Let's talk about this. A lot of people responded with stats about healthcare discrepancies btwn Black & white people, w/ infant mortality rates, or "white privilege doesn't mean your life isn't hard, it just means that skin colour isn't something that makes your life harder."

And they're correct! White privilege is real, it provides material & structural advantages to white people & those advantages come at the expense of Black & Indigenous people. None of this is in dispute (Matt says there's no way of proving white privilege - he's wrong about that)

The problem is, at the end of the day, acknowledging the truth of those material advantages & those structural privileges doesn't solve the problem that is raised here. None of that means anything to that poor white kid. None of that alleviates his suffering - and he IS suffering

He's not going to say, "wow, well I may be poor, my dad may have died of despair, my mom may have an addiction, there may be no future for me in this town & no way for me to escape it, but at least the horrific circumstances of my life aren't caused by my skin colour!"

The fact that white people are FAR less likely to die of medical negligence doesnt matter to a kid too poor to have ever seen a doctor. The fact that BIPOC are far more likely to be locked up or killed by police doesnt mean anything to a white person locked up or killed by police

Statistical differences mean nothing to people who are suffering. You could argue quite reasonably - and I probably would - that to tell this hypothetical child that, actually, he's *fortunate* that things aren't made worse for him by his skin colour is cruelty.

We need to acknowledge the fact that Matt is largely correct here. HOWEVER, his being correct doesn't mean what he thinks it means. He has not disproven white privilege. What he's done is shown that white privilege is only an advantage inasmuch as the ruling class wants it to be.

Despite the fact that the ruling class is almost exclusively white, despite the fact that white people hold significantly more wealth than do racialized people, there are STILL white children living in starvation-level poverty.

What it proves is that racial capitalism, while reserving the full extent of its horrors for BIPOC, is fundamentally a system in which a large number of people of every race are horrifically abused and exploited for the benefit of a very tiny minority.

Matt is doing the same thing as people who point out that more white people are victims of police brutality than Black people. While it's true (in a strictly numerical sense, if you break it down per capita, Black & Indigenous people are killed at far higher rates than whites)...

It's missing the most important point, which is that we live in a system that brutalizes us. This is a class problem, and there is a ruling class and a working class. This class system cannot be viewed independently of race, and race cannot be viewed independently of class.

Which is why the fight for racial justice is our fight, even if we're white. This is class warfare & while some of our comrades are more disadvantaged, more oppressed because of their race, race is a tool that the ruling class uses to divide us. And its extraordinarily effective!

Just look at the way leftists flocked to Matt's mentions to point out all the ADVANTAGES that this hypothetical (but certainly existing) child has. Instead of saying "YOU'RE RIGHT! What a FUCKED UP SYSTEM!" We continue to divide ourselves.

White people need to understand that our liberation is bound up in the liberation of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. That we have more in common with working class BIPOC than the white ruling class. That if some of our comrades are not free, then none of us can be free.

The reason that people are feeling "allyship fatigue" (jfc) is because when we see ourselves as allies, we (falsely) see ourselves as surrendering something solely for the benefit of others. Of course it's tiring. We need to realize we're fighting for our own freedom here.

Acknowledging that white people are brutalized & oppressed in this system doesn't negate the lived experiences of BIPOC. Saying that, "yeah, actually, some white people aren't *really* benefiting from white privilege" doesn't mean that white privilege isn't real.

Anyway, I'm going to link to this really excellent essay by Asad Haider about White Purity, because it's extremely relevant and valuable https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/01/06/white-purity/?fbclid=IwAR2XJ-fIZksuX7nmgSMjA6zv7MYfbt6BreLpSP-kE_ef0mqNGZGmjtds4Rs

(Also M*tt W*lsh is a POS, just so we're clear)