The term white privilege has become a bad term, just like the word feminism. Society has found a way to distort and change the definition of terms like these to avoid the actual issue that the term is bringing up. By definition feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities, but the word has come to carry a negative connotation (Webster). Many who believe in the principle would not call themselves feminists or participate in trying to reach equality to avoid that connotation placed on them. Their silence only aids the continuation of inequality between men and women. This misconstruing is also being done to the term white privilege. The word privilege alone upsets people. They think you’re saying that they’ve …show more content…
The term white privilege has also been oversimplified by many. In August of 2014 Bill O’Reilly discussed white privilege on air, and stated that he, “does not believe in white privilege. However, there is no question that African-Americans have a much harder time succeeding in our society. Even whites do. But the primary reason is not skin color. It 's education…” (Talking …show more content…
The very first dissenting opinion was a girl who believed that “[she] wouldn’t go as far as saying its racism because I don’t think it was meant to be discriminatory.”. The fact is that racism in America is less likely to be blatant anymore. Systematic racism is aided by small occurrences such as these. But how could this girl understand that, if she’s never had someone compliment her on being articulate for her race? Or be told that she has such good hair for a girl of her ethnicity. She doesn’t understand, so therefore how could it be racism? Another student commented, “They literally checked a box.”. But that box implies so much more than a few pixels on a screen. He would never understand that because he’s probably never had someone try to shove him in a box that he knows he has no business being in. One of the last comments on the post was, “So what. Does it really change your life or hurt you at all?”. He simply didn’t care. All these people seemed to fail to understand the issue. Little boxes aid systematic racism; this is a micro example of a macro issue. All of them failed to understand the position that situation has put multiracial Pitt students in because they have probably never experienced a situation where someone tried to wipe away or repress part of their cultural identity. Statements from white Americans such as, if I said it, it would