Thanks for this. I have been making this exact same point for over a year, in battles about White racism. To say that me not being pulled out of the car by a cop and brutalized is a privilege, or not being followed around in a store a privilege, is counterproductive. What should I do, demand that the cop beat me or the manager to follow me around? As you point out, a privilege is something that can be taken away at any point. A right, insomuch as rights exist, is more secure, and takes more effort to delete. The fact that rights are denied to Black people does not make them White privileges. The solution is to make sure everyone has the same rights, to upgrade the lives of BIPOC, not diminish the lives of Whites.

Words matter. There was a lot of anti-racist momentum in the Summer of 2020, which seems to have all but died down, and I suspect that the vicious dialogue that ensued had a part to play in that.