Does the term “white privilege” apply to Eastern Europeans?

Question

Does the concept of "white privilege" also apply to (for example) Eastern Europeans, according to the political groups, who it? How is it explained?

I am mostly talking about hard line groups, like black supremacists or Nation of Islam. But I am also interested in the take of more moderate groups on this question.

Do they have a model for how white privilege applies to an Eastern European, living in Eastern Europe?

Or has this question never come up in public debate?

Answer 1

I don't believe it comes up in Eastern Europe, for the simple reason that very few people of African descent have ever lived there. As Alexei notes, those nations have their own form of discrimination. Basic human nature doesn't respect borders and continents.

My German friends tell me that there was some discrimination against former East Germany residents (called 'Ossies') shortly after reunification, but it does seem to be fading.

It is curious that even in countries where the concept of 'white privilege' is used as a cause of economic disparity, it doesn't explain why other non caucasian minorities that have been subject to discrimination in the past (and used as slave labor at one point), such as Asians, have done quite well.

With that in mind, the accuracy of 'white privilege', with its sound byte simplicity, is open to some degree of debate.

Answer 2

Note: I live in Romania and my answer will be quite localized

"White privilege" concept is virtually unknown in Romania (never heard of it on local media, from friends, only from Politics.SE). This does not mean there is no discrimination, discrimination against Romani people. being a good example:

Racism is mostly directed against the Romani people, the country's third-largest minority, who are routinely discriminated against by the state, local authorities and private enterprises, in matters of housing, employment and education.

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Regarding a comment on OP:

in Eastern Europe who obviously didn't benefit from slavery

Actually there was slavery in Eastern Europe and some argue that ending it was not done properly, thus many problems related to discrimination and their integration:

Slavery (Romanian: robie) existed on the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 13th–14th century, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s, and also until 1783, in Transylvania and Bukovina (parts of the Habsburg Monarchy). Most of the slaves were of Roma (Gypsy) ethnicity

Following the abolition, there were attempts (both of the state and private initiatives) to sedentize the nomads and to integrate the Roma people into the Romanian society, but they had a rather limited success.

I would say that “white privilege” virtually does not apply to some Eastern Europeans (at least not to Romanians). In fact, this article explains why racism is quite low (except that against Roma people):

(...) it really shouldn’t be interpreted as racism. In fact, you may find that Romanians hold fewer racial stereotypes about blacks and Asians than Americans do, simply because there are almost no people of those races living in Romania and there are no cultural narratives defining what PoC are “supposed” to be like.

Answer 3

There are 2 main issues with the term "white privilege".

1. Language: White privilege is an English term. English isn't a dominant language in any Eastern European country (yet).

2. Origin: The term white privilege finds its origins in racial tensions between groups of humans with vastly different skin tones. There is no relevant dark skinned minority in any Eastern European country.

Of course, if you ask if it's easier to get a job, higher pay, run for office, ... if one looks like a local, talks like a local, has a local name, and is a local citizen, the answer is "yes" pretty much everywhere in the world. And "local" in this context refers purely to the dominant ethnicity.

Answer 4

Your title question is “does it apply to Eastern Europeans,” but then in the rest of your question (and in comments) it seems you’re really curious about whether the groups that routinely use the term think of it as applying also to Eastern Europeans.

It is true that being part of the dominant culture in any country will give you an advantage over someone who is not part of the dominant culture there - so insofar as that is what is meant by “white privilege,” likely white Eastern Europeans do have it, because every country has a dominant culture, and most white Eastern Europeans belong to theirs.

As to whether Eastern Europeans are seen as having white privilege by Black Lives Matter and other groups which routinely use the term? It seems that by and large these people do not think about this question - it seems not to have come up in the mainstream rhetoric. However, when it has been posed as a direct question (on blogs, quora, etc), the consensus seems to be that yes, the idea of “white privilege” would apply to whites living in Eastern Europe as well. But - the key here is that this isn’t really relevant to the activist groups promoting racial equality in countries with large racial minorities - to experience the effects of white privilege, there has to be a significant non-white minority over which to be privileged.

Again, this is all within the framework of assuming that “white privilege” is a real thing. (And not a function of something unrelated to skin color - which frankly is difficult to disambiguate).

Answer 5

First of all, there is something called intersectionality, which reflects that privilege applies to more things than just race. Ignorance of this fact is often a barrier to people understanding privilege because, for example, they think if one white person is not wealthy, then white privilege does not exist. However privilege can come from race, gender, religion, sexual preference, and other lotteries of birth (including the wealth and influence of your family). This means that a person can be privileged in some areas (like race), disadvantaged in other ways, possibly even underachieve due to their own lack of effort, luck, or intelligence; and then infer that their white privilege does not exist because they haven't achieved some measure of success that they associate with privilege.

What is privilege?

privilege is a concept used to define certain rights or advantages that were held by a particular person or group of people using historical fact; in sociology, privilege is a concept used for certain perceived rights or advantages that are assumed as available only to a particular person or group of people as compared to another individual who derives their own relation whether false or fact. The term is commonly used in the context of social inequality, particularly in regard to age, disability, ethnic or racial category, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and/or social class.[1] Two common examples involve having access to a higher education and to housing.

In America, some examples of white privilege include uneven law enforcement based on race, racially disparate outcomes in jury verdicts, discriminatory lending practices including redlining and subprime lending that targeted minorities, disparate quality of public schools largely along racial and wealth lines, discriminatory hiring practices, and a persistent racial wealth gap.

Does white privilege exist in every country? It really depends on racially where the institutional power lies, the social progress of the country, and the racial distribution of the country. Obviously in a country of only one race, it is hard to find racial inequality. According to the Racism in Europe entry of wikipedia,

The weakest racial bias was found in Serbia and Slovenia, and the strongest racial bias was found in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Malta, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Portugal.

Answer 6

The question and all the answers seem to somewhat misunderstand what white privilege is.

Privilege, in this context, is when any system favours one group or one attribute over which people have no control. In that sense, and given that eastern European societies are in large majority white, the only way white privilege could not exist there is if every system treated non-whites absolutely equally.

Given how we have seen non-whites treated in some eastern European countries, e.g. Wikpedia has extensive articles about it, it seems a stretch to say that there is absolutely no privilege associated with being white in those countries.

Answer 7

Unless someone plays in some highly sophisticated version of intersectionality, then the answer is rather simple - ethnic groups smaller than race are generally not being recognised for any practical purposes. Because of melanin level and swift integration of migrants it makes sense to disregard history and consider as privileged Whites.

Eastern European in spite of lack of colonial past and rather tragic story in XXth century, could not be reclassified, as their historical baggage by pure historical coincidence would look like right-wing argument:

• Eastern Europeans experienced both Nazism and Communism, when in 1939 Hitler and Stalin went on joint conquest of the region. The problem is, that while in the West the WW2 tends to be portrayed as war between good and evil, in the whole region it looked more like two evil genocidal dictators and smaller nations caught in crossfire while just trying to survive. By stating such historical narrative one risks being considered as right wing hard line anti-communist or even neonazi.

• In Poland in the interwar period the farthest reaching state sanctioned antisemitism regulations were quotas for Jews on universities, which simply reflected their ethnic share in overall population. So a left-of-center Polish is being explained that such ethnic quotas limiting the most successful ethnic group are blatant discrimination and shameful past...

• Muslims... In southern part of the EE we had experience of Muslim conquests, subjugations and slaver raids. Local left-of-center reasonably suggest living on without getting obsessed with history and past grievances. So far good, except that US left would suggest actually commemorating the history really well, just different grievances.

• Soviet occupation... except stories ruining all those old school Marxists dreams, there is an extra issue for identity-left. In one Polish atlas I've seen decolonisation and collapse of the SU marked in the same way, as year in which each country gained its independence.

The thing is NOT that people from EE are right wing by default (we have in our countries public healthcare and generally are somewhat puzzled by the way is handled by richer Americans), but that accidentally by mentioning something from our history may be uncomfortable for US left. If we are classified as privileged Whites, then in highly polarised US politics, it's simply a stuff that a far right would say and can be ignored. Add to it that recently in Poland we actually had a huge nationalistic marches (that made me feel a bit uneasy concerning next election), then everything can be simplified in comfortable way.

Answer 8

My question is: is this concept really something to take in consideration as a real thing when talking at a global level? I'm not talking about the discrimination part, which is horrible whenever it happens, but about setting a specific word that applies only to one ethnic group.

Does "black privilege" apply to blacks in SA simply because they are the majority now in the democratic country? Farm confiscation is a form of black privilege in modern SA?

Ottoman empire had slaves taken from the European countries they dominated (Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Greece etc). They had a tribute in children. Do we talk about the Turkish privilege on the current Turkish area when we take in consideration the minorities that are created by the children of this slaves?

What about the "Indian privilege" when we consider the minorities in India?

I understand the logic of this, if you are only talking about blacks and whites in US and if you are talking about people who actually had to benefit or lose at some point or now (directly). I fail to see how an immigrant from Europe from a country that does not have English as the native language to the US today is white-privileged compared to a latino or black person born and educated in the US.

Answer 9

Although our mentality and behavior is actually more old-school and comparable to Eastern cultures, I'd say the sole fact that we have white skin gives us white privilege. They don't care whether you're from a first world haven or a third world dump, if your skin is white then American society doesn't really care. That being said, Americans generally view Slavic people in a negative light - probably because of our social and ideological differences. We're white but we're not Western, which many people find hard to grasp.