All white people are racists...or "white fragility" ??

[Catholic_Lady]

"So if someone is born dirt poor to the point of not even having a bathroom in their home, they are still considered privileged  people just because they are white? I think the Obama girls are extremely privileged. They're not white. I'd be inclined to think privilege has more to do with social class, money, and coming from a good family, than it does skin color."   --  CL

I'm with you there CL.  I used to work in a high school that was in a VERY low-income demographic.  The school didn't get the funding it needed.  The kids - - - so many didn't have opportunities for all sorts of reasons:  one-parent home, parents out of work, neither parent graduated from high school (and so don't value education), they have to babysit younger siblings while parents work, they have to work at McD's in order to help parents pay the rent . . . and on and on.  It was terribly sad.  I saw a huge waste of great potential.  

Privilege is privilege.   HOWEVER . . . a greater percentage of African-Americans (and Latinos?) live in poverty. 

I was raised white, lower middle class.  And yet, I had access to more educational opportunities, more scholarships, etc., than most kids living in poorer conditions had. Yes, there is privilege.  And yes, a lot of people whose parents could afford to pay for extracurricular activities and pay for college degrees don't see that they had big opportunities that a large percentage of the population do not have.

Right, so the privilege comes from money, social class, and family. Not by color of skin, in and of itself, lol.

[abaris]

Right, so the privilege comes from money, social class, and family. Not by color of skin, in and of itself, lol.

And nevermind that black have been held down, for lack of a better definition, from 1865 till 1965. Give or take a few years.

[Dystopia]

Lol at all the butthurt over minorities asking white people to check their privelage.

Sure, teaching colorblindness is great, but that is not the reality minorities live in.  It's easy for white people to say we should teach colorblindness, because we live in a world where their skin color isn't an impediment.  The fact is that skin color still creates a huge divide in how people are treated and the opportunities available, and insisting we just teach colorblindness is ignoring the fact that minorities constantly face obstacles that white people do not.

That may not be the popular opinion here, but that's my $0.02.

In todays world, in first world nations like the US, UK, AU, Canada ext... opportunity to succeed is available to everyone IF they work hard and make good decisions. In fact, more so to minorities born into negative circumstance than white people born into negative circumstance (think scholarships only open to certain races/ethnicities of certain socioeconomic status). That may not be true in the developing world or unstable countries, but I don't think those places are the issue being discussed here. Unfortunately, some people make have to work harder than others, but skin color doesn't determine if you will be born poor, be put into foster care, have drug addict parents, be raised around violence, not have enough to eat, have to work harder in school because stuff doesn't come as easily for you as other students or whatever other shitty life circumstance makes life difficult. I think society does a great disservice to minorities brainwashing them into believing they are all victims by birth because they were born a certain color. It's simply not so in first world nations in todays world. I think half the problem is that minorities perceive EVERYTHING negative that happens to them being about their race/ethnicity when more often than not, it has NOTHING to do with what they look like. Growing up with the perception you will fail in life and be hated for no good reason in life is much more likely to make it so (self fulfilling prophecy) than being raised with the perception you CAN succeed, you CAN overcome negative circumstances and you are only a victim of your own poor choices if you fail in life. 

And yes, there is racism, but it's not exclusive to white and racists of any color/ethnicity are in the minority (as in, very few of them). Most of those people aren't good people in general and contribute little to society anyways. Why should we all focus so much on such a limited number of people deliberately stirring up so much trouble instead of ignoring them whilst all the intelligent contributors who don't care what everyone else looks like move forward?

Are you basically making a bunch of unfounded claims without providing evidence other than gut feelings and personal opinion - Why should we consider that reasonable? You open your reply saying one of the most ridiculous claims I have heard in 2015 - That opportunity to succeed is available to everyone.

[Catholic_Lady]

Right, so the privilege comes from money, social class, and family. Not by color of skin, in and of itself, lol.

And nevermind that black have been held down, for lack of a better definition, from 1865 till 1965. Give or take a few years.

I never said to never mind that. I am well aware that the above makes it so that there is a higher percentage of blacks that are poor than there are whites. But at the end of the day, it's not skin color, in and of itself, that makes someone privileged or not. If a black person has a lot of money, was born into a good family and a high social class, that person is privileged. If a white person was born dirt poor and from a broken family, that person is under privileged.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm surprised that minority status and average incomes hasn't been brought up, because that directly affects privilege as well. It is a fact that minorities typically earn less than whites for the same job, and to my eyes that indirect form of racism directly affects the relative perception of privilege and opportunity.

Disclosure: I'm a mostly-white member of a multiracial family.

[Rhondazvous]

Show me a person and I'll show you a racist. We're all wired that way, regardless of skin colour. Some simply manage to overcome those tribalist urges. That's my observation at least.

If we define racism as tribalism, then it is a human thing. It goes way back to when humans first began to think in terms of ownership and devised ways of determining the haves from the have nots. Even if, as a species, we adppt "colorblindness" as a social norm, we'll just find some other way to make that determination.

[Lemonvariable72]

Tell your adian friend to take a good look at their own culture. A good hard look. I can tell you that in many Asian culture is where we were 80 years ago at the very dawn of this current conversation. For example I like anime. One of my favorites recently is attack on titan. Anyone who has watched it knows that all of the characters are white except one Asian. Now there is a racist subtext that the potrayal of this one Asian as a super soldier is racist in and of itself but I think that under normal circumstances would be reading into things too much. However they are now making a live action movie. With all Asian actors, likely in white face, while the movie is actually set in southern Germany. Forgive me if I instantly think of Charlie Chan.

[brewer]

I'll just take the blanket condemnation, I'm a racist, and move on with my life.

One more point, don't confuse cultural ignorance (which I admit I have/had and so do my ex Nippon and Hispanic partners) with racism. It's only racist if the behavior continues after the education.

[Rhondazvous]

It's stupid to tell white people to check their privilege and say "white people do such and such a thing" When theirs millions and millions of white people on earth, we don't have a uniformed gang and we aren't all privileged.

But that's the thing.  We are all privelaged when it comes to our skin color.  A white person may grow up in a life we wouldn't consider privelaged, like growing up in poverty, but they are privelaged in the sense that they are in a better position to overcome their adversities compared to a black person growing up in the exact same scenario.  That's the kind of stuff we need to be aware of.

We have to understand where that privilege came from. There was a time when White indentured servants and Black slaves saw that they were in the same boat and oppressed by the same PTB. They joined forces. Said PTB did not like this so they used the tried and true divide and conquer—reminding the whites that they are white and giving them privileges to make them feel superior to the Blacks who lacked the power to give them anything in exchange for their allegiance.

There is a natural affinity between Black and White people when they're left alone. But whenever the big boys fuck up the economy, they find it convenient to take the heat o off themselves by pointing to the illegal alien or the welfare queen as the source of the problem.

[paulpablo]

I get that some people's approach to this is wrong, and much of what people say on race is phrased poorly. I think, however, focusing on the phrasing is missing the forrest for the trees, and if we choose to focus on that instead, we will fail to address the underlying problems at hand.

The only thing that matters is the phrasing and the wording of the article.  If you want people to try to understand and acknowledge a topic then don't write a full article of bullshit and poorly worded paragraphs about it accusing the people you're trying to communicate with of violence, murder and arrogance.
He's writing an article about something that is already well known, it's been a popular hashtag for a while now among others.  #crimingwhilewhite #whiteprivilage and so on.
If you're going to write an article about an already well known topic the only thing that matters is your own personal wording and phrasing of how you present the topic.
It isn't his role to be the first person to tell people about this because most western white people with the internet already know, so what he's doing is basically taking a topic people already know about then taking a shit on it by writing his own article on it while giving out incorrect statements that are poorly phrased while passing them off as a fact.
I don't know how any white person reading this can't feel annoyed that you're basically being told because you're white you're responsible for a lot of pain and suffering, you act violent towards, kill and fire these "people of colour" from their jobs if they disagree with you.  And I don't know how you can't feel like the guy is being condescending if you're black and reading the article.
And don't argue with this person about race either, you don't even have a PHd on the topic which means the subject isn't up for debate.  He clearly says this in the last few paragraphs.