Is it productive to repeatedly remind white people of how privileged they are?

[AverageJoe90]

62. To be truthful, although there are *usually* good intentions in mind.....

.....The sad truth is, it doesn't always do any good. The biggest problem, really, is messaging. For example, the term "white privilege", at least as it was originally coined(though it is, sadly, now regularly abused, at least in some circles.), was a contronym, as it were: using "privilege" to actually describe the lack of social privileges that People of Color enjoy in comparison to "white" folks in this country; also, it can be argued that inn in pre-Mandela era South Africa, it took on a more literal meaning there because whites were not the majority and actually did enjoy privileges above the norm, so However, though, this is also one of the problems that the (mostly American) creators of the term never did address; i.e. that "whiteness" happens to be the "norm", as it were, in not just the U.S., but most of the rest of the West as well.

And herein lies the problem: when most people think of privilege, they think of enjoying life above the norm; like, for example, a preppy kid from Yale or Harvard or the son of an Alabama business owner would indeed have more advantages in life than a middle-class Italian-American professional from Los Angeles or a Jewish factory worker in Cleveland. They don't think of the norm itself.....

And class happens to play a major role as well, one that's at least just as important, or maybe even more so these days, than race. And unfortunately, all too often, for all the talk of intersectionality, class still doesn't quite get brought up as much, at least not in certain circles anyway.

If we want to beat the problems that face us all, we have to try to focus on all problems, including race, but everything else as well. Just my two cents, so take it as you will.