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ok - i and other non american people REALLY have a problem with this concept of privilege - because im sorry - shouldn't privilege be EXTENDED not removed?
you are not going to convince me that if in a society some people have more privilege than others they have to renounce it. the aim is always to extend it.
this might just be the european way, but, for example, if i hold open a door for a lady i WILL NOT EVER buy this stuff about how i'm treating her as inferior. if someone gets treated with extra politeness and sensitivity then that's a rare example of humanity being civilized and not an expression of preferential bias that in itself somehow takes anything away from someone who doesn't get the same deference.
also - im sorry but i DO NOT see myself as having to engage in a permanent struggle for the sake of anti racism. i am not going to treat people badly because of their race. when race comes into my life i am going to try and be blind to it, i am going to be sensitive enough not to use douchey words by default. i'm on the side of whatever legislation or activism puts an end to racial discrimination.
but i am not going to live in a permanent state of self hatred and guilt about it. because - sometimes the oppressed races are in the wrong. not because of their skin colour, but because they or other people can use anti racism to frame certain things in ways that play off our natural revulsion at racism. also because they're human and can be just in the wrong like all other humans can.
also, i am not going to blindly accept that everything presented to me as racist is necessarily so. i'm always going to try and look at what the real motivating factors are - which is almost always money.
the way you frame it there's an evil half invisible force of (white) oppressors who somehow always makes decisions based on race, not economics or self interest or practicality.
in every case where it IS down to race - then im with you
but i dont see me being white as a problem. you do, but you dont expect blacks to see their blackness as a problem.
i dont necessarily believe being "white" means much more than a certain line of ancestry and a certain pigmentation of skin. it doesnt mean im born in sin - sorry - racism.
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