Why I don't like the term "white privilege"

[kjones]

176. None of them really seem to discuss racism itself.

Marx gives all discussion of slavery the treatment of
"economic system."

"The whole movement was and is based, as one sees, on the slave question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves within the existing slave states should be emancipated outright or not, but whether the twenty million free men of the North should submit any longer to an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx//works/1861/10/25.htm)

In fact, he even seems generally more concerned the plight of the average poor white southerner
than slaves (as true as the problems of poor whites may have been under the systems of slavery).

"the number of actual slaveholders in the South of the Union does not amount to more than three hundred thousand, a narrow oligarchy that is confronted with many millions of so-called poor whites, whose numbers have been constantly growing through concentration of landed property and whose condition is only to be compared with that of the Roman plebeians in the period of Rome's extreme decline."


It's not that he ignores race or racism, but that he gives primary focus to economics/production and such, and treats
racism as a symptom. Or that's what it seems like.

Both those quotes are taken from the first piece listed, but I did look through all of them, it just happened those quotes were in there. Most of the other ones are more like news pieces or discuss politics. There is an interesting one in there where he contrasts European (I think all British aristocrats) concern with Union treatment of New Orleans women with British aristocratic lack of concern for treatment of poor women in Britain and Ireland itself.

Again, may have missed, omitted, misinterpreted etc. I'm interested in anything else as well. I'm just happy to actually
be having a conversation on DU again.