> But in real life, skin pigmentation and other differences that have been attributed to the term "race" have an impact on a person's perception, whether or not they admit/realize it.
I think, in the US, skin pigmentation has historically acted as a metonym for the social divide between European-Americans and African-Americans. But, it would be a mistake to take the metonym too literally – and people who are neither have always been somewhat out-of-place, and as the US becomes more diverse the number of people who don't belong to either side continues to grow. Some Indians have darker skin than some African-Americans do – would you expect therefore, that when those Indians immigrate to the US, they'll encounter worse treatment than lighter-skinned African-Americans? I don't think anyone believes that is what actually happens. That's not to say that they don't sometimes experience discrimination to a degree which lighter-skinned Indians do not (whether in India or in the US), but it is an overly simplistic model of how US society actually works to suggest that there is such a simple correlation between one's skin tone and one's societal privilege.
Also, "white" people aren't all one skin tone. My wife and I are both of predominantly northern/western European descent, yet my skin tone is somewhat more "olive", hers is quite pale. In many Irish families with slightly darker skin, the darker skin tone is explained through the legend of Spanish ancestry (ship-wrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada) – I've heard that legend with respect to both my parents' families. Am I, as a slightly-more-olive person of European descent, discriminated against compared to paler-skinned people of European descent? Not as far as I am aware. But, that once again shows that there is no simple and historically universal correlation between skin tone and privilege.
> My argument may be misguided or even wrong in any sense of that term, but I do not think it is naive.
You are American? You seem to keep on making the assumption that ideas derived from American culture are universally applicable, even when more than one non-American tells you that they are not. How is that not naïve?
I grew up in Germany, born elsewhere, without giving too much personal information about myself. I now live in the US. The fact that the US has become more diversified and generally affords individuals more opportunities; community ties are not as strong or important as elsewhere; sprawling geography and population; all of these things create a different set of costs and benefits socially.
When people in other countries get more defensive or sensitive to an influx of foreigners is not an indication that racism doesn't exist or race doesn't play a part at all in how they view others. It is a different side of the same coin. Yet, look at how the plight of a white population in Ukraine is seen vs. that in Syria or Yemen or even Rwanda before that.
> When people in other countries get more defensive or sensitive to an influx of foreigners is not an indication that racism doesn't exist or race doesn't play a part at all in how they view others
People can treat foreigners in a prejudiced way without believing that they belong to a "different race". That's still "racism" provided you define "racism" in broad terms to include prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity/nationality/language/culture/etc – but once you've done that, the concept of "race" is no longer essential to the concept of "racism".
> Yet, look at how the plight of a white population in Ukraine is seen vs. that in Syria or Yemen or even Rwanda before that.
The US government officially considers Syrians to be "white". Syria's President has pale skin and blue eyes, and many other Syrians look like he does–other Syrians have darker eyes and skin, but then so do many Europeans (southern Europeans especially). If you had seen Bashar al-Assad walking the streets of London – he lived there from 1988 to 1994 – and you didn't know who he was, could you have known he wasn't European just by looking at him? I couldn't have. So your idea that Ukrainians are "white" but Syrians are "not white" seems to me rather questionable.
I think most uncompassionate responses to the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, were not primarily motivated by the physical appearance of Syrians, but rather by their predominant religion. The same point applies to the Bosnian genocide, whose victims were Muslims of Slavic ancestry and language, physically largely indistinguishable from their Christian Serb murderers.
I think, in the US, skin pigmentation has historically acted as a metonym for the social divide between European-Americans and African-Americans. But, it would be a mistake to take the metonym too literally – and people who are neither have always been somewhat out-of-place, and as the US becomes more diverse the number of people who don't belong to either side continues to grow. Some Indians have darker skin than some African-Americans do – would you expect therefore, that when those Indians immigrate to the US, they'll encounter worse treatment than lighter-skinned African-Americans? I don't think anyone believes that is what actually happens. That's not to say that they don't sometimes experience discrimination to a degree which lighter-skinned Indians do not (whether in India or in the US), but it is an overly simplistic model of how US society actually works to suggest that there is such a simple correlation between one's skin tone and one's societal privilege.
Also, "white" people aren't all one skin tone. My wife and I are both of predominantly northern/western European descent, yet my skin tone is somewhat more "olive", hers is quite pale. In many Irish families with slightly darker skin, the darker skin tone is explained through the legend of Spanish ancestry (ship-wrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada) – I've heard that legend with respect to both my parents' families. Am I, as a slightly-more-olive person of European descent, discriminated against compared to paler-skinned people of European descent? Not as far as I am aware. But, that once again shows that there is no simple and historically universal correlation between skin tone and privilege.
> My argument may be misguided or even wrong in any sense of that term, but I do not think it is naive.
You are American? You seem to keep on making the assumption that ideas derived from American culture are universally applicable, even when more than one non-American tells you that they are not. How is that not naïve?