on the concept most people attempt to describe when they invoke the term 'privilege.'
I'm a thirty five year old, dad-bodied white guy with no apparent superior phyiscal characteristics (possibly apart from being 6'2"), and in this country I get regarded by people (young women especially) precisely as I imagine pro athletes are regarded when they walk the mall. Every pair of eyes lingers a few extra seconds on me, playful giggles as I pass are a common occurrence, and pretty much every other example of arms-length flirtation you can think of are commonplace during a twenty minute walk through the mall. Any American man who has visited a country like this one knows that I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. There are facets of this which could *obviously* be beneficial to me, but there are facets which are decidedly not.
Once one subset of people begins to behave favorably toward a person, other subsets (say, the local men who vie for these young ladies' attentions) chafe at such favorability and they seek to 'even the score' as it were. In this country that could be anything from gouging me an extra $0.50-1.00/kilo for fruits/meat at the market, to taxi drivers trying to take me for another $4-5/trip, to local bureaucrats adding zeroes(!) onto the price tags for standard government services (like fencing permits and the like). I'm a MUCH fatter-looking target for petty thieves and other criminals to come take a swipe at, and yes I've had to deal with that in this country as a result of my 'privilege.' So yeah, while I get preferential treatment from young, single filipinas I get at least that much negative treatment from the rest of the people I encounter--and frankly, I don't leverage the positive aspects of this condition but I most certainly do receive the detriments associated with it.
I see it pretty similarly in the USA. It seems to me that once the concept generally referred to as 'privilege' is acknowledged by a person, little-or nothing!-else need be done by that person. The world is full of independent actors doing as they think is best for themselves and their agendas; if some group is indeed inordinately advantaged in a given arena, people don't need state force to level the field--we're pretty capable of doing that ourselves.
In fact, it seems to me that the most horrifying example of human suffering (slavery) is only made possible via state support. Why should it be any different for lesser variants on the spectrum of advantage vs. disadvantage? Serious question. And if you intend to couch an answer in the standard rhetoric of 'institutionalized advantages' then I would ask that you lay the case out precisely as you see it, in your own words. I'm not saying institutional advantages don't exist; I'm saying that in my experience they are usually inappropriately invoked.
So while I think that acknowledging the differences each of us might have with our fellow humans is a GREAT thing, I disapprove of the concept of 'privilege' being invoked since it paints a picture of categorical advantages (which do indeed seem mythical to me; as I elucidated above, it seems to me that everything in life is trade-offs). How's 'white privilege' working out for students riding the bubble in terms of SAT scores, which have to be markedly higher for whites/Asians than many ethnic minorities due to (laudable, but ultimately self-defeating in my considered opinion) attempts to 'level the field' as it were by the imposition of state force? I doubt a kid whose SAT scores were a hundred points higher than a competitors, but failed to get academic footing while the lower-scoring youth passed said kid by, much cares about the concept of 'social justice' being made manifest at his/her expense.
And ultimately my primary issue with the concept of privilege is simple: what's the inverse of privilege? Think about it for a second. If you're accepting of the notion that some people are inherently advantaged over others, and that this must be corrected for by the application of outside force, you're necessarily declaring that some people will require the application of outside force to overcome their disadvantages. That, to me, is a truly insidious and destructive idea to promulgate--especially when it comes to the impressionable and fertile minds of our youths.