Why I don't think the phrase/argument white privilege is effective.

[nadinbrzezinski]

99. White privilege, was developed and adopted after Professor

Peggy McIntosh transferred her revolutionary studies in women studies to race. It is a whole, comprehensive, holistic concept that has income only as a very minor element of it. Income is an element of the concept only insofar as some groups are accepted by the greater society as white, and accorded the same benefits when they go up in the social income ladder. This includes Asians, to some extent, within a generation at most they will be "white." Irish, Italian, Eastern Europeans and Jews (who might be losing that status due to a rising antisemitism)

White privilege vs people of color is not just about blacks, but also about Hispanics and Latinos, and at this point immigrants from the mideast. It is about all the invisible benefits that you get for being white, even if you are poor.

Examples, if you are poor and white and have a criminal record, you have a far better chance to get a job than if you are black, or hispanic, or middle eastern with no record, and middle class even with a college degree.

You might have heard this just about African Americans, but the concept is far more expansive.

here is some reading, this piece is good as to the origins of it.

Peggy McIntosh, a women’s-studies scholar at Wellesley, started writing about it. In 1988, McIntosh wrote a paper called “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies,” which contained forty-six examples of white privilege. (No. 21: “I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.” No. 24: “I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the ‘person in charge,’ I will be facing a person of my race.”)

Here some on latinos and that empty knapsack

Identifying with an ethnic group, however, does not stop a population from being racialized – the process/project of becoming a race or being identified via a human classification system that uses several characteristics in order to construct a race. Although some Latinos identify as AfroLatino, others as Mestizo, White, there are still conversations and discussions of never truly fitting in a “White” box or a “Black” box and so on. As such, many people have identified Latinos as “Brown” – even though some Latinos think they are White.

While there is much scholarship in this area, there is very little of that information being trickled to the masses about how Latinos are racialized, the effects that a de facto binary racial classification system has on Latinos, and how Latinidad is completely dumbfounding race bloggers, writers, and researchers who continue to grapple with the important work of understanding the role of race and racism in the U.S.

And for muslims

The counterpoint to white privilege is the many ways in which those who do not appear to fit into these ideas of ‘whiteness’ are marginalized. People that are subject to assumptions of their abilities based on their appearances are ‘Othered‘, shifted into the peripheries and excluded from easily moving in spaces in our society.

What you are making is the classic mistake of forgetting that this concept is not about money, but the social construct of race. Income has a tad to do with it, since it allows people in the targeted community to become whiter as far as neighbors are concerned, since they are the good (insert minority here) that succeeded against all odds.

And yes, poor whites have it hard... we know this, but do poor whites fear when their children go out to the corner store to buy bread? How about fearing getting stopped over and over and over again by the police? Are their art forms targeted by the state? No. But all this is relevant to both black and brown people.

I understand why some folks do not want to have these discussions. I really do. But that does not mean people might be right. It is hight time we as a society actually face to the monster (slavery), because as long as do not, this shit will only change in how it expresses itself, and it will not change at a structural level.

For PoC this is about white supremacy, and that is also a social construct, but a direct consequence of slavery. After sitting down with plenty of my neighbors who are PoC and mostly listening, I get it, trust me, I get it. And it is not the easiest of conversations to have either.

Edit, had to fix my quotes...