White people reject claims of white privilege, study finds

NY Post ^ | September 30, 2015 | David K. Li

[SZonian]

White people are quick to cite personal hardships instead of acknowledging that they are privileged because of their skin color, according to a new study.

Stanford University's L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery, writing in November's Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, split test subjects into two groups - with one given more evidence of white privilege in American culture.

[Ban Draoi Marbh Draoi]

My stepmother’s father was a coal miner and he died of black lung disease.

Please show me his white privilege.

[kearnyirish2]

These raving lunatics think having your parents read to you as a child gives you an unfair advantage over non-whites. They should just ask their own parents why they never bothered learning to read...

[kearnyirish2]

They have to throw the term “white privilege” out there to explain the inherent racism and sexism in their policies (which openly advertise inferiority on the parts of blacks, Hispanics, and women). They either get the freebies because they are inferior, or they grow up and act like American adults; the “white privilege” nonsense lets them claim adult benefits/paychecks while never measuring up to any standard at all.

Our government can’t demand we treat them equally while the government itself refuses to do so.

[kearnyirish2]

I’ve noticed in my experiences that some low-information blacks regard ANY form of work as slavery. I see it most often in those whose children have grown and moved on, the former welfare sows are a nightmare for anyone who has to work with (or supervise) them. Many people hate their jobs; these cases hate the very concept of work. They are forced into the workplace at nearly forty years old, and they resent it; they have no job (or social) skills, and pine for the days when they could spend years in the same set of pajamas 24/7, year-round.

[mlo]

This whole “white privilege” thing seems to be based an a flawed premise. Just because non-whites have certain disadvantages, and they do, is not the same thing as whites being “privileged”. “Privilege” implies something completely different than a lack of negative bias.

That being said, yes many groupings of people face negative biases. Tall people are more successful than short people. Blondes have more fun. Darker skinned people face prejudice. That last is true even in societies of darker skinned people by the way.

Most of this is irrational and unfair. But as your parents told you, life isn’t fair. It has to do with the way human beings process things. We categorize and generalize. We detect patterns. We could not function without that ability. We cannot treat every individual or event as if it were completely separate from the totality of all our past experience, and that’s what would be required to be “fair” all of the time.

What we can be expected to do is to make sure our social systems are free of elements of improper bias. Our laws, our customs, etc. That we don’t encode structural bias against short people or black people. But we can’t make everyone be absolutely “fair” all the time. All of us have something that puts us at some disadvantage. Some lucky people maybe very little, and others quite a bit more. But that’s life. We can only work with what we have and make the most of it.