This began as an answer to a question, and quickly became too long. Plus I don't want to keep saying it.
The question was basically 'is white privilege real'? My answer is mainly aimed at skeptics, though for people who want to argue its stronger than I suggest, you can comment away, but I think recognizing if it exists and what it means is a larger issue at my end of the cultural world. I'll also note that I'm going to answer from a western world perspective, and use U.S. examples to illustrate. With that:
Is white privilege real?
Sure, white privilege is real, though its not that big, and exists in north America primarily as part of 'not being black privilege'.
There are a lot of 'privileges' like this where it's not like a select group has an advantage that's wrong, as much as sometimes it's a lack of a disadvantage some other group faces.
Before focusing on white privilege, I'd note how often it overlaps with some other privileges:
- speaking standard American English is a 'privilege' vs. having a dialect or being an ESL speaker.
- growing up in the U.S. and being culturally attuned is a 'privilege' versus being unfamiliar with U.S. customs.
- without any question most of these privileges are small compared to being rich, being able bodied, being physically good looking, being smart.
So, how much advantage does a white guy have versus an Asian immigrant when applying for jobs, dealing with banks and police and so forth? I'd guess a noticeable amount. But much, much smaller (if any, my guess is a tiny amount) versus someone Asian who grew up in the U.S. and speaks and is culturally the same. And relative to other factors (wealth, education, etc.) almost unnoticeable.
But do black people have to deal with more racism than white people, in ways that materially impact them, above and beyond the fact that on average they have less family wealth, etc.? Yes. To point out three meaningful examples:
-as recently as 10 years ago, did we have incidents of major financial institutions offering black mortgage applicants high interest loans even though they had solid credit (at a rate far higher than white applicants) and later settling to agree wrongdoing. http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/30/news/companies/wells-fargo-memphis/index.htm
- there are a number of ways black students with equal ability and work seem to be more likely to fail out of school (including post secondary) than white students. One is that they seem to be expected to fail more, so less is done when they struggle. Another concerns stereotype threat: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/08/thin-ice-stereotype-threat-and-black-college-students/304663/
- the police. Black people are certainly stopped by the police for trivial matters far more than white people ("driving while black" is often referred to). It's hard to statistically show whether this is race driven, but I suspect it is, and anecdotally black friends seem to get pulled over far more. What we do have data on is sentencing, where in the U.S. for instance, black men tend to get 20% longer sentences (http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/black_prisoners_tend_to_serve_longer_sentences_than_whites).
For comparison, that's smaller than the gap between men and women, with men getting longer sentences than women. I find in discussions around police, people tend to say things like 'well if you just stay out of trouble'. That's nice. Think of your extended family. Think of your friends. Take all of those people together. How many of them ever drive over the speed limit? Have ever smoked pot? Been drunk in public? Perhaps some have even gotten in a fight, or thrown out of somewhere, or been in an altercation where the police arrived. The reality is, lots of people will have interactions with the police, and fairness in those interactions matters.
I could probably dig up advantages black people have over white people but they're going to be much less significant than the above (this situation is, to me, quite different than when we look at if 'male privilege' is a thing: men and women each have large and really material advantages in comparison with one another). For the most part it seems to be that people think I won't have good hops or dance well (correct in both cases but that's beside the point ...)
Marx: good at diagnosis, bad at cure?
As I noted at the beginning, there are a whole lot of different privileges that intersect with one another. The simple answer though is that while Marxism may be a terrible idea, Marx was probably right about one thing: Money and class are what matters most. Blacks and men may get it worse in court, but O.J. still walked. Coming from a poor family background matters more than skin color. But that doesn't mean skin doesn't create a real disadvantage for some.
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