On my recent video, I was lambasted for my alleged privilege and dismissal of anti racism.

I got to thinking what role privilege actually plays between people in a society.

I think really the “privilege doctrine” could be summarized as viewing people’s ability to move up the social latter as racially determined in a given culture. Where the majority demographic is viewed as preventing the minority demographic from climbing the social latter due to in-group preference.

If you’re white, then you’re “privilege” as a white person would mean that you have a given head start because you’re in a society that allegedly caters to white people, and any race outside that is viewed as marginalized, victimized, or oppressed groups.

I don’t think this ideology really explains why there are disparities between races on certain levels of measurement. However, to by-default assume that disparities equal discrimination is to fall prey to the correlation equals causation fallacy. Which this ideology seems to largely revolve around.

Ethnic differences in outcome are not always evidence of racism or bigotry.

If you look at two more dimensions:

1. Culture
2. Interest

Culture If we look back in history, there was a LOT of time before global e-commerce. Therefore certain cultures developed certain skill sets due to the peculiarity of resources in their local geography.

India was where the silk was, so if you lived in India, it was likely you developed skills involving silk making.

Also by consequence, if you didn’t live in India, you would have no frame of reference for the skills required to make silk. Therefore you’d have to travel to India to get some silk.

So if those skill sets were evolutionarily engrained in a given culture after hundred or thousands of years of selection, is it evidence of racism if a German population doesn’t have equal outcomes in silk production with native born Indians in India? I would say not.

As regards to interest, this speaks to the philosophy of individualism. Regardless of what culture you happen to be from, you’re going to be exposed to unique experiences that are informed by your group characteristics (as the anti-racists argue), BUT your experiences are also going to be informed by your choices and interests.

For example, I’ve seen lots of black people that feel uncomfortable in the metal music community because their family & friends don’t typically like that genre of music, and the metalheads in the culture know this and therefore (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) makes this worse.

However, that doesn’t prevent them from listening to the music they want to. Because every individual makes their own choices and are not predetermined to act out in exact replication, every aspect of their birth culture.

I’ll stop there but to summarize:

Racial disparities in outcomes are not evidence of racism. They could be, but not always by default. They’re most likely the cause of different interests of individuals and could also be cultural selection for a given skill set that gives them a productive advantage.