Black Skin Privilege

[Factsplease]

The OP is hilarious. Are you talking about media privilege? It is little white girls and white women who get most of the air time when it comes to missing people. I think I would rather have that bias if me or one of my loved ones were missing. The last time I checked, it was blacks who get more prison time for the same crimes. It was blacks who are profiled, and as a result arrested more. I'd rather have the white bias there too. Oh and there was a study done that showed that black males get harsher punishment ias early as elementary school - it starts early.

Just because people are upset about Zimmerman shooting Martin after following him, does not mean there is black privelege. Just because Trayvon Martin's family raised hell and want justice served does not mean there is black privilege. It means that he was loved and that those who love him feel that he did not deserve to die at the hands of some fool. Do you think that every idiot who says they wish for the POTUS to catch a disease and die or just die gets punished? Some of them make the news. If they do, they are on for two minutes, just like Spike Lee - clearly it is you who has the bias.

Are these "black mobs" that you speak of above the law? Did law enforcement sit there, watch them commit a crime then tell them that they can go free because they're black? Do black people get away with committing crimes more than white people? I don't think so.

[Redshadowz]

There are certain privileges on both sides. I would say that black skin provides certain economic and social advantages, but also economic and social disadvantages. The same goes for white skin.

The argument seems to really be, who has more advantages, and how do those advantages actually play out on a daily basis.


I would argue that from a social and economic, blacks have a lot of disadvantages. Because most people(including other blacks) tend to see blacks negatively. Blacks are less likely to be trusted by other races. To be assumed to be criminals, or to be considered stupid or uneducated.


It is similar to the difference between older people and younger people. Older people are more likely to be seen as trustworthy, responsible, or informed. And so older people are given many economic and social advantages than younger people.

For instance, if Trayvon Martin had been a 50-year old man for instance, it wouldn't have mattered what the color of his skin was, he wouldn't have been assumed to be a criminal.


There are certain privileges that black people do get, but most of it stems out of government and the media. The prevailing influence of mainstream politics and media, is to effectively demonize whites and victimize blacks. A good example of this is "hate-crime" legislation. Which tends to ignore or downplay black on white crimes, but exaggerate white on black crime. It is to criticize anything that white people do, while ignoring most of what black people do.

Moreover, it is obviously true that blacks are given preferential treatment in school admissions, and hiring. It is nearly impossible to fire a black person, especially in a union job. As well as women for that matter. And that these kinds of privileges result in a certain amount of antipathy towards people who unfairly benefit from special privilege, by the people who don't benefit from special privilege.


Of course the true way to best identify which race receives the most overall privilege, is to ask yourself, if you could somehow go back in time and choose to have been born either black or white(or native-american or asian or whatever). Which would you choose?


In the grand scheme of things, I think a person would be a fool to choose to have been born anything but white... Of course that depends a lot on geographic area of the country/world, and on the individual himself.


But I will say one thing, I think the future might change the dynamic. Because what holds blacks down is a perception, and that perception can change. What holds down whites, is a concerted effort by government and special interests to give minorities special privileges. And it is much easier to remove a negative perception, than it is to limit government.

[MrSykes]

Originally Posted by All American NYC

Is there black skin privilege?

Well if you're going to bring up the Martin case to make your point, I would simply argue that if black skin privilege did indeed exist, Martin and millions of other young black men would never have had to worry about being racially-profiled in the first place.