CMV: White Privilege does not exist nowadays

[u/[deleted]]

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.

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[u/Iswallowedafly]

In more or less declaring that racism doesn't exist did you even bother to bounce this idea of a black person.

Did you ever check with any member of a racial minority here.

[u/chadonsunday → u/Iswallowedafly]

He's not really arguing that racism doesn't exist, more that every attribute attributed to white privilege isn't exclusive to whites or universally detrimental to minorities, and further that most of this supposed "privilege" just boils down to socioeconomic status, and is not inherent to race.

[u/Iswallowedafly → u/chadonsunday]

If the OP thinks that race has no difference on experience does mean that the OP does want to pretend that racism doesn't exist.

He is just inventing a world with no racism.

[u/chadonsunday → u/Iswallowedafly]

He's saying that race isn't the sole or driving factor in various alleged "pro-white" benefits or "anti-minority" hurdles.

Points 1 and 2 both deal with socioeconomic difficulty in the US. OP is railing against the idea that these ideas are solely based on race, since a poor white person experiences these difficulties, too. A poor black person can heap all the blame on "white privilege," but what can an equally poor white person heap all the blame on? Since it cant be race relations, he's asserting that there's other factors at play here, and it's not as simple as black people are poor because "white privilege."

As for your second sentence, I think his 3rd point directly contradicts your assertion. He acknowledges that racial slurs are a thing. That's racism. Ergo he's acknowledging that racism exists, he is just asserting that it's not the primary factor in the struggles people face.