Maybe it's time we stopped calling it "white privilege." I think the reason people resent that phrase is they don't feel privileged. A life of "privilege" implies that I was born with access to the family yacht and country club membership. I have neither of those things and most of the people I see being resentful of the phrase "white privilege" (resentment which is often expressed in the phrase "all lives matter") have far less advantages in life than I've had. For people sitting in a humble home, struggling to survive on minimum wage does not feel like much of a privilege.
I grew up in a very white neighborhood. I had one African-American acquaintance in high school, but no black friends. One of the first lessons I got in so-called white privilege was after my sister and her husband moved to New Jersey. My brother-in-law and I wanted to go for a run. He asked if I'd mind if he asked his neighbor to join us. As we were running, the neighbor said to my brother-in-law, "I'm so glad you're back. I got arrested again last week. When I run with you I never get arrested." The neighbor is African-American and said that when he runs alone he often gets stopped by the police. It was an upper-middle-class subdivision and the police just assumed he didn't belong. He had taken to carrying his driver's license with him to show that police that yes, indeed, he did live a few blocks away. Instead they insisted on handcuffing him and taking him down to the police station, "Just to check things out." A white guy jogging with him was enough to grant him immunity from this harassment.
When I started teaching traffic school in California, I learned new levels of harassment of people of color. (In California and several other states, someone who commits a minor traffic violation can have it expunged from their record by doing a refresher class.) In one of the first classes I taught, a young black man was telling us how he got his ticket and said, "...then when I got the handcuffs off and got back in the car..." I stopped him. "Wait, why were you handcuffed?" He said, "You always get handcuffed when you get stopped by the police." The rest of the class said, "Uh, no, you don't." I started taking an informal survey in my classes. Almost all, upwards of ninety percent, of young African-American men were handcuffed while they got their traffic tickets. Something down around one percent of the young white males were. (These guys admitted they were being a problem or mouthing off to the cop so probably deserved it). I found it remarkable that most of the black men assumed it was normal to be handcuffed during a ticketing. None of the white people assumed it was.
A too typical moment for some people of color.
I had a top choreographer in one of my traffic school classes who had done the dance arrangements for some of the hottest stars and most popular music videos of the time. His success had allowed him to buy a home and some nice cars to keep in its garage. He said he knew almost every cop in the Beverly Hills Police Department because each of them would pull him over a few times before they would learn that yes, this black man driving a Ferrari really owned the car and lived in the neighborhood. He said he missed the Grammy Awards ceremony one year because he had once again been arrested for stealing his own car. Even though his face matched the photo on the license and the name and address on the license matched the car's registration, the police took him to the station, "Just to check things out." I asked him if that didn't make him really angry. He rather stoically said, "It used to, but I learned." He took off his hat and showed me a scar on his forehead. "After I got beat on a few times I learned to say, 'Yes, sir' a lot and just go with it. Being angry didn't change the outcome; it just got my head kicked." He said he now makes a point to remember the officer's name so the next time he gets pulled over he can say, "Hello again, Officer Harris. Yes, it's me again. Yes, it's still my car. Yes, I still live in the neighborhood."
He seemed much more at peace with this harassment than I or the rest of the traffic school class were. Or at least more resigned to this unfair fate. That was over twenty years ago, and I know things have gotten much better at both LAPD and the Beverly Hills Police Departments, but I've never forgotten those lessons. And things may be better, but they are far from good in most place. And these were just the lessons from the police.
I now have black friends and have been with them to witness the sort of looks they get from store clerks and waiters. I have been with a Native American friend as he was asked by a waitress if he spoke English. I have been with Middle Eastern friends when people have asked their religion or questioned their loyalty to America.
I suspect that most of the people who claim there is no such thing as "white privilege" have ever spent enough time with a person of a different color to know how different things can be. I don't consider it a "privilege" to not be harassed during a traffic stop or get suspicious looks from waiters or be subject to rude questions from strangers. It's not a privilege. It's a right. But a right denied to too many in our society.
The cemetery at Manzanar. The ultimate example of white privilege. No Americans of German descent were similarly rounded up and imprisoned.