But the shine has come off this hardy, once-­helpful word. It looks a little worn, a bit blunted, as if it has been taken to too many fights. Instead of clarity, it has sown confusion: ‘‘I’m white, my husband is Latino,’’ one woman commented on a blog post about confronting your privilege. ‘‘We have a Latino last name. Does that mean I lose some of my white privilege?’’ Even those who find it useful in certain contexts say the word swallows too many subtleties and individual variations. ‘‘You need to know that I was privileged,’’ Ta-­Nehisi Coates wrote on his blog for The Atlantic. ‘‘I can run you all kinds of stats on the racial wealth gap and will gladly discuss its origins. But you can’t really buy two parents like I had.’’ My own allegiance to the word is atavistic — growing up, it was one of the few words I had to understand the racism I felt so surrounded and mystified by. But now I find myself wielding the word warily, like the devalued currency it has become — dismissed as jargon or used to hector. The only reliable effect it seems to produce is panic.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/magazine/how-privilege-became-a-provocation.html

“In contrast, the terms “black” and “working class” are laden with the baggage of associations, perhaps some of them positive, but many of them negative. When a person is labeled “black,” we’re primed to perceive the characteristics that we tend to associate with “blackness” more generally, which is why students drew racially ambiguous faces with typically black features when they were told the face belonged to a “black” person. Participants in the experiment at Princeton similarly associated Hannah’s working-class background with diminished intellect, so they tended to emphasize her failings and overlook her strengths when they watched her complete an academic test.”

http://theweek.com/articles/464854/how-labels-like-black-working-class-shape-identity

“The research, published in January in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, found that white people characterize a ‘black’ person as belonging to a lower socioeconomic status, being less competent, and having a less inviting personality than an ‘African-American’ person. And this difference in perception could have an impact on African Americans in various settings, from the labor market to the criminal justice system.”

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/2/7480843/study-african-american-black