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Why I Worry About White Privilege
Memes are no substitute for adequate analysis and usually lead to atrociously misguided results.
OK, I get it. Our tiny ape-brains are hardwired for simplicity and reality is complex. So we gravitate towards the simple because it feels good. And virtue-signaling feels good too. When we virtue signal we’re demonstrating how we’re part of the good people group.
But the problem is that all this has very little connection with reality.
Let’s look at White Privilege. A lot of well-meaning people are throwing this term around because they’re understandably upset about racism in the USA. And there’s a huge amount of racism in the USA. In fact, the nation was built on it: wealthy white folk owned black slaves. You can’t get more racist than that.
But here’s the thing: no one sat down and explicitly said, “let’s privilege all white people.” In fact, white share-croppers were nearly as badly off as black people, because the real issue here was socio-economic status. Wealthy white people got to own slaves; poor white people were regarded as trash unless they too could scrape up sufficient funds to buy a slave of their own.
It’s undoubtedly the case that today a white skin confers a wide range of social benefits. But let’s look at why that is before we grab onto the nearest easy-to-remember meme…
