While I agree that left (ill)logics frequently affirm consequents, the concept of privilege does not necessarily implicate the usage of this fallacy. I thus consider this piece a strawperson argument that is based off of a highly decontextualized and abstract way of understanding privilege. Non-dominant group members do not have the privilege of being able to appeal to such abstract notions as logic and epistemology because their material existence is perpetually at risk of loss or impoverishment. Having a majority of resources affords white communities a whole host of privileges that make it easy for white folks to forget or ignore that material bodies, feelings, and subjectivities play a fundamental role in the human being.
I see this abstract and decontextualized way of thinking as part of a broader focus on analytic philosophy in the United States, and while I agree that deductive logic is an important tool for understanding some types of phenomena, I don’t think it’s usually useful to describe or understand human behavior. Deductive logic is especially not useful to understand whiteness because whiteness perpetually defies and resists logical explication since it is based in maintaining a superiority that doesn’t actually exist. Humans are not logical creatures, and part of this is because human subjects are not objects, which means that we are therefore based in subjectivity, not objectivity. I think purely analytic approaches to understanding human behavior miss the mark because they hold humans to an objective standard that will never be met while simultaneously and systematically devaluing human subjectivity, which is the ontological basis out of which we are formed.
It is also not necessarily the case that white privilege involves the supposition that one ought not be privileged, or that one should necessarily wish to get rid of their privilege, which further reinforces my understanding of this piece as a straw person argument whose primary fallacy involves unjustifiably crossing the is-ought gap. You seem to be arguing that a particular moral imperative (i.e., that one should not be privileged, or that people should all suffer the same consequences) partially constitutes the concept of white privilege, and while I understand why you probably believe this given the moral righteousness the left tends to proclaim for themselves, the concept of white privilege has no necessary relationship to any particular moral imperative.
Privilege generally speaking is any advantage whose presence is taken for granted by those who have it because these advantages belong to those who are perceived to be “normal” by the dominant group. There’s an inherently social and relational component to privilege that makes purely individualistic, decontextualized framings metaphysically unsound. Individualizing privilege is also part of why many white people defensively respond to white privilege with the claim that it doesn’t exist because white people work hard for what they have. No one is denying that white people work hard; in fact, I’d say that white people are those most thoroughly exploited by capitalism. White privilege implies that environments (e.g., power structures, laws, business operations, etc.) typically support and affirm the behaviors of white people because these environments have been designed by and for white people. It’s easy to not see privilege when you haven’t been met with structural barriers to your success, which is why I recommend any cisgender and heterosexual white men to consider how different their day would be if they decided to wear red lipstick, and how different their lives would be if they decided to wear red lipstick on a regular basis. Do you think you’d be just as easily respected and taken seriously if you presented yourself in this way? Why or why not? Jane Elliot asks audiences of white people if any of them would want to be treated the same way Black people are treated in America, but no one ever says they would.
What exactly white people should do with white privilege is up to debate; in fact, many white people in the United States are in the midst of figuring this out right now. I personally think that white people should use their privilege, not get rid of or deny it, and what they should specifically do with their privilege is talk to other white people about whiteness. This response is one attempt at such a behavior, as are many of my other articles on Medium, for I am also white and have a background in philosophy. I hope it is clear that I am coming from a place of openness and curiosity about how white privilege is understood by those who oppose it, and that I mean you no disrespect by disagreeing with you.
I hope that more white people get on board with the reality of whiteness and all the particularities it involves, for we act in just as patterned and predictable ways as any other social group whose stereotyping is an institutionalized practice. Conservative and liberal ways of understanding the world would benefit from integration of objective rigor with subjective nuance, for I agree that the left has serious problems with weaponizing subjectivity through shaming and cancel-culture. Attempting to eliminate subjectivity by appeals to rationality and logic is also problematic, however because subjectivity is basis out of which we our humanity is formed, which is why I think we should be working toward integrating these two ways of thinking instead of further separating them. I hope that over time more philosophers begin to integrate subjective human messiness into their theoretical frameworks, for this messiness is part of who we are—and there’s nothing wrong with that.
