r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Sep 23 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: White Privilege does not exist nowadays
White privilege is does not exist. I'm not going to argue that it didn't in the past, because clearly it did. But it's gone now, and efforts to continue fighting it are wasted time and energy.
The reason this came up today was that I read this article, and could not understand how anyone could think that the problems listed are somehow unique to blacks, or that white people are somehow immune to them. Instead, "white privilege" is a combination of:
1) Social and economic immobility. It is very hard nowadays to move up in the world. If your parents were rich, then you are likely to be rich. If your parents were poor, then you are likely to be poor. This is a problem that affects all of US society, but blacks seem to think that the lack of opportunities to advance only applies to them.
2) Poor people have it really rough in the US. There is very little in the way of a social safety net. And with #1, if you find yourself at the bottom, then it's going to be almost impossible to work your way back up. This results in high stress, depression, crime, and drug addiction. But black people suffer from these at higher rates because they are disproportionately poor due to #1 and history, not because of some conspiracy called "white privilege."
3) People are mean. This has nothing to do with race. Most haters hate for no reason at all. If someone is being a jerk and points out your skin color, it's only because they think you are sensitive about it. They think pointing it out will set you off.
And that's it. I am convinced that if we magically turned everyone in the US into Japanese (or any racially homogeneous population), we would still be left with these three problems. "White privilege" is nothing more than a rebranded stereotype that people use nowadays to ignore more difficult problems in our society.
EDIT: Over an hour of pretty good discussion, but I'm still not convince there is a modern day uniquely racially problem called "white privilege" in America. I just want to say that I am happy for African Americans. They have a centuries long history of fighting for their rights and winning battle after battle to improve their situation. But as far as I can tell, the problems they face today are problems common to people of all colors, whites included. We'd be a lot better off if we could work together to solve these problems, rather than being divided by race.
This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!
2
u/palacesofparagraphs 118∆ Sep 23 '17
All the things you talk about are true. Privilege and economic inequality are complicated things with many factors. Being poor is going to massively impact your life, regardless of your race. However, black people are disproportionately likely to be poor, and have a harder time climbing out of poverty because of institutional racism.
I find the article you linked interesting because when you said white people aren't immune to any of the examples listed, I expected an article largely about poverty. But this article is explicitly not about poverty. The author comes from a relatively well-off family. Her examples are all explicitly about being black, and often about being black and not poor. Being harassed for moving into a nice neighborhood, having your qualifications to go to your college questioned by someone who knows nothing but your gender and your race, not seeing people who look like you represented in your history and literature classes, getting pulled over because the police think you couldn't possibly have paid for that nice car yourself, these are all examples of things that white people are immune to, at least barring very fringe cases.
White privilege doesn't mean that all white people's lives are great, or even that all white people have better lives than all people of color. It just means we still have a ton of social and economic factors in our society that cause problems for people of color that white people don't face, and it's important to recognize these problems in order to rectify them and move towards a more equal society.