Society & Politics

White privilege debunked once and for all: reasons why the "white privilege" concept is not a valid social analysis.

In my second glorious Take, I will debunk the entire liberal concept of "white privilege". Although it would not be an easy reading, I can assure you: this will be the BEST article that you will ever read about "white privilege".

So, without further ado, here we go.

1. What it is in theory?

According to Peggy McIntosh, it should encourages individuals to reflect on and recognize their own unearned advantages and disadvantages as parts of immense and overlapping systems of power.

We can notice that the whole concept is based on a very judgmental, negative and subjective premises towards white people. Her idea is basically a secularized notion of religious confession mixed with the assumption that ordinary people really can control the social reality because they are supposedly part of a "system of power" (which is not real). Does it help to improve the living standards in POC communities? Does it promotes a peaceful and harmonious coexisting between whites and POC? Or does it divides the society and make white people feeling guilty about the accident of their own birth?

The concept of "white privilege" is based only in the political rhetoric and some biased sociology (the Whiteness Studies and the Critical Race Theory). It excludes all of the scientific fields which are indispensable (Psychology and, especially, the Evolutionary Psychology) for the better understanding of what is the "privilege" of being part of a majority. In fact, the very liberal concept of "white privilege" is so subjective that no one can explain what it really means. Some people even go so far as to saying that "only POC can know what is the white privilege".

As far as I know, being a white person doesn't prevent anyone from being able to think and from being able to have reasoned perspectives on things...

2. The origins of the concept: flawed at the very beginning.

The term "white privilege" was first recorded in the 60s, in the works of Theodore W. Allen, a communist activist who published articles on the concept of white skin privilege for all classes of whis. In his works, he theorized an alleged relation of the white working class to white supremacy. He explored this in "White Blindspot" and “Can White Workers/Radicals Be Radicalized?" (1), co-authored with Noel Ignatiev, who was the creator of the Critical Race Theory concept and co-founder of a journal named Race Traitor (2), the main influence of both authors was the works of another communist activist, W. E. Du Bois (3). Noel Ignatiev even confessed his real intentions: "'Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as "the white race" is destroyed—not "deconstructed" but destroyed". (4)

The internal logic of the "white privilege" concept is based on the disappointment of its authors that the bulk of the white working class was supposedly "corrupted by relative prosperity, and ineradicable racism" which they called "white skin privilege" (5), they hoped that in the counterculture, made up of disaffected young people, they might find a constituency capable of eventually empowering their revolutionary project. In another words: the marxists failed to co-opting the working-class for the revolution and they realized they should try a new strategy: the subjective "identities" struggles nearly replaced the class-struggle as the "motor of history" in their revolutionary practice.

The label was also intended discipline the members of their extreme left-wing revolutionaries groups like the Weather Underground Organization, which used the term "white skin privilege" as a putdown of less radical activists. The attack implied that you weren't fit for revolutionary struggle against global imperialism and white supremacy because you hadn't owned up to, and given up, your racial advantages. For radical members, this only could be accomplished through excruciating criticism/self-criticism sessions, a lesson taken from the Maoist Cultural Revolution.

As Angela Nagle writes in Current Affairs:

"The Weathermen used a style of 'criticism-self-criticism' sessions, also called 'Weatherfries', which were described by the author of Bringing the War Home as 'the most harrowing aspect of life within the collective'. Based on Maoist struggle sessions, these were used to root out subconscious racism and sexism within their own psyches. Individuals were reportedly hazed for up to twelve hours without a break until the white radicals confessed their deep white supremacism, homophobia and misogyny to their fellow white radicals thus achieving catharsis through their own admission of guilt". (6)

3. How did this become so popular?

However, was Peggy McIntosh, a Harvard Gender Studies professor, whom is credited with popularizing the term "white privilege" (7). That concept supposedly is meant to be an analysis of the unearned assets that White people are able to accrue simply by being White.

White privilege, in McIntosh’s analysis, is generally invisible to White people, and the purpose of her works is supposedly to make these manifestations of racism visible. This is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. An example: I will accuse someone of doing something wrong and then complete: "I'm right because he will deny doing that". Obvious... It can be convincing to some peopke, but doesn't prove anything because it is the development of a fallacy.

Her essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and "Some Notes for Facilitators" (1989) is highly based on a SUBJECTIVE NATURE

And just because of that, her postulates can't lead to conclusive answers, there's no methodology at all. During the Obama era the concept marked its transition from academia to more mainstream prominence, especially after the BLM emergence.

As Walter Williams have said: "I wonder how one goes about determining whether a person is privileged". (9)

4. The distortions factory.

Every time you confront a "white privilege" believer, you will be responded with:

A. Emotional outbursts;

B. Accusations, especially of supposedly being "racist";

C. All kinds of fallacies;

D. Distortions and exaggerations.

Let's talk about that last one. I can start with one example:

"Schools focus on the history that supremely concerned with and glorifies white people". This is an utterly distortion. First of all, the American schoold focus obviously on American history, what is my right as a Hungarian man to demand them to focus on teaching Hungarian history? Aren't Hungarian-Americans "worthy" of it as an ethnic minority? See how the Oppression Olympics can escalate with a distorted and exaggerated rhetoric?

"POC have 8.921% more chances of being shot by police".

Be careful with statistical claims, oftentimes "statistics is the art of lying with numbers". Like I've just made up that number to give credibility to the claim, the things are not so different with "social justice" activists practices.

A food for thought: (10) and this book (11)

The same "white privilege" rhetoric, with the same elements, is being used in countries like Sweden and Ireland, these countries never had Jim Crowe Laws. The education system there doesn’t have any of the alleged built in institutional racial biases, yet the SAME concept about white privilege is being pushed there.

5. Why are the debates towards "white privilege" so counterproductive?

Because the "white privilege" believers fail to address the real problems faced by individuals and end up replacing the debates with subjective demands and subjective thoughts. I don't deny that there are social phenomena that can be perceived as "white privilege". I just think social sciences should be an empirical subject, not an article of faith or political propaganda for radicals.

White privilege believers tend to ignoring the epidemic of impoverishment found in the white working class, for example. These unprivileged white people live desperately, with widespread alcoholism, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and unemployment. Their children can only dream of a college education. How liberals are treating this social reality? As a non-issue, it doesn't provokes media outbursts and they can't gain political profit.

About the "mass incarceration" of POC in USA, I recommend reading the works of Thomas Sowell, here a little example:

"We are told that such riots are a result of black poverty and white racism. But in fact -- for those who still have some respect for facts -- black poverty was far worse, and white racism was far worse, prior to 1960. But violent crime within black ghettos was far less". (12)

During the Civil Rights movement, the culture of the black community changed for the worse, part of which a result of the growth of the welfare state. The economic incentives offered by welfare laws for the avoidance of marriage and two-parent families had disastrous consequences. While the majority of black children grew up in two-parent families prior to the 1960s, 72 percent of black children today grow up in single-parent homes. How is this the fault of white people?

Shouldn't everyone be discussing about possible solutions to prevent the outbreak of broken families and promote self-sufficiency in poor communities. Work on that basis can definirely help POC to gain social trust, instead of pointing fingers to whites.

6. Why is that theory being used as a political weapon? What is the concept in reality?

The very concept of "white privilege" was created as an extension of the class struggle, by the radical left inspired by the Maoist Cultural Revolution, and one of its purposes was shaming and discipline the less radical members of communist groups in the 60s.
How wouldn't be the "white privilege" theory used as a political weapon again?

We can see the shaming purposes, the effects of psychologic abuse, noticeably guilt, in young people submitted to indoctrination on "white privilege awareness". The concept was intended to shut down the "less radicals" members of some extreme leftist groups at first. Now it's used to radicalize the whole society and to shut down the critique of radical views and policies. The nature of the concept is a moral blackmail tactic that now is turned into a mainstream ideology.


The typical response of a "white privilege" believer when he/she sees people disagreeing with the concept is: ""Racists Runs on Denying the Existence of White Privilege". Isn't that a kind of power play? The idea of “white privilege” still comes across as an accusation, whether it is meant that way or not. It suggests that you as a white person are harboring racism deep within you, a kind of original sin.

7. There is such thing like "Whiteness"?

No. White people are too much diverse to be categorized under an umbrella-term that ignores all the differences between the subgroups (historic background, average income, social class, customs, values, languages, to name but a few) and even their mutual rivalries. Example: White Americans x White Latinos, White Protestants x White Catholics, Britons x Poles, Hungarians x Romanians, Serbs x Bosniaks, Croats x Serbs, German x Poles and everyone x Russians. Racial similarity per se, as asocial unifying element, tends to be dwarfed by cultural differences and historic rivalries.

The major culture is not based by the skin color per se. A white person can be discriminated in a white country just for being from a different cultural background. Example: a brit employer can reject a job application from a polish candidate and...they are both white. That shows how much the "white privilege" theory is absurd.

For example, did you know that during World War II, Italian-Americans who were believed to be loyal to Italy were put in internment camps in the U.S.? Another example, given by the professor Ed Falco, "The largest mass lynching in U.S. history took place in New Orleans in 1891 – and it wasn't African-Americans who were lynched[.] ... It was Italian-Americans. (13)

"After nine Italians were tried and found not guilty of murdering New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy, a mob dragged them from jail, along with two other Italians being held on unrelated charges, and lynched them all."

As far as I know, Italians are white. How could a system based on "white privilege" be that inhumane hell for them?

8. How "white privilege" believers explain the fact that some POC outperform whites in western countries?

Some minorities (East-Asians, Indians and Arabs) are doing very well in Western countries, even to the point of outperforming the white majority on living standards and social trust. And trust is fundamental in a capitalist society, we can understand it better if we read a book named "La société de confiance. Essai sur les origines et la nature du développement", by Alain de Peyrefitte, a french scholar member of tbe Académie Française. Social trust and nuclear families are the best predictor of success in capitalist economies.

Just compare the incarceration rates of American ethnicities, I recommend reading this article:

"If the belief that the American criminal justice system is racist towards minorities is true, it should be expected that Asian-Americans among other racial and ethnic groups would be over-represented in the incarcerated population just as blacks and Hispanics are. However, this assertion is found to be false...


... Statistics regarding the incarceration rates of Asian-Americans in the United States prove to be in sharp contrast to those for other racial minorities in the country. The drastic over-representation of blacks and Hispanics in incarcerated populations has led many advocates for criminal justice reform to denounce it as biased or even outright racist. The under-representation of Asian-Americans, however, threatens the veracity of this claim, and points to other factors such as dual-headed households and higher income that may contribute to the current unbalanced racial demographics". (14)

Some liberals claim that Asian Americans and Indians benefit themselves from "white privilege". The very idea and the core of the white privilege theory (a system built on the white supremacy) are mutually exclusive. Only a large "dose" of cognitive dissonance can justify why some people believe in the two claims at the same time.

9. Delusions of a People Under Siege

The "white liberal guilt" can be compared to the Battered Child Syndrome, that is characterised by the tendency of victims of psychological abuse to blame themselves. They are usually convinced that if they would only behave better, their parents would cease to beat them, without knowing that they will continue to be beaten anyway because it is their parents who have a problem and not they.


In the case of white guilty people, they blame themselves and other whites for social realities that no one can control, like racism and social inequalities. And they are convinced that by dooming themselves psychologically to lives of self-abnegation and pity parties they would heal the society. No one person have control of the social reality, the very idea of "white supremacy" is absurd because the majority of whites do not have access to intitutional power.

Those segments of White liberals commonly embrace the anti-White bias around them, even to the point of indulging every kind of bad behaviour from POC (just an example: group of black youth tortured a mentally disabled boy because he is white? Not racism, nor it was a hate crime, according to white liberals). And they often insist they are being virtuous by doing so. This behaviour is no less delusional than that of abused children who blame themselves for the abuse they experience.

10. "He who humbleth himself wishes to be exalted." (F. Nietzsche)

Publicly declaring your "sins" can be a very effective tool to gain more power and political validation. It makes you appearing be a better person than those who have not confessed them. These performances are based on a pretence "moral superiority" that can be very convincing to some people, and it can be a weapon to silence critique because it supposedly would come from people who are less morally worthy for having been less forthcoming in their commitment with the alleged "anti-racist" moral duty.

But beneath the performance of awareness and self-criticism may lie something thoroughly more fishy and self-interested disguised as a virtue.

11. Why is it dangerous?

And finally, to paraphrase Jordan Peterson:

"The idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. And it's not because white people aren't privileged. We have all sorts of privileges, and most people have privileges of all sorts, and you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them. But the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group - there is absolutely nothing that's more racist than that. It's absolutely abhorrent. If you really want to know more about that sort of thing, you should read about the Kulaks in the Soviet Union in the 1920's. They were farmers who were very productive. They were the most productive element of the agricultural strata in Russia. And they were virtually all killed, raped, and robbed by the collectivists who insisted that because they showed signs of wealth, they were criminals and robbers. One of the consequences of the prosecution of the Kulaks was the death of six million Ukrainians from a famine in the 1930's. The idea of collectively held guilt at the level of the individual as a legal or philosophical principle is dangerous. It's precisely this sort of danger that people who are really looking for trouble would push. Just a cursory glance at 20th century history should teach anyone who wants to know exactly how unacceptable that is".

12. Why does "white privilege" seems to be real?

Besides being pushed by media, liberal political elites and the academia, there is a real social phenomenon that can be mistaken for "white privilege": the in-group favoritism. This is a trend observed in all kinds of perceived group organization and is characterised by a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and that are just a few examples (15). This subject is too much complex and it would requires a new Take to be better addressed. Just to point out a few examples of how it works:

A. UK have a "white" majority. Eastern Europeans are white, but they face discrimination in briton lands. Why? Because although Poles are whites, they are outsiders, they don't belong to the British culture. And even being a white British is not a bid deal anymore. (16)

2. The USA case. The majority of latinos are white (of Iberian descent), but they also face discrimination in America. Why? White Latinos are still an "out-group".

3. (It can be any minority either) Jews can be only 1% of the demographics of a country. But in their communities, they tend to perceive themselves as the "standard" (as "majority"), then the "outsiders" will face the same problems with jobs and personal relations. They can be 1% of the country population, but they are 80~90% in their communities.

Now you have a machine gun of facts, ho, ho, ho.

You can be outnumbered by liberals arguments, but never outgunned.

From Hungary, with love!

White privilege debunked once and for all: reasons why the
White privilege debunked once and for all: reasons why the "white privilege" concept is not a valid social analysis.
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