IBW21

One commenter on Salon got my attention last week during the furor that followed my essay about “white privilege” as a concept that helps us understand both what actually happened in Ferguson, Missouri, and the racially polarized response to those events. In post after post, this person repeatedly tried to strike a middle ground between fundamentally incompatible positions that reflect opposing worldviews, between the idea that white privilege is an immensely significant if largely hidden dynamic that shapes much of American life and the proposition that white privilege is a left-wing fiction. This person’s brave effort to split the difference – or, less charitably, to deflect the question without rejecting it entirely – didn’t work, but I found it instructive.