General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Maybe we need a DU "white persons' group". [View all]TorchTheWitch
(11,065 posts)by calling it "racism" or "racial discrimination" instead of using a useless, divisive and alienating new "white privilege" term that very clearly has done nothing but spawn hundreds of posts of people screaming at each other comparing everyone's various privileges and non-privileges they deal with in various situations while forgetting all about talking about the very real problem of racism.
Seems to me the term "racism" or "racial discrimination" always worked out just fine here before (not to mention anywhere else we've been when the subject is discussed), and people of all hues discussed the very real problem of racism without anyone's hair going up in flames or getting totally off the subject of the very real problem of racism by instead making up lists of everyone's various privileges and non-privileges and mapping them onto any random situation.
Here's what I learned about the term "white privilege". It's bogus. And it is because though racism is a very real problem no white person is always going to be privileged over every person of color in every situation because there's a HUGE list of other privileges or non-privileges both of those people have that are going to make one more fortunate than the other depending on every single different situation and person and how much is known about them. I've been reading that 'well, all other things being equal other than race the person of color is the non-privileged one every time.' Really? You'd have to be dense as a huge ball of lead to believe that and for two reasons:
1) There ARE no two people of different races where everything else is going to be equal - EVER - because we're all extremely individual people with a plethora of both privileges and non-privileges depending upon the situation, and how much is known about us, AND...
2) There are numerous situations where being a person of color IS the one privileged by their race as in many situations where the white person is the one who is of the minority race. And there likely isn't a white person here who hasn't been in such a situation at least once in their life and learned first hand what it was like to be discriminated against because of their race. And believe it or not us white folk that have been in such situations DO have something positive to contribute about racism being a very real problem because of those situations teaching us what it FEELS like to be discriminated against for no other reason than the color of their skin.
Now, here's and idea: how about we dump this useless "white privilege" term that is CLEARLY not working to further the cause of eradicating racism much less even being able to get into that discussion at ALL and get back to discussing the very real problem of racism by talking about the very real problem of racism.