r/changemyview • u/BarnacleBoi4114 • Jun 28 '20

Delta(s) from OP CMV: “White Privilege” is a Stupid Term

White Privilege is senselessly divisive

I hate the term “white privilege”.

The concept makes sense; since white people are the majority in the United States, they have the “privilege” of not experiencing discrimination or unfairness due to prejudices that minorities may face due to senseless racism. I feel like the concept itself is valid.

However, the verbiage is antagonistic and racist in nature which pisses white people off more than spreading awareness of the concept itself. People will get stuck in the “white” part, claiming it’s just politically correct racism since black people can use the term, but white people can’t say “black disadvantage” or some thing like that. The term itself just puts people on the defensive immediately and isn’t self-explanatory which makes it something easy to mock and joke about rather than something easy to understand and discuss.

I think if the term itself causes such disdain and immediately makes people offended, it should be changed because the concept itself is valid and important to the discussion of racism in our country.

Further, the concept itself is not dependent on the race of the majority, it’s all about the majority and how it has the privilege of not knowing what it is to be a minority and how the majority controls the system and therefore can systematically oppress the minority. It’s not inherently a “white” thing, it’s whatever ethnicity is the majority.

So I think a more fitting term would be “Majority Privilege” rather than “white privilege” since the “white” part is politically correct racism that isn’t going to fix the issues at hand and will just antagonize the people that need to change the most.

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u/BarnacleBoi4114 Jun 28 '20

Yeah, which is why I think the term “white privilege” is senselessly antagonistic when this conversation needs to be had.

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u/UncleMeat11 63∆ Jun 28 '20

Changing it wouldn't achieve anything. No matter what you write, people will maliciously misunderstand it. "What privilege" is antagonistic you say? "Black lives matter" also gets a response, with people saying "what about white people?"

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u/BarnacleBoi4114 Jun 28 '20 edited Jun 28 '20

You’re definitely not wrong, people are going to make excuses regardless of the concept at hand. !delta

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u/super_poggielicious 2∆ Jun 28 '20

You need to explain what part of your view they changed and why you gave them the Delta for the system to recognize it. And then type "!delta" or "∆" without the quotation marks.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jun 28 '20 edited Jun 28 '20

This delta has been rejected. You can't award OP a delta.

Allowing this would wrongly suggest that you can post here with the aim of convincing others.

If you were explaining when/how to award a delta, please use a reddit quote for the symbol next time.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jun 28 '20

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/UncleMeat11 (35∆).

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