"I'm the real victim here!"

We get it, you're privileged and others are not, way to rub it in everybody's faces while pretending to care.

try actually reading her words, instead of looking at her picture.

Its all about "I'm white, I'm privileged but I'm the real victim here for not understanding how you people feel".

Ding.

"White guilt", at best, is useless. At its worst, it shifts victimhood over to poor put-upon white guys and girls who feel so very bad about how people of color are (or even worse, "were&quot treated in this country. People don't need sympathy, they need systemic change.

But I agree on another point: privilege is sometimes difficult to identify when you're part of the privileged group. I had always been aware that people of color were treated differently from myself, but I did not understand the scope of the difference until I took a course on systemic racism back in college.

The most valuable lesson I took from that course: "passive anti-racism" is a contradiction of terms.

... racism has to be actively healed.

And the key to this is recognizing one's own and coming to terms
with it. This has not been easy for me, so every so often I examine
my inner thoughts and outward actions to see if they match, because
outwardly I can put on quite a show of being against racism and
treating people well.. but I know there are still places where I need
to examine my heart and mind because there is just so much poison
out there and it can be contagious even if I don't want it to be.

of how we can help reduce racism. The author talks about how at the age of 14 she was angry that her school did not have a "white" club, and it seems that even now she is much more concerned about her own feelings than about helping to address the problem.

of white privilege. And that is what she addresses in this essay.

I think everyone here acknowledges that racism exists and that vastly more black people than white people are victimized by it.

That covers in a single sentence what it took the blog author over 30 paragraphs to say.

Or is being treated courteously by a cop how everyone should be treated, regardless of their skin color?

If a police department hires a racist cop who treats black people like shit, that doesn't mean that the white people in that town have suddenly acquired extra "privilege". It just means that there is a racist cop who deserves to be disciplined and fired.

most white people can do -- and that black people cannot, no matter what their status in life.

For example, a white professor in Boston would not be detained by police simply for going to lunch while wearing a "puffy jacket" and a knitted cap -- as happened recently to a 51 year old black professor.

I think you could benefit from reading the whole article. It explains it better than I.

I'm not sure why you prefer the word "privilege" to the word "racism". Racism is ugly, yes, but we need to confront it, not disguise it with euphemisms.

The words "white privilege" and "racism" refer to different things -- it's not a matter of preferring one word over another.

I prefer Barack Obama's approach. He has made several excellent speeches about racism but in none of those speeches has he ever used the phrase "white privilege".

Again, being treated professionally and courteously in a non-racist manner should be an expectation, not a "privilege".

so unlike the President I can talk about white privilege using a term some people don't prefer.

But is true anyway.

It is also true, as you say, that being treated in a non-racist manner SHOULD be an expectation.

But it isn't. That's only an expectation white people can have in this country, in 2015. It is a privilege that black people don't have. They know it isn't true, and for them to "expect" it won't make it true.