Talk:White privilege

Two sources

An Empirical Assessment of Whiteness Theory: Hidden from How Many

"This paper employs data from a recent national survey to offer an empirical assessment of core theoretical tenets of whiteness studies. Using survey items developed explicitly for this purpose, we analyze three specific propositions relating to whites' awareness and conception of their own racial status: the invisibility of white identity ; the understanding (or lack thereof) of racial privileges; and adherence to individualistic, color-blind ideals. Consistent with whiteness theories, we find that white Americans are less aware of privilege than individuals from racial minority groups and consistently adopt color-blind, individualist ideologies. However, we also find that whites are both more connected to white identity and culture as well as more aware of the advantages of their race than many theoretical discussions suggest. We then combine these results to estimate that 15 percent of white Americans exhibit what we call " categorical whiteness, " a consistent and uniform adherence to the theoretical tenets that are the focus of this body of theory. We conclude by suggesting that these findings provide the basis for a more nuanced, contextualized understanding of whiteness as a social phenomenon.'[1] downloadable at [2].

“American” as a Proxy for “Whiteness”: Racial Color-Blindness in Everyday Life

"This article discusses racial color-blindness as it relates to a modern strategy used by both Whites and People of Color (POC) to mask their discussions of race and privilege. People who endorse racial color-blindness tend to believe that race should not matter and currently does not matter in understanding individuals’ lived experiences. Therefore, racially color-blind individuals use strategies to justify their racial privilege and racist beliefs and attitudes. One such strategy is to use the term “American” as a proxy for “White” in describing instances of White privilege as norms and to hide discussions of race more generally. Study 1 findings show that there are many different socially constructed definitions for the term American. Study 2 findings reveal differences in definitions for American depending on an individual’s race and generational status."[3] Doug Weller talk 17:24, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

The second paper is rather fringe - it only has 13 citations. What's worse, it relies on rather irrelevant samples for its "studies" -i.e.: "Study 1 –Social Construction of “American”. Participants discussed ways of defining American concepts in 1 of 15 focus groups. Each focus group included three to five participants."Thematic analyses revealed many different definitions and socially constructed uses of the term American. They varied from being very fact-based,to include those born in the United States and those who are U.S. citizens to more socially constructed uses that included only Blacks and Whites or Whites only. Even more varied was the use of American to mean all those who are from a racial/ethnic group different from the participant. For example, a Filipino American may perceive all those who are not Filipino to be American" --ColumbiaXY (talk) 00:21, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Sociological concept

This is a sociological concept and is academic theory. The article mainly focuses on academics such as Mcintosh and how the theory has been picked up by some in the mainstream media. Not making reference to that in the lede is misleading. if it is not a sociological concept or an academic theory, then what is it? what do you call this? what is White Privilege if it is not an academic concept or a sociological concept? Sparkle1 (talk) 20:55, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

It is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. Adding empty filler words accomplishes nothing. Grayfell (talk) 21:13, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Except that they are not empty and they are not filler words. They are a standard qualification for the concept, in sociology, and an important distinction for a concept that is and has been largely debated by scholars. --ColumbiaXY (talk) 00:00, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

No, it's a phenomenon described by a sociological concept. Attempting to make the article suggest it's simply an abstract, a consequence free thought puzzle, is a violation of WP:NPOV. Simonm223 (talk) 12:13, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

That’s an arse about face description. It treats white privilege as a discovery and a fact. Which it is not. White privilege is not a phenomenon, it is a description given to a theory advanced by Macintosh in her 1989 paper. To claim it is not a sociological concept or to omit that, is a violation of WP:NPOV. Not the other way round. To claim at as more than a theory it needs to be provable and factual with limited to no mainstream alternatives. The round earth theory is an example of a wholly provable and factual academic theory. White privilege is most certainly not the same as that. The article is a largely academic leaning article with aspects of the mid 2010’s entrance into a less academic audience. Claiming it is not a sociological concept is the same way some individuals treat the bible. Some treat it as fact others treat it as fiction. Wikipedia reflects it as a book of religion. It doesn’t reflect it as ‘’a work of fiction’’ or ‘’the true telling of the foundation of the creation of the world’’. It reflects it neutrally by calling it what it is. The same must be applied here or it is inaccurate. White privilege began in academic theory circles and then moved outside of those circles. Not the other way round. Trying to portray white privilege as anything other is not calling it what it really is. Sparkle1 (talk) 19:46, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

• The article does not require filler words such as "sociological concept" and so on. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:02, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

These are not filler words as has been pointed out by @ColumbiaXY:. They are a standard qualification for an academic theory or concept. Not including them is denying what this is and adding a POV that this is somehow a great and revelatory discovery of facts. I feel in this discussion I am encountering evangelists who refuse to accept this is a theory and believe this is cold hard fact. This is just an academic theory nothing more. Simply re-claiming calling something what it actually is as "filler" is not discussing. It is simply intransigence, with no substance behind it. Sparkle1 (talk) 10:11, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Gravity is just a theory.[4] The idea that white privilege is just a theory with no substance - how can you say it's got no reality to it? Maybe your life experience is very different from mine. Doug Weller talk 18:07, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

That is wholly missing the point and is a false equivalency. Where is the proof to back up this concept as more than just a theory? This is not a phenomenon as the evangelists keep on claiming. A phenomenon is an observable fact or event. White privilege is an interpretation of facts and events. it is not directly observable ergo not a phenomenon. Something "invisible" is literally not visible. White privilege is also not physically measurable and therefore not observable. The claims of White privilege being anything other than sociological concept lack proof and confirmation.

The arguments being presented here to stop calling something what it is are weak and soporific. They are recycled over and over, just from different users. Sparkle1 (talk) 20:11, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

It's easy to find people who think it can be measured. Just do a search on measuring white privilege. And [5]. Resorting to nsme-calling doesn't impress. Doug Weller talk 21:27, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Gosh, it's like you're not listening for some reason. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:27, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Referring to individuals who are from academia reinforces the point that this is an academic concept. The above source is an academic reference and shows this is simply an academic concept. Sparkle1 (talk) 22:50, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

You keep using the word "academic" as if it means "not real," which is not an attitude that's compatible with a site that just summarizes academic sources. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:27, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Agree. Socioeconomic status, mental illness, and addiction would all be examples of academic concepts in social sciences as well. EvergreenFir (talk) 03:19, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

If rs says its a theory its a theory, if it doesnt it doesn't. The rest is just the personal view of editors, which is not significant to our purpose in editing. Does rs say its a theory or not? If so which rs? Keith Johnston (talk) 20:53, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

here Phyllis May-Machunda, Ph.D. Professor, American Multicultural Studies, describes White privilege as a 'a theoretical framework for viewing the dynamics and structure of oppression' https://nationalseedproject.org/Key-SEED-Texts/peggy-mcintosh-s-white-privilege-papers here White privilege is described as both a 'theory' and a 'concept' https://din.today/the-theory-of-white-privilege-why-racism-is-not-a-privilege/ and here White privilege is described as a 'paradigm' https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/07/the-progressive-case-against-white-privilege/ These are good places to start a discussion around rs claims that white privilege is indeed a 'theory' Does anyone wish to support or dispute this rs or can provide rs demonstrating its not a theory? Keith Johnston (talk) 21:15, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It's like I mentioned way back when, white privilege is a phenomenon. There are sociological theories which describe the phenomenon and attempt to ascertain its causes. But this article treats the phenomenon using the academic research about it. It'd be disingenuous to present the phenomenon as if it sprang wholly formed out of the heads of academics like it was Economics or something. Simonm223 (talk) 13:43, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Do you have rs to support this view? I dont believe the opinions of editors, unsupported by rs, will take the discussions forward productively especially when there is rs 'on the table'. Keith Johnston (talk) 11:26, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Doug Weller do you have rs to justify reverting my edits, which were supported by rs? Keith Johnston (talk) 20:57, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Does this mean you haven't searched for any yourself? Just search Google Scholar and you'll find them. It's a real thing with statistics.[6]. I'm not saying it isn't described as a concept or a theory, of course it is. I'm going offline shortly. Doug Weller talk 21:29, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Doug, so in summary you have no RS and you agree its a concept? In this case I dont understand why you reverted by edits, especially as you make no attempt to justify this by reference to actual rs. For the benefit of other editors the edit was to the opening: "White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a sociological concept describing the societal privilege..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keith Johnston (talk • contribs) 18:16, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:IDHT. Simonm223 (talk) 18:46, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree. @Keith Johnston: if that's the way you interpret what I said, I don't see how I can take you seriously. Since there are sources for concept, theory, phenomenon, etc it's odd that you can only find those that support your view. Hell, I even provided a source and you claim I have no RS. Bottom line, you don't have consensus. Doug Weller talk 19:40, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Yup. There's no shortage of sources to say that Natural selection is a theory, but it's also an actual thing. This effort to crowbar "theory" into the lead is getting tedious. William Avery (talk) 21:17, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

In determining consensus the quality of an argument and its supporting sources are more important than whether it represents a minority or a majority view. Here are more reliable sources discussing "white privilege theory" and white privilege in the context of "theories of race relations". https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=soc_fac The authors are Professor Hyeyoung Woo, Department of Sociology, Portland State University. Professor Arthur Sakamoto, Department of Sociology, University of Texas, and Professor Isao Takei, Department of International Relations, Nihon University. Keith Johnston (talk) 20:46, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

And here is Shannon Sullivan, Professor of Philosophy and Health Psychology at University of North Carolina, discussing "the concept of white privilege" https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190236953.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190236953-e-8 Keith Johnston (talk) 17:33, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

A) That's not what consensus means here.

B) Your cherry picking of sources to try and push "it's only a theory!" has been noted, and we're not persuaded by it. I don't know why you think repeating the behavior will suddenly work. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:50, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Thats your view, here is the view of Khiara M. Bridges, Professor of Law and Professor of Anthropology, Boston University, discussing the "concept of white privilege". http://www.virginialawreview.org/sites/virginialawreview.org/files/Bridges_Book.pdf Keith Johnston (talk) 19:45, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

No, it's tendentious behavior to just keep throwing out any link that has the word "concept" or "theory" in it in an attempt to bludgeon us into letting you change the meaning of the article. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:26, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks finding reliable sources to support argumentation is vital to meeting Wikipedia's editing standards. If you have reliable sources to refute Khiara M. Bridges, Professor of Law and Professor of Anthropology, et al I would love to see them. Otherwise making accusations of tendentious editing can be inflammatory and hence these accusations may not be helpful in a dispute. It can be seen as a personal attack if tendentious editing is alleged without clear evidence that the other's action meets the criteria set forth on the tendentious editing page, and unfounded accusations may constitute harassment if done repeatedly. Meanwhile here is Professor Emeritus Wilburn Hayden, Jr. examining "the concept of white privilege" https://www.jstor.org/stable/41446518?seq=1 Keith Johnston (talk) 21:48, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't have to refute anything because you've not made an assertion beyond "they used this word!" Your entire schtick is to do that, search for any instance of the words "theory" or "concept" in a document and proclaim that means you're right. That's not evidence, it's just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. You're cherry-picking and bludgeoning the talk page, so I don't see any value in engaging further with you. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:40, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

So it seems to me at least enough sources have been provided above to at least consider a wording change. Arkon (talk) 22:23, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

A shit ton of sources are provided... but it's the equivalent of going to Peer presure and saying "This is a sociological concept and is academic theory." Yes, it's those things and an actual observed phenomenon. These sources are being thrown out to attempt to downplay its reality, and turn it into "just a theory" that people can dismiss. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 23:26, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

It is true group differences are an actual observed phenomenon. But that is not what we are debating. The question is whether white privilege is the only or best way to explain - or conceptualise - those differences.

The reliable sources consistently demonstrate that a majority on the liberal-left believe that white privilege is the best way to explain the phenomenon of differences in group outcomes. This is supported by a huge number of studies from University professors, especially subject matter experts who teach white privilege and critical race theory. These studies make excellent reliable sources. A minority view amongst liberal-left sociologists is that, as white privilege does not explain the relative success of Asian-Americans, it is not such a useful concept.

Equally, conservatives disagree with the contention that white privilege explains the relative success of racial groups. These conservative criticisms tend to be expressed by economists and cultural commentators. Judged against the ‘subject matter experts’ on the liberal-left it is possible, because Wikipedia assumes the academy is neutral, to sideline or dismiss the conservative critique. Since conservatives tend not to be sociology professors and do not make careers out of studying concepts they do not believe in, the temptation to dismiss their views has been indulged. It is also possible that conservatives are less interested in editing wikipedia pages on concepts they do not believe are useful, leading to discussions where the weight of numbers, if not the weight of argument, is liberal-left.

Therefore by presenting white privilege as THE explanation for the phenomenon of group outcome difference- and not AN explanation - this wikipedia page is not neutral because it presents the majority liberal-left view as fact and dismisses both the liberal-left critique and the conservative critique. The inclusion of the word ‘concept’ in the lede becomes essential to redress this balance. This is a fair and balanced word to use since it does not dismiss white privilege but it correctly contextualises it as one way -but crucially not the only way - of explaining differences in group outcomes. To omit this is an ongoing violation of WP:NPOV. Keith Johnston (talk) 11:59, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Aaaaand there it is. "Wikipedia is biased against conservatives!" isn't a compelling argument. If you think this is what's happening, take it up with the admins. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 14:30, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keith Johnston (talk • contribs) 15:59, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The fact that there are sufficient reliable sources, but a few editors are refusing to allow the edit to pass seems to be an arbitrary and subjective decision.

The article initially described White Privilege as a concept for several years until it was subjectively changed one day without any sources cited (relevant talk). Despite that, the current version of this article still consistently refers to White Privilege as a concept throughout. The sources cited in this article also refer to it as a concept throughout. Additionally, why is the Male Privilege article on Wikipedia referred to as a concept while this one is no longer? I've yet to see an argument, that isn't a subjective opinion, against referring to White Privilege as a concept in the article's lead.

We need more voices weighing in on this, something I think both sides of the debate can agree on is that this discussion has gone nowhere.SprayCanToothpick (talk) 18:09, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

RFC

There is debate weather or not the White Privilege should be referred to as a concept in the lead, as it used to be. Please read through both viewpoints presented in the talk page, thank you for taking time out of your day to chip in! SprayCanToothpick (talk) 18:09, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

• Should be stated as a concept - I essentially agree with what @Sparkle1: wrote above; "White privilege is not a phenomenon, it is a description given to a theory advanced by Macintosh in her 1989 paper. To claim it is not a sociological concept or to omit that, is a violation of WP:NPOV." As for my own thoughts, "White privilege" is a contentious concept with many holes to begin with - it completely ignores that Asians, for example, tend to have more wealth and less criminal statistics than whites in many historically white countries. It ignores the fact that the majority group in any country will have specific advantages inherent to being the majority. Where's a page on "Japanese privilege" in Japan, "African privilege" in Ethiopia, "Hispanic privilege" in Mexico, etc? Frankly, to single whites out with this I daresay is anti-white. Even more reason it should be underscored that this is a concept/theory. Edit5001 (talk) 20:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
• Retain page as phenomenon, not simply "concept/theory" - I see we're going to rehash a discussion that petered out over a month ago. And such a great start, with "where's the page on X privilege" (aka WP:OTHERSTUFF) & "pointing out problems is anti-white". Suffice to say, I've made my point above: this is an observed phenomenon, covered in multiple peer-reviewed reliable sources, and all arguments to remove that statement are attempts to pull "it's just a theory!" dismissal, or literal whitewashing as we see above. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:07, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Rather than letting emotion seep into this, let's focus on policy. Can you provide the multiple peer reviewed sources you mention that state White Privilege is a hard fact. Please and thank you. After we all look through them, we might be able to come to a compromise, or even an agreement. I think this may just be the first step forward in the debate for all of us. SprayCanToothpick (talk) 22:34, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but this ain't "the first step". If you are interested in sources, first take a look at the ones which are already cited in the article. The talk page and it's archives are also full to the brim with these same points raised over and over. Grayfell (talk) 22:53, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

As I said, the article itself refers to White Privilege as a concept. Many of the sources throughout the article refer to it as a concept. Here's one of the sentences in the opening paragraph for example from the article, note the source in particular:

As an academic concept that was only recently brought into the mainstream, the concept of white privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics; some academics, having studied white privilege undisturbed for decades, have been surprised by the seemingly-sudden hostility from right-wing critics since approximately 2014.

When the source itself calls it a concept, it should be referred to as such in the article. Which it is. Many of the other sources are the same way. SprayCanToothpick (talk) 15:30, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@HandThatFeeds: I brought up the lack of other articles on "X privilege" simply to show why this whole concept is just that, a concept, by a specific group of people who have a strong interest in demonizing white people for political/social power and gains. And also, way to completely dodge the point about how the theory is racist and anti-white, and I love how you didn't even try to touch the point about Asians. Edit5001 (talk) 23:10, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Edit5001: Why is this comment directed at me? It should be directed at The Hand That Feeds You. I did not state disagreement with your argument, he did. I'm in favor of referring to it as a concept which is the same position you are. I didn't dodge your point or refuse to touch on your point. If there's 100 RFC replies, is it my responsibility respond to all of them? Otherwise I'm "dodging" comments? Please assume good faith of your fellow editors and don't throw personal accusations. The Hand That Feeds You is the one who countered you, not me, please take it up with him. This is placing me in a darned if I do, darned if I don't situation. You're arguing with the wrong person. I am not responsible for his claims, I am not responsible for your claims, I am not responsible for replying to every single RFC comment. SprayCanToothpick (talk) 14:42, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I apologize, I meant to direct that response to @HandThatFeeds:, not you. Edit5001 (talk) 20:15, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

All good, misunderstandings happen. SprayCanToothpick (talk) 20:38, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• No, retain as is - Extremely well sourced that it has existed for centuries. Indeed, there are some that bemoan the fact it is not as much of a privilege as so during the days of slavery. The fact that other kinds of privilege also exist is not relevant. Nowhere is it said that this is the only advantage that exists anywhere. O3000 (talk) 22:13, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your clear, and direct policy based response. Could you please provide said sources so we can all look through them and assess weather the sources describe it as a concept or a hard fact? Thank you.SprayCanToothpick (talk) 14:52, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• No, retain as is - On its face, this is empty filler which doesn't really explain anything. Conflating race with nationality and then assuming these things must be treated exactly the same tips the hand that the real purpose is to cast doubt on the term by side-stepping reliable sources. Grayfell (talk) 22:23, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Calling it an empty filler is a subjective opinion. Referring to it as a concept was not considered an empty filler for several years until it was removed one day, without citations. Let's focus on policy and cited sources.SprayCanToothpick (talk) 14:52, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• No, retain as is. Whether white privilege exists has already been discussed ad nauseum, and most editors have agreed that the phenomenon exists. This RfC is not too likely to lead to new insights. Some of what's been said to support white privilege denialism --- the notion that it doesn't really exist but is just a theory of sociologists --- is absurd. "Hispanic privilege" in Mexico. Huh?? Ever been to Mexico? anti-white...demonizing white people. Sure --- just as some people claim that any discussion of social structures that favor males is "anti-male" and "demonizes men," and that the historical phenomenon of male privilege doesn't really exist but is just a sociological theory. NightHeron (talk) 00:47, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

It's anti-white when whites are deemed as oppressors due to being better off in certain countries while other races that outperform whites in those same countries (Asians and Jews) receive none of the same criticisms. Edit5001 (talk) 03:55, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• No, retain as is. This is just the "Evolution is only a theory" argument recycled. Of course the article uses the word concept. "Concepts are created (named) to describe, explain and capture reality as it is known and understood." But leading with the word is a way of disguising the reality, particularly with the phrasing "sociological concept" which few readers would really understand anyway and isn't an accurate description. This whole is a basic misunderstanding of the literature. I love the poorly disguised "If you want this in you're a racist". Doug Weller talk 08:21, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, describe as sociological concept. Evolution is a scientific theory. Critical Race Theory, however, is not a science. It's a sociological field - one of many that give very different and mutually contradictory views of society. Yeah, a lot of people who frequently edit this particular page believe that CRT is the correct description of society, but they should at least separate personal conviction and fact, and not make an equivalence between CRT and scientific fields like biology or climatology. Fundamentally, I just don't understand the desire here to obfuscate the fact that we're describing a concept from CRT. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:41, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, describe as sociological concept. To reiterate my previous comment:

“The fact that there are sufficient reliable sources, but a few editors are refusing to allow the edit to pass seems to be an arbitrary and subjective decision.

The article initially described White Privilege as a concept for several years until it was subjectively changed one day without any sources cited (relevant talk). Despite that, the current version of this article still consistently refers to White Privilege as a concept throughout. The sources cited in this article also refer to it as a concept throughout. Additionally, why is the Male Privilege article on Wikipedia referred to as a concept while this one is no longer? I've yet to see an argument, that isn't a subjective opinion, against referring to White Privilege as a concept in the article's lead.” SprayCanToothpick (talk) 15:14, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting observation about the Male privilege article. Probably that article should be edited so that the lead does not define that term as merely a sociological concept, especially since the beginning of the main body (the overview section) starts out by correctly defining it as a phenomenon. Of course it's also a concept in sociology, women's studies, and other areas, and the same is true of white privilege. Both need to be defined as a phenomenon, one that has been studied academically. One can disagree with the way academics study these phenomena, and in fact the white privilege article does contain substantial criticism. But that's not the same as disputing the existence. NightHeron (talk) 15:33, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your civility and willingness to engage in an actual policy discussion. I think you raise an interesting AND very productive point of phenomena vs concept! For example documented instances of White Privilege in European Colonialism could be a factual statement, as cited in the lead. However the claim that modern America or other Western countries remain plagued with White Privlige is a concept opposed to a fact, with differing claims from scholars (most modern sources refer to it as a concept). What aspects of White Privilege are fact and what is theory should be distinguished in the opening paragraph, if you agree to this (and others do too) we might be able to work toward a proper compromise. SprayCanToothpick (talk) 16:14, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it would be wrong to state in Wikipedia's voice that modern America or other countries are "plagued" with white privilege, or for Wikipedia to endorse any theory such as Critical Race Theory. But white privilege is a phenomenon, and not only in earlier time periods. In an earlier discussion on this talk-page that I initiated (see Response to NPOV/N discussion) I gave some specific indisputable examples of white privilege in modern America. However, I also said that there is plenty of legitimate controversy about ways that white privilege is analyzed and dealt with in pedagogical settings. I added a section on white privilege pedagogy that cited mainstream sources that had strong criticisms of that approach. While it is a fringe viewpoint to deny that white privilege exists (now and in the past), it is not fringe to criticize over-use of the term. NightHeron (talk) 02:15, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

@NightHeron: You're confusing the concept of white privilege, which comes from Critical Race Theory, with the evidence that Critical Race Theorists use to try to argue that the concept is correct. Just pointing out various facts or anecdotes does not substantiate that white privilege exists, because white privilege is an interpretive framework used to try to explain those facts. It is not the same as the facts themselves. To give you an analogy from science, the fact that things fall to the ground is the observation, and universal gravitation is a theory (the correct one, it turns out) that explains those facts. You're confusing those two things.

But unlike with gravity, there is demonstrably plenty of "legitimate controversy" over whether the concept of white privilege accurately describes society, as evidenced by the many critics of the idea (by Marxists, conservatives, and many others outside of Critical Race Theory). This is not a case of science vs. ignorant critics. It's a case of one sociological framework vs. other, competing frameworks. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:06, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

As an aside, not a great example. Universal gravitation is an approximation that does not work in all circumstances and has been superseded. O3000 (talk) 15:15, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

That's an important point that needs to be absorbed. Science is chaotic and incomplete. The social sciences are relatively messy and undeveloped, in part due to the nature of the data and the involvement of practitioners in the phenomena under study. But to introduce the sixth grade science class model of physical phenomena like gravity having been neatly and perfectly explained is preposterous. SPECIFICO talk 16:04, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

@Objective and SPECIFICO: you're making a false assumption here about me. I'm very well aware that there is no single theory of gravity and that science is chaotic and incomplete. Look at the recent research into Dark Matter for instance. This is my point. White privilege is a phenomenon, the explanations of it are perhaps also messy and incomplete. Doug Weller talk 16:20, 8 January 2020 (UTC) Damn.repinging {{re|Objective3000)) and striking through a bit. I thought the comments were about me, but it looks as though I was wrong. Doug Weller talk 16:23, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

(ec)@Doug Weller: I was referring to Objective3000's response to Thucydides, who has used these references to physical sciences in what sounds to me like a dismissal of the phenomenon without considering the relationship between the phenomenon and the ways we describe it. Reviewing your most recent post above, I agree with everything you say and thought I was arguing for that view. Or at least that my statement below in this thread was consistent with yours. SPECIFICO talk 16:26, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: thanks. Sadly I only figured that out after my first post. We have the same opinion here . Doug Weller talk 16:32, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

The word privilege has an objective meaning in the English language. To say that someone has a "privilege" is not an interpretative framework but rather a statement of fact that might be true or false. The statement that privileges accrue to white people in certain situations is similarly a statement of fact, and to dispute that is fringe. Of course, many critics say that the term white privilege is used improperly or over-used by some academics, and that criticism belongs in the article (and is in the article). NightHeron (talk) 15:49, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with this. A similar situation exists, for example in the economic theories concerning "business cycles". There's agreement that the phenomenon exists but no wide agreement as to a full definition, let alone an explanation. It's important to cover the phenomenon and to convey the extent to which it is understood. For this, our NPOV policy guides us very well. SPECIFICO talk 16:04, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

The phenomenon in this case is the set of disparities that Critical Race Theorists argue are explained through white privilege - the interpretive framework. @NightHeron: No, saying that someone has "white privilege" is not a simple statement of fact. Critical Race Theorists argue that various disparities constitute a form of privilege for white people, but that's a novel argument that they invented, and which is not universally agreed upon. There are many critiques of the idea, from Marxists, Libertarians, conservatives, and all sorts of other people. One common critique of the concept of white privilege, which a previous version of the article discussed, is that it misuses the word "privilege", calling a state of non-discrimination that most people enjoy and which almost everyone thinks everyone should enjoy a privilege, when the better term is "right".

I made the analogy between the observation that things fall (compare with: there are average disparities in income between whites and African Americans in the United States) and the theory of universal gravitation (compare with: these disparities are a form of white privilege, or are caused by it, or are perpetuated by it, depending on which CRT argument you're going to follow). I also pointed out that unlike with gravity, we're not talking about science here. We're talking about sociology, and a rather political corner of sociology at that. That's where my analogy stops being accurate, but the point of the analogy is just to point out the difference between the empirical observations and the theory that is offered to explain them. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:02, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, there's much well-reasoned criticism of over-use and misuse of the term "white privilege." I agree with your example: not being mistreated is not a privilege but a right. However, there are major undeniable cases, now and in the past, where forms of privilege in the correct meaning of the term are typically enjoyed by whites and not by people of color as a consequence of systemic racism. For example, suppose that in some region most African Americans have been put in inferior schools for generations and denied opportunities in other ways and cannot get hired for good jobs. A consequence is that even middle-class white families are able to afford nannies, servants, and other low-paid help. This is a privilege that they would not enjoy if they'd been born black or if there had not been such a pattern of racism in that region. White privilege is a phenomenon that has existed much, much longer than Critical Race Theory or even the whole field of sociology or women's studies. An obvious example is the antebellum plantations in the South of the US. NightHeron (talk) 00:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with your example: not being mistreated is not a privilege but a right. Then you agree with one of the major arguments against the sociological concept of "white privilege". Much of what CRT calls a "privilege" falls under this category (commonly referred to as "rights"), as critics like Lewis Gordon have pointed out. "A consequence is that even middle-class white families are able to afford nannies, servants, and other low-paid help. This is a privilege that they would not enjoy if they'd been born black or if there had not been such a pattern of racism in that region." Marxists argue that this is a consequence of class, and that being born black is not what matters, but rather being born poor. There are rich and middle-class African Americans as well, who can afford to hire low-paid help. There are also poor whites who cannot afford to hire low-paid help. In any case, whichever of these competing views you or I personally find more persuasive, you have to recognize that competing views exist and are by no means WP:FRINGE. "White privilege is a phenomenon that has existed much, much longer than Critical Race Theory or even the whole field of sociology or women's studies." Again, you're confusing the empirical facts with the concept in CRT. The CRT theory of white privilege has existed for a few decades. Many of the facts that people in CRT use to argue that white privilege exists have existed for longer than a few decades. But others, including Marxists (as I've illustrated above), draw very different conclusions from the same set of underlying facts. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

To argue against the existence of white privilege by pointing to situations where white privilege is not present is illogical. It's like saying that because there are situations where African Americans are not treated in a racist way, that means that racism in America does not exist. Denying the existence of white privilege, just like denying the existence of racism, is fringe. It's not fringe to say, as some Marxists do, that the best way to analyze racism or white privilege is to focus on class rather than race; or to say, as some conservatives do, that a rising tide lifts all boats, so we should focus not on inequality but on improving the economy. One can debate how to analyze, explain, or respond to a phenomenon, but that's not the same as denying its existence. NightHeron (talk) 15:27, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I think the logic is clear: the argument is that what you're describing is not a "privilege" of skin color, but rather of social class. This is an extremely common criticism of the concept of "white privilege", but hardly the only common criticism. Other common criticisms relate to the use of the word "privilege" (as I mentioned earlier), and the fact that going by things like income, wealth, health or education, white people are hardly the most "privileged" group in America (many ethnic groups, including immigrants from some African countries, are far more "privileged" by such measures). We don't have to personally agree with such criticisms to recognize that they exist and are prominent. That should be enough for us to not have Wikipedia declare the CRT concept of "white privilege" to be correct. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Study after study has concluded that blacks in the US of the same financial background pay higher interest rates, are guided to different neighborhoods, are prescribed less effective medical treatments, are more likely to be harassed by the police, serve longer sentences for similar crimes, etc. Just two months ago, an investigation revealed widespread housing discrimination against blacks and other minorities in New York’s suburbs, more than 50 years after the Fair Housing Act.[7] Let us stop pretending this is an academic construct. O3000 (talk) 18:56, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

The explanation of these observations through the theory of "white privilege" is indeed an academic construct developed in Critical Race Theory, and it is heavily disputed. Again, you're confusing a set of empirical observations with the interpretive framework that attempts to explain those observations. To give you one common line of argumentation against this interpretive framework, by the very same measures you're quoting, other non-white minorities fare better, on average, than whites. This is clearly a difficult challenge to "white privilege" theory, because it implies that the "privilege" (if one accepts that term in the nonstandard way the CRT uses it) is not held by white people alone, but rather by many minority groups. See the entire debate over "model minorities". -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:00, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Marxists?? All five of them? Get a grip. It's AD 2020. SPECIFICO talk 13:56, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Okay, SPECIFICO has officially declared that Critical Race Theory > Marxism (and conservatism, and Libertarianism, I'll assume). I guess that settles that. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:08, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

That's hardly helpful. In fact, I'm not sure why anyone feels we have to discuss critical race theory here to make a decision. Doug Weller talk 16:00, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Because "white privilege" is a concept from Critical Race Theory. I don't think it's helpful that SPECIFICO discounts a major ideological current (Marxism) with a reference to the fact that the year is 2020. I hope that's what you're responding to with your comment about "hardly helpful". -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:34, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Nope, it was your comment that I didn't think moved the discussion any further or made the environment more conducive to discussion. Doug Weller talk 19:23, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

You must be joking. Can you see how your differential reaction to SPECIFICO's comment and mine looks like political bias? -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:53, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, describe as sociological concept. I have given sources to support this in other debates above. But this isnt binary. Its not an either/or. There is a debate in the literature which we are reflecting. So change to say 'The term is controversial with proponents arguing it is a phenomenon while critics claim it is a sociological concept which lacks empirical foundation". Keith Johnston (talk) 15:14, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
• Retain as-is. Nationality is a sociological concept too if you want to put it that way, but it's unhelpful. Guy (help!) 18:38, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
• Retain as is Super weasely wording. White privilege is not a concept or a theory, it's easily demonstrated and verified via myriad studies, census data etc. It's like calling climate change a concept. Bacondrum (talk) 00:07, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Why wasn't it considered weaselly wording from 2006-2012, then suddenly transformed from a concept to a fact in 2012? Why do the sources in the article refer to it as a concept? People here argue that it should be stated as both a phenomena and a sociological concept which is a fair discussion, but the argument that it's only a fact with no concept aspects is a poor argument.SprayCanToothpick (talk) 20:34, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Retain as-is. Everything discussed in academia could be described as a "[subject] concept"; but doing so, especially in this context, is an inappropriate expression of doubt ala WP:ALLEGED. Disputes and disagreements over exactly what qualifies as privilege and how to approach it are detailed further down; but at least in academia its existence (on some level, to some basic degree) is not in serious doubt, so it is inappropriate for us to go for a wording that would imply that it is. EDIT: The critiques within academia do not, generally, doubt its existence; they disagree over how to approach it. And this is indeed a scientific concept - social science is science. In that respect the ideological objections from "conservatives and liberatarians" outlined below are no different than their objections to global warming - the fact that non-experts outside the discipline dislike its conclusions are not sufficient for us to cast doubt on it in the article voice. We can and do cover these objections in the article, but we still have to approach it from the mainstream academic perspective. --Aquillion (talk) 11:47, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

"in academia its existence (on some level, to some basic degree) is not in serious doubt": In Critical Race Theory, that's true. It's not necessarily true elsewhere. For example, the concept comes under critique from Marxists and historians (Eric Arnesen, for example). Outside academia, it comes under heavy critique from conservative and Libertarian social commentators. CRT is not a science, so I don't see any reason to elevate its viewpoint above that of people from other fields or social commentators from outside academia. It's one out of many views on society. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:24, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Can you cite a single academic source that says that white privilege does not exist, that there's no such thing, that white people never benefit from privileges because of racism? I don't mean an academic source that says that certain other authors over-use the term or use it inappropriately in their theories. There's plenty of criticism of the latter sort. NightHeron (talk) 23:15, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Describe as a concept per WP:WikiVoice. When there is a controversy, we don't take sides. We describe the concept. The current (non-concept) version takes sides. Adoring nanny (talk) 02:54, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

The article uses the word "concept" 26 times. But to suggest in the lead that it is only a concept both flies in the face of reality and take sides. Worse, there is no "the concept". There are various ways of conceptualizing the societal privilege and the literature makes that abundantly clear. Doug Weller talk 15:02, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Retain as is for neutrality and truth. White privilege is indeed a fact discovered rather than a concept developed. Binksternet (talk) 15:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Phenomenon not Concept Rather than repeat the same arguments I will simply second the statements/reasoning of NightHeron, Doug Weller, Grayfell, Objective3000, Aquillion, et al. Describing it as a concept seems very WP:FRINGE because it departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views. The use of the word "concept" in the article itself should be looked at and revised appropriately in light of the consensus from this RFC. Since it was mentioned above, the arguments here also should be considered regarding the wording on the Male Privilege article.   // Timothy::talk  17:15, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Clarified my position (Thanks NightHeron)   // Timothy::talk 

• Retain treatment as phenomenon - not principally a theory in sociology. William Avery (talk) 18:24, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, mention both in lead as long-standing consensus and per WP:LEAD. Preferably, restore the long-standing consensus line lost in November 2019 that I think had been the end of para 1 for years. Academic perspectives such as critical race theory and whiteness studies use the concept to analyze racism and radicalized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people.. As much of the article is dealing with it as concept, LEAD would say to include that. And frankly, the position that it’s solely a phenomenon seems silly - things can have more than one aspect, and the existence of scholarly analysis on the concept and the long history of racist propaganda used to justify discrimination thru the years is too big to ignore in LEAD. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:35, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• Clarification needed. After reading the previous comment, looking at the statement of this RfC, and rereading the article's lead, I see that there's some confusion about what we're voting on. The retain as is votes are not opposing mention of the concept of white privilege in the lead, since that's there now. What we're saying is that white privilege is first and foremost a phenomenon that's existed for a long time. More recently the term has been used by CRT academics and others to broadly frame issues of racism. We're not voting to remove all mention of the latter from the lead. The framing of the RfC by User:SprayCanToothpick that the debate is about whether or not White Privilege should be referred to as a concept in the lead is not an accurate statement of what's being discussed. The debate concerns the first paragraph of the lead defining the term, not the subsequent paragraphs. NightHeron (talk) 12:23, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• Clarify to prevent the motte and bailey. There are two different definitions of privilege at play here. First which creates the trivial answer that "white privilege" is a phenomenon. This definition is akin to a particular benefit, advantage, or favor; a right or immunity enjoyed by some but not others. The other definition is Social privilege which can be defined as a special, unearned advantage or entitlement, used to one's own benefit or to the detriment of others; often, the groups that benefit from it are unaware of it. This second definition doesn't define so much a phenomenon, but a theory, or rather a moral framework. --Kyohyi (talk) 14:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Criticism Subsection

As the topic of this article is undoubtedly controversial, in the interest of full transparency I believe that a "criticism" subsection section should be added to the article in order to describe countervailing viewpoints that exist. To not do so is to render the article misleading, as it presents the topic of the article as criticism-free when the opposite is true. Whether the criticisms are warranted or whether the individuals who are making the criticisms are qualified to weigh in on the topic is another question entirely, and should be addressed in a separate section such as "responses to criticisms" or by other means. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allenwiliams (talk • contribs) 19:37, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

A request for comment was held in 2017, and consensus was against a "critique section". This can be reviewed here: Talk:White privilege/Archive 11#RfC should this article contain a "Critique_section". This was far from the only time this has come up. This talk page has 14 pages of archives (!), and I'm guessing most or all of those pages have at least one entry mentioning this. Per WP:CSECTION, there are many reasons Wikipedia articles should avoid such section, even if some editors think the concept is controversial for some reason. Framing this as criticism vs. response would not solve these issues, and would make the situation worse, as it would introduce false balance. Grayfell (talk) 01:12, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

@Grayfell -- To fail to include a criticism section renders the article more misleading than it would be with such a section included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allenwiliams (talk • contribs) 01:49, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Allenwiliams, I agree with you that this article is extremely biased. In my opinion, neutrality on this subject is unattainable at this time, so I won't waste time editing here. Good luck to you.Jacona (talk) 13:46, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree. The reason the subject of a critique section keeps coming up is because the article is so often considered biased. Last time this came up I was told it was not necessary because there was a "contrasting concepts" section - but even this has now been deleted. Keith Johnston (talk) 20:40, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It seems ridiculous to me there is no Criticism section but there is a "response to criticism" section (e.g. white fragility). Wikipedia should be an unbiased source, not propaganda for only one side of the discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.69.170.63 (talk) 10:01, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Seems a valid question.Slatersteven (talk) 10:04, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Criticism sections are generally frowned upon by Wikipedia and should be avoided where possible in preference to integrating criticism into other relevant sections. Simonm223 (talk) 13:38, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Yet we have A "response to criticism" section, that seems to me little different.Slatersteven (talk) 13:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I am not opposed to restructuring the article such that these responses remain in other relevant sections. Simonm223 (talk) 14:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Problem is we still would have reactions to statements we do not give.Slatersteven (talk) 14:12, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Do we though? Or do we have an asymmetrical situation where legitimate academics have felt pressured to respond to WP:FRINGE critics? In that case it'd be fully possible to have due and notable responses to critics but not to include the "critics" themselves. Simonm223 (talk) 14:16, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

We still need to know what they are responding to "They are wrong you know, ohh yes they are" is not much of a refutation of someone point and neither is "Its just white folks whining".Slatersteven (talk) 14:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I think the most constructive thing to do is to present the critique you would like to see included, backed by rs and then we can debate it. Otherwise this discussion is rather abstract. Keith Johnston (talk) 11:54, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I just said I think the question is fair, and then explained why.Slatersteven (talk) 11:56, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with you.Keith Johnston (talk) 15:04, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I think that that misunderstands what that section is. It isn't "a response to criticisms of the concept of White Privilege", it's part of the applications in critical theory that uses the concept to explain resistance to discussion of racial issues more broadly (even where the term isn't used), as well as backlashes against racial equality. I think the solution is just to remove the section header, since it's separating out parts that aren't really separate from the list of applications. --Aquillion (talk) 12:01, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

@Simonm223: What do you mean by "legitimate academics" and "WP:FRINGE critics"? I think this sets up a dichotomy between academics in a few areas of social studies, who are being set up as the arbiters of truth, and everyone else, including social commentators outside of academia, who are being declared wrong if they disagree with those academics. That would be an appropriate dichotomy to draw if we were talking about a scientific field, but we're not. We're talking about what is a strongly polemical term ("white privilege") used in areas of social studies that are themselves highly political. It's not appropriate to declare all criticisms or rejections of the views of academics in those fields WP:FRINGE. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The article as a whole is insufficiently neutral

A reasonable person would be more likely than not to believe, after reading this entry, that there is less criticism of white privilege than actually exists in reality. This is a problem. We now must think about how to remedy this problem. Until we can agree to a remedy - whether a banner of some kind or some other solution, many of which have been proposed previously - I believe a banner should be placed on this article. It is simply not the case that more cannot be done to improve the neutrality of this article. Hence, a discussion needs to be ongoing as to what these improvements should look like and how they should be implemented. But in the meantime, as previously mentioned, it is only reasonable that a banner of some kind be put at the top of the article to call readers' attention to this fact.Allenwiliams (talk) 02:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)— Allenwiliams (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

The only reasonable solution is to include the critique that is backed up by rs. I would encourage you to make some suggestions and review the proposed critique suggested by other editors. Keith Johnston (talk) 20:46, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

We generally discourage banners until after a discussion of specific improvements has been completed. Please present RSes that you believe are being ignored. Simonm223 (talk) 13:40, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Allenwiliams, feel free to suggest changes backed by reliable independent secondary sources. Guy (help!) 23:17, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

@ guy -- Did you not read what I wrote previously? This cannot be allowed to turn into a situation where the onus is on those who disagree to provide sources rebutting the notion that white privilege is somehow a social fact (which it plainly is not), putting you, conveniently, in the position of dictating which sources are "legitimate" and which are not. The onus is on the proponent of the claim to put forward evidence establishing that the claim is, in fact, true. This is literally always the way it works. In absolutely no situation is the claim ever just assumed to be true and the burden shifts to those who disagree that its true to rebut it. -Allenwilliams — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.23.192.20 (talk) 15:14, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The claim has been established in the article based on multiple reliable sources. And the article has been written to adhere to a neutral point of view by a consensus of experienced editors. So at this point, challenging the facts & neutrality of the article requires new sources to rebut the facts as stated. Therefore, your comments about "shifting the burden" are misplaced. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:30, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The article has been edited countless times in the recent year alone and the claims about its current neutral point of view should be re-evaluated especially in the light of overwhelming evidence pointing to the contrary (evidence submitted on this talk-page by several editors).--ColumbiaXY (talk) 05:38, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Your logical fallacy is: begging the question. Guy (help!) 15:38, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Response to NPOV/N discussion

@Keith Johnston, HandThatFeeds, William Avery, Doug Weller, François Robere, Grayfell, Michepman, Ian.thomson, ColumbiaXY, Eggishorn, Slatersteven, Sridc, EricR, EvergreenFir, Allenwiliams, JzG, Simonm223, and Jacona: There's a consensus of editors that white privilege is a fact and not a theory, and any viewpoint that denies the existence of white privilege is fringe. However, there is legitimate controversy among scholars, particularly in the area of education, about whether or not the framing of antiracism as renunciation of white privilege and the focus on white privilege in teacher training are the best approach. In response to concerns raised at WP:NPOV/N, especially a point raised by User:EricR concerning unclarity in the lede, I replaced an unclear paragraph in the lede with a summary of criticisms, and added a section on criticism. I give 5 sources, all by people who admire and respect the seminal work by Peggy McIntosh and all of whom acknowledge that white privilege is a phenomenon, but who have some criticisms. I pinged the participants in the NPOV/N discussion hoping that other editors will look at my edits and comment on the talk page. I think that the discussion belongs here rather than at NPOV/N. Thank you. NightHeron (talk) 02:02, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Again, this has already been the subject of an WP:RFC: Talk:White privilege/Archive 11#RfC should this article contain a "Critique section". Your edit ignores prior consensus, so this will not work. I also do not agree that your summary of the "controversy" here on the talk page is an accurate reflection of the edits you have made. While this particular aspect may be a controversy in some senses of the term, by presenting this as a "Controversy" section, this is misrepresenting both the scope and greater significance of this controversy. I would strongly recommend rephrasing this to avoid the issues raised by WP:CSECTION, the previous RFC, and the dozens of other times this has been proposed and shot-down on the article's talk page. Pending that, perhaps a new RFC could be raised, but you will have to address WP:CSECTION either way, so you may as well get ahead of the curve and figure it out now. Grayfell (talk) 09:01, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Grayfell, I think you're right. Adding factors such as class is only adding confusion, as the data shows pretty clearly that African-Americans in particular have substantially lower social mobility. "You're not disadvantaged because you're black, but because you're poor" ignores the fact that you're much more likely to be poor if you're black.

The point I always focus on is that white privilege doesn't mean that white people can't have shitty lives, it's just that their lives aren't shitty because of the colour of their skin. Guy (help!) 11:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Class is actually extremely relevant and should to be added as well. LeBron James and many other African-Americans in sports, showbiz, business or medicine enjoy benefits way above the homeless or the average Appalachian or Californian Hispanic. Let's not pretend these differences do not exist or are not relevant.--ColumbiaXY (talk) 06:21, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy: Yes, of course. I'm sure that the critics I cited would agree with that, too. What they would say (if I understand them correctly) is that if one wants to reach out to white people who lead shitty lives, in many cases it is not a good strategy to try to convince them to confess to having privileges because of being white. There are better ways to frame the issue of racism (such as when talking to future teachers, which is a focus of several of the critics) --- for example, one can talk about the divide-and-conquer strategy that destroys unions, gets Trump elected, undermines social welfare programs, etc. I'm not asking for editors to agree with the critics, but just to agree that their viewpoint should be explained in a clear way in the lede and main body of this article. NightHeron (talk) 13:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

NightHeron, not sure that reaching out to people is our concern. Documenting the concept of white privilege, is. It's a bit like having an article on feminism that worries about reaching out to incels. Guy (help!) 16:35, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy: Not our concern, but definitely the concern of the 5 sources I cited --- as well as the concern of Peggy McIntosh and other originators of the 'white privilege' framing of anti-racism. Clearly the intent of McIntosh and her followers was to reach out to whites and get whites to turn away from racism. The article from the Harvard Educational Review discusses what they see as the need (in multicultural and antiracist education, especially for ed students) to reach out to students from poor white background. That's one of the two main reasons given in the article for having become somewhat disillusioned with white privilege pedagogy as a strategy. They're talking about open-minded but not well-informed (white) young people from rural America who want to be teachers. Not incel idiots. NightHeron (talk) 20:58, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy, one major criticism of the concept of "white privilege" is that it mislabels the absence of oppression "privilege." Another is that it ignores all sorts of differences within racial groups (as defined by skin-color). For example, immigrants from some African countries are actually much better off than the average American. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:43, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I disagree that that is necessarily a criticism in the sense you mean it, ie. some people mention this as a possible aspect to consider without intending it as a broad criticism of white privilege as a concept. More generally, that sort of thing is why having a WP:CSECTION is generally a terrible way to organize an article; actual scholarship rarely divides evenly into "people supporting this idea" and "people opposing this idea." If you have reliable sources for those aspects we can put them in a more appropriate section instead. (Not just opinion pieces, though? I don't feel dropping a bunch of duelling opinion pieces into an article like this helps much.) --Aquillion (talk) 16:29, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Thucydides411, the absence of oppression is indeed a privilege. Ask any American other than a native-born cis white man. Guy (help!) 16:30, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Aquillion: The argument that "privilege" is a fundamentally misleading term in this context is indeed a broad criticism of "white privilege." I don't see how else it could be interpreted. There are several prominent criticisms of white privilege theory, and they should be discussed clearly in this article.

Guy, that's your opinion, and the opinion advanced by academics inhabiting certain (highly political) areas of social studies, but it's not a universally held position. Your assertion that everyone other than native-born cis white men agree with that opinion is incorrect (and pretty insulting, actually). Just to illustrate this, the page used to include criticism of the term "white privilege" by Lewis Gordon (see [8]). -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:32, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy how about we ask LeBron James and a random, homeless native-born cis white man? Your turning this discussion into a display of your own ideological biases and stereotypes, and treat Wikipedia as if it were Reddit, when this should be about what RS say. --ColumbiaXY (talk) 05:21, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

ColumbiaXY, See earlier answers. White privilege doesn't mean that white people can't have shitty lives, or that black people can't become rich, it just means that white people don't have shitty lives because of their skin colour and black people can become rich despite their skin colour. If you look at demographic data the picture is absolutely clear: being black makes you more likely to be poor, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be jailed, less likely to do well in school, less likely to get to the top in any profession - and this holds even when you control for all other factors. Example: black and white teens use weed at the same rate but black teens are four times more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for it. Guy (help!) 09:52, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy In the USA, the white privilege claim doesn't hold much once you control for ethnicity (as others have pointed out repeatedly) instead of lumping all people of a given color together. According to : "Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months (in 2016 inflation-adjusted dollars)". [from American Community Survey. United States Census Bureau. 2016] - Indians have the largest household income in the US ($128,000). White Americans: $67-68,000. Sri Lankan Americans: $73-74,000. Ghanaian Americans: $66-67,000. Pakistani Americans: $72-73,000. Pennsylvania German Americans: $48-49,000 and so on.

Outside of the US -in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, China, India, Nigeria, Egypt, Iran and so on- your claim seems to be on even shakier ground -as there's no data to support it. --ColumbiaXY (talk) 07:26, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

ColumbiaXY, Most of the studies showing white privilege to be a thing are from America. I mean, you could cut out the weasel words and call it systemic racism, but the facts are pretty clear here. Guy (help!) 10:28, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

ColumbiaXY: It seems that the arguments that it's reasonable to deny the existence of white privilege have a basic logical fallacy. There are many examples of what's undeniably white privilege; I've mentioned a few. It does not refute the existence of white privilege to give examples where it is not present and to point out that it is not present everywhere or in all situations. This is the same logical fallacy as denying global warming by saying that last year we had an unusually cold winter. NightHeron (talk) 12:13, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

The appropriate place for this is the NPOV board where impartial editors can adjudicate. Keith Johnston (talk) 10:52, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, this is also an appropriate venue. Guy (help!) 10:58, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

You will confuse contributors to the discussion by having it in two places. The board exists for a reason. I note NightHeron (talk) You have failed to list many editors who take a more nuanced view or disagree with you. These include Sparkle1 (talk) Scorpions13256 (talk) Correctus2kX (talk) Byulwwe (talk) MagicatthemovieS (talk) Nikolaneberemed (talk) Thucydides411 (talk) Tornado chaser (talk) Hesperian Nguyen (talk) Cummin14 (talk) 64.125.109.37 Liberty axe1 (talk) Ϫ(talk) Telenarn (talk) ShimonChai (talk) Jobberone (talk) SRichardWeiss (talk) Keithramone33 (talk) Jacona (talk) Obsidi (talk) Keith Johnston (talk) 11:31, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, the issue affects one article, so this is an appropriate venue. Noticeboard discussions get archived pretty aggressively so it's arguably a better venue, but it's certainly an appropriate one. It's also a bad look asserting your opinion as fact when dealing with people vastly more experienced on Wikipedia than you are. Guy (help!) 13:02, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I pinged all 18 editors who participated in the NPOV/N discussion, without regard to what viewpoints they expressed. I admittedly did not research the history of debates over this article and did not know about the RfC that occurred before I was a Wikipedia editor. Is that a requirement before editing? If so, that's a great way to discourage newcomers and others. The article in its present form, after all my edits were reverted, has obvious problems that others have noted. The lede contains a poorly written paragraph (the one I replaced) trying to summarize some criticisms. But there's very little mention of criticism in the main body. As my edits showed, there's a substantial body of legitimate criticism of the 'white privilege' framing (not of the existence of white privilege), especially in education. To ignore this, or to give a garbled paragraph about it, violates WP:NPOV, which is a core policy. WP:CSECTION is not a policy at all, but an essay, and many editors clearly disagree with parts of that essay. Wikipedia includes a huge number of criticism sections and even entire criticism articles, including Criticism of Mother Teresa. The essay states that it's better to work criticism into appropriate places in an article, rather than gathering it together into a separate section. If anyone sees a way to do that in white privilege, then fine. But the only way I could see to include the critical commentary without disrupting the coherence of the article was in a separate section.

I initially thought the article complied with NPOV, but then a comment by User:EricR made me think more carefully about the article, especially the main body, which, according to MOS:LEAD, should explain what's in the lede, and I changed my mind. Is there a consensus of editors that the article in its present form is fine, and adequately accounts for legitimate mainstream criticism? I don't see the evidence for that. NightHeron (talk) 12:52, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I think that dividing sources into "critical" and "uncritical" is already a mistake, and I would strenuously disagree with your assertion that most of the sources you added were "legitimate mainstream criticism." They discussed the topic and how to apply it; they were not, broadly, criticism. That said, if you really think that there's a substantial body of legitimate criticism of the 'white privilege' framing (not of the existence of white privilege), especially in education according to your personal gut instincts on what qualifies as "criticism", the obvious thing to do is to add the sources you read as critical of certain specific approaches in education to the education section, ideally in a paragraph devoted to the approaches they're discussing. (If we don't even mention the approaches or concepts they're discussing - ie. there's no clear place to put them because the aspect they discuss isn't in the article - then they're possibly not WP:DUE; intentionally hunting for sources you read as adopting a critical tone and adding them regardless of whether the aspect they're critiquing is in the article risks a degree of WP:FALSEBALANCE.) But my reading is that your edits generally pushed to label certain scholars as 'critical' (ie. you added a 'criticism' section and rewrote the lead paragraph to add Several scholars have criticized...; to me, that risks both WP:SYNTH and a WP:POV framing. If you want to cast a scholar as broadly critical you need to actually cite a source describing them that way rather than just your own personal gut feeling on how to categorize them. Also, I feel it's WP:SYNTH to combine these individual lines of commentary (many of which are aimed at refining or improving the concept) into a paragraph or section of "look at how many people have criticized this." To answer your original question, though - yes, the article, as it stands (prior to your edit) gives a broadly-accurate summary of mainstream scholarship on the topic. It is neutral and accurate, and your changes introduced WP:POV issues by crowbarring a non-neutrally critical WP:TONE into the article voice by synthizing together a bunch of sources that didn't individually support the tone or thesis of the section. If you want to argue that there is broad criticism of the concept in academia beyond what is currently in the article (something I don't think you've any evidence for), you will need comparable broad, mainstream academic sources covering and describing this criticism as a whole - not a few scattered, disconnected sources focused on refining or questioning specific narrow applications braided into some sort of WP:POV amalgam. --Aquillion (talk) 16:38, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Aquillion By no means was it my idea to lump together the 5 sources I used and call them criticism. If you look at the most recent of the 5 sources (the one from the Harvard Educational Review), you'll see that its introduction identifies itself as criticism and briefly surveys earlier critical articles, specifically discussing the other 4 sources I cite. You write If you want to cast a scholar as broadly critical you need to actually cite a source describing them that way rather than just your own personal gut feeling on how to categorize them. The 5th source I cite is thus a source that does precisely what you call for.

White privilege pedagogy is used in teacher education, in gender studies and ethnic studies departments, in diversity training programs, etc. The original Peggy McIntosh article from 1988 has been hugely influential as pedagogy, reprinted many times (usually in a shortened form), and serving as a basis for many educational efforts aimed at combatting racism. If this isn't clear from the article, we should add more sources that make it clear. The critics I cite are not opponents of these efforts, but supporters of and participants in them. They don't question the existence of white privilege as a component of racism, but rather question whether the 'white privilege' framing is really the best approach in educational efforts. NightHeron (talk) 21:19, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Aquillion: I agree that it's important to avoid POV-pushing in the way we cite sources. Please look at the way the Lawrence Blum article is used in the body of this article. It is cited many times, though this might not be apparent at first, because it is listed in 4 different places in the references (reference numbers 11, 13, 62, and 63). In the main body of the article (White privilege#Applications in critical theory) the source is presented as an elaboration on the notion of 'white privilege', whereas in fact it is a critique. The title is White Privilege: A Mild Critique, and here is the abstract: White privilege analysis has been influential in philosophy of education. I offer some mild criticisms of this largely salutary direction — its inadequate exploration of its own normative foundations, and failure to distinguish between `spared injustice', `unjust enrichment' and `non-injustice-related' privileges; its inadequate exploration of the actual structures of racial disparity in different domains (health, education, wealth); its tendency to deny or downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the major racial groups; its failure to recognize important ethnic differences within racial groups; and its overly narrow implied political project that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to the cause of racial justice. The way this source is currently used in the article is a clear example of what you're concerned about, namely, distortion of the author's viewpoint to make it appear to agree with an editor's POV. NightHeron (talk) 13:34, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks NightHeron (talk) I appreciate you are acting in good faith. I would be happy to work with you try to weave in mainstream critique but given the ongoing noticeboard I still think its better to discuss there. I would recommend duplicating your comments in that forum. Keith Johnston (talk) 17:38, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston: I'm happy to work with you, and also with the other 17 editors I pinged, to try to achieve consensus. I don't think this has to go to another forum, since many editors are involved in or following the discussion here. When in doubt, the article talk page is the best place to go, rather than adding to the backlog of unresolved issues on NPOV/N. To achieve consensus, we should be very careful about sources, using high-quality mainstream ones. They can be conservative as well as liberal, as User:Thucydides411 suggests (below), but, frankly, high-quality conservative sources might be hard to find, since (at least in the US) so many conservatives have gotten into supporting fringe views. Denying the existence of white privilege in the face of factual examples is fringe, as is claiming that "racism in reverse" is the real problem. I think we'll find that the best critical sources are written by people who acknowledge that white privilege exists as a consequence of racism but believe that using that term as the main way to frame the problem of racism is a mistake. NightHeron (talk) 13:09, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: Rejecting the existence of white privilege is not fringe. When you say "in the face of factual examples", you should recognize that the factual examples you're talking about are facts that are used to support the idea of white privilege. The facts (so long as they really are factual statements about census figures, etc.) are not what is at question, and the facts themselves are not what constitute the theory of white privilege. The interpretation of those facts as establishing a privilege based on whiteness is what constitutes the theory of white privilege.

There are several reasonable ways that people who acknowledge the facts argue against the theory of white privilege. One is to argue that absence of certain types of discrimination is not a "privilege" - that is, that the idea of white privilege fundamentally mixes up rights and privileges. This is an argument put forward by Lewis Gordon. Another argument (also made by Lewis Gordon) against the theory of white privilege is that most whites do not have access to the actual privileges that are often claimed to make up white privilege (even though white people might on average fare better in certain ways than some other groups, there is huge variation). An argument against the theory of white privilege that I have read in conservative publications is that the theory relies too heavily on a comparison of white Americans and African Americans, ignoring the numerous minority groups (including Indian Americans, Chinese Americans, Nigerian Americans, Ghanaian Americans, and many others) that fare significantly better (on average) than white Americans in many broad measures (income, education and health). These conservative critics will agree that there are comparisons between, say, average income of white Americans and African Americans that indicate that white Americans are better off, on average, but the critics say that the fact that the exact same measures show many minority groups doing better than white Americans undermines the idea of "white privilege." Then there are, of course, Marxist arguments against the theory, centering on the idea that race is actually being used as a fuzzy stand-in for class (fuzzy because there are rich African Americans and poor whites). Eric Arnesen additionally argues that the term "white privilege" is used by so many different writers to mean so many mutually contradictory things that it is an ill-defined moving target. Arnesen compares white privilege theory to Freudian psychoanalysis (which I don't think Wikipedia is about to declare to be absolutely true).

These are all reasonable, non-fringe criticisms of the existence of white privilege. There are prominent representatives of these various criticisms. This old version of the page goes through several of these arguments, with sources. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:09, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Thucydides411 Most of what you say is very reasonable. I certainly did not say that all examples of white privilege are necessarily valid or aren't open to question. Nor is it true that an example has to be statistical. The many cases of specific situations where there is indisputably privilege for being white are enough to justify the statement that white privilege exists as a phenomenon (but not enough to necessarily support a sweeping theory of the ubiquity of white privilege or the value of white privilege as a way of framing the issue of racism). For example, a manager hires a white guy who reminds him of his son, passing over a more qualified black guy whose appearance reminded him of some criminal he saw in a movie. Or in the NFL a head football coach who's white replaces a black coach who was fired after a 10-6 season and gets kept for years despite his team's record being worse than 10-6. Students give a white professor high evaluations despite his being tough, but give a black professor low evaluations if he/she is tough. Or if police are devoting most of their effort to stop-and-frisk of people of color, then a white person who's speeding on the highway has less chance of being pulled over. I'm sure people who've thought about this much more than I have could give you many more examples. NightHeron (talk) 17:48, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: Would you consider the view that those specific examples (which could be matched by countless other examples where being a member of any particular group is an advantage or a disadvantage) do not establish the existence of a generalized "white privilege" as fringe? I acknowledge that there are commentators who argue as you do above, but it's not Wikipedia's place to declare those commentators correct, and the commentators who disagree with them incorrect. This is not climate science, and there is not a definitive interpretation that Wikipedia can declare to be correct. There are Critical Race Theorists, conservatives, Marxists, and commentators from many different strains of thought that have mutually contradictory views on whether white privilege exists. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@Thucydides411:: The common meaning of the word privilege is a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most: the privileges of the very rich. This is the first definition in dictionary.com. Suppose that a manager has a white guy and several people of color apply for a sales job. He says to himself, "The white guy doesn't seem to be as good as the others. But many of my customers are uneasy around people of color, and I can't afford to lose their business. So I'd better hire the white guy." This is not at all an unlikely scenario, at least not in many parts of the US. The white guy getting the job is an indisputable beneficiary of white privilege, and it would be fringe to deny that. On the other hand, it would be reasonable (though controversial) to say, for example, that from a statistical standpoint this is not an important form of racism, because only a small percent of all whites have ever received a job because more qualified people of color were passed over. Whether or not the notion of white privilege should be extended to cover cases where the common meaning of privilege doesn't apply (such as simply not being discriminated against) and whether or not the terminology white privilege is a good way to frame racism in general, and whether focusing on white privilege is a good strategy or a distraction in efforts to reduce racism --- all of this is the subject of mainstream debate. But denialism of the existence of white privilege amounts to denying facts. NightHeron (talk) 21:29, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: "The white guy getting the job is an indisputable beneficiary of white privilege, and it would be fringe to deny that" - no, it's not fringe, because there are many commentators who do deny that. The argument against that view is pretty simple: that's not a privilege that most white people enjoy. The fact that some white people (and people of very race) get jobs because they know someone is not necessarily reflective of a general privilege that white people benefit from. The definition of "privilege" that you quoted actually gets right to the point: a privilege is something reserved for the few, not something that is broadly viewed as a universal right (like non-discrimination). That's one of the central criticisms of white privilege theory, voiced by many critics.

I'm really not here to argue who is right or wrong in this debate, though. My views are irrelevant here. What is important is that there is very significant criticism of the concept of white privilege, and it's not correct to call it all fringe. I don't think we should be declaring that commentators from a few subfields of academia are correct, while commentators from other subfields are incorrect and social commentators outside academia writing for well known publications (whose views are just as weighty as someone with a position in academia) don't matter. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:51, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Thucydides411, how many of those denying it are white libertarians? Guy (help!) 09:53, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy, of the dozen or so critics whose views were noted in an earlier version of the article, I think zero are white Libertarians. That isn't to say that the views of white Libertarians should be discounted or excluded from this article. Wikipedia doesn't have any policy of excluding the views of either white people or Libertarians. I would be against instituting any racist policies of that sort. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:36, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Thucydides411:: The definition says a benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most, where presumably most means most of the relevant group of people, such as applicants for a job. So my example clearly fits. The benefit in fact was a generalized white privilege, because most any white applicant could have been substituted for the not-so-well-qualified white guy and still would have gotten the job. Here's another example, a true story told me by an acquaintance. She's a white British citizen having an extended stay in the US, and she had overstayed her visa. Once she was on a bus in southern California that was stopped by Immigration. All the other passengers were Latino, all were checked carefully, and all had their proper papers. She was skipped, much to her relief --- and also amusement, since she was the only "illegal alien" on the bus. She was granted that privilege because she was white, and presumably another white person would have been granted the same privilege. On the other hand, most of the people she encountered traveling by bus in southern California would not have been given this privilege. Using the common meanings of the words white and privilege, both of my examples can indisputably be called cases of white privilege.

I agree with you that, rather than discussing content issues, we need to find a way to improve the article. For that we need consensus, which in this case might not be easy to achieve. But I don't think it would be so difficult to come to an agreement if editors agree to forego positions at the extremes, that is, if we all could compromise by agreeing that (1) this article needs to give due coverage to responsible critics of theories and approaches that focus around the term white privilege, and (2) the existence of white privilege as a phenomenon is not in contention. NightHeron (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: I agree with your point #1, but strongly disagree with your point #2. There are many prominent social commentators who reject the notion of white privilege (in the US, at least). These critics range from conservatives to Marxists. Their views should also be presented. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:14, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@Thucydides411:: Other editors agree with (2) and disagree with (1). It doesn't look like either side is likely to convince the other to change their minds, so I'm suggesting compromise as the only way to reach consensus. If everyone insists on having their way, then the article won't be improved, any attempt to insert criticism will be reverted as "not reflecting consensus", and this could devolve into edit-warring. Note, by the way, that the male privilege article also has very little criticism --- just a sentence mentioning that men's rights advocacy groups and anti-feminist men deny it. As I understand the Marxist position, they believe that talk about either white privilege or male privilege is divisive in the working class and gets in the way of class struggle, which is not quite the same thing as saying that neither phenomenon exists. Or do you know a reference where Marxists say that white/male privilege doesn't exist? NightHeron (talk) 11:53, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, bear in mind that we cover criticism according to its prominence. That's why we state as fact that climate change is real. Guy (help!) 18:44, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

That is not the case currently. One source in the lede is an article entitled "The Year in Hashtags: 2014". At the same time conservative or liberal critique is sidelined or banished. You may not like or agree with Denis Prager but he is one of the most prominent conservatives in the world. You may not like Toby Young but he is a prominent British conservative - see https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2019/no-need-to-plead-guilty/ - There is an unacceptable double-standard at play here. Keith Johnston (talk) 22:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy, the comparison to climate change is precisely the problem here. Critical Race Theory is not science. It is an interpretive framework and a political program. The term "white privilege" is a highly polemical term, and whether or not you think it's an accurate, appropriate or useful term depends very much on your political outlook. Does the fact that Nigerian and Ghanaian Americans, on average, earn far more than white Americans undermine the idea of white privilege? Is the real division one of class rather than race? It depends very much on whom you ask. Marxist academics, conservatives, and Critical Race Theorists will give different answers to each question. Who are we to declare that only the Critical Race Theorists are correct? On the contrary, climate change is a reality - something that you can objectively measure using the scientific method. We should not be presenting white privilege theory as if it were on the same footing with climate change. Concretely, that means that the various criticisms of the concept - from both left-wing and right-wing commentators, should be discussed in the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:45, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I see we've descended to the "social sciences aren't real science!" part of the argument. Such a stance does not even bear consideration. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:40, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Are you actually suggesting that Critical Race Theory is a science, and that the theses put forward by people in that field have the same certainty as scientific laws in areas such as physics, chemistry and biology? That's just not credible, in my opinion. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Observing the behavior of populations is science, definitely on par with physics, biology and chemistry. This page describes a documented phenomenon. That you dismiss it speaks more to yourself than anything else, and I have no further comment on your opinions. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:59, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

That's not a reasonable view at all, and the way you're discussing here is not reasonable. There is an important distinction between scientific fields like physics, chemistry and biology and fields like Critical Race Theory or Freudian psychoanalysis. The fact that you so emphatically proclaim them to be on the same level is just strange to me. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:25, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Just because you do not understand HandThatFeeds does not invalidate his point. "Science" has to do with method, not subject matter. SPECIFICO talk 18:28, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Fixing ping error @HandThatFeeds: above. SPECIFICO talk 19:19, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I never said that I don't understand what HandThatFeeds is saying. I agree that science (no scare quotes) has to do with method, and Critical Race Theory (and related areas of academia that we're talking about here) do not follow the scientific method. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:35, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

One more thing, @SPECIFICO: Please stop stalking me. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:43, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

If you have sources for Critical Race Theory (and related areas of academia that we're talking about here) do not follow the scientific method, I suggest you present them and they may help you to elucidate any concerns you have about the article or any content you feel should be included. SPECIFICO talk 19:22, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

As I've asked you kindly several times before, stop following me to random articles. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:12, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

SPECIFICO Critical Race Theory is not a Science and there's plenty of criticism from scholars about it, even on its wikipedia page. No reliable sources call it a Science or claim it's following the scientific method.--ColumbiaXY (talk) 07:39, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

OK so now you've repeated Thuc's assertion above, but neither of you has responded to my request. I've rebutted your assertion in several posts on this page. I think you're getting tied up in language. It's possible to discuss White Privilege in terms of factual assertions that can be tested against observed evidence, and for these purposes that makes it a legitimate field of inquiry, measurement, classification, discussion, inference, and all the other things credible social scientists do. What good does it do to deny the facts because you don't like the way they are discussed? SPECIFICO talk 20:27, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

fields like Critical Race Theory or Freudian psychoanalysis I see the problem now. You equate modern peer-reviewed social sciences with Victorian-era early psychoanalysis, and paint them as equally invalid. That's a serious category error and colors your entire understanding of the matter. That's why you don't see my stance as reasonable: you're equating all social sciences with century-old therapy techniques. It's not equivalent. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:49, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

No, the problem is actually much simpler than that. It is patently absurd to claim that interpretive frameworks in the social sciences have the same level of solidity as theories in the hard sciences. If you believe that they do, then you're going to have to decide which of the many mutually contradictory "truths" that the different social science theories develop is actually true. Which, exactly, of the following philosophies should Wikipedia declare to be true? Critical Theory, Post-Structuralism, Marxism, Postmodernism? They all have their journals full of peer-reviewed papers. But they also contradict one another on very basic points, and we obviously can't proclaim all of them to be true without entering into contradiction. A central problem with this article, in particular, is that it takes a highly polemical concept from one of these fields, which is very controversial beyond the circle of practitioners of that field, and treats it as if it were the correct interpretation of society, largely sweeping the criticisms under the rug. That's just not appropriate for Wikipedia to do. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:10, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

This elaborate description of social sciences isn't "much simpler". It's also not anything new, but either way it seems needlessly complex. It is holding social science to a higher, more arbitrary standard than physical sciences. The purpose of this proposal was, ostensibly, to highlight a specific issue some academics have with this term's use in pedagogy. Extrapolating from that subtle point to decry all social sciences as lacking rigor tips the hand that this is just an excuse to complain about something else entirely. It also doesn't match reliable sources (or my personal experience). A term, or a larger framework, is often used to understand a more complex situation. You can try and use quantum mechanics to explain racism, if you want to, but it's not going to get you very far, is it? Instead, people who study these fields develop different approaches. Some of these are more complicated, and more contentious, then others. This doesn't invalidate them, and even when people dislike the conclusions, that doesn't make them somehow less real or less legitimate than physical sciences. Grayfell (talk) 04:19, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

The fact that there are multiple mutually contradictory interpretative frameworks does indeed make them less solid than the sciences. We're not talking about scientific fields, and it's frankly ridiculous to say that disagreeing with Critical Race Theory's view of society is like denying climate change. It's pretty scary that there are several editors here trying to elevate CRT to the same level as climate science. Wikipedia cannot declare one or another sociological theory to be the truth. It should describe the theory and the relevant criticisms. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:09, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Agree - Thucydides411 (talk) is correct here. Putting Critical Race Theory or other political discipline on equal footing with the psychical sciences is like putting the claims in OpEd articles in BuzzFeed on equal footing with those in Nature magazine. This article is clearly biased in favor of political claims coming from the field of Critical Race Theory - a field which some would want us believe should be given weight over any other academic discipline, since its theories and definitions are, for unclear reasons, as legitimate as physical sciences.--ColumbiaXY (talk) 06:21, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Thucydides411 (talk) is quite correct. We now need to move to specific proposals to include the critical arguments. Keith Johnston (talk) 08:55, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@Keith Johnston: That requires that we first reach consensus, which is not likely to occur through heated debates about content issues such as science vs social science. In an exchange with Thucydides411 above, I've suggested that if both sides compromise, we can proceed to specific edits, and I've proposed as a possible compromise that we all agree that (1) this article needs to give due coverage to responsible critics of theories and approaches that focus around the term white privilege, and (2) the existence of white privilege as a phenomenon is not in contention. To put it another way, we would agree to add the viewpoints of moderate critics, but not the more extreme ones (such as conservative pundits and bloggers). NightHeron (talk) 12:15, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

NightHeron (talk) I sympathise, but consensus on what changes, exactly? I believe its better to propose precise changes backed by rs than have a general debate about white privilege which is unlikely to lead to concrete suggestions.Keith Johnston (talk) 13:18, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Keith Johnston: I added a new section on white privilege pedagogy that I hope satisfies the editors who objected to and reverted my earlier edit. I did not change the lede, and I put my sources in a section on pedagogy rather than a section labeled 'criticisms'. Hopefully it won't get reverted. Please read the whole article in its present form. I think you'll find that there's actually quite a bit of criticism of various aspects of how white privilege is used to frame the issue of racism. On the other hand, many editors rightfully insist that white privilege is a phenomenon that indisputably exists, and any claim to the contrary is fringe. My own feeling is that the article in its present form now does a pretty good job of complying with both WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. NightHeron (talk) 13:43, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, status quo ante works for me. We already cover critical arguments in the article. The fact that the far right don't like the fact of white privilege really isn't our problem to fix. Guy (help!) 12:02, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy I don't see how it's possible to say that in its present form the article gives due coverage to criticism. But I agree with you that we should not include criticisms from the far right, per WP:FRINGE. NightHeron (talk) 12:15, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with JzG here. There are areas of "Physics" that are inconsistent with areas of "Chemistry" among the most widely recognized "sciences". It is to be expected that a relatively new area of inquiry -- currently labeled (among others) "White Privilege" -- will be less well-organized and canonized than long-established sciences. That does not invalidate it. Among the established social and behavioral sciences -- economics, psychology, and others -- we see an intermediate stage of development, wherein there are broad areas of common frameworks but still many apparent contradictions and unexplained phenomena. Attacks on the concepts relating to White Privilege appear to stem from denial or opposition to its nascent, sometimes imperfectly-stated, conclusions. SPECIFICO talk 14:24, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we need to debate whether or not social science theories can have the same validity as theories in the natural sciences. White privilege is first of all a set of empirical facts that are indisputable. Secondly, the term refers to an approach to discussing racism and teaching students about racism that is controversial, even among people who are deeply committed to combatting racism. The article I cited from the Harvard Educational Review (in my edit that was reverted) is an example of responsible mainstream criticism. NightHeron (talk) 14:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: White privilege is not a set of empirical facts. It's a theory of the structure of society that comes from Critical Race Theory (CRT). There are certain statistical discrepancies between whites and African Americans in the US that Critical Race Theorists argue constitute a form of privilege, but this interpretation is very contentious, not least because: 1. The idea that oppression of one group equals a privilege for another is an invention of CRT that is widely disputed, 2. There is a lot of argument about whether the primary divide is race- or class-based, since there are also many privileged African Americans and many poor whites, 3. There is the argument that the success (on average) of many non-white minority groups (such as Nigerians or Indians) in the US indicates that white skin does not confer a privilege. White privilege theory is not just the acknowledgement of certain empirical facts about the distribution of wealth. It's an interpretation based on those facts (and according to critics, it ignores many facts that contradict the interpretation). -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:03, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

All three of your points are debates within the framework of the theory. They do not invalidate its status as an observed phenomenon or as a field of science. So your argument doesn't actually alter anything. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

You're confusing the notion of observed phenomenon (ie: statistical differences in income among groups) with political interpretations of empirical observations (ie: what Critical Race Theory claims to be behind those differences). --ColumbiaXY (talk) 06:40, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

This view presents such a garbled misunderstanding of fact, theory, explanation, and empirical tests that it cannot even be discussed. SPECIFICO talk 18:16, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Thucydides411, no, actually, the concept predates any such argument and is based on empirical observation. White privilege has always existed (ask any random sample of black and white people how many times they have been unable to hail a cab). It's only the theory of measuring and describing it that's relatively new.

On a personal note, as one who benefits from a great deal of privilege, as a middle-class white guy from a thousand-year-old school with a stable family background and all the rest, I find it disturbing when people can't see that denying privilege is in itself a form of privilege. No black man can walk out of the door in America or the UK and say "right, today, I will pretend I have no disadvantage due to the colour of my skin", and expect to have that survive until the end of the day, whereas any white man can successfully pretend that being white confers no privilege and can preserve this delusion indefinitely simply by ignoring the evidence of their own eyes. Guy (help!) 09:58, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Re: hailing a cab. Many years ago on the show "TV nation" Michael Moore ran a clip where he had asked a successful, well-known and wealthy black actor (Yaphet Kotto) to stand on a street corner in New York and try to get a taxi. Kotto was dressed in a suit, carrying a baby in one arm and a bouquet of flowers in the other. One empty cab after another passed him without stopping. Then Moore had a white ex-felon, dressed in scruffy clothes, do the same. He got a cab right away. That's white privilege. NightHeron (talk) 13:10, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy The concept is fairly new actually (not even 5 decades), does not exist everywhere and has not always existed as you wrongly claim. The Trans-Saharan Slave trade where people from Southern and Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus were among the most often enslaved is just one counterexample to your claim. The Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe is another such counterexample. And so are the Ottoman Slave Trade, the Armenian genocide and many, many others. Your examples are annecdotes, often personal, that seem to ignore the History of the World. You also seem to imply that your experience and history as a privileged American or Brit is equivalent to that of european Poles, Moldovans, Armenians, Chehens, Ukrainians, Georgians or Yazidis -and this is not a reasonable claim.--ColumbiaXY (talk) 07:58, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

ColumbiaXY, white privilege started existing after black people became people rather than property in majority-white countries - though you could make a solid case that Columbus having claimed to "discover" a country already inhabited by people who were perfectly well aware of its existence would also qualify. Guy (help!) 00:44, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy, this article is about a concept from CRT. It's important to keep this in mind, because many of the arguments for excluding criticism here revolve around essentially the following argument: "I think white privilege is obvious because of XYZ empirical observations, so any fundamental criticisms of the idea are WP:FRINGE." The problem is that we're discussing a sociological concept which is actually strongly criticized by academics from other fields (for example, Marxists) and social commentators outside academia. Regardless of what you or I think about whether the concept is obviously right or wrong, or whether you think its disturbing to disagree with it (as many social commentators and academics do) or not, the prominent criticisms of the concept should be described in the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:46, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: The article is not about a concept from CRT. It's about white privilege, a phenomenon that existed well before CRT existed. More precisely, as I wrote earlier, it's about both the phenomenon and the idea of framing discussions of racism around the term white privilege. The latter, as you say, is promoted by CRT, among others. If you read through the article in its present form, I think you'll find that there's actually a lot of criticism. Some, but not all, relates to the use of the "white privilege" framing of discussions of racism in educational settings. Criticism has not been kept out of the article. On the other hand, the claim that there's no such thing as white privilege or that it's not notable would be fringe. NightHeron (talk) 19:47, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

NightHeron, exactly. Especially in the United States, where the legacy of slavery is part of the very fabric of the country. Guy (help!) 23:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

There are many empirical facts to which the term white privilege clearly applies in the sense of the common meaning of the words white and privilege, that is, an unearned/undeserved benefit that someone gets as a direct result of discrimination against people of color and of being white, a benefit that would be enjoyed by most any white person in that situation and not by a person of color. Above I gave a couple of examples. Those instances of white privilege would exist even if Critical Race Theory had never existed, and they cannot be denied. These facts exist even though one can point to non-white groups with privilege, to white groups without privilege, and to whites who get privileges for reasons other than being white. Legitimate controversy arises when writers extend the use of the term white privilege in ways that don't agree with the common meaning of "privilege", such as the absence of oppression. Critics can also object to the notion that white privilege terminology and analysis is the best way to frame the problem of racism and is the best way to teach students (white privilege pedagogy). Can we try to reach consensus about some of this? NightHeron (talk) 20:20, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: Even assuming that all your empirical claims were true, the idea that not being discriminated against is a "privilege" is something that was promoted by CRT, and which many critics point out does not accord with what the word "privilege" generally means (a benefit reserved for a few). That's one of several prominent criticisms of the theory of white privilege. You keep on saying that white privilege theory is just a set of empirical observations, but it's not just that. It's an interpretation that extrapolates from several empirical observations. According to many critics, it both misuses the word "privilege" and ignores other empirical facts that undermine the theory (such as the success of African immigrants and other non-white immigrant groups in the US). The "legitimate" controversy over white privilege theory extends far beyond educational theory. There is legitimate controversy over the core of the theory. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: The examples I've given, such as the cab-hailing episode on "TV Nation", amount to more than just the absence of discrimination. In a city with many people wanting taxis (this was in the pre-Uber days) taxi drivers could afford to be picky. If it weren't for race, a driver would normally prefer a well-dressed guy (who'd be likely to leave a big tip) to a poorly-dressed seedy-looking guy (who might not pay or at least would be less likely to tip). However, the point of Michael Moore's little experiment was to show that not only was Yaphet Kotto discriminated against, but also the white guy was automatically accepted and not viewed critically as he would have been if the driver had not been distracted by his own racist preference. Similarly, in the case of my acquaintance who had overstayed her visa but was skipped over by Immigration because of her skin color, she was afforded a benefit beyond what she "deserved" that was not available to the majority of bus passengers, who were Latino. That's a form of privilege, as the word is normally understood. NightHeron (talk) 19:36, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Is this your opinion, or can you cite sources for all the assertions you attribute to "many..." etc.? Please state what you refer to as "legitimate controversy over the core of the theory." Otherwise, this comes off as cable news punditry and handwaving and it does not enable other editors to give substantive responses that might lead to resolution of some or all of what you say. SPECIFICO talk 17:38, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Certainly. In his book, Intellectuals and Race, Thomas Sowell agues that 'privilege' represents an effort by the intelligencia to "downplay or discredit achievement by verbally transforming it into privilege".

Full quote is:

"The very concept of achievement fades into the background or disappears completely in some of the verbal formulations of the intelligencia, where those who turn out to be more successful ex poste are depicted as being privileged ex ante. How far this vision can depart from reality was shown by a report titled 'Ethno-racial inequality in the City of Toronto', which said "The Japanese are among the most privileged group in the city because they were more successful economically than either other minorities there or the white majority'. What makes this conclusion grotesque is a documented history of Japanese discrimination in Canada where people of Japanese ancestry where interned during the second world war longer than Japanese Americans. Efforts of the intelligencia to downplay or discredit achievement by verbally transforming it into privilege are by no means by no means confined to the Japanese minority in Canada." Intellectuals and Race, pp52-53, Basic Books (12 Mar. 2013) 978-0465058723 Keith Johnston (talk) 19:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

The core of the theory is that whites benefit disproportionately as against other ethnic groups. Yet In England, working-class whites are doing badly when it comes to higher education. A 2015 report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that white British pupils in the lowest socio-economic quintile are 10 per cent less likely to participate in higher education than any other ethnic group in that quintile. But it isn’t just whites from disadvantaged backgrounds who are struggling. According to the Department for Education, whites in general made less progress in England’s schools in 2018 than Asians, blacks or Chinese. These facts do not support the theory.

When it comes to income, whites are also lagging behind some other ethnic groups. In 2016, white Americans had a median household income of $67,865, lower than Indonesian Americans ($71,616), Pakistani Americans ($72,389), Malaysian Americans ($72,443), Sri Lankan Americans ($73,856), Filipino Americans ($84,620), Taiwanese Americans ($90,1221) and Indian Americans ($110,026). These facts do not support the theory. Keith Johnston (talk) 19:49, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Apologies, @NightHeron and Keith Johnston: -- my previous request for citations was in response to @Thucydides411:.

No problem. Here Phoebe Maltz Bovy subtitled her book - The Perils of Privilege: Why Injustice Can't Be Solved by Accusing Others of Advantage (ISBN: 9781250091208) She also claims "the main result of privilege talk is scrappiness one-upmanship among the privileged." https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/check-your-check-your-privilege/361898/

No-one is seeking to deny that privileged people exist, or that racism exists, but they don't see all ethnic group differences as evidence of "white privilege", especially since whites are not the groups which are doing the best. Keith Johnston (talk) 21:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, again, ask any white person if they have ever had trouble hailing a cab in Dallas. Guy (help!) 23:07, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this it may be the key to unlocking the difference in views. It appears many editors believe that white privilege and racism are synonyms. But critics of white privilege point out that to blame an entire ethnic group (whites) for the sins of a minority is unfair and some even go as fa as calling that conceptualization itself racist. Others note that poor whites in particular suffer discrimination so the conceptualization is best one of class, not race. Naturally it would be quite wrong to claim that racism does not exist, so its understandable if editors believe that is what is happening they object quite forcefully. The solution would be to make this clear in the text by emphasizing the critics of the concept are not denying the existence of racism. Keith Johnston (talk) 08:01, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

@Keith Johnston: No, I think there's already agreement that white privilege means something different from racism. It's a consequence of certain (not all) situations when racism is present. None of the editors is "blaming" all white people for anything. Even the direct beneficiaries of white privilege are not necessarily to blame for anything and are not necessarily racist. For example, my British acquaintance (who overstayed her visa but was skipped over when Immigration stopped the bus) was a beneficiary of white privilege, as she would happily admit. But she wasn't to blame for anything. As I wrote before, at present there's quite a lot of criticism in the article. Not of the existence of white privilege as a phenomenon, but rather of the idea that the "white privilege" framing is the best lens through which to view racism. Saying that the focus on white privilege in Critical Race Theory is excessive and should be dialed back -- a viewpoint of many responsible people, including some who are deeply committed to combatting racism -- is very different from claiming that there's no such thing as white privilege or that it's not a "thing" that merits treatment in Wikipedia. NightHeron (talk) 12:24, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks I was not suggesting that any editors are blaming all white people. Rather I am talking about the views reliable sources take of white privilege. For example here is JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis: "One side sees white privilege while the other sees anti-white racism. There is no room for agreement or even understanding." https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/race-relations-getting-worse-america-why/?itm_source=parsely-api

Here is David French "conservative white Americans look at urban multicultural liberalism and notice an important fact: Its white elite remains, and continues to enjoy staggering amounts of power and privilege. So when that same white elite applauds the decline of “white America,” what conservatives often hear isn’t a cheer for racial justice but another salvo in our ongoing cultural grudge match, with the victors seeking to elevate black and brown voices while remaining on top themselves." https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/great-white-culture-war-race-political-divides/?itm_source=parsely-api

Here is Dennis Prager "So then why all this left-wing talk about white privilege? The major reason is in order to portray blacks as victims. This achieves two huge goals for the Left — one political, the other philosophical. The political goal is to ensure that blacks continue to view America as racist.The political goal is to ensure that blacks continue to view America as racist." You can see from these examples that many mainstream conservatives fundamentally disagree with the conceptualisation of white privilege and believe it is part of a wider anti-white, anti-conservative worldview. These are controversial views amongst those on the liberal-left, but they are not fringe views.Keith Johnston (talk) 14:43, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, Dennis Prager? Seriously? GTFOH. Guy (help!) 00:35, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, white privilege and racism are not synonymous, but they are related. White privilege is, in large part, the state of not being subject to racism. The condition of not having to even be aware of racism. The worldview where racism does not exist because it's never happened to you. Guy (help!) 00:36, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

@Keith Johnston: There are a large number of empirical facts that show that whites sometimes get privileges because of skin color. It's unclear to me from your quotes from the National Review whether or not the conservatives are denying those facts, that is, whether or not they're claiming that there's no such thing as white privilege. In the US some conservative politicians and pundits have been adopting fringe views, denying scientific facts (anthropogenic climate change, evolution, etc.) and other facts. However, if all the conservative pundits are doing is complaining that liberals and progressives talk too much about white privilege, then that opinion is not necessarily fringe. But I'm not sure it's relevant to the article, since we have much more credible critics of white privilege framing who are already quoted in the article. Also, please remember that we're not interested in a false balance. The claim (alluded to in the JD Vance quote) that the real problem is anti-white racism is just a case of right-wing anger, and it's fringe. Also we should keep in mind that Wikipedia is international, and politics in the US is skewed to the right of the international average. So some of what passes for "mainstream conservative" in the US can still be fringe, such as climate change denialism, evolution denialism, and white privilege denialism. NightHeron (talk) 16:18, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

If you have reliable sources that help contextualise the arguments set out by such conservatives all good. We are here to report reliable sources views on a topic including critical arguments. what we cannot do is pretend arguments in reliable sources don't exist or pre-empt them with original research. given this, my personal opinions on white privilege is not relevant, only reliable sources are Keith Johnston (talk) 16:37, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

What I'm suggesting is that a well-known scholarly journal (such as Harvard Educational Review) is a better source than a political magazine for conservative pundits (National Review). I think that the criticism that's now in the article provides balance and is well-sourced. There is no need for additional low-quality sources when we already have high-quality ones. NightHeron (talk) 18:28, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, this has been a useful discussion. I find it useful in this article to focus on specific proposed changes, which I will do in due course. In the meantime the NPOV noticeboard discussion is ongoing and I note that since the creation of this section two new and uninvolved editors support the contention that it is not neutral and not a scientific fact. I shall leave it to an uninvolved editor to summarise the entire discussion once it concludes. Keith Johnston (talk) 18:35, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, just be sure you cite reliable sources. Which means not Dennis Prager, National Review, Breitbart, InfoWars, Tinfoil Hat Monthly or anything else but solidly peer-reviewed academic research. Guy (help!) 00:41, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Do you include journals in Critical Race Theory as "solidly peer-received academic research"? Such journals exist in order to perpetuate CRT. They're not going to publish essays (since that's really what we're talking about, not scientific articles) that dispute the existence of white privilege. The National Review publishes political essays from a different perspective. I see no reason why CRT journals would be given more weight on Wikipedia than prominent conservative publications like the National Review. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:50, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Thucydides411, if you define CRT journals as any journal with a scope that is narrowly focused on CRT then that would be reasonable. I would not cite the Journal of Critical Race Theory (if such a thing existed) not because it's unreliable but because some people here would not accept it just on that basis.

If, on the other hand, you define it as any journal that includes discussion of white privilege, then no. Guy (help!) 16:58, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Images

-sche, good job finding the new image. Do we need more? How about File:Whites_Only.jpg, File:New Orleans Public Service Streetcar Bench with Colored Segregation Sign 01.jpg, File:1943 Colored Waiting Room Sign.jpg, File:Boston Protester White Privilege.jpg? Mathglot (talk) 04:16, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! I sought out an image showing both a white and a colored thing (fountain, waiting room, etc) in the same image or collage so the higher quality of the one for whites could be seen, as this seemed more illustrative to me than a photo showing only a colored thing. A thing reserved to "whites only" could also be illustrative, but despite the name File:Whites_Only.jpg actually depicts a "non-whites only" bench. I don't object to including any of those photos, but others may want to weigh in as to whether they're relevant to white privilege per se as opposed to, say, Racism. (The Boston protestor's photo is already used in the article.) -sche (talk) 04:42, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I do object on the bass that what is displayed is racism. Lets not confuse readers that white privilege is the same as racism. if it is we may as well marge the articles Keith Johnston (talk) 15:30, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Of course it's not identical. I've seen it described as "the legacy and cause of racism"a good discussion of the relationship and white privilege as the cornerstone of racism.[9]. That's just a couple, there are more and no doubt better analyses of the relationship between the two. That close relationship is why an image showing racism can be useful, especially one that clearly shows the difference between the facilities as the present one does. It occurs to me that this subject is a good example of where political science and sociology are both key to its understanding - my Yale years are long ago but my study of both subjects there still is useful. Doug Weller talk 16:37, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

“ Equally there have been many editors whose assumption has been that because they reject the concept of white privilege, so it is not a thing, and they will not accept any other answer. Newsflash: white privilege is a thing.”

This is your opinion, and wikipedia is not a place for your opinions. White privilege is not a widely accepted fact, and you must demonstrate that it is universally accepted before treating it as such. No matter how strongly you believe in it, your personal beliefs are irrelevant. Librairetal (talk) 09:44, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Bias in the article

An editor has condensed this section.

I would like to argue that the wording of this article is very biased, I will start by agreeing that under certain definition white privilege does exist, not everywhere but it does exist in many (or all?) white majority countries, however the way this is represented in Wikipedia is highly biased when it is, I believe, common knowledge that people tend to give certain favoritism to people of their own skin color, culture, language, ethnicity or race, for various reasons, relatability being among the chief reasons, and I think this is absolutely undeniable fact, easily proved, and pretty much common knowledge - and while such favoritism does exist there is no article called "Black privilege" or any other race based privilege article on Wikipedia, neither is it noted in this Wikipedia article which attempts to present white privilege as something unique among white people when that is clearly not the case. I would challenge anyone to go to Africa, middle east or Asia (and I mention this as an argument) and start to speak about privilege of native race there and see where that leads to, for the reason that people generally know what it would lead to (the person or group being immediately shut down/incarcerated etc.) there are almost no examples of that thereof. I could cite multiple non-white majority countries with extremely strict immigration laws, government dictated strict maximum quotas for foreigners working in there together with very difficult naturalization laws, and history of oppressing citizens of other races or ethnicity effectively working as extreme privilege and favoritism for native race/ethnicity proving that such privilege is non exclusive to white people. This article presents itself as something describing the order and norms of contemporary world while it would fit much more with colonial age, where multiple, but hardly all and not majority of White people countries were colonizing many non-white people countries and (usually) enforcing privilege for themselves, however it was neither majority of white people countries, nor is there any proof that it was approved by majority of citizens of those countries as they were generally authoritarian monarchies, and none of the people responsible are alive today, neither was it only white people engaged in this behavior. Lastly if white people are exceptionally privileged, racist etc. then why do we have more than million people immigrating to United Stated every year (still a majority white people country) out of their free will with white people being only a small share of them (see https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2019/06/03/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/ which cites 13.2% of Canadian and European immigrants in 2017), isn't that contradictory to the tone and message of this article that white privilege is an oppressive and offensive system exclusive to white people countries designed to target and under-privilege minorities, if those people were somehow unaware of the white privilege then why do we see so little return migration? I mention U.S. in specific because the article appears to be very Americocentric which is not mention in the heading (another bias). Walther st (talk) 22:15, 27 December 2019 (UTC) Welcome to Wikipedia. Please check out WP:FALSEBALANCE, WP:RS, and WP:NOR. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:14, 27 December 2019 (UTC) I am not exactly new to Wikipedia but I previously did my edits without account, I am aware of no-original research, but there isn't much authoritative research I can present when quoting any view that significantly deviates from the current article wording would probably be dismissed as far-right, and I am not sure how that invalidates any of my arguments regarding my claim that the article is biased and I think it is fair to state this in the talk section. I think this article is clearly not neutral point of view. I will quote WP:YESPOV Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight. Observe the following principles to achieve the level of neutrality that is appropriate for an encyclopedia I think the article is in conflict with "strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another". If we base this article purely on academic research of white-privilege it is bound to have left-wing bias which is well known for it's particular take on and obsession with white privilege all the while ignoring all other forms of racial bias and privilege. I quote research about left-wing bias in academia: https://www.adamsmith.org/research/lackademia-why-do-academics-lean-left Individuals with left-wing and liberal views are overrepresented in British academia. Those with right-wing and conservative views are correspondingly underrepresented. Around 50% of the general public supports right-wing or conservative parties, compared to less than 12% of academics. Conservative and right-wing academics are particularly scarce in the social sciences, the humanities and the arts. There are whole studies dedicated to 'white privilege' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_studies ) with no alternative research regarding any other racial privilege. So we are bound to run into bias if we base this article purely on academic research, and as far as I know Wikipedia is pretty much banning any right leaning non-academic source with no such effect on left leaning sources, still I believe there should be ways to improve this article and uphold the intended spirit of Wikipedia as free and neutral online encyclopedia and make this article more balanced including making a section for criticism, as for individual lines from the article with strong bias then there are far to many to quote, as they make up majority of the whole article. Walther st (talk) 23:58, 27 December 2019 (UTC) Also note this, you quote WP:NOR, however it specifically mentions: " (This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources, such as deletion discussions or policy noticeboards.)" And I did not do any edits in the article (and of course I can't) nor made any specific original research based suggestions. Walther st (talk) 00:07, 28 December 2019 (UTC) The sources you're referring to as "left leaning" aren't necessarily so. A lot of right-wing cranks who attempt to use a vaneer of academic standing to promote their political claims try to present academia as being in a political dichotomy. Have you considered the prospect that it isn't an entire field and the majority of editors here that's biased, it's your selection of sources that are the problem? Have you read WP:GEVAL? Ian.thomson (talk) 00:10, 28 December 2019 (UTC) The page you quote about 'reality liberal bias' leads to some joke so I am not sure how that is relevant to this discussion. I am reading very wide selection of sources both left wing and right wing, also you did not even try challenge any of my specific claims so I am not sure how you are contributing to this section. Walther st (talk) 00:17, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Here's a specific academic research that even babies prefer people of their own race: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2566511/ which completely confirms my point that certain favoritism towards own race isn't white people specific why can't that be added to article for balance? Walther st (talk) 00:21, 28 December 2019 (UTC) That source doesn't say anything about white privilege. Are you sure you read WP:NOR? Because you'd've read WP:SYNTH if you had, and if you had read that, you'd know you're wasting your time sharing sources like that. We don't need to challenge your claims, because you're not presenting relevant WP:RS. See also WP:NOTFORUM and WP:NOTSOAPBOX. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:31, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Again I did not requests any specific edit, but challenged the neutrality of the article, I think the article deserves 'not neutral point of view' banner like this: I am not sure you read my previous answer, according to the very policy section you state I am free to share any original research in the talk section so I am not sure where you are coming from, it specifically states this: " (This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources, such as deletion discussions or policy noticeboards.)" Walther st (talk) 00:38, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Also I did not say that it disproves 'white privilege' on the contrary it confirms it, but the study also confirms my argument that favoritism towards own race isn't something unique to white people, which helps to prove my point that the whole article is not neutral point of view. Walther st (talk) 00:40, 28 December 2019 (UTC) You've not demonstrated that the article does not neutrally represent mainstream academia, though. You've only mentioned the prospect that it excludes partisan sources (which isn't an issue) and cited unrelated sources. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:57, 28 December 2019 (UTC) As I noted earlier there is a very strong left wing bias in academia which is associated with bias towards topics such as 'white privilege', so I did not dispute that the article is relatively in-sync with the academia, however even on this level I think it is not neutral, there are various studies that would challenge the prevalent tone in this article - that is, that is that whites are not experiencing racism and only benefiting from existing system and that only whites are giving favoritism to their own race, see for examples this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3164804/ which notes the negative effects of white privilege (none of which are mentioned in this one sided article): Bowser and Hunt’s (1981) edited text entitled Impacts of Racism on White Americans presented a collection of scholarly writings that underscore the negative consequences of dominant group membership for White people, including inauthenticity (Terry, 1981), negative emotions (Karp, 1981) and maladjustment due to racism (Pettigrew, 1981). The specific phrase costs of racism to Whites was conceived by Kivel (1996) and is defined as negative psychosocial consequences that Whites experience as dominant group members in a system of societal racial oppression. There are also articles on bias in academia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27905455 which links to: https://www.nature.com/articles/540007a I quote: It is crucial to fight discrimination in all its forms, but it is unhelpful to exclude conservative voices from debate. I think the main problem with this article is current prevalent news source bias in Wikipedia where right leaning news sources are excluded giving an actual privilege to left leaning news sources as well as existing left wing bias in academia which is rarely disputed, in fact you admitted this bias by linking to an url that says "Reality_has_a_well_known_liberal_bias". The only dispute here is whether left wing or right wing better represents reality, perhaps it's neither and Wikipedia shouldn't be giving any privilege to left leaning sources. Walther st (talk) 01:37, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Your comments include a large number of unsupported assumptions. It also appears you have not carefully read the sources you are proposing. This source does not support what you are implying. It is building on previous work to say that racism negatively affects white people specifically because they are in a "dominant" position. In other words, this study accepts the existence of white privilege and identifies it as significant to white people's behavior and well-being. Where does the article say otherwise? Have any reliable sources ever denied this? How would you have us properly summarize this WP:PRIMARY source? If you have a specific point, make it succinctly, and use reliable source which are specifically about white privilege. It might be convenient to assume sources will be dismissed because they are "right-wing" but this is simplistic at best and defeatist at worst. You need to propose changes based on what reliable sources are actually saying, not merely what you wish they were saying. So far, you have not done any of the work needed to improve the article. Grayfell (talk) 01:56, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Regarding your restatement of the dismissed argument there is a very strong left wing bias in academia, as I already explained (but you didn't listen), A lot of right-wing cranks who attempt to use a vaneer of academic standing to promote their political claims try to present academia as being in a political dichotomy. In other words, the problem is that you're ignorantly dismissing the majority of academia as "left-wing" because you've surrounded yourself with a few hyper partisan sources that try to present a Manichaean political dichotomy to pretend that it's just "two sides" (implied to be equal) instead of a few cranks opposing the near totality of scholars in relevant fields. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:12, 28 December 2019 (UTC) I mentioned about ten times that I agree that 'white-privilege' exists, so why are you trying to imply otherways? This article opens with "White privilege (or white skin privilege) is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people", no-where does it mention other-ways, the article I mentioned notes several negative impacts of 'white-privilege' towards whites. This article is one sided, not neutral, and paints a false picture of white-privilege being the only form of racial privilege in existence, that whites only benefit from it, and that there no anti-white bias or discrimination in US or elsewhere see this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6438165/ This association was also observed in White women with higher SES, which was an unexpected finding. Several explanations may exist for this finding (e.g., Apfelbaum, Norton, & Sommers, 2012; Craig & Richeson, 2017; DiAngelo, 2011; Norton & Sommers, 2011; Wilkins & Kaiser, 2013). Of late, a growing number of Whites in the U.S. have been reported as perceiving an increase in Anti-White bias and racial discrimination toward their group (see report byNNational Public Radio, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, & Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, 2017; Norton & Sommers, 2011). In addition, these perceptions have been linked with poor health outcomes in Whites (e.g., Peterson, Matthews, Derby, Bromberger, & Thurston, 2016. Also this research about racism towards whites in Australia challenges that notion: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07256868.2018.1459516 Walther st (talk) 02:19, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Do you really mean "towards whites"? Or perhaps "against? I note that the lead sentence says "...an event where they perceived a white Australian had been the target of racism". The key word there is "perceived". It doesn't mean it actually existed. HiLo48 (talk) 02:49, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Again see this: https://www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/ Studies have found that majority of people with higher education in U.S. hold liberal views, and modern science and academy is absolutely dominates by people with higher education and that the gap is increasing. Also note this study which found that most professors are liberal (i.e. left wing): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257661887_Why_Are_Professors_Liberal Walther st (talk) 02:45, 28 December 2019 (UTC) In reply to 'HiLo48' - please look up the meaning of the word 'towards', one common meaning is 'directed at'. The use of the more neutral wording 'perceived' in the study is because as I said, and cited sources which confirm it, that academia is dominated by people with left-wing/liberal political views, so anything perceived as promoting existence of 'anti-white racism' can by perceived as actual racism towards non-whites, people who have been judged as racist have been booted out of science and academy time and time again, not so with left leaning professors please look up Noel Ignatiev, in fact he pretty much advocated for "abolishing white race" whether it meant genocide or something else is open to interpretation but that's a fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Ignatiev#%22New_abolition%22_and_the_%22white_race%22 In answer to 'Ian.thomson' - I am not sure how you are contributing to discussion by citing a joke, and using loaded language with words like 'right-wing cranks': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language Walther st (talk) 03:01, 28 December 2019 (UTC) It appears that you are arguing against a vague position that nobody seems to be holding, and you have not explained how the article "paints" this supposedly biased picture. Most of the sources you have thrown against the wall do not mention "white privilege" at all, so your point is lost and you give us the impression that you are not listening to what we are saying to you. Again, this should be based on reliable sources, and for every specific claim, those sources should be about "white privilege" in clear terms. An encyclopedia article about an academic term is going to rely on academic sources. Balance does not mean we include less-reliable sources simply to placate a hypothetical group or ideology. That would not be balance, it would be false balance. We go by reliable sources, and if those sources share a specific viewpoint, that is not necessarily a problem, and not one Wikipedia can solve. Grayfell (talk) 03:08, 28 December 2019 (UTC) I could quote endless articles that would explain how wrong this article is, but they would all be dismissed as "far-right propaganda and conspiracy theories" while at same time there are actual professors in academia advocating for "abolishing" of white race and they are perfectly accepted. Say this: https://quillette.com/2019/05/23/what-does-teaching-white-privilege-actually-accomplish-not-what-you-might-think-or-hope/ quote: What accounts for this? One possibility is that social liberals are internalizing white-privilege lessons in a way that flattens the image of whites, portraying all of them as inherently privileged. So if a white person is poor, it must be his or her own fault. After all, they’ve had all sorts of advantages in life that others haven’t. When we talk about racial inequality, it is important to understand that we’re often talking about structural or society-wide averages, not the status of all individuals at all times. It is true, for instance, that African Americans are disproportionately impacted by poverty. That means a higher percentage of African Americans live in poverty as compared to whites. But the largest number of individuals in the United States who live in poverty are white. We can’t, and we shouldn’t, assume anything about any individual’s life solely based on his or her race, or based on larger facts about racial inequality. Racism exists, of course, and its impact is disproportionately felt by society’s minority populations. I have personally spent a decent chunk of my reporting career documenting this. But the fact that disparate treatment is inflicted on racial minorities doesn’t prove the existence of an all-encompassing pattern of white privilege. “If you’re white, chances are seeing a police officer fills you with one of two things: relief or gratitude,” writes one advocate of a privilege-centric worldview. But around half of the people who are killed every year by U.S. police officers are white. True, police violence falls disproportionately on ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. But if you’re white and you’ve been abused by a police officer, your individual experience may be just as painful as that of a black person who’s suffered similar abuse. If we extend the logic of privilege beyond the issue of race, it’s easy to see the flaws with this approach. We know, for instance, that 93 percent of people in U.S. federal prisons are men. In nearly every part of the criminal justice system, in fact, men on average have it worse than women do. But does that then mean we should be discussing “female privilege”? Would it be beneficial to the men behind bars for women to proclaim awareness of their “privileged” status? I literally can't afford to waste any more time on this, you say I am "arguing from vague position that nobody seems to be holding" this talk page is literally full of people alleging bias in the article, I disproved nearly every point that was thrown at me including with citing actual research, all I met was trying to shut me down by throwing policies against me that do not exist for talk page, attempting to nit pick at my words and failing even there, not disproving any of my actual points, trying to use jokes and loaded language to disprove my points, ignoring everything else I said per convenience, this is not a honest, good-faith WP:GF discussion by any margin and just a waste of time for everybody. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:White_privilege#Criticism_Subsection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:White_privilege#POV_banner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:White_privilege#Change_the_main_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:White_privilege#Factual_or_Theoretical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:White_privilege#The_article_as_a_whole_is_insufficiently_neutralWalther st (talk) 03:32, 28 December 2019 (UTC) Your last post makes it abundantly clear that you cannot consider the prospect that you might be wrong. Between that, multiple experienced users pointing out your failures in understanding our policies, and you starting to understand that you are wasting time (not just yours but everyone's), it's best that you find something else to do. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:45, 28 December 2019 (UTC) I agree with Walther st (talk) to the extent one of the criticisms of white privilege in reliable sources is that it relies on academics who are biased or suffer from group-think. This should be included because it is in the reliable sources. I welcome specific proposals for changes. Keith Johnston (talk) 15:47, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

For example, the sentence I quoted above should really read something like “According to Critical Race Theory, European colonialism, involving some of the earliest significant contacts of Europeans with indigenous peoples, was crucial”. As it stands right now, we go from speaking ABOUT the ideas of CRT theorists, to actually using their voice. We need to make clear who’s position this is. Right now it is written as an established fact. We have sources in which CRT theorists explain their opinions, and make a case for them, but no source that this is an objective, widely accepted phenomena. The burden of proof is on those claiming that this is a fact that we must just accept. We don’t have a source for that. We just have sources in which CRT theorists explain what white privilege is, but we’re begging the question if we use this as evidence for the existence of the phenomena. What we are lacking are sources that demonstrate this to be fact. Otherwise the article needs a number of “according to” xyz lines. The article is mostly acceptable, but then we get opinionated and unsubstantiated claims like:

“White privilege functions differently in different places. A person's white skin will not be an asset to them in every conceivable place or situation. White people are also a global minority, and this fact affects the experiences they have outside of their home areas.”

Here we are not talking about the concept of white privilege, as an academic subject or tool, and are instead looking at history/society through a lens of white privilege. Even if you believe strongly that this accurately reflects reality, it is not appropriate for a wikipedia article, anymore than a religious person writing matter-of-factly about their faith, however strongly they believe in it. Librairetal (talk) 15:53, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Why are my responses winding up in the wrong thread? Librairetal (talk) 15:57, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Librairetal (talk) 19:21, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Reverted rewrite of lead sentence

The rewrite introduced confusion about the term white privilege. It describes it as a sociological concept, and then later in the paragraph traces it back to European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade. Whereas write privilege as a phenomenon has its roots in much earlier times, the sociological theories related to white privilege do not have roots from hundred of years ago. In any case, these issues have been discussed at length on this talk page, and consensus is needed before making changes in the lead. NightHeron (talk) 17:00, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

I read the other section and didn't notice this section, oops! Anyway the discussion is here. Regarding consensus it's hard to determine at this point, a good number of editors are split in terms of what should be done in said discussion.SprayCanToothpick (talk) 18:50, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, consensus is difficult to determine. There have been large numbers of editors who have objected to the overall tone of the article (describing a contested sociological concept as a fact) and relative lack of criticism, but they've been repeatedly chased away (for example, see the above talk section, "Bias in the article"). -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:46, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Equally there have been many editors whose assumption has been that because they reject the concept of white privilege, so it is not a thing, and they will not accept any other answer. Newsflash: white privilege is a thing. Guy (help!) 15:14, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem is subjective comments like "Newsflash: white privlige is a thing." keep getting made and have no actual policy weight. If everyone here focused on Wikipedia policy rather than subjective opinions it could be a productive discussion. I respect and thank @NightHeron:, while holding a differing opinion, for engaging in such policy discussion and hope to follow up to him once I have enough time to.SprayCanToothpick (talk) 03:59, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

SprayCanToothpick, actually the problem is people who are here to try to deny that white privilege exists, because it causes them cognitive dissonance. Wikipedia documents the fact that it exists. Same as we do with climate change, evolution and the rest. The fact that some people want it not to be so is our problem only in as much as it causes these arguments. Guy (help!) 08:48, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

@SprayCanToothpick: I agree. We should focus on policy rather than subjective opinion. I think one fundamental issue that prevents agreement here, however, is that some people view Critical Race Theory as equivalent to biology or physics (that is, a science), while others (such as myself) see it as a more subjective field that can make arguments, but doesn't have a particular claim on truth (and certainly doesn't have more claim on truth than competing sociological theories). Those who view CRT as scientific truth view those who view it as subjective as "deniers", equivalent to people who deny evolution and climate change. Those who don't view CRT as a scientific field think equating CRT with evolution, climatology or physics is absurd, and don't think the article should push the view that CRT is correct. I don't know how to break this logjam, because these two different views (on whether CRT is a science) are fundamentally at odds. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:33, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: At least in my case you're making an incorrect assumption. My opinion of CRT (which is irrelevant, except that you speculated about our opinions) is not entirely positive. I initially entered discussions on this page because I thought that more criticism from RS was needed especially in the area of white privilege pedagogy, which has been criticized by some educators. After discussions I added those criticisms in a new section on white privilege pedagogy. Personally, I happen to agree with the criticisms. My position is not that CRT should be immune to criticism. Apparently other editors whom you're arguing with also do not believe that CRT should be immune to criticism, because if they did believe that, they would have reverted my edits on white privilege pedagogy. NightHeron (talk) 12:07, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

NightHeron, indeed. In academic discourse, this is normal and expected. But criticism of CRT is not a critique of the fact of white privilege, which appears to be part of the error we see in the discourse above. Guy (help!) 12:11, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

@JzG: As a matter of fact, much of the criticism of CRT disputes the concept of white privilege. The article used to include some of this criticism (mostly removed now): [10]. Do you think Wikipedia should say that these criticisms are incorrect, in the same way that it would say that creationism is incorrect? -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:13, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Note that the first sentence of the earlier version you're citing from 20 March 2014 defines white privilege as a phenomenon, not as a concept. Also it has a [note 1] giving several authors' definitions of the term, and all 7 of those authors define white privilege as a phenomenon, not as a theory. So the version you're citing actually supports the edit I made to the first sentence of the lead. NightHeron (talk) 14:52, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

@NightHeron: I'm not endorsing that version of the article. I'm just pointing you to the "Aspects" section, which contained criticism that disputed the concept of white privilege. You and Guy have essentially been saying that such criticism is fringe. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:08, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Thucydides411, you just undermined your own point. Guy (help!) 08:30, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Not at all. I pointed to a section in an old version of the article that cites a number of critics who dispute the concept of white privilege. That's a critique that NightHeron has been saying either doesn't exist or is fringe, but there it is in the old version of the article, sourced to two well-known social commentators. NightHeron ignored that section, and somehow assumed I was saying I agreed with everything in the old version of the article. It's irrelevant if the old version of the article says white privilege is a fact. What's relevant is that the critics NightHeron is saying don't exist do, in fact, exist in abundance. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:31, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I said that denying the existence of white privilege is fringe, but I have never said that it's "fringe" to criticize the use of white privilege analysis or framing of an issue on the grounds that it might not be accurate or helpful in a given situation. I didn't carefully read all of the criticism in the earlier version, but I didn't see any that claimed that there's no such thing as white privilege. Marxist criticism, for example, takes the position that it's much better to focus on class than on race, and that use of the term white privilege when talking to workers is divisive and counterproductive, especially since in most cases the white people among the workers are not big beneficiaries of white privilege. W. E. B. DuBois, who was philosophically pro-communist, would have undoubtedly agreed with that Marxist criticism, although he also talked about the ways that racism resulted in privileges for whites. NightHeron (talk) 16:34, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

"I said that denying the existence of white privilege is fringe": Then you're effectively calling the views expressed by Gordon Lewis, Naomi Zack and Eric Arnesen in the previous version of the article "fringe". "I didn't see any that claimed that there's no such thing as white privilege": That is essentially the claim being made by Lewis Gordon and Naomi Zack in the quotes presented in the previous version of the article. They do not think the concept reflects the reality of society, in which, in their view, most white people are not privileged. The disagreement is not only about whether white privilege is helpful to talk about, as you are claiming, but is also about whether the concept of white privilege accurately describes society at all. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:13, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

The term white privilege accurately describes a phenomenon that exists in society. That's not to say that it is present everywhere or all the time. By analogy, no reasonable person could deny that government corruption is a phenomenon that exists. But that's not the same as saying that "government corruption accurately describes society". NightHeron (talk) 22:26, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

"The term white privilege accurately describes a phenomenon that exists in society": According to you, and according to Critical Race Theorists. Not according to many critics of the theory, two of whom I've just named for you. They're not fringe, and their views must be represented in the article. We've gone around in circles, and I've tried (and failed, so far) to get you to acknowledge the fact that many social commentators do not think that the concept of "white privilege" accurately describes society. Can you just acknowledge that one fact? I've demonstrated it above pretty clearly. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:24, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

After "tried and failed" comes "drop stick." SPECIFICO talk 02:14, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

The term white privilege accurately describes a phenomenon that exists in society not a concept in a theory. To describe it as a concept is inaccurate. The article should clearly state it is a phenomenon. Attempts to describe it as a concept are WP:FRINGE   // Timothy::talk  02:04, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

TimothyBlue, the open RFC above leans to that view, certainly. Guy (help!) 13:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

// thanks JzG. From a look at the archives, it seems like this is unfortunately a perennial discussion.

Since it was mentioned here, I looked at the Male privilege article and this concept nonsense has actually made it into the lede. I was going to comment there and maybe open an RFC, not sure if the RFC would be appropriate at this time.   // Timothy::talk  15:16, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

TimothyBlue, oh good grief. Privilege is a thing. The fact that some privileged people like to think it isn't, is a big part of the problem. Guy (help!) 15:33, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Not a neutral article

This article presents “white privilege” as a given, objective fact rather than the fringe theory of academia that it actually is. The article should be about the CONCEPT of white privilege, what it means to those that believe in it, the history of the idea and so on. Instead, by the time we reach the history section, we have abandoned the analysis of the concept, and are treating the phenomena as a given, tracing it back to the colonial (!) period. Past the introduction, it is as though the concept is accepted and then the phenomena is traced backwards through time: in other words, this reads like a white privilege essay, rather than a neutral account of the concept and the people that believe in it/promulgate it.

“ White privilege is a social phenomenon.” - This is inappropriate. White privilege is a concept that aims/claims to explain social phenomenon. Instead, the article is composed as though the “white privilege” is some widely accepted fact.

“ European colonialism, involving some of the earliest significant contacts of Europeans with indigenous peoples, was crucial in the foundation and development of white privilege.” - Again, this shifts from talking about white privilege as an academic hypothesis, and treats it as though it was as universally accepted as gravity. Librairetal (talk) 09:40, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Ok, what forum is recruiting these guys? Ian.thomson (talk) 09:51, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps the editorial stance a number of editors here have taken - that white privilege is a proven fact, rather than a concept in sociology - is what's causing so many people to complain. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:05, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Denial of reality can be discomforting. Let's stick with RS instead of inserting our own opinions. O3000 (talk) 13:15, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

What about when the RS describes it as a concept, I can find more throughout the article. SprayCanToothpick (talk) 04:06, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with sticking to RS. I don't agree with your assertion that describing an academic concept in CRT as an academic concept in CRT is "denial of reality." Why the push to declare CRT to be the correct description of society? -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:19, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

One must recognize a problem before one can fix it. Of course, there are some that don't want problems that may benefit them fixed. O3000 (talk) 13:27, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

That's a fine political statement, but it's not an editing guideline for Wikipedia. Not everyone agrees with Critical Race Theorists about what the nature of the problem is. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I would encourage those critical of the article to make proposals on how to change it supported by reliable sources. Keith Johnston (talk) 15:18, 9 January 2020 (UTC) (Sorry for the double post, posted this elsewhere by mistake)

For example, the sentence I quoted above should really read something like “According to Critical Race Theory, European colonialism, involving some of the earliest significant contacts of Europeans with indigenous peoples, was crucial”. As it stands right now, we go from speaking ABOUT the ideas of CRT theorists, to actually using their voice. We need to make clear who’s position this is. Right now it is written as an established fact. We have sources in which CRT theorists explain their opinions, and make a case for them, but no source that this is an objective, widely accepted phenomena. The burden of proof is on those claiming that this is a fact that we must just accept. We don’t have a source for that. We just have sources in which CRT theorists explain what white privilege is, but we’re begging the question if we use this as evidence for the existence of the phenomena. What we are lacking are sources that demonstrate this to be fact. Otherwise the article needs a number of “according to” xyz lines. The article is mostly acceptable, but then we get opinionated and unsubstantiated claims like:

“White privilege functions differently in different places. A person's white skin will not be an asset to them in every conceivable place or situation. White people are also a global minority, and this fact affects the experiences they have outside of their home areas.”

Here we are not talking about the concept of white privilege, as an academic subject or tool, and are instead looking at history/society through a lens of white privilege. Even if you believe strongly that this accurately reflects reality, it is not appropriate for a wikipedia article, anymore than a religious person writing matter-of-factly about their faith, however strongly they believe in it. Librairetal (talk) 15:56, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I support this and the reasons given are valid Keith Johnston (talk) 16:14, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

There's nothing non-neutral about the sentence European colonialism, involving some of the earliest significant contacts of Europeans with indigenous peoples, was crucial in the foundation and development of white privilege. It's an indisputable historical fact that European colonialism established social systems in which whites lived privileged lives compared to the "natives". The colonial system was an extremely important early example of a system of white privilege. What's the matter with saying this? Have we ventured through the looking-glass into Trumpotopia where facts are no longer facts? NightHeron (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

“ Have we ventured through the looking-glass into Trumpotopia where facts are no longer facts?” Can we stick to the topic at hand? Second time I’ve been accused of ulterior motives in this thread. If your argument is valid it should stand by itself without the aid of ad hominem.

This article is not about ways that white people have dominated throughout history. Nobody is disputing that. This is an article about a sociological concept, white privilege. It was invented as in the 1970s. It has much broader implications that direct oppression i.e. slavery, colonialism, both of which already have articles. This is an article about a specific academic concept peculiar to the Critical Race Theory school. It should not be written in the “voice” of a CRT theorist. Everybody knows that there was white racist ideology used to try to justify the suppression of Africans in the previous centuries. This is not under dispute and you’re moving the goal posts to make your point.

No, you objected to a specific sentence in the article, and I defended that sentence as a statement of fact. The notion that white people often enjoy privileges as a result of systemic racism was not first noticed by CRT academics. Franz Fanon, Steven Biko, and others wrote about that aspect of racism. And in the 18th and 19th centuries in the South of the US anyone with any sense would know that whites there were enjoying privileges they would not have if it weren't for slavery. There are also plenty of situations today in many countries where whites get some benefits as a result of systemic racism. It shouldn't be necessary to get into a dispute about that. NightHeron (talk) 20:08, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

No, Librairetal (talk) is correct. the conceptualisation of this as 'white privilege' is a product of CRT. RS can show this. Attributing it to CRT is neutral.Keith Johnston (talk) 18:01, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, no it's not. It predates CRT and if CRT did not exist white privilege still would. The data is unequivocal on that. Guy (help!) 16:50, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Refrences

References

Then is the answer not two pages? On on the social phenomenon, one of the CRT theory of the same?

And do we not need evidence that “white privilege” is a universally or even widely accepted term? And also a reason why “white privilege” even needs its own page if there is already pages on white supremacism etc?

All of the sources we have, or at least 80-90%, relate to Critical Race Theory.

It at least sounds like we agree that White Privilege (CRT theory) and white privilege (synonym for white-on-black racism) should not be conflated. That seems to be a contention on both sides. Librairetal (talk) 20:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I need to go through these sources when I get some time, but it looks to me as though almost all of the references describe the CRT theory, and not this broader “white privilege” or “white skin privilege” as being widely accepted/observed. I am not convinced that the theory of white privilege, independent of the CRT theory, is widely accepted enough to be stated matter-of-factly. My hypothesis, which I have yet to confirm, is that the vast majority of uses of the term “white privilege” are CRT based, while the broader phenomena is more commonly called white supremacism, racism etc. I’m willing to do the legwork to demonstrate it, but I’m not convinced that the wider use of the expression “white privilege” is really independent of CRT. I think that it is ALMOST exclusively used in this sense. Librairetal (talk) 20:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

The nature of our dispute

I have been thinking about this stalemate for the last two days, and I think I know why we are still in dispute. This page is being used for two separate, but overlapping purposes.

1) There is the theory of “White Privilege”, which I will capitalise for distinction, invented in the 1970s by certain academics - Peggy McIntosh, the CRT school and so on.

2) Secondly, there is the historical phenomena of white people oppressing black people through colonialism, slavery, jim crow and so on. This can be described as “white privilege” (lower case) but is also covered by “racism”, “white supremacism” and so on. This INCLUDES White Privilege as described by Peggy etc but is also broader and encompasses older forms of more direct racism that would not ordinarily be described as privilege per se.

These are two separate subjects that overlap. The theory of Peggy does not simply mean anti-black, pro-white racism. It is more specific, a particular framework used to analyse racism. While (virtually) everyone agrees that white people have historically oppressed black people (generalising for the sake of argument), there is no consensus on whether the “White Privilege” framework is accurate, given all of its additional stipulations as specified in the academic literature.

This page currently reads as a hodge-podge of both of these - it is a history and description of the “White Privilege” concept defined in the 70s, with all its additional (and more controversial) provisions of unconscious bias and so on, and also of a history of how white “forces” have oppressed black people throughout history.

The fact of black people being historically oppressed by white people is a universally accepted fact that does not need to be referred to as a theory. In a colloquial sense, we could describe this as lower case “white privilege”. The academic theory of “White Privilege”, however, is something more than this. It is a more specific theory, not simply an open term used to describe widely accepted phenomenon.

We need to determine whether this page is about the specific theory of White Privilege, or the phenomena of “white privilege”/white supremacy/white exceptionalism throughout history. We do need a page that deals specifically with Peggy’s concept, its adherents and its critics, and so to exclude the history of racism from such an article is not to deny the historical reality but to maintain the encyclopaedic nature of wikipedia - this article is about a Theory, not racism more broadly. This can change, but we need to specify. The theory itself needs its own page, independent of the history of the phenomena of which the school seeks of claims to describe/uncover/analyse. Right now we don’t have this, we have a confused page of dual-meaning - White Privilege as in Peggy McIntosh’s concept (which has greater implications than simply the name suggests, hence why she is credited as discovering/creating something new) and “white privilege” as a loose term describing ALL pro-white racism. In denying that Peggy’s theory is universally accepted (which it certainly is not), people are being buffed as though they are denying historical white-on-black racism full stop. It is becoming less about accuracy and more about political culture war, which Wikipedia should be and is above. Proponents are being accused of evangelism, detractors as racists in denial, neither of which are accurate at all. It really doesn’t need to be this controversial. Librairetal (talk) 19:06, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

This article is about white privilege, spelled without a capital P. In earlier years the same phenomenon was often called white skin privilege. A subtopic is the view of CRT that the term should be used to frame most discussions of racism -- even to the extent of using the word privilege in ways that do not accord with the dictionary definition of the word, and this is of course very controversial. For example, the article covers controversy about the notion that the white privilege framing should be the way to teach students about racism. The article does not say that CRT or McIntosh's article is universally accepted (BTW, unless you're a friend of hers, an author should be referred to by last name, not first name). The article seems balanced and NPOV-compliant -- but if someone wants to insert some additional critical perspectives supported by RS, that can be done per WP:BRD. NightHeron (talk) 20:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

It really doesn’t need to be this controversial.

It really doesn't. However, this need to try and frame "White Privilege" as somehow a separate phenomenon from "white privilege" really is controversial. And its this insistence that keeps this argument going. It's as if trying to argue that "Gravity" and "gravity" are different things.

We already have a page on Critical Race Theory which discusses that school of thought. But that school of thought is not synonymous with the recognized phenomenon of white privilege. The repeated conflation that it only exists within that school of thought keeps dragging things out here. So we're at this stumbling block because WP:RS have established that this is an actual phenomenon, not solely a "concept" within CRT, but some people don't like social science papers being RS, because... well, they don't think social science is "real" science. Hence, the impasse. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:16, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Then is the answer not two pages? On on the social phenomenon, one of the CRT theory of the same?

And do we not need evidence that “white privilege” is a universally or even widely accepted term? And also a reason why “white privilege” even needs its own page if there is already pages on white supremacism etc?

All of the sources we have, or at least 80-90%, relate to Critical Race Theory.

It at least sounds like we agree that White Privilege (CRT theory) and white privilege (synonym for white-on-black racism) should not be conflated. That seems to be a contention on both sides. Librairetal (talk) 20:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

No, white privilege is not a synonym for white-on-black racism. Please read my earlier comments and those of other editors about what the obvious examples of white privilege are. NightHeron (talk) 22:32, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I need to go through these sources when I get some time, but it looks to me as though almost all of the references describe the CRT theory, and not this broader “white privilege” or “white skin privilege” as being widely accepted/observed. I am not convinced that the theory of white privilege, independent of the CRT theory, is widely accepted enough to be stated matter-of-factly. My hypothesis, which I have yet to confirm, is that the vast majority of uses of the term “white privilege” are CRT based, while the broader phenomena is more commonly called white supremacism, racism etc. I’m willing to do the legwork to demonstrate it, but I’m not convinced that the wider use of the expression “white privilege” is really independent of CRT. I think that it is ALMOST exclusively used in this sense, and not just to describe white-on-black racism more broadly.Librairetal (talk) 20:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Librairetal, my first exposure to the idea of white privilege was reading Black Like Me at school, over 40 years ago. He refers to himself having experienced something "as a privileged white". The fallacy here seems to be that specialist academic study of white privilege is taught as part of, or alongside, critical race theory, so in current literature you can't separate them, but the idea and fact of white privilege both predate them in much the same way that matter always behaved as it does now even before we started studying is through the lens of atomic then quantum physics.

We have exactly the two articles we need: this article on the phenomenon of white privilege, and critical race theory on the sociological discipline within which it is studied. Guy (help!) 17:13, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

@Librairetal: I basically agree with your summary of the nature of the dispute. There are two things being discussed here: the Critical Race Theory concept called "white privilege", and the cluster of phenomena that various people of a certain political persuasion colloquially call "white privilege", but which have other names (racism, discrimination, colonialism, etc.). This latter use of the phrase "white privilege" has become more and more common as CRT has entered the political mainstream (at least among liberal Americans), and "laypeople" have started using the term in everyday life. If you follow Eric Arnesen's critique of Whiteness Studies, this may be partly to blame on people in the field, for using unclear or shifting definitions in the first place. In any case, this article isn't about flippant uses of the term "white privilege" in everyday conversation. It's about the academic concept. That's what almost all the sources we cite are about.

The problem is that the article sounds as if it were written by someone who strongly believes in the claims of Critical Race Theory. Various previous versions of the article have briefly mentioned some of the critics of the concept (coming from a number of different directions, from conservatives to Marxists), but as written, the article now implicitly says that these critics are mistaken. I don't see why we can't have a neutral description of this academic concept. I guess some editors personally feel strongly that the concept is correct, and that's fine in itself. The problem is when editors try to force Wikipedia to take a side on a heavily disputed sociological theory. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree and I think there is a third factor which I would call "white privilege in practice" - which would include the impact of claims of white privilege of people's lives including "check your privilege" and the popular response to the claims made largely through books by non-CRT scholars and supportive and critical media op-eds. The conceptualisation of white privilege and its impact on society is not simply an academic topic. We should be able to distinguish between these 3 issues. If we cannot in one article then we can fork. In practical terms the existing article is bloated already so perhaps this is the least worst option Keith Johnston (talk) 19:19, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thucydides411, because the consensus of editors here is not to make this an article on the theory -- but rather to for it to treat the phenomenon and discourse about it -- your repeated complaints that unnamed editors are taking sides or promoting a theory is nonsense. And name-checking various fringe racism deniers or a few surviving Marxists doesn't do anything to improve the article. If you have concerns, propose improved text. If not, well ... SPECIFICO talk 22:41, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Thucydides411 Your point above is correct - it is a "a heavily disputed sociological theory" - White Privilege as a theory is heavily disputed. That's why it shouldn't be here. What is not heavily disputed is the phenomenon of white privilege, it's widely acknowledged. That's why it does belong here.

"I don't see why we can't have a neutral description of this academic concept" - because it's not an academic concept, its a phenomenon. A phenomenon individuals can see and experience every day. But White Privilege as a theory or concept is heavily disputed.

White Privilege as a concept or theory should be completely removed from this article.

The musical chairs this discussion is having from one section to another is giving me a headache.   // Timothy::talk 

It isn't really complicated at all. The article is about the phenomenon of white privilege and also about the way the term has been used in recent years to frame discussions of racism. The latter is controversial, and criticism is included in the article. For example, the section on white privilege pedagogy describes and cites criticism of the approach to teaching students about racism that centers around trying to get white students to acknowledge (or confess) their "white privilege".

The reason why the issue might seem headache-inducing is that opponents of the notion that white privilege exists as a phenomenon have been repeating the same arguments again and again in several places on the talk-page. I think there's a consensus to keep the article as it is except for minor edits (possibly including additional citations to criticism of certain theoretical tendencies). Perhaps an admin can close the RfC and we can all agree to stop talking about it. NightHeron (talk) 10:50, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

This criticism is never going to go away because it reflects the real world discussion about white privilege: that is some people treat it as a phenomenon, some treat it as a concept which describes a phenomenon and some people dispute the phenomenon and the utility of the concept. Until these arguments, which are supported by rS and thus are perfectly capable of being integrated, are integrated this dispute will remain intractable. But it is not a solution through inertia or filibustering to maintain the status quo Keith Johnston (talk) 14:31, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

You are making the mistake of assigning equal value to arguments that white privilege is a concept.

We don't value an argument just because it exists in the "real world."

The fact that white privilege existed before scholars were discussing it will never go away. Binksternet (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, no, the problem is that because it is discussed in the literature of CRT, so social injustice warriors think they can get it dismissed as a product of "grievance studies", ignoring the fact that white privilege has been a subject of academic discussion since long before political correctness or the culture war were ever discussed. Guy (help!) 15:26, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Fine. This "criticism of the criticism' should also be included. What cannot happen is the critical arguments are ignored.Keith Johnston (talk) 15:30, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, you are - deliberately I think - missing the point. There are two separate subjects. White privilege, a historical and cultural fact that this article documents, and CRT, a school of pedagogy which is discussed at critical race theory, which is where any criticism of CRT and criticism of that criticism belongs. Guy (help!) 17:07, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Assume good faith. I do not agree with the point, I am not missing it. Ideally criticism of white privilege and criticism of that criticism should be on the white privilege page. However, if we cannot resolve the current impasse there is a case for a fork. I don't think that would be ideal but it may be a more constructive use of our time.Keith Johnston (talk) 17:31, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

No WP:POVFORK, which would be a violation of WP:NPOV. As always, my initial assumption of good faith is quickly modified by observed behavior. Your behavior is similar to a POV warrior who doesn't like how racism is accurately portrayed as racism. Binksternet (talk) 17:55, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Binksternet: Those sorts of accusations are unwarranted and unhelpful. I haven't seen Keith Johnston (nor anyone else here) deny the existence of racism. If you think that criticism of white privilege theory is equivalent to denying the existence of racism, then that would explain your position here, but then you'd also be sorely mistaken.

We can go back to the example that NightHeron gave a while back: it is entirely possible that cabs often don't stop for black people in parts of New York City (as NightHeron claimed). I think it would be uncontroversial to call that "racism". It would, however, be controversial to call that "white privilege", for a reason that Lewis Gordon points out: the ability to walk into a public business and be served or to hail a cab is widely considered a right, not a privilege. The people who make use of this right are not "privileged", according to the common meaning of the term. The people who are being discriminated against are certainly being unjustly deprived of a right, but that does not mean that the large majority of people who are not discriminated against are "privileged". That's if you go by the pre-existing definition of the word "privileged". The novelty of Critical Race Theory is to call non-discrimination against the majority a "privilege", in effect redefining the word. That redefinition is itself controversial.

A second reason why the concept of white privilege is controversial is because it uses certain anecdotes or data points to argue that white skin confers privileges, while ignoring (according to critics) countervailing evidence that points to white skin not being the actual cause. For example, many non-white ethnic minorities in the United States do much better, on average, on a whole host of measures (income, health and education, to name a few) than people considered white. See the entire discussion about "model minorities". -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:15, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: You missed the point of the story about the New York taxis. At that time (the pre-Uber days) taxis were often hard to get in NY. The TV clip showed a seedy-looking white guy (who normally wouldn't be favored by taxi-drivers, because they wouldn't expect much of a tip from him) who readily got a cab, while no cab stopped for a formally attired black guy with a baby in one arm and a bouquet of flowers in the other. The point of the clip was that white people, because of skin color, had an advantage in getting a taxi that they wouldn't have had if it weren't that the drivers avoided black people. The white people had the privilege of easily getting a taxi although they wouldn't have if the drivers did not discriminate against blacks. NightHeron (talk) 00:13, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thucydides411, you keep banging on about CRT. The fact and identification of white privilege predates CRT. The "controversy" is also around CRT. We have an article on that. This article is about the fact of white privilege. I would say that your next step would be an RfC but we already had one, so in fcat your next step is to drop the stick. Guy (help!) 20:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

criticism of white privilege article

I am sincerely convinced that there is so much information about criticism of white privilege that it justifies a separate article. This daughter article must include suitably-weighted positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the split article. Views? (may I make a request for brevity where possible)Keith Johnston (talk) 18:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

This sounds a bit like your proposal of July 2017, that this article should have a critique or reception section - except this time you're suggesting a separate article.[11] Perhaps we need to ping the participants in that. Doug Weller talk 19:14, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, this is a constructive attempt to resolve this seemingly intractable impasse. Perhaps we should ping them. What is also different is that since then a number of editors have also expressed more or less misgivings about the neutrality of this page. These include Michepman (talk) Librairetal (talk) ColumbiaXY (talk) Naddruf (talk) Walther st (talk) Sparkle1 (talk) Scorpions13256 (talk) Correctus2kX (talk) Byulwwe (talk) MagicatthemovieS (talk) Nikolaneberemed (talk) Thucydides411 (talk) Tornado chaser (talk) Hesperian Nguyen (talk) Cummin14 (talk) 64.125.109.37 Liberty axe1 (talk) Ϫ(talk) Telenarn (talk) ShimonChai (talk) Jobberone (talk) SRichardWeiss (talk) Keithramone33 (talk) Jacona (talk) and Obsidi (talk) This suggests these concerns need to be taken seriously and a constructive solution found. What has also happened is that wikipedia has accepted a number of 'criticisms of..." articles. So the situation has changed significantly. Keith Johnston (talk) 10:06, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Keith Johnston, see WP:POVFORK. Guy (help!) 20:21, 15 January 2020 (UTC)