Even poor White people have privilege. They will never have to face the things that Blacks and other people of color (even wealthy ones) deal with on a regular basis. This is not race-bating; it’s a fact. You have never once been followed around a store due to the color of your skin because it was assumed that you must be a shoplifter. You have never once been afraid that you would be shot by the policeman who pulled you over. You have never once had the cops called on you for being “in the wrong neighborhood.” Refusing to grapple with that and have some empathy for those who have a different life experience than you do says a lot about who you are as a person. Thanks for the sermon but I prefer to take guidance from those who actually care about their fellow human beings.

The concept of white privilege does not deny individual hardships. Hardships can be circumstantial, they can be born into, they can be at our own doing, or they can be outside of our control. Some hardships, for some people, are related to race, and those who haven’t experienced those particular race-related hardships hold white privilege. That doesn’t negate the hardships others have faced because racial privilege refers only to issues of systemic racism. It doesn’t mean that people haven’t experienced difficulty. Nor do the hardships not related to race negate the very real discrimination some people have faced.