Acknowledging that one privilege exists does not deny the existence of other privileges. That is a fundamental rule of institutional privilege. Saying that white privilege exists does not deny the existence of class privilege or classism, male privilege or sexism, hetero privilege or homophobia. In fact, a lot of them are interrelated, a phenomenon in sociology called intersectionality.
But just saying that they are related isn't the same as saying that they are the same. Racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and other forms of bigotry all manifest themselves differently, depending on the context and history of the institution in question. These types of privileges will always have aspects that unite them in a common bond, but they wont manifest themselves in the same way.
Being white and having white privilege does not, for instance, deny that I lacked privilege in other aspects of life. My mother is a lesbian, and believe me in the 1990s in Salem, OR in the schools I went to that was a BFD. A real BFD, and a bad BFD. The homophobia that my siblings and I experienced was, quite frankly, outrageous. I remember one day on the school bus, my big sister who was 2 grades ahead of me was very vocal about the fact that her parents were lesbian and that we were a family. Not saying that was a bad thing, I love her for it (but hate her for other things, thats a long story), but for the rest of my time at school my peers made my life -- well, not a living hell, but pretty miserable.
But does that lack of privilege is one arena in my life discount the fact that I have white skin, and I am privileged in that fashion? Hell fucking no.
Again, I grew up poor as dirt. My mom and my other mom both worked for fucking peanuts, and our combined family packed into a teensy 3 bedroom apartment in a pretty bad neighborhood. The schools I went to were notorious in our area for being shitty and underfunded.
Oh, Did I mention the near 75% Latino make-up of the schools in question? Yeah, see, districts give the fuck up on places like that because of bullshit ethnocentrism about those dirty mexicans havin' no cultural orientation toward edumacation or nutin'. And we're talking about bright blue Oregon, not rural Louisiana here. But I digress.
Yes, my lack of class privilege existed. Hard. And it shaped my life. Just as the homophobia did. But you'll never hear me moaning and groaning when people call me out on the privilege of my skin and gender. Privilege doesn't exist a vacuum, without other privileges. It just doesn't.
So when you bring up classism as a counter argument to the privilege of skin and gender, I tend to find those arguments lacking. Just based on my own life experiences, which are decidedly not scientific. But none the less important to the formation of my views on social privileges.
