The problem with the term "white privilege," and the reason why I think we need to drop it, is that it arbitrarily affixes guilt and blame to every white person in the United States and elsewhere. I say this as someone who struggled with the phrase for a long time as to whether it was appropriate, given that "Islamic extremism" is another phrase that one might say has the potential to foster ill sentiment against an entire group of people.

The difference between the two, I believe, is that "Islamic extremism" applies only to those who intentionally align themselves with it, while "white privilege," again, is applied to all whites in this country and in others.

We should replace "white privilege" with a phrase like "black disadvantage." The latter does not affix guilt and blame to anybody and it refers more directly to the causes of today's racial disparities, e.g. the lingering effects of segregation.

A New York Times article discusses how the phrase "white supremacy" has come to refer to - instead of just the ideology - any disparity between whites and non-whites and anything that supposedly holds non-whites down exclusively. Today's rhetoric about "white supremacy" and racism certainly appears to conflate race with class. That's my problem with this widespread enthusiasm for "racial equity"; it treats non-whites as more oppressed than whites regardless of financial circumstances, and it fails to distinguish between the different historical circumstances of non-whites. For example, another New York Times article explains how many blacks descended from slaves feel that blacks descended from voluntary immigrants benefit unfairly from affirmative action in higher education.

Much is said about the "systemic racism" that supposedly pervades our society, but with little to show for it. That's another term that, quite arguably, is widely misapplied. Are there laws in our government or standards in the private sector - aside from affirmative action - that discriminate on the basis of race? If not, then why do we say that the police are systemically racist? Why does Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago say that the news media is institutionally racist simply due to the dominance of whites within it? Could that not simply be due to the talent pool of prospective journalists being wider among whites than among other races? Segregation was a true example of racism in the system. If we speak of the racism in our legal system causing blacks to be sentenced more harshly than whites, we speak of racism that occurs not because of the system but because of factors affecting the individuals in the system. We need to know how to distinguish between the two.

There are right ways and wrong ways to address our disparities, but whether or not we can tell the difference doesn't matter if we do not show each other due respect.