Socially acceptable racism

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Unfortunately racism is not exclusive to "whites." It is endemic in all races in my opinion.

There is still a lot unknown about decline of Neanderthals and the factors driving it. Diseases may have played a major role, similar to smallpox in Americas.
Anyway, as all modern non-Africans have some Neanderthal DNA, we can with some certainity tell that our distant ancestors didn't have one drop laws.

Yep. Every race has racists within it.

It goes as far back until there is no longer a systematic oppression of communities that were formed by systems for the purpose of oppression, following an effective attempt to fix things.

My understanding is that part of what caused the rise of Nazis of WW2 were a poor implementation of paying back what was done in the first world war. The good fixes for things are providing services to lift people out of poverty, things like schools and job opportunities. And places that have failed to meet these requirements are cases where bad schools, such cases of America where black communities are already poor, and then they base the school funding off of property taxes, which means that these poor communities are just being further disadvantaged. And arguably it is then rich places that are benefiting off of the economic differences where they can continue to take advantage of the privilege of being in those rich areas, that benefit going back to policies created for real racist reasons.

It should be the responsibility of rich nations to help other nations they might have exploited in the past, so that everyone in the world might have the opportunity to succeed. I don't know all the facts, but my understanding of Germany as it is now has done quite a lot to pay back for the damages it caused. I am not going to make a blanket statement without understanding what might have been done. Only that the type of people who act protectionist of just defending their own culture/society/nation while claiming they personally did not do the bad thing in the past, have held fixes back.

But you are aware that even then it was only the absolute upper crust that benefited from slavery? The vast majority of whites never did benefit from slavery and also had a dogs life themselves. The area that I live in for example had entire towns built for housing white people who were "paid" very poorly with tokens and not money that could only be spent in the price gouged shops owned by their employers.

Their jobs? Working from dusk till dawn in dangerous coal mines and often starting work as a 12 or 13 year old child. Just 15 mins away 400+ white people died instantly in a coal mine explosion. All the houses that I currently own were once housing exploited white people. To this day the area has never recovered.

This is why a lot of people have a big issue with "white guilt debt". A lot of white people had it equally as bad.

Land of Freedom, Equality and Opportunities!
Sounds like founding states on lies and propaganda is not restricted to Old World.

I am reading "How the other half lives" https://www.historyonthenet.com/authent ... index.html It describes various exploitation practices from times when slavery was officially abolished. Even there, the Black-White racism had significant additional impact: https://www.historyonthenet.com/authent ... hap13.html

It was never really adressed - I suppose during Cold War, the success propaganda to shut up that evil commies was a major factor in keeping it taboo.

Pretty much. I think today there's to much emphasis on one entire race vs another race. This is rarely the case. The reality is that it was only a tiny minority of white people vs everyone else regardless of location or race. Even back at the height of slavery most white people didn't benefit and where probably beanten and exploited themselves. Almost all didn't benefit then and they don't now.

If you were to look at the average white person and the average black person hundreds of years ago, I think there isn't much to envy. None of my family benefited from slavery past or present and it's mirrored with almost all other white families in the UK at least. When they say they didn't own a slave or benefited from slavery they're probably telling the truth.

Reading about American slavery, I come to a conclusion that there was a difference between exploitation of peasants in relevant times here and Black slavery.
Peasants were still considered humans, "christian souls". Not free, awfully exploited, but they could e.g. decide on their own family matters, marry and raise their children as their own. They had stable social structures that couldn't be disrupted on a whim by decisions to sell away someone. And, at least in Poland, after serfdom was abolished (about the same time as abolishment of slavery in America), the descendants of serfs and the gentry mixed into one society.

It's very similar here. While people were "free" there were punishments for exercising that freedom. Many people didn't dare challenge their opressors here........not until they found a lot of guns at least which is another part of my local history.

There was never much white privelage in my area and still isn't today. As recently as the 60s an entire school full of kids were killed not far from me after an industrial landslide destroyed it.

At least, as Magz points out, these white folks were deemed human. Black slaves were purely chattel—like animals, vegetables, and minerals.

There were exceptions to this—but not enough to mitigate the above impression.

Subsequent history confirmed this impression through the Jim Crow laws.

Perhaps in the US this was the case. In the UK were I'm from this wasn't. Rest assured a lot of white people were treated like animals, vegetables and minerals here and often on an industrial scale.

What I’m saying is more a legal thing than perhaps an actuality.

Plenty of white folks were exploited in the way you described....but at least, legally, they were people.

Black slaves were 3/5ths of a person—at most. At least white folks couldn’t legally be sold to someone else.

Tell all that to a white person in grinding poverty, though.

Well yeah I guess. The difference in my eyes is marginal between working 14 hours a day in a coal mine with regular explosions only to spend your tokens on a £75 loaf of bread and £25 slab of butter vs a cotton field all day and get beaten weekly. Perhaps the latter is worse but honestly not much I feel given how horrific a lot of the industrial accidents where here.

The specifics are about even after becoming "free" people they were still treated as lesser to the lower white people, who could benefit more from the economy built by people who made their wealth through slavery.

If a rich person made money from slaves, then used their money to provide better jobs or payment of services to low class white people, are the low class people not benefiting from the fruits of slavery? But regardless, it is not about punishing specific people who might have in some way be connected to benefiting from slavery, it is about providing equal opportunities regardless of race and that a system that was built on the exploitation or discrimination of people should help lift the people that were left disadvantaged because of that.

People in general can benefit if there is a class of people that was placed bellow them, so even if they were treated like s**t, they were not treated as subhuman. The actual damage done has never been truly addressed, and just creates more victims.

Here, they could - land was bought and sold with people bound to it. At least social, family and work structures were preserved. From the peasants' point of view - the lord changed, the rest went on as usual.

Back to "white privilege" - I have experienced it a lot when travelling. When you're white and you look like a tourist, border control and airport safety in many places do not bother with you much. It probably works for Japanese tourists as well. You just fall into a box labeled "unlikely to cause trouble".
However, a friend of mine - also definitely European and looking so - gets in trouble for his "working class" looks not fitting science conferences he gives as the reason for visits. When I was overmedicated, I instantly got searched on every control. So it's definitely more nuanced than Black-White.

In a nutshell no, they didn't benefit from slavery even when conditions improved. Only a tiny minority benefited from slavery and to this day the areas that were hit hardest by exploitation are still poor (and among the whitest in the UK ironically)

Everyone was treated like s**t back in the day. I can't think of a single Welsh miner that benefited from slavery directly or indirectly even after their working conditions improved considerably.

I don't really know what you mean by lifting up to. A lot of black people in London have it much better than a lot of white people in former industrial towns.

Statistically white working class boys are the worst off in the UK and face the most unfavourable life prospects.