I was going to say something about how I occasionally use the phrase &quot;white privilege&quot; and I agree with you, but I think I actually just tend to use &quot;privilege&quot;. You&#x27;re right, in different times and places there&#x27;s a lot of change in who is privileged. And it&#x27;s definitely not a two-level system. I don&#x27;t think the word &quot;privilege&quot; necessarily implies it, but it&#x27;s used like that a lot, and I think that&#x27;s unfortunate, and it&#x27;s definitely a simplistic view of the world.<p>For instance, Irish-Americans did not have a particularly great time in the US in the mid-19th century by any means, but they had a much <i>better</i> time than African-Americans. They faced serious discrimination, but they rarely were assumed to be runaway slaves.<p>I think it&#x27;s useful to acknowledge that even today, some groups of people have basic privileges like being assumed not to be a thief that everyone ought to have, and we can acknowledge that without reducing it to a simple white-nonwhite line.