Christine Emba's White Privilege?

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In her 16 January 2016 The Washington Post editorial, “What is White Privilege?”, Christine Emba asserts white privilege is a societal advantage inherent in people who are white, irrespective of their “wealth, gender, or other factors.” According to Emba, white privilege makes life smoother and is an entity that is hidden or unknown until the privilege is taken away. Although racism is still a rampant issue in society today, white privilege is a concept created by the progressive left in order to brand whites as a scapegoat for issues and adversities that non-whites face. This concept of privilege ultimately causes further dissension between whites and non-whites. Our contemporary understanding of the term “white privilege” originates from …show more content…

On their site, Teaching Tolerance, Holladay’s definition is as follows, “White skin privilege is not something that white people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose. Unlike the more overt individual and institutional manifestations of racism... white skin privilege is a transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society” (Holladay). In this definition, Holladay asserts that white privilege, in a way, attaches to individuals whether they want it or not. Holladay’s definition can be likened to Emba’s definition, as both women have similar stances on the …show more content…

However, Dave Nappi, an editor for Thought Catalog, challenges the concept of white privilege and its validity within society. Nappi believes white privilege can only be proven if “one allows themselves to stop using logical reasoning and start jumping through illogical hoops with [a] triad of fallacies.” He goes on to say that people like Holladay and Emba “aim to degrade the social cohesion of the population,” and that the public believes both women even though their arguments contain hand-picked logical fallacies (Nappi). Various other individuals agree with Nappi on the basis that there is no substantial evidence to support white privilege. Of these individuals, syndicated columnist Dennis Prager believes that white privilege “turns out to be largely meaningless… more significantly, it does great harm to blacks”

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