I've been meaning to write my own article about this so I decided to watch a Jordan Peterson video. It's both infuriating and hilarious since he tries to disprove White Privilege but... well, take a look:
First off I need to help him out a little. He begins by stating he doesn't understand why "postmodernists" draw distinctions based on things like race, gender and sexuality. I'm not really sure what these "postmodernists" are that he keeps trying to claim are Marxists, but I'm going to guess he's trying to address "leftists" as he often does.
To answer his question: Those lines were drawn a long time ago. People have made laws based on those lines. Conservatives still try to make laws based on some of those lines, such as preventing gay marriage.
What he is really doing here is claiming that people are causing the problem because they draw attention to it. It's a fairly insidious tactic, to claim that "post-modernists" draw distinctions based on race when the KKK has existed for a couple hundred years with the explicit goal of preventing political and economic equality for black people.
He further goes on to talk about intersectionality, claiming it is a path the realizing individuality by comparing race or gender to other traits like being dumb, or ugly.
The question here is: Is there a 140-year-old group in America trying to prevent ugly people from having equality?
No, there isn't. And while ugly people might not get the same treatment as attractive people they aren't specifically targeted for violence or discrimination.
But let's move on to the meet of his presentation: The claim that white privilege doesn't exist.
He starts off questioning if it's really "majority privilege" because the majority of people in our countries (US and Canada) are white.
Well, yes. Yes it is. Absolutely it is majority privilege. And the majority of people in the US and Canada are white.
He goes on further to state that those privileges are part of "living within 'your culture'" and that the culture is built in order to provide those benefits. The culture meaning the majority, meaning white people. (As a side note, he implicitly just excluded minorities from even being part of our culture.)
He ends with: "one of the consequences is that it (the culture) accrues fewer benefits to those who aren't in the culture." Then claims you can't tie that to race.
So let's follow this logic:
White privilege is actually majority privilege
Majority privilege is created by the majority as part of culture
People "not in the culture" accrue fewer benefits
So what he's really saying is: The culture made by white people for the benefit of white people accrues fewer benefits to people of other races.
In reality, Western Culture is an amalgamation of many cultures though. Especially the US and Canada since so many of the majority here are descended from immigrants. What the white privilege argument is really about is trying to ensure our culture is inclusive and accrues benefits equally to all people.
