While everything you write is technically true, I find it disigenious how so many spend so much effort defending the concept of white privilege without realizing practical reality: As a term, white privilege, is an utter failure.
The users of the term have become overly defensive about a term which has accomplished very little, in fact I would be tempted to say that in terms of working to reduce or end racism it has been negative.
https://erik-engheim.medium.com/why-white-privilege-is-a-bad-term-415c303cef8d
Stating that privilege is not a negative term, is to take great liberties with how language should be understood and interpreted. Or perhaps I simply don't get it as English is not my native language.
But certainly in my native language, privilege is not a positive word at all. You use it to describe things like the privilege of the nobility, the rich elite with money and connection to high places. Those who posses ways to make shortcuts they should not have.
The problem with applying this to whites is that often what is mentioned as privilege are thing EVERY single human being should have the right to have. The privilege of the nobility and ultra-rich are generally not something everybody ought to have, rather we would want their privilege taken away.
The dictionary defines privilege as:
a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
This reflect privilege as understood in the context of nobility. That is not what white people have. Rather what is going on is the disadvantage of various minorities.
The focus on white privilege is about as sensible as trying to solve a pandemic by focusing on those who are not sick rather than those who are. It is about as sensible as solving a famine in Africa by writing books about well fed and healthy people in Sweden. It is as sensible as trying to solve a poverty problem by writing about the middle class.
I also wonder why when you meet a poor under educated white person, the most important thing to talk about is his skin color. Why is white-privilege most important? How about middle-class privilege instead?
But what do I know, I am just a clueless foreigner. It just seems odd that in a country like the US with such deep levels of inequality, the privilege of the affluent over the poor is hardly discussed, while skin color based privilege is the main focus. African-Americans in America are not just in a bad situation due to racism but also due to the US being a society which is rife with classism and were social mobility is poor. Look at the white appalacians stuck in poverty for generations.
If racism was the only thing holding people back, then they would have been joining the middle class decades ago. Racism and poverty is of course linked. Racist practices of the past helped create the poverty African-American experience in America today. However if by magic you removed racism tomorrow, a lage portion of African-Americans would still be held back due to American classism.
