Agreed. It's a conversation stopper for me. Sorry. When I hear that term I have to remind myself that people of color automatically get a lot of racist crap, as a matter of course. But still I block or mute. Just the other day I saw a tweet beginning with "Hey white girl" followed by some diatribe. I immediately and reflexively muted this person. Call it my white privilege.
It’s just like the real world. Where I grew up, “hey white boy” was often a prelude to someone threatening or trying to beat me up for no reason. As an adult, those words still trigger my reflex to prepare for an actual fight.
I was a graduate student working to get left-wing groups pulling together around 1994 and that was when I heard some students talking about how they'd been browbeaten by a professor about "white privilege".
My immediate take at the time was that groups like the Olin Foundation were working hard to push right-wing views on campus (funding three separate conservative student newspapers!) and that this was exactly what they wanted: a 'vaccination' that will drive young people to vote Republican for the rest of their lives, while fooling left-oriented academics into thinking they've claimed some territory for themselves.
College leadership is decreasingly ideologically diverse, you could say they are oppressively conservative within the realm of academia. When things like tenure tracks are scrutinized, obedience is the number one adjective to describe staff.
My immediate take at the time was that groups like the Olin Foundation were working hard to push right-wing views on campus (funding three separate conservative student newspapers!) and that this was exactly what they wanted: a 'vaccination' that will drive young people to vote Republican for the rest of their lives, while fooling left-oriented academics into thinking they've claimed some territory for themselves.