poverty and deprivation, their whiteness won’t hinder them, and that they at least retain “white privilege” (despite it being of no meaningful consequence) is misplaced. For instance, when selecting people for jobs, I have to admit fighting some prejudice in applications from someone with a typical white working class name, more so than I believe I do those from ethnic backgrounds. I attempt to compensate for this instinctive and admittedly ugly prejudice, and look for the person behind the stereotype. I absolutely know I’m not the only one in a privileged position to think like this.
White privilege just doesn’t reflect the reality of modern Britain. Class privilege, yes; Class privilege of a largely white elite, absolutely; but white privilege, no - there are just too many white communities that are marginalised and looked down upon by other privileged groups.
I fear that the insistence of the liberal left on the concept of white privilege will do more damage to race relations in Britain than the BNP ever did.