It’s hard to forget about the George Floyd riots. This man, previously unremarkable before his death, was murdered by the police for the crime of passing a possibly counterfeit $20 bill. Of course, Floyd wasn’t a perfectly innocent man himself, but giving counterfeit money does not deserve a death sentence. A white man would probably have the money returned to him in the case that it was counterfeit, or it could just go unnoticed. This is an example of the white privilege we have in our society. Unfortunately, people don’t want to admit that this exists. For example, in PragerU’s “Jordan Peterson Debunks White Privilege,” the existence of white privilege is somehow both denied and made into a way to accuse white people for virtue signaling.

1: Jordan Peterson: Criminal Psychologist (0:00)

Jordan Peterson, the first so-called-expert in this video, is a criminal psychologist, as said in his own page about himself. He says that “He’s studied religious/ideological belief and personality/performance assessment and improvement,” which is not in any way related to racial issues. As well as this, Tabatha Southey, columnist for a Canadian magazine, says “Peterson’s secret sauce is to provide an academic veneer to a lot of old-school rightwing cant, including the notion that most academia is corrupt and evil, and banal self-help patter.”

2: Brandon Tatum: Political Commentator (1:43)

Although Jordan Peterson talks for a little bit, he doesn’t say much of importance. After Jordan’s short rambling about some group of farmers in the Soviet Union (who I have not researched, as they did not seem important to this topic,) We hear Brandon Tatum after a short screen transition. While I couldn’t find anyone saying anything about his work, I did find a few articles about Alex Kasprak, a science writer and investigative journalist disproving each claim he made in a video, which should say something about his credibility. As well as this, Alex says Jordan uses his own “experience as representative of the Black experience in America,” which also helps prove that he may not be the best person to be commentating on political issues.

3: “White Privilege doesn’t exist.” (2:10)

After we introduce our first 2 experts, we have our first claim, saying white privilege doesn’t exist. We know this is untrue due to the claims made by a study at the US Department of Education, which say that “Elementary and secondary schools with large numbers of black and Hispanic students are less likely to have experienced teachers, advanced courses, high-quality instructional materials and adequate facilities,” as well as the data gathered by Mapping Police Violence, a site dedicated to recording the killings made by police, claiming “About 17% of the black people who died as a result of police harm were unarmed, a larger share than any other racial group and about 1.3 times more than the average of 13%,” and finally the conclusions made by Team Westport, saying “American culture conditions white folk to not fully grasp how society privileges them.”

4: “White Privilege benefits no one.” (4:26)

Next, the video claims that nobody is benefited by the existence of white privilege. However, Brando Starkey, a writer and scholar concentrating on race, law, and American History claims, after his work with Team Westport, that “The white working class hears these stories [about what happens to non-white people]. But many choose to disregard them and castigate minorities for blaming the white man for all problems.” as well as this, he says “…American culture has taught whites to believe they represent the intellectual and cultural vanguard…” Finally, a study from Mapping Police Violence says “…people of color were more likely to be the victims of [police brutality in 2019 than they were in 2014.” To sum up, the only “benefits” of white privilege is that we don’t get treated as if we’re inferior, and we can ignore that people are.

5: “White Privilege only exists to make white people feel better about being white.” (4:50)

Finally, our expert claims that the existence of white privilege is only to bolster the ego of whits people. Of course, this isn’t true, as can be seen in a study from Pew Research Center, where “About three-in-ten Asian adults (31%) say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the outbreak began, compared with 21% of Black adults, 15% of Hispanic adults and 8% of white adults.” As well as this, a report from Mapping Police Violence says “…people of color were more likely to be the victims of [police brutality] in 2019 than they were in 2014.” Finally, Team Westport claims that “The white working class hears these stories [about black people being discriminated against]. But many choose to disregard them and castigate minorities for blaming the white man for all problems.” 

Conclusion

Fact-checking and disproving arguments in videos like this is important because media like this spreads the idea that black people are the enemy, or that there is no reason to help them, and this actively works against the goal of everyone being treated equally. As well as this, the circulation of media like this perpetuates the idea that nobody is being treated unequally, and anyone who speaks out against that is just trying to cause trouble. As a result, society doesn’t try to change its problems, and we may end up with another tragedy similar to George Floyd’s.