I recently read an article suggesting that when white people are told they are exhibiting “white privilege” they should express their thanks. Although this response might be warranted, I find that suggestion psychologically naive. This post explains why the expression “white privilege” can get in the way of effective cross-racial communication. AGB
Want to start a fight? Put an honest white person and an honest person of color in a room together and tell them to discuss white privilege. “White privilege” is one of those phrases that means two totally different things to most white people and most people of color. Outside of colleges and and multi-cultural training seminars it is a complete conversation stopper that does nothing to illuminate anything and everything to sow seeds of enmity between races. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s a phrase that should be abandoned altogether.
“Now, wait a minute, Rebecca,” I can hear some of you saying, “you’re a white person married to an African American. You’ve even written a book which is enormously sympathetic to the perspectives and experiences of African Americans and quite critical of whites inability/unwillingness to deal with those perspectives and experiences. How can…
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Friends of Justice 
When my wife worked as a nurse in a hospital, a nurse with whom she worked was black with a very dark complexion. She learned from that nurse that, in the black community, shade of complexion is important, that lighter is better. Is that a reflection of White Privilege?