Aaargh. Wading into it: I'm grateful for my "white privilege". I wish everyone had it.

[Californeeway]

60. either you want to educate people or you want to put them in their place.

Being an academic, I have no problem understanding the concept of "white privilege" and I see it as a reality as obvious as the sun is bright, but I worry that some people are using it as a cheap bludgeon to troll fellow posters and to shut down a more comprehensive discussion about the various forms of disadvantage that people are suffering because of race, sex, sexual orientation, class, education, physical disability, mental disability, geographic location, political affiliation, personal eccentricities -the issue is a very complicated and intellectually challenging one that many people are just really starting to come to grips with, to assume that the term "white privilege" is the only proper means of conveying the idea just shows a lack of imagination and a rigidness that would be more at home among the racist conservatives that we are trying to fight. There's something really elitist and misguided about insisting on confusing academic language when you are supposedly trying to educate a group of people who for the most part are poor, under-educated and who will quickly stop listening when they hear these confusing terms and misconstrued them as clueless insults. And I can't help but sense the presence of racial and sexual animus in the way that you are so blithely dismissive of White men's feelings, or that the idea of taking those feelings into consideration at all should be out of bounds - it sound pretty prejudiced to be honest. All of our feelings count. You have to take into account the feelings of the people you are trying to educate -it's basic human psychology, if you are trying to get someone to open up to your ideas, you don't use language that makes them feel like they are being accused of something heinous. It should be obvious that anyone in that situation becomes defensive and stops listening. If you are doing things that make people stop listening, and resisting using more inclusive, more easy to understand language, then you are just getting trapped by your sense of elitism and doing more harm than good. Pretending like some people's feelings count and others don't just doesn't jibe with sincere inclusiveness or my own personal definition of being a Liberal. Honestly, if people were really trying to be clear about the idea, they would say "Black Disadvantage" or "Minority Disadvantage" -it communicates the same idea without subtly implying that all White people are consciously doing something wrong and don't care. I fear that some people enjoy using the phrase precisely because it is so easily misconstrued and gives them an excuse to engage in condescension and elitism towards the people who are confused by it. And on an intellectual level, I just think the phrase fails at it's main objective, which is to educate people and we should be open to using other language that makes the idea more clear to those who need to be educated about it.