who said anything about racists? i'm talking about the default. being white is "normal."
Why is "normal" good? White people are commonly stereotyped for being bland, boring, culturally vacant. Heck, even in this thread, there have been multiple assertions that just by the virtue of having white skin, people can't relate to struggle. In popular media, most villains tend to be white men. In liberal classrooms, white men are blamed for all the world's wrongs. We get no history month, and there is no celebration of our cultural identity. When we go to job interviews, we are seen as just another bland, uninteresting stuffed suit - regardless of actual background.
I don't get it. What's the big advantage to being "normal"?
also, your experience might be somewhat atypical due to location.
TITCR. I live in NYC, grew up in a multicultural environment, and don't have many hangups about race. My uncle is Indian, and the last girlfriend I loved was half-black. I know that to a lot of people, these kinds of experiences may be atypical - but that's the whole point I am trying to make: The macro assumption that "white people" have some kind of advantage completely ignores the micro reality that all people are individuals - with their own private histories, battles, and struggles.
White people - white men in particular - don't
need a history month, dude. That's the point. There's a black history month, a women's history month, a whatever history month because history as it is taught
is white male history. That may be changing, but that doesn't change the fact that the reason we have these things is
because there was/is a deficiency in the way our society has addressed history. Not because black history, women's history, etc., are more celebrated, but precisely because they have been ignored. If you'd like, we can refer to every month without a special designation as white male history month. Would that make you feel better?
I empathize with some of the things you're saying here (and I think that you're greatly exaggerating other points), but
not as an argument against the idea of white privilege.
Yes, people are individuals. Yes, people have different experiences. White privilege doesn't mean that every white person has an easy, awesome, rainbow-and-sunshine filled life. White privilege means that there are certain benefits that come along with being the dominant classification. Those benefits may operate differently, and more or less prominently, depending on your subject position, but they are there.