ThirdTerm wrote:It's easier to get a job if you have an English name in Britain rather than an Asian one and Asian Britons are more likely to fail to land a job upon graduation regardless of their excellent grades in school. But this is similar to Japanese individuals who are more privileged in their own society than Korean or Chinese residents, who are almost excluded from the formal education system and the job market. Calling it white privilege is a misnomer but we can fairly say that resident aliens are discriminated.
That is a most insightful post, @ThirdTerm . But I think we can go further than saying ‘white privilege’ is a misnomer. It is actually deliberately racist. It is trying to convey the idea that people of European decent are somehow exceptional in a negative way.
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:The more egalitarian societies become, the more privilege or similar concepts are invoked to explain away differences. Otherwise, the house of cards on which the world view of progressives is built comes crashing down. That's pretty much at the heart of most of our problems today.
That is a superficial look at it. A better view can be obtained by looking at the historical political economy trends in the West.
Socio economic inequality has been on the rise in the West, particularly America, for the last 50 years. Naturally many will lose out as resources and power are concentrated in fewer hands. Given the majority in these countries are white, a system of belief that justifies the dispossession of that majority and delegitimises any objection to their new circumstance, will be of utility to those who are benefiting from the rise in inequality.
So we have an idea that white people have something they don’t deserve and can’t complain about if it is removed from them. It is quite perverse that an idea based on notions of equality can be used to propagate inequality.