White Skin Privilege

[sugar and spice]

Originally posted by AXJules

Sorry I just get pissed when people are quick to paint all white people as spoiled and always getting their way. Discrimination definitely exists, and to a much lesser extent, so does reverse discrimination.

I agree that (obviously) not all white people are spoiled whiners. But I think that reverse discrimination is very very rare as compared to the amount of times that people think it goes on.

And of course that depends what your definition of reverse discrimination is. If a company's 90 percent white and they're looking to hire a minority, if they narrow their field of candidates down to the qualified ones and then pick the minority, is that reverse discrimination? I would say no. Some people would say yes.




Because somebody mentioned it, here's the "Unpacking the knapsack of white privilege" article, which I've posted a couple times before:

http://www.utoronto.ca/acc/events/peggy1.htm

If you've (a general you, not an AXJules you or a PM Mama you or whoever) read that and still don't feel like you've ever felt privileged simply by being white, then either (a) people don't think you're white or (b) you aren't paying enough attention.

I went to discussion tonight about issues at my old high school and one of the things we discussed was race. One of the women there said that she doesn't think that many white people can even imagine -- and I would tend to add don't even try to imagine -- what people of color in this country face. Way too many white people immediately go into defensive mode whenever a topic like racism is brought up, and that's not conducive to discussion.

Why can't we have a discussion about discrimination on this board that doesn't involve a discussion on reverse discrimination?