Charlottesville, Virginia
August 21, 2020
I read an article on "white privilege" today. The author was making the argument that there is no "white privilege" in the US, and in fact there is "black privilege." I did not find his argument all that compelling, just as he probably would not find something I wrote compelling that there is "white privilege."
I put the terms white and black privilege in quotation marks because the term gets used so much that I think it is important to define what one means by privilege before making an argument. I'm going to punt on that definition for now because that's not really the point of this post.
After reading the article, I Googled "survey results on white privilege." I came up with lots of results; I ended up choosing the following one as it seemed to be in the middle of the results and it was from last year, so not influenced by recent events. The question was not "white privilege" but "discrimination."
My observation is not earth shattering. I tend to think that ALL Republicans think that whites are discriminated against and that ALL Democrats think that whites are not discriminated against. Of course, that isn't the case. While 75 percent of Republicans think that is the case, 25 percent don't. Who are these 25 percent? Why do they see things differently? Is it a function of where they live, their age, their economic standing? Can one of them write an article for me to read so I can understand what they think?? 🤔
One more observation - it is pretty amazing in this survey that so many people agree that Blacks are discriminated against. Again, I'd love to have more data on who these people are - and who are the ones that don't think there is discrimination against Blacks. Why do think that?
Here's the article I found:
75 Percent of Republicans Say White Americans Are Discriminated Against
According to the results in a poll from Hill-HarrisX. 75 percent of registered Republican voters said that white Americans face discrimination.
55 percent of Independents agreed.
38 percent Democrats agreed.
The poll did find some agreement among the different political spectrums:
- 78 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of Independents and 95 percent of Democrats said that African-Americans are discriminated against.
- 81 percent of the registered voters polled said Hispanics also face discrimination.
19 percent of white respondents said they personally faced racial discrimination.
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