This is a great response but I think we're going to fundamentally disagree on a few things. Not that this is in any way a bad thing.
White privilege isn't an economic factor and you're right here, but we must be very careful that we don't irradicate and make invisible the complex and intersecting nature of privilege. I've done a lot of work with young carers for example (all skin colours) they are at a huge natural disadvantage but one that becomes even more complicated when you drill down into the individual stories. Often in those specific cases, being from a ethnic minority background is a boon. There is often a collective sense of community, usually a religious support network and often a larger family. We can go into the minutiae of individual cases but you get the picture - an over simplification of race equates to privilege isn't helpful in all cases.
My article doesn't mention happiness, because despite the best efforts of M. Cameron and M. Clegg, there's no real way of measuring it - it has to be self reported and across these demographics, I suspect there's a degree of under reporting. The ONS doesn't collect details of suicide by ethnicity, but I did manage to find this study of higher education suicides by ethnicity between 2013 - 2017. I was genuinely interested and it seems that Asian and 'other' (all mixed race) lead in suicide per 100,000, followed by white people followed by black people.
We can't infer much from these figures, but they are interesting. Whether it means only the happiest black students get to university, they're statistically less likely to die when they get there. The ONS will start collecting deaths by ethnicity data fairly soon, and have been roundly criticised for not doing so in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I don't think we should abandon race based discussions to avoid giving poor white kid a complex; but I think we should be very cautious about the timing and manner of those discussions. Letting loose without thought may see the demos move significantly to the left. I think the gradual shifting of the Labour Party away from the economic arguments (For the Many, not the Few) and into identity politics as problematic - all identity politics being an inversion (for the few, not the many). I think it may be the inclusion of Corbynistas that lost Labour the North - and even though Boris Johnson has been demonstrably racist in the past, the UK voting population gave him the top job.
I think identity politics is a massive miss-step for the left and I wrote about it here. https://medium.com/lucid-nightmare/what-we-all-lose-when-society-plays-identity-politics-397dcb896d5b
I think your last sentence is bang on. Our minorities are catching up and we have a lot to be happy about. American politics is a mess and their race relations are in a complete state. We must be careful not to presume the exact same conditions apply here and let that inform the rhetoric everywhere - we are a different country with different problems and a different class system.
Good response, and great arguments :o)
