Privilege: a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most.
snoboy and commie are not claiming that all white people are rich, slave masters who are actively oppressing a minority, but there are some things that need to be considered. White people do have certain privileges:
Guess who's most common drug gets a longer sentence?
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-racial-disparity-in-crack-sentencing
Guess who gets targeted between 50% and 90% of all stop-and-frisk cases?
http://www.nyclu.org/files/stopandfrisk-factsheet.pdf
And guess who has to prove their citizenship when they get stopped by police?
http://www.rightsworkinggroup.org/c...b1070-leaves-open-possibility-further-legal-a
Let me throw out a personal anecdote. A friend of mine is Hispanic and was hanging out with a white friend when they had the police come to their apartment. After being frisked and found to be unarmed, my friend was handcuffed and detained as they were being questioned. His friend was found to be carrying a knife that was not legal. The police took possession of the knife and asked his friend to sit on the porch. Ultimately, my friend was released and his friend was given back the knife. Isn't it prejudice to find the white male with an illegal blade more trustworthy than the Hispanic male who is unarmed?
Maybe you don't feel privileged because you're in a rough spot, and that's understandable. But artificial barriers exist, and minorities are still legally being targeted. Look at how many states tried to write copycat laws after Arizona passed SB1070. You keep focusing on slavery, but that's not what this is about, though lets touch a little on the effects of that too. Most colleges offer scholarships or grants to first-generation college students. Typically if your parents were not able to go to college, they earn more than a million less over the 40 years or so they work. That averages to at least a 25,000/year difference. So with parents that earned less, there's a good chance they couldn't afford college for their children, who then have the same struggles their parents had. We don't even have to go back as far as slavery to see that as recent as recently as the 1960's there were colleges that turned away minorities as a rule. Compounding these factors, there's only been a few generations for those families to break that cycle. 2/3 of all first-generation students are minorities. This is not a coincidence. Yes, there are white students who are the first in their family to graduate college and they qualify for the same grants and scholarships, but it's not prejudice for the scholarships to be awarded mostly to minorities because there is a large discrepancy between the amount of first-generation students. Racial tension from slavery helped cause this discrepancy because affluent white people chose to segregate. They took the opportunity first, and now we're seeing opportunities for everyone.
White privilege can be having enough money that your lawyer keeps you out of jail, or having your college is paid for with a personal check, but it doesn't have to be. White privilege can be getting a shorter drug sentence, not getting frisked when you leave your house, and not getting asked to prove you belong here. White privilege can be being deemed less dangerous and more trustworthy than a minority. White privilege is being treated differently than a minority would be treated. So yes, sometimes there are programs that attempt to create parity. That doesn't mean white people are still apologizing for slavery and hoping black people forgive them, but understanding that social policies have created a situation where there isn't equality and trying to expedite the process. Will it work? Not as long as we have ignorant people who cannot comprehend why we celebrate black history month and not white history month.
