Racism is a terrible problem in this country and we obviously need to do much, much more to address it.
But this language of “privilege” seems so imprecise to me and seems to lead to comparisons that are not at all useful and distracting.
For example, I have health problems resulting in pretty severe chronic pain. When I start thinking, “I’m privileged because I’m white and I haven’t experienced racism,” my brain fires back with, “Yeah, but I’m in chronic pain. Want to change places?”
Thinking about whether it is worse to go through life with chronic pain or racism, all else being equal, is really not at all helpful to addressing the problems of racism.
To get me to start focusing on issues of racism, it is much more effective to say, directly, “You don’t know what it is like to experience chronic racism.” And then discussing specific anecdotes. That just seems to me to be a much more effective rhetorical strategy.