Jumping from generalizations about groups to specifics of individuals is inherently unjust - as is the inverse, generalizing about a group from a few individuals. Generalization from systematic group aggregation is useful for exposing systemic biases, but action should be specific to the circumstances of individuals independent of group membership or the risk of injustice is very high.
Unsafe generalization is at the root of prejudice. Racists / sexists / bigots generalize from the worst instances of individual behaviour to a group, or aggregate statistics about a group, and then apply the generalization in specific individual scenarios. A crude example, taking the generalization "Jews run global finance" - and it's true that they have been historically over-represented - and then applying the generalization to specifics: "you're a Jew, I don't like Jews because they run the world".
A good rule to bear in mind before leaping to prejudice is that the variance within groups is larger than the variance between groups.
White privilege is a prejudice concept built along the same architecture as racism and sexism. It takes aggregate group attributes and tries to enforce it in the particular against individuals. You've just rehearsed the line yourself - "you benefit from racism" - you've given an example of instantiation of a group attribute upon an individual without evidence. It is literally prejudice, and it's unjust, even if it's more likely to be true than false.
Identity politics and group thinking squished together loses a dangerous amount of nuance. Identity poltics is how self-identified liberals assert their form of universal subjectivity by splitting the working class racially (read Wilderson, Hartman, Moten and afropessimistic thought and of course Lacan). While Groupthink is naively but generally defined as: " a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome". The distinction thus becomes clear. Identity politics is born of the desire to divide the working classes using the disharmony of racialization causing irrational decision making, while Groupthink has the same ending but with explicitly the opposite desire.
Let's get down to the core of your argument, which to me seems to be that white privilege doesn't exist. I can spend five minutes on google and turn up a cornucopia of studies that demonstrate otherwise, so why deny the exist of racial privilege?
No, the core of my argument is that treating individuals based on aggregates is unjust, as is generalizing to aggregates based on individuals. The former is prejudice in action - from the general to the particular - and the latter is prejudice formation - unsafe generalization from the particular to the general.
I have zero doubt that many people are treated differently based on skin and other overt characteristics. But that's not my argument.
Unsafe generalization is at the root of prejudice. Racists / sexists / bigots generalize from the worst instances of individual behaviour to a group, or aggregate statistics about a group, and then apply the generalization in specific individual scenarios. A crude example, taking the generalization "Jews run global finance" - and it's true that they have been historically over-represented - and then applying the generalization to specifics: "you're a Jew, I don't like Jews because they run the world".
A good rule to bear in mind before leaping to prejudice is that the variance within groups is larger than the variance between groups.
White privilege is a prejudice concept built along the same architecture as racism and sexism. It takes aggregate group attributes and tries to enforce it in the particular against individuals. You've just rehearsed the line yourself - "you benefit from racism" - you've given an example of instantiation of a group attribute upon an individual without evidence. It is literally prejudice, and it's unjust, even if it's more likely to be true than false.