It's almost pathetic, isn't it, the lengths they are prepared to go to. The reasoning seems to be white privilege doesn't exist because some white kids are underprivileged.
I think there is a general point that gets overlooked or ridiculed there. I have benefited from white privilege, but my dad hasn’t. Talking to him about white privilege without any context for his own life experience only loses an ally, because otherwise he shares a lot of the same beliefs as those who use the term most.
He grew up as one of 6 children, the son of a janitor and a housewife, with very little food on the table. He grew up in one of the hotspots of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, gunshots most nights, an occupying army on his doorstep, paramilitary organisations trying to recruit him, other people his age throwing petrol bombs and senior political leaders mounting rifles on his street. There was no privilege in his background. He had a much worse upbringing than the vast majority of people with a different skin colour in his country. The fact he was white just meant he would be defined by his religion or his political identity, and he happened to be in the minority and subject to explicit discrimination.
Just waving a hand and saying well sure you grew up with all that, but imagine how much worse it would have been if you had a different skin colour, is plainly untrue but more importantly, it invalidates a fundamental part of his being. That’s stupid politics but it’s not uncommon for people who talk about white privilege to such an extent.
It just shouldn’t feature in this report at all. It could be misguided analysis but most likely it’s just a bullshit distraction from the deeper problem they have much more responsibility for.