I think that if you want to talk to someone about privilege, you should have some sort of actual goal in mind. To be poor is a form of anti-privilege. To be white is usually form of privilege (if you're a white person in Zimbabwe, being white might get you murdered). Few people are entirely privileged or entirely unprivileged. Even a poor black person has more privilege than a starving quadriplegic black person, for example.
People focus on their privilege relative to the people around them, and someone who feels they have less power than others is going to feel unprivileged, regardless of how shitty things are for other people. If your goal is just to say, "it's better to be a poor white person than a poor black person," he probably already knows that. If your goal is something beyond that, you might try starting from a different angle closer to your goal.
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Date: 2010-11-06 12:51 am (UTC)People focus on their privilege relative to the people around them, and someone who feels they have less power than others is going to feel unprivileged, regardless of how shitty things are for other people. If your goal is just to say, "it's better to be a poor white person than a poor black person," he probably already knows that. If your goal is something beyond that, you might try starting from a different angle closer to your goal.