White Privilege

Because the pools are drawn from voter rolls and the white structures are set to discourage blacks from registering to vote.

You don't vote you don't get a jury summons.

it's a right - a human right that should be available to all.

I didn't say anything about 'natural'

I know this is not the intended goal of yours, but that sounds really patronizing and demeaning to minorities.

It's a privilege that many of us are born with, like white skin.

The point is that people who are privileged are the least likely to notice that they are privileged.

I said you should recognize that it is a privilege - or at least equivalent to a privilege. You should recognize that it's something you have that others don't have.

Do you have a preferred word? I mean, the word has been used in this fashion since the turn of the 20th Century... would you prefer another term used at the time, 'the wages of whiteness'?

Person A being deprived of something in favour of Person B because Person B has something Person A does not would be an example of Person B's privilege in relation to Person A.

Having one ear at school is likely to result in mocking and bullying. To have a quiet high school life would be considered a privilege to such an individual.

Yes I did. The word 'privilege', like all terminology, was in competition with other terms. Privilege became the standard word to use in the natural selection process that is human discourse. Like how language works generally.

I imagine "privilege" is appealing as a term because it sounds like something Black people can't control and can't be held responsible for;

just like "deprived" is appealing to you because it sounds like something White people can't control and can't be held responsible for.

From your frame of reference, they are "down there" (poor them).
From their frame of reference, you are "up there" (lucky you).

It's a term of art in sociology. It's the one that stuck around. People today inherited its usage from people long dead.I mean its like asking why the word 'evolution'. Various terms were being used, Darwin preferred 'Transmutation' but evolution is the one that stuck as the primary one.

Check your privilege is a rather modern slogan based on a word that gained favour for use in this context in Edwardian times.

You'll notice that normally people don't.

Except I'm just using a word with an accepted and longstanding technical definition within academia. I'm not abusing the language, I'm using the language our ancestors left us.

A century long setup to a con?Seems inplausible.

Are you judging the concept by the fact that some people wield it as a rhetorical weapon?

Yes. It's different because it is no longer used this way in academia but is now in common discourse. The slogan is an ideal way to express a complex concept in media such as Twitter. This means it gets used more loosely in general, people don't quite use the term in a way that makes sense from the technical perspective and sometimes they are still basically right, sometimes it leads them to all kinds of wrong.

This isn't suspicious. Lots of terms hang around in academia before they enter into common discourse in one way or another. Waterboarding, hitman, carcinogenic, computer, spacetime, Schrodinger's Cat etc. and sometimes they don't get used quite right.

Thank you. I try to rise above the lowest common denominator.

PErsonal experience time, it's Richard Dawkins' fault.Well he and some others.See, they issued a rallying call.And the atheists rallied.Then split into groups to work on their areas of interest. Some groups turned their attentions inwards. Naturally this group contained a lot of sociology, feminism and other equality studies types as that's what they like to do.For a while the atheists felt morally superior but these people tried to burst that bubble by pointing out that atheism's public representation seems to be very white, pretty old, and overwhelmingly male. That many of the smug atheists who thought that publicly breaking with God was the end and they got to look down on the silly believers were young white males. And when minority voices spoke up, there was a lot of pushback and the privilege conversation got started.Angry young white male atheists have, in general, privilege over middle aged black female atheists when it comes to having their views represented, their concerns and social needs met and so on. The minorities and those who had studied this, pointed out that this is the kind of thing those same angry young white men were smugly criticising insular religious communities for. The AYWM grew angrier and manlier (though probably not whiter), and the whole misogyny argument erupted.These days, you are likely going to run into people who have been arguing about these issues for a half a decade or more. You know well enough that evolutionists in that position often become cranky and uncivil when they hear the same damn long dealt with objections time and again. It's like they feel they have to speak to every single white man individually but having the same discussion, rather than the white men just reading some academia or academic summaries on the subject. (it's not just white men, but to pretend they aren't disproportionally the egregious offenders would be kind of blind)

Most people don't. But since there are others that do use it, it's good to know what it means and why it is used.

I was thrown by your use of the terms 'shell game', 'dishonesty', 'con'

On the one hand, maybe you have, but you have had the privilege to not have live with the consequences.
And if you haven't, you must be very privileged indeed.

Very few people of any race or gender manage to escape benefiting from their race unconsciously and to have such confidence in your beliefs that you are 'good already' is a privilege I cannot even imagine having. It must be wonderful to rest assured in the knowledge that nobody has favoured you over someone equal or better, just because of your race.

Yes, that was a debate tactic. I wasn't being dishonest. My debate strategy has nothing to do with whether or not white people have privilege and how white people should handle it's existence if it does.

Why else would you dismiss something like this on the basis of 'some people argue in a way I don't like'?

Are you sure?

Can you be sure in every single conversation you've ever had you haven't unconsciously made implicit assumptions in your speech, behaviour etc based around what you regard as 'the normal experience' without realizing that you were around people for whom that is not a common experience and actually a bit of a sore point?

Assuming you are right - ultimately, you acknowledge your privileges when they arise and you treat others around you without the assumption that they share them. But you don't want to have anything to do with the concept of privilege?

Maybe next time if someone asks you to 'check your privilege' you might have a kinder, more receptive response that doesn't necessarily accept guilt while simultaneously treating the concern seriously.