This is a generalization. Typically, generalizations made about entire ethnicities are considered bigoted, which is exactly why people have a problem with the term "white privilege"....which everyone has, rather than understanding that it means white people in America are generally the vanilla, placeholder, default that no one projects much prejudice onto.
Generalisations made about minorities are usually considered bigoted because they're untrue, insulting and harmful, not simply because they're generalisations. If I say that veterinarians tend to like animals, that's a generalisation but not bigoted in any way. If I generalised a negative trait, like athletes tend to smell like sweat when they're working out, it's still not bigoted. When people say "white people have white privilege", it's mostly a claim about a societal norm and not always specifically about an individual person. But even if we want to analyse it on an individual level, we still have a claim that's difficult to argue against. For example, saying white people have white privilege is to say that white people usually don't get pulled over for "driving while black". It's a generalisation, sure, but it's hard to imagine a situation where a white person has regularly been pulled over because he looks black. Similarly, I don't see it being a common occurrence for white people to be systematically filtered out of job prospects on the basis of having black-sounding names, because generally they don't have black-sounding names. When you remember that "privilege" is a very large set of these attributes, even if you think of outlandish and rare cases where a white person might fall victim to them (maybe in the dark a white guy looked black in his car and a cop pulled him over, or maybe the guy was named after his mother's favourite literary character which sounds like a stereotypically black name and it affects his job prospects), the fact is that these freak chance events are exceptions to the general rule of their life. And that's why it's essentially impossible for a white person to not have white privilege (especially in societies where this discussion tends to take place and often even in other societies).
Holy... you assume all white people have "white sounding names"? Damn, I thought hubski was supposed to contain thoughtful and introspective discussion. Disappointing. Seems more like another authoritarian left hangout. You're making all kinds of baseless broad assumptions here. Are you completely blind to that?
It's a little fresh to make all these claims after a single comment.
I can break out the dictionary if you're having difficulty with the meaning of what was said, but I suspect you're smart enough to figure out phrases like "common occurrence".I don't see it being a common occurrence for white people to be systematically filtered out of job prospects on the basis of having black-sounding names
You'll have to expand on this. How does "it's not very common" translate to "all white people"? And did you read my final paragraph where I explain that exceptions in some aspects of privilege doesn't affect the large set of privileges as a whole? What was your argument against that? Well they can't be baseless as I backed them all up. But Hubski is supposed to be a place for discussion, not baseless accusations like the ones you're presenting. If you're making a claim then back it up. It could be that you've misunderstood something I've said, like the black-sounding names bit, and I could correct you like I've done just above.Holy... you assume all white people have "white sounding names"?
You're making all kinds of baseless broad assumptions here. Are you completely blind to that?
It doesn't appear to me that mrsamsa assumed that all white people have white-sounding names. mrsamsa implied that they are perceived not to have Black-sounding names.
White people is not an ethnicity, it's a broad category and is broken up into ethnicities. Cornish, Irish and Italian etc. are ethnicities. When generalisations are bigoted you can explain how they are bigoted. So how is this generalisation bigoted?
Cornish. Not familiar with that one. Well, the assumption that white people are inherently privileged is a sweeping generalization. In your original post, you claim that people are confusing the experience of an individual with the overall experience of white people in general. What I am saying is that applying this concept of "white privilege" to the entire demographic of white people is an over generalization. Perhaps you're right in that this isn't outright bigotry, but it certainly gets used for bigoted ends. Unfortunately, it's a difficult topic to discuss. There are many things that I would like to say about it, but honestly, many things that I have to say can in turn be interpreted as "racist" depending on whose listening and I really don't want to pick a fight, but I feel that's what would inevitably happen if I elaborate any further.
The article is nonsense. I'm not going to walk on eggshells my entire life because someone somewhere thinks that systematically I've "got it better". The mere thought makes me shutter. Believing that all white people somehow "have it better" is sheer intellectual blindness. The article completely ignores the fact that there is all kinds of oppression WITHIN white ethnic groups. No one ever mentions that because they all subscribe to the myopic idea that it's "white against all". Ridiculous.
Bigotry implies malice. White people are the default in this country because we're the majority and we're all over every media. Did you honestly consider I wrote that as a native Australian man experiencing America? Nope, you probably assumed I'm a white guy, it's a safe bet and it's the right answer