[jariel]

"Anyway, why are you coming onto a HN comment thread to find out what privilege means? So much has been written about this."

Surely they know what you think you mean to say about White Privilege, but there's a special kind of authoritarian arrogance in assuming that the notion is settled.

Do White people in Poland, a country with essentially no Black people have White privilege? Or do they only gain privilege when there are sufficient people around them who may not have the same opportunities manifest themselves?

In which case, there clearly is no such thing as 'White Privilege', rather, there are some groups who simply have it harder than others and it's much more rationally described in terms of those who face discrimination, than those who do not.

It's like saying people in the suburbs are 'privileged' to not live in high crime areas, or that kids are 'privileged' to not be bullied in school, or 'privileged' to have access grocery stores nearby.

None of those things are privileges and we'd never describe them as such.

We would always describe those situations wherein a special, negative context applies i.e. 'lives in high crime area' or 'child is bullied' or 'lives 20 miles from the supermarket'.

'White Privilege' is a racist term used by intersectionalists wanting to weaponize issues of race, and project guilt or other groups who frankly have no advantage or privilege, other than in the most narrow of contextualization.

[ajkjk]

Look, you have completely successfully communicated the fact that you hate the concept of white privilege and believe it is incorrect and, apparently, racist. But these debates are much larger than this comment thread, and you are not going to convince someone that it is a racist or not real here, nor am I going to bother defending the concept in detail here, since there is _so much written_ on the subject that you can peruse at your leisure. Coming in here and loudly rolling your eyes at the concept just makes you seem ignorant; it doesn't make you seem right.

Although for what it's worth, I think you're misunderstanding the term. For instance: "There are millions of 'Tall White Guys' in prison, earning minimum wage, living on the streets. It's really not that much of a privilege." If you believe that it is a valid counterargument against the concept, then you have misunderstood the concept. It is not "the privilege that white people have". It is "the aspect of someone's privilege that comes from their whiteness". One may have many privileges. Being white is one of them. Particularly in America; I can't and wouldn't try to speak to the social dynamics in other countries.

> "It's like saying people in the suburbs are 'privileged' to not live in high crime areas".

> None of those things are privileges and we'd never describe them as such.

The only sense in which those are not privileges is the connotation of the word 'privilege' that it applies to groups of people instead of other categories. They're certainly advantages.