Is It Hard to See Racism if you're White?

[OffenseTaken]

1. and your last paragraph cover much the same territory, and indeed we never have lived in a perfect meritocracy and likely never will.

But "privilege" is indeed hardly the word for what we possess, except in some very limited circumstances. And I consider myself a fairly privileged individual. (Privileged, but not entitled. Too many people out there conflate the two.)

I qualified it that way because whatever might be called black "privilege," as it appears to me, is extremely ambiguous. In many settings, it seems as though white people are eager to grant their black colleagues, neighbors, etc. a forbearance on their own prejudiced attitudes—or, more likely, to appear to be doing this—and from this, black people may find some advantage. But behind this display, white people will work quickly to find a reason to revoke that forbearance, which not only retains for them the pleasure of congratulating themselves for having striven to rise above bigotry, but the satisfaction of holding on to the prejudices that they had, in fact, never abandoned.

Similar things may happen in those situations where blacks compose a majority, and where being "singled out" can either be a blessing or a curse for a white person. However, since these cases are fairly anomalous within our country, it's hard to draw the comparison.

I hope you can expound upon your distinction between privilege and entitlement, because it would shed some light for some of the skeptics out there who believe that we do live in a perfect meritocracy. (I can't believe they exist, but they do.)

Same here. Though at the same time it also made me kinda sad (for the person who said it to me).

I think I've only been called a cracker once, while walking through the Stapleton Houses on Staten Island (home of the Wu-Tang Clan). It didn't make me laugh or feel sad. I think it just made me walk really fast.