= new reply since forum marked as read
It's limousine liberals who can afford microwaves and paying through the nose for little microwave popcorn packets.
Yes, I know you were kidding, but I'm telling you true. (When not making popcorn for DU, I use an air popper--no oil at all. I don't know what socioeconomic class that puts me in. 
)
This is just a story about popcorn that is funny to me, because it is so my "true grit" father.
One day father was making popcorn in a big ole pot on the top of his gas stove for a few kids. He wanted to grab the pot to shake it back and forth--I guess so that the bottom kernels wouldn't burn? He grabbed a kitchen towel, putting one end of it on one pot handle and the other end of the towel on the opposite pot handle and started shaking the pot. Before too long, the part of the towel hanging down in the middle caught fire from the gas flame. My father never skipped a beat or made a sound. He just kept that pot moving back and forth over the flame until he felt the popcorn was done.
Then, and only then, did he move the pot to a cool burner, throw what was left of the towel into the sink and turn on both hot and cold taps to put out the flames. He did all of that so fast, it looked almost like all one movement.
The kids could not believe their eyes had been screaming the whole time. After the fire was out, though, they started laughing. To this day, you can make them laugh by reminding them about my father calmly holding the pot of popcorn with the flaming towel until the popcorn was perfectly done. In hindsight, I wish I'd saved that last black bit of towel.
By virtue of sheer accident, the towel was a goner, no matter what. However, my father was not about to throw good money after bad by wasting a whole pot of popcorn just because his hands might get burned.
Though I don't share a lot of personal info on the board, I will say this: No one has to school me too, too much about how poor people behave or about how people who more are comfortably off behave. 
acknowledge realities and do the best you can to make the world better for everyone...
so glad you acknowledge your white privilege, 
now do some action to help all those without it
They're about the person decrying "white privilege," who, with almost perfect certainty, is a white person just like you. Pointing out the fact of your "white privilege" is never meant to accomplish anything other than to burnish the progressive credentials of the person doing the pointing. And when I say "pointing," I don't mean a gentle reminder that you have benefited from some ancient, well-established social and financial apparatus that has elevated you to your current loft without so much as a callus on your part. I mean THIS sort of pointing:
(Let us ignore for a moment that almost everyone on DU is not named Bush, Kennedy, Clinton, Trump, Morgan, Rothschild, or any other name associated with actual, tangible privilege. Those white people don't read DU, so finding them to chide them about their ACTUAL is, like, HARD, man. Better to remind a poor guy that at least the cops don't crack his skull every ten minutes. That way time can be preserved to throw support behind someone about to cash in their actual privilege chips to run for President again.)
You asked a fair question of those who bolster their self-esteem, street cred, and post counts what you are to do with this awful privilege that has been bestowed upon you. You got wiseassed responses or ones that urge you to work to change the system or short-circuit the process. Using, you know, those methods we all know work so well. At this point you might start to realize that this whole "white privilege" thing is pretty much an enormous pyramid scheme, except in place of soap or timeshares or internet advertising, you are meant to sell guilt. The persons who have reminded you of your "white privilege" are selling you guilt. And the only way for you to not have to buy the guilt is for YOU to sell the guilt. And when those who have sold YOU the guilt see that YOU'RE selling guilt, then they know that they're higher on the pyramid than you, and that is what matters.
And you know this hierarchy is all that matters because, again, the product is the process. No one ever said Amway's soap is GOOD. It's just supposed to be BOUGHT. In this same way, when you confront those attempting to hold themselves above you, they have damn little in the way of actually DOING SOMETHING about this thing which literally infects your DNA. Conduct the following exercise: count the posts on DU reminding otherwise good Democrats and progressives how shameful their "white privilege" is, and then count the number of posts in which someone details concrete actions they have undertaken to negate or toss off their "white privilege." The former will overwhelm the latter, and in fact the ratio may be near infinity.
My advice is to nod politely at the Check Your Privilege squad and move along. You don't have to buy soap if you don't want it, and you damn sure don't have to sell it, and in fact I bet you're already reasonably clean in the first place.
And a big "fuck you!" to our lurking friends watching through the glass.
The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling.
It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands.[1] The poem was originally written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, but exchanged for "Recessional"; Kipling changed the text of "Burden" to reflect the subject of American colonization of the Philippines, recently won from Spain in the Spanish-American War.[2] The poem consists of seven stanzas, following a regular rhyme scheme. At face value it appears to be a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule other nations for the benefit of those people (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the "burden" of the title).
Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with somber warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States of America understood the phrase "white man's burden" as justifying imperialism as a noble enterprise.[3][4][5][6][7] Because of its theme and title, it has become emblematic both of Eurocentric racism and of Western aspirations to dominate the developing world.[8][9][10] A century after its publication, the poem still rouses strong emotions, and can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives.
more at link below
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden
Realize that you are going through life on the easiest difficulty setting imaginable.
Recognize and acknowledge that you are part of the institutional white power structure (from Joe Biden on downwards).
Check your privilege again.
Finally, check your privilege one more time, just to be safe.
Hope this helps 
Ooooooof.
Who said you should feel guilty?
that take pleasure out of their miserable lives to respond like...well...snarky assholes. They're like sharks in bloody waters, or posters in white privilege threads that want to doll out tired jokes that they think are clever. 
My advice is to not feel "guilty" for being white. White guilt doesn't solve jack squat. Instead, just recognize that being white, you'll never be systematically discriminated against by police or the justice system, or followed around a store while shopping, or passed up for a job etc. That doesn't mean that it's okay for others to make you feel ashamed of being white or to call you "honky, cracker, whatever". Just treat everyone, regardless of their color or ethnic background, with respect and uplift them. Fight against racism with us, be tolerant and kind, and always speak up when you see any kind of discrimination towards another person.
I hope this response was more helpful than some of the snarkier ones that didn't add a damn thing to the thread.
I imagine it's much more convenient to call it "white shaming", and much well-suited to the irrational to pretend people are instructing you to pay penance than it is to engage in a sincere, insightful and honest debate with one's own ethics, behaviors and actions.
It certainly let's us better rationalize that which lies in ourselves which we condemn others for.
"I and my bosom must debate awhile,
And then I would no other company..."
W. Shakesepeare
