This thread began with a specific incident that illustrates how blacks in this country face continuing discrimination that has real consequences for their lives. The argument since then seems to boil down to a discussion of whether blacks are afforded other advantages, with the implication that these supposed advantages offset the disadvantages caused by racial discrimination.
White privilege is another way of saying discrimination against minorities, and blacks face the worst of it in this country. I don’t think that’s a controversial statement, although Native Americans may disagree, and they may have a point. Discrimination rears its head in cases like the Starbucks incident and in more significant cases, like differences in hiring rates and unequal enforcement of laws and sentencing. ‘Driving while black’ is a thing; ‘driving while white’ isn’t. Sentencing disparities based on race are well documented, and have large and long-lasting effects on peoples’ lives. I knew an old fella that owned a business in Austin and hired hundreds of people over the more than 30 years he ran it, not one of them black even though there were plenty of blacks qualified for those jobs. Maybe you can say those two guys in the Starbucks got lucky because they are still alive; that’s probably an exaggeration, but it’s not a huge one. We’ve seen plenty of Bernard incidents where similar situations ended up being escalated to the point where someone got shot. Real estate redlining is an actual problem. The list goes on.
The point is, policy solutions may help, but they won’t solve the problem (and of course there will be those that argue against any policy solutions anyway; affirmative action is all but dead because reverse racism is a handy buzzword). The only thing that will really solve the problem completely is cultural change, so that people don’t learn racial prejudice in the first place. The first step toward that, it seems to me, is for people to at least acknowledge that discrimination exists. And that means that privilege exists. I’m white, and it is clear to me that I’ve had lots of advantages because of my skin color. I’m not proud of it, nor am I ashamed of it; it’s just a fact. I really don’t see what’s so hard about acknowledging that fact when it’s staring you in the face: if you’re white in the US, you have a number of advantages over minorities right out of the gate. Can anyone explain to me why that’s so hard to admit? Chrispy? Spanky? Johnny? Anyone?