I completely agree. In a world where you're comparing people of equal financial status - there is a privilege afforded to people who are white. That's the nature of white privilege and systemic racism. It does exist and society needs to work at how to bring about equity. We are in full agreement.
The point I'm making is about the methodology of moving a society forward. At the moment, the dialogue consists primarily of middle class people (of all skin colours) agreeing amongst themselves that racism is bad and that white people are guilty. The middle class is in an intellectual echo chamber.
In reality, the point you're making about the white homeless man and the black homeless man is completely correct. I would even go as far as to say that a homeless white person has more privilege than a poor black person who isn't homeless in terms of upwards mobility.
Where the rhetorical gulf is emerging is that although your argument is correct, it's a semantic argument. You win the argument but it applies in specific conditions. When two people have identical lives only separated by skin colour - reality rarely provides us with such a situation.
As a result, you have a selection of writers who are telling poor white folk, you are 'more privileged' than all black people. They are likely making the same argument that you're making (which I don't dispute) - but the argument being made by those on the political right goes like this.... You've got no money, you're dirt poor and all these lefties in San Francisco and elsewhere keep insisting you're more privileged than they are - with their electric cars and their holidays abroad. Do you feel that accuratley reflects your lived experience? If not...how do you fancy votiing for Trump or some other demagogue who makes outlandish claims that 'feel' right to your worldivew. They don't care if they're racist, they care they're poor.
Your argument is absolutely correct - and I'm not skirting round it. My argument is, what do we do with that information? Because hitting poor white folks round the head with it is likely going to push them towards voting for more racist politiicians. I think the answer is raising people out of poverty and moving people away from identity poltiics and back toward a socialist and economic argument.
