General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It's disappointing to see "liberals" deny the existence of white privilege [View all]laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)in a sociology class.
Basically, let's take this paragraph: "A large part of the problem has to do with the term's own shortcomings; not only does it fail to adequately address class, political and even gender issues, but it's more modern iteration in particular assumes that all white people will always have it better than all People of Color; the reality is a lot more complex than that."
It doesn't adequately address those other issues because those issues are SEPARATE sources of inequality. White privilege is a term the focuses solely on race inequality. You cannot attribute the source of ALL income or other inequality in the country/world to white privilege/racism. There are plenty of other reasons for inequality in our society, but they have nothing to do with white privilege. Yes, a visible minority male can be poor because of 'deindustrialization' or 'job deskilling'....or a white guy can be rich based on 'meritocracy' however, the rich white guy would likely be less rich if he was black, and the visible minority guy would likely be better off if he was white. THAT is white privilege...it's not the reason those people are in those positions in the first place, but it can be a pressure to worsen or lighten the load of a person in that position. As someone else said in this thread: As a poor white guy if he'd rather been black in his position. Chances are he'd say no.