M. L. commented on Megyn Kelly Attacks MTV’s ‘White People’ Show Before It Airs
2015-08-02 13:39:58 -0400
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Typo: I wrote “it essentially denies that not all ‘non-whites’ are equally disadvantaged”; I meant of course to say that “it essentially denies that not all ‘non-whites’ are NOT equally disadvantaged”.
Also, many of the “white privilege” arguments only hold water if we assume all or most whites to hate non-whites or at the very least to harbor significant prejudices about them. For example, arguments like “whites have the privilege of being able to shop without the store owner looking at them with suspicion”.
First of all, this is a classic hasty generalization fallacy, and again it is predicated on a shameless stereotyping of all white storeowners as racists.
Second, and this gets back to my point about how the “white privilege” argument dubiously conflates all non-whites into a single “PoC” category who are all equally ‘marginalized’. But let’s be honest, folks. In cases where white shopkeepers do conform to steretype, they aren’t worried about Asians, and they probably couldn’t distinguish an ‘Hispanic’ with a European phenotype from any other white kid. They’re sudpicious of blacks, particularly young black males.
So what is the racist shopkeeper doing? Profiling of course. Steretyping. The problem is, the ‘white privilege’ narrative rarely rises above the level of profiling whites.
I might add, it is not only white shopkeepers that sometimes keep a wary eye on their black customers. Asian, Latino, and other non-blacks are at least as likely to.
Other ‘white privilege’ arguments tend to center around the assertion that simply being in the majority is itself a ‘privilege’. While it’s true people in the majority population may often fail to recognize that certain things they take to be universal may not be seen the same way by people not in the majority, it seems rather polemical to characterize this as a ‘privilege’; more often than not it’s an innocuous and inevitable oversight.
If I were to go to France, and characterize the French to be ‘privileged’ over me because their street signs are in French, and I don’t speak French, I would be a fool. Much of the ‘white privilege’ narrative strikes me as being substantially similar.
Also, many of the “white privilege” arguments only hold water if we assume all or most whites to hate non-whites or at the very least to harbor significant prejudices about them. For example, arguments like “whites have the privilege of being able to shop without the store owner looking at them with suspicion”.
First of all, this is a classic hasty generalization fallacy, and again it is predicated on a shameless stereotyping of all white storeowners as racists.
Second, and this gets back to my point about how the “white privilege” argument dubiously conflates all non-whites into a single “PoC” category who are all equally ‘marginalized’. But let’s be honest, folks. In cases where white shopkeepers do conform to steretype, they aren’t worried about Asians, and they probably couldn’t distinguish an ‘Hispanic’ with a European phenotype from any other white kid. They’re sudpicious of blacks, particularly young black males.
So what is the racist shopkeeper doing? Profiling of course. Steretyping. The problem is, the ‘white privilege’ narrative rarely rises above the level of profiling whites.
I might add, it is not only white shopkeepers that sometimes keep a wary eye on their black customers. Asian, Latino, and other non-blacks are at least as likely to.
Other ‘white privilege’ arguments tend to center around the assertion that simply being in the majority is itself a ‘privilege’. While it’s true people in the majority population may often fail to recognize that certain things they take to be universal may not be seen the same way by people not in the majority, it seems rather polemical to characterize this as a ‘privilege’; more often than not it’s an innocuous and inevitable oversight.
If I were to go to France, and characterize the French to be ‘privileged’ over me because their street signs are in French, and I don’t speak French, I would be a fool. Much of the ‘white privilege’ narrative strikes me as being substantially similar.