Talk:White privilege

Discrimination

I removed "Some indigenous Australians report incidents of discrimination by shopkeepers and real estate agents. " from the Australia section, as it does not address privilege in the way the concept is elucidated in the article. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:57, 23 June 2014 (UTC).

Theory

White Privilege is a Theory, not simply a term. It is also a racist theory singling out a specific race for scrutiny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.253.16.125 (talk) 07:07, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

This critical claim would need sources, which I think could be found and probably should have a place in the article. Jojalozzo 17:00, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the IP's first sentence, and the article should reflect this; however, the second asserts a criticism of the theory that I think the article already covers in due weight to RS on the subject. AgentOrangeTabby (talk) 01:04, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

It's not a racist theory. Scholars generally agree that racism targets an oppressed minority group.Meremermar (talk) 09:05, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Meremermar. That said, I do think the first sentence would read better if it said, "White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a THEORETICAL term for societal privileges that benefit white people beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances." I only suggest this because, in fact, there's such robust evidence for the existence of white privilege, and its manifestations are so insidiously widespread, that WP isn't just a "word" or "concept" or "term" or "slang" or even "hypothesis," but a veritable, well-developed, self-consistent social science theory, with all the weight & authority that "theory" implies among thoughtful people. Because no sociologist, social psychologist, or anthropologist that I can find anyway disputes the existence of WP within many Western societies, I think adding the term "theoretical" better reflects the considerable volume & quality of thought supporting it, while preparing readers to anticipate aspects of WP that are complex & not immediately self-evident. It probably depends upon readers' personal epistemology, but to me anyway, adding the term "theoretical" ADDS weight to the term, rather than vitiating it. My 2 cents anyway. AgentOrangeTabby (talk) 05:25, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

White privilege is certainly not empirically proven. There are other hypotheses for racial disparities. Therefore, the first sentence of the entry should reflect that this idea is nothing more than an theory. To maintain objectivity at all times on Wikipedia we need to distinguish between scientific truths and theories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.7.36.191 (talk) 14:33, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

"The term white privilege (or white skin privilege) is an alleged phenomenon..." makes little sense. Terms aren't alleged phenomena. "White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a term for societal privileges..." is correct as that's how the term is used. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:36, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

To IP 209: The scientific community expresses "truths" in terms of theories; any distinctions between "theory" and "truth" exist only in your misunderstanding of both. 166.216.165.45 (talk) 19:46, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Criticism?

And no critique of the concept that sounds like a conspiracy theory to a normal person? --197.228.5.205 (talk) 18:52, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Separate sections for criticism is discouraged by style guides. See Wikipedia:Criticism#Approaches_to_presenting_criticism. However, there is White_privilege#Limitations and other critiques throughout the article. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 19:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Conspiracy theories are, by definition, unproven. White privilege is academically proven to be real. There's no room for fringe critique per WP:UNDUE.Meremermar (talk) 09:08, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I would dispute that it is academically 'proven' - A Canadian Toker (talk) 16:07, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Concepts like this are never "academically proven". You can present evidence that supports your hypothesis, but that hypothesis, by definition, is still open to dispute. This is not like a mathematical proof. Arzel (talk) 17:35, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Please use talk pages to discuss improvements to the article not to share opinions on the topic

As someone who subjectively finds this term offensive (I find it literally offends me, and then I'm more offended when people presume to explain why that would be, but enough about me), I see it as conflating two ideas. First, with those social groups that you happen to accept, clearly you can point out statistical advantages and disadvantages of one versus another. So for each race, sex, nationality, etc., if you can identify an "advantage" then you can assess how common it is among each group. For whites in America (or everywhere?) it's thought that there is more advantage on average than other racial groups (I could say that this is obvious, and practically speaking it is, but the truth is that even at its strongest it is only as objective as the social groups themselves and the general concept of life "advantage"). Of course, the most obvious problem with this first part is that it disregards the individual. Second, there's the idea that white skin color gets people certain inherent advantages, no matter how bad they may otherwise have it. But what if they don't care about those things very much at all, or even want this "privilege"? These two ideas are different, but they seem to be kind of lumped together with all of this with the apparent result that all advantages of all white people are relevant, and no white person can claim to be exempt. To say it's all objectively proven, in my view, is to gloss what is obviously at heart subjective and, perhaps intentionally, provocative. I believe the idea that groups are subject to pernicious discrimination, especially some racial minorities, is beyond mainstream criticism. The focus on "white privilege" is different, but not because anyone thinks it can be disproved. There is easily found mainstream criticism of the concept that "white privilege" is an objective, disinterested way to talk about these issues. 24.18.98.101 (talk) 05:22, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I struggled to follow what seemed like key components of your various points, and as a result can't specifically answer them. That said, the theory clearly upsets you. I suspect that what confuses many similarly upset editors on these talk pages is the perception that WP is somehow an individually willful phenomenon, when it's exactly NOT that. Individuals don't even need to be aware of - much less condone or condemn - WP to either benefit from or suffer its effects. It's a SYSTEMIC phenomenon, that is, embedded within the very structures of culture, itself.

Culture by definition, is a collective - not individual - artifact, so WP theorists aren't calling any individual white person anything, except for maybe blissfully ignorant of their privileges at best & complicit in them at worst. All this to say that one needn't be aware of - much less responsible for - privileges in order to benefit from them, so relax. There is no WP theory corollary or condition that individual white people must be racist for the theory to be generally valid.

Regarding your last statement, can you provide any RS's that cite notable social science scholars who dispute the theory's validity?AgentOrangeTabby (talk) 07:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

If there's an equal playing field and whites outperform blacks in some areas then maybe it's biological? Why does it always have to be "white privilege"? 174.26.132.162 (talk) 19:23, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Because race is not biological like that. It's based on skin color in the US. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 19:31, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

The IP's post seems to be more appropriate on a forum. It's an argument bout the subject. Dougweller (talk) 20:58, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

First, "assuming" an equal playing field is among the largest sources of bias in social science research. Second, whenever I read assertions like yours, my first instinct is to check how such phenomenon as "performance" is both measured & defined, since those are the second & third leading sources of research bias. Finally, one has to ask, are the sample groups representative of ALL "whites" and of ALL of a particular minority? How exactly do we define & distinguish the groups? If you think such concepts are simply defined by skin "color," consult a public health researcher, who will quickly tell you that race is a socio-political - NOT biological - construct, and therefore tricky to classify, much less in the binary. Otherwise, DWeller's right, and I'll refrain from further comment. AgentOrangeTabby (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

This is much more than "skin color". Races differ on a very large number of traits such as differences regarding genetic susceptibility to diseases and differences in psychological traits. Races differ in the extent and manner in which the fine subcutaneous muscles of the lips and cheeks have become differentiated from the parent mammalian muscle body; in the chemical composition of hair and of bodily secretions, including milk; in the ways in which different muscles are attached to bones; in the sizes and secretion rates of different endocrines; in certain details of the nervous system, as, for example, how far down in the lumbar vertebrae the neural canal extends; and in the capacity of individuals to tolerate crowding and stress. Yet despite all this, human racial variation is still marked by obvious differences in skeletal morphology, hair and facial features, as well by blood groups and DNA fingerprints. 71.223.124.232 (talk) 15:45, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

The only problem with relying on such "biological" qualities as categorical markers is because they manifest continuously across the genome, co-vary inconsistently, and are as arguably familial & geographic as "racial." In fact, humans invented the concept of "race" in order to explain such visible, inheritable variations among humans. While this sloppy taxonomy enables us to practically define & discriminate among groups of people, biologists simply don't recognize such arbitrary inclusion/exclusion criteria. They're SOCIO-POLITICALLY defined. One could make the same observations you did about certain Semitic or Eastern European facial features, or about the fair hair of Scandinavians, or the ruddy complexions of Brits...at what point do such similarities define those sharing them as a distinct "race"? What's the threshold? Must the relevent features be visible, or also functional? Must they manifest in phenotype, or just genotype? Such questions may CONCERN biological characteristics, but they're SOCIO-POLITICALLY motivated. There's just no biological import to such questions nor to their answers so long as we all can still mate, mix & match. So good try, but your argument is specious. AgentOrangeTabby (talk) 00:38, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Nothing is ever academically "proven." For a while, phrenology was academically "proven." This article is nonsense, and subsequent efforts to silence discussion prove the limited basis of fact this article rests on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.9.254.171 (talk) 06:16, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

"Proven" is a poor choice of words for a discussion about what should be included in Wikipedia, but I will say that regardless of what definition of proof we use, phrenology was never so. Even at the height of its popularity it had a lot of critics. I digress. The question here is only this: what do reliable sources say about white privilege? See WP:RS for what qualifies as a reliable source -- in this case it's going to be largely academic, but certainly not entirely. And if you look across all of those reliable sources there emerges a pretty clear consensus that there exists some sense of "white privilege," even if not everybody agrees with what that extends to and the extent to which causation can be asserted. --— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:13, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the American Mosaic Project

Hello, I'm not a Wiki-user so hopefully I'm doing this right. I was checking to see if any polls had been conducted on acceptance of the white privilege concept amongst the US population, and came across the link to the Mosaic Project in this article. The article uses this wording:

"Sociologists in the American Mosaic Project report widespread belief in the United States that "prejudice and discrimination [in favor of whites] create a form of white privilege." According to their 2003 poll this view was affirmed by 59% of white respondents, 83% of Blacks, and 84% of Hispanics."

To me, the use of quotations there heavily implies this was the wording that was used on the poll. However, per that reference: "63% of people asked believed that prejudice and discrimination in favor of whites is important in explaining white advantage. Said another way, two-thirds of respondents see a form of white privilege and believe prejudice and discrimination play an important role in benefiting whites."

While the wording of the question isn't actually provided anywhere, the use of "said another way" implies that the former sentence was almost certainly closer to the wording. This may seem like a minor point but I think it's a bit misleading; even if the recognition of prejudice/discrimination plays into the concept of white privilege, it seems more than reasonable to assume the usage of the phrase might've changed the results, making the sentence descriptor a bit misleading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.255.222.190 (talk) 10:00, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Problems with the article

There are several problems with the article: "White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a term for societal privileges that benefit white people in western countries beyond what is commonly experienced by the non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstance". Several issues here:

• white people don't live only in western countries. What about Eastern countries like Ukraine, Belarus or Poland? The sentence completely ignores that or ignorantly claims only western countries have white populations-difficult to tell. In any case needs some kind of adjustment.
• "societal privileges that benefit white people in western countries" Western countries like United Kingdom or Netherlands have large number of immigrants from Eastern Europe, who despite being white, do not enjoy any social privileges. In fact they can face more severe open racism than immigrants from other groups. There's actually a literature on this subject and this could be sourced, including literature that talks about "white privilege". We need to clarify this sentence as it is simply wrong.

"Nevertheless, some people who use the term "white privilege" describe it as a worldwide phenomenon, resulting from the history of colonialism by white Western Europeans. One author argues that American white men are privileged almost everywhere in the world, even though many countries have never been colonized by Western Europeans.[43][44]" There are many problems with this, white people are not only Western European, the sentence is unclear if the term applies to all white people, Western Europeans or just Americans.

--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 12:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

You raise some very good points, and it suggests to me that not only does the article need amending for implicit bias, but also expansion for explicit criticism of the term. I guess since that 'white privilege' arises in the U.S. from comparison of 'white' communities (where white European – Eastern and Western – are fairly long-established and freely mixed communities) with 'non-white' communities (initially African-American, and then later extended to other 'non-white' communities). This would therefore not have to deal as strongly with the issues of Eastern vs. Western European identity that exists in many Western European countries (especially in the wake of increased free movement within Europe in recent years), so would neglect forms of discrimination against the 'white other', as many Eastern European identities are constructed as being. I tried a quick search to see what Google Scholar offered for the term "white privilege eastern europe", and a few potential sources jumped out at me:

• Bhopal, R and Donaldson, L (1998) "White, European, Western, Caucasian, or What? Inappropriate Labeling in Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Health", American Joumal of Public Health (full text available) – no direct mention of 'white privilege', but it certainly criticises use of 'White' in scientific contexts (especially medical demography). It appears to be a good article, but I'm not sure to what degree inclusion here would began to trespass on the grounds of original research, on account of its discussion not of white privilege, but the more general use of 'white' in scientific contexts;
• Garner, S. (2006) "The Uses of Whiteness: What Sociologists Working on Europe Can Draw from US Research on Whiteness", Sociology (full text available) – this does mention the problems of translating 'white privilege' from US to European social discourse, specifically pointing out that "[n]ominally white Europeans can also be racialised in the process of constructing national identities, as has been the case in Britain with nomadic, Jewish and Irish people, as well as Eastern Europeans" (p.2), which is exactly a key problem that you mention.
• Twine, F.W, Gallagher, C. (2008) "The future of whiteness: a map of the ‘third wave’", Ethnic and Racial Studies – I couldn't find the full text, but as an examination of "whiteness studies", it does mention in the abstract discussion of "analyses of white identity formation among members of racial and ethnic minorities"; whether the racial and ethnic minorities include 'white minorities' (e.g. Eastern Europeans in Western Europe) remains to be seen.

In short, there's definitely scope for expansion of the article to include criticism of the term itself as US-centric, or at the very least neglectful of non-privileged white groups. I'm not sure when I'd be able to add any material, and to what degree, but if anyone else is looking to take this on, then I'm more than happy to help. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 14:30, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your extensive response and providing me with additional sources. This indeed can be expanded with some information about situation in Europe and specific ethnic groups. I have also found sources directly informing about the theory of white privilege and situation of Eastern European immigrants. I will work on this subject.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 21:51, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

This article is extremely un-encyclopaedic. == I Propose to Merge it with Racism ==

The article fails to give a concise definition of the subject. The article fails to define 'whiteness' . The article fails to define 'privilege'. The article fails to explain causality from 'whiteness' to 'privilege'. The article fails to differentiate race, ethnicity and colour. The article fails to present a coherent survey of the literature surrounding the subject. The article has a subsection titled "Whiteness unspoken". The article fails to differentiate the subject from simple racism.

I, therefore propose, to merge this article with that of racism.

170.70.20.39 (talk) 04:26, 12 February 2015 (UTC)