[BigBubbleButt]

You're focusing on one tiny anecdote of my life and generalizing it to my entire existence. I never said being discriminated against for a job was an example of incredible privilege - it's many of the other things that most white males never notice. When I get pulled over for speeding I don't have to worry about getting shot like black men do. Do you have any idea how fucking horrible it is to go through life worrying about legalized thugs with a proven history of racism regularly getting away with murdering you just because of the color of your skin? I don't because I'm white. That's privilege. If you think "driving while black" is a joke then your ignorance is making the world a worse place.

Holy fucking shit I cannot stand the echo chamber that is tech sometimes. Get out of your bubble and try to experience the world outside of reading about it on HN. There are worse things than being denied a job because of bullshit HR policies.

[native_samples]

More white men are shot by the police than black men in the USA, so unfortunately you do have to worry about that (a little bit, but not too much).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

This means your example of white privilege is invalid. Do you have any other?

[BigBubbleButt]

Those are raw numbers. What happens when you consider that there are more white people than black people in the United States? It reverses your claim. Your numbers show there are roughly twice as many white people shot, but there are roughly 4x as many white people as black - so being black makes you twice as likely to be shot by the police in the United States. This is so obvious I assume you're arguing in bad faith.

The sign of privilege is being unaware of it, because you're not regularly confronted with adversity. What is the worst adversity you've faced in your life as a white male? Mine is maybe being denied a lucrative job. Boo fucking hoo for me.

[native_samples]

Look, the original article is about gender discrimination and you're displaying all the signs of the newly converted, so I'm not going to try too hard to argue with you about this. We all know there's many aspects of life where outcomes are disproportionate to racial/gender demographics, and that US police violence is one of them, with white women being given a famously light touch by police. In fact I once talked to a girl who openly boasted that she was always speeding and never got a ticket because she just started crying at the policeman (she was a very pretty girl so I could believe that this worked).

However your original claim was wrong and deserved to be called out. You said:

"When I get pulled over for speeding I don't have to worry about getting shot like black men do."

which is an absolute statement. In fact, you do have to worry about getting shot. I knew perfectly well you'd make a statistical argument in return, and also that it would be irrelevant given the strength of your original claim. There is no "white privilege" that means US police won't shoot you. They will do so if they feel the need, or perhaps even if they don't. The primary determinator of that is nonetheless your own actions, like whether you're armed or on drugs at the time.

But it also doesn't make sense to use this one isolated statistic in the context we're debating. After all, if you want to use getting shot by the police to define your hierarchy of privilege then the poorest European is vastly more privileged than the richest American will ever be, implying that Europeans should never be hired for jobs when an American could be hired instead. That wouldn't make sense.

Now, none of the above will land home with you. But I want you to consider something else. When you try to justify racism and sexism against white men like you are doing above, you're not just slapping yourself in the face, you're slapping the rest of us too. You're justifying us being denied jobs, including those of us who don't even live in America, because this ridiculous self-harming ideology gets exported via American HR departments, management and cultural production to the rest of the world. That's how you end up with people marching in London saying "hands up don't shoot" even though British police are almost always unarmed and the UK doesn't have a problem with police shootings.

By insisting that arbitrarily chosen differences in outcome with deep and complex socioeconomic causes are all reduced to "white man bad" you are deservedly opening yourself to harsh criticism, not merely because it's a racist and sexist viewpoint, but also because it directly harms the lives of those around you. By all means, stop applying for lucrative jobs if you feel so guilty about existing, but for goodness sake don't insist that those same harms befall the innocent.

[BigBubbleButt]

You actually make a lot of great points, and I agree with you up until this part:

> When you try to justify racism and sexism against white men like you are doing above, you're not just slapping yourself in the face, you're slapping the rest of us too.

Yes, I did choose an absolute example. You're not wrong about that. The part you're missing is that you sound tone-deaf. To quote a famous movie: "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole." Are you the guy that says "all lives matter" instead of "black lives matter?" It's like you don't get the bigger picture. Yes, the problems you point out are real - they're also trivial. And if you want to make a mountain out of a molehill I can't stop you, but you come across as an entitled jerk.

The point isn't white men are bad. The point is white men are clueless that others are suffering more than them and are only focusing on themselves when others need help more than they do. It's selfish. It's similar to billionaires complaining about taxes. You also conveniently avoided my question - what's the greatest adversity you've faced as a white male? Because that's the perspective you're lacking.

FWIW I actually appreciate you writing a long response. Anyway, agree to disagree.

[native_samples]

Well, when an argument devolves to "you're right but you're an asshole for being so" there isn't really anywhere else to go. I disagree that I'm an asshole, and yes I say things like "all lives matter". I do not agree that black people need some kind of global social movement promoting anti-white/male discrimination to help them, especially given that many of us live in places with no history of slavery and very small black populations. Even in the UK, only 3% of the population is black and in other parts of Europe it's far less still.

But even if we just focus on the USA, the situation and causes of some parts of the black population's outcomes are so complex that reducing it to "white people don't care enough" just doesn't make sense. White men don't make black men get divorced at a much higher rate, to pick just one example.

Greatest adversity I've faced "as a white male"? I ignored the question because it makes no sense to me. I don't know what it means, grammatically. I've faced all sorts of adversities and was a white male whilst those things were happening but that's not what you mean is it? How about being incorrectly accused of being racist? That's happened a couple of times. Whether that happened "as a white male" I cannot say, but I really doubt it would have happened had I been black. But then maybe it would have been. Who can know?

[BigBubbleButt]

You say I deserve harsh criticism but get upset when I call you out for being an asshole? Man you just keep victimizing yourself. It's obvious you're convinced you're right and nobody can change your mind. I understand your perspective just fine because I used to agree with you. Then I grew up. I suspect you will too some day.

[username90]

Men are more overrepresented as targets by police violence than black people are. So you just brought up a strong example of female privilege, and more specifically white female privilege. But certainly not a white male privilege.