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Notes -
But if it boils down to a simple cost-benefit analysis, it seems entirely reasonable for white people (in my case, native British, I’ve written about my concerns re: looming minority status and the open glee of many immigrants about it elsewhere) to draw the cost-benefit differently to you.
I can only think of two reasons why someone might come to that conclusion, neither of which I would consider even close to reasonable.
The first is if one values 'costs and benefits to someone of the same ethnicity as me' more highly than 'costs and benefits to someone of a different ethnic group'. This covers pretty much all of what 'racism' meant before the 'prejudice-plus-power' gerrymandering. It tends to end badly.
The second is if one has an understanding of history and current events that, to put it charitably, is very different from what I understand to be the case. The only examples I know of in which white people qua white people were, or even may have been, persecuted are:
All of these occurred in countries which had, until immediately before-hand, been governed under a system in which black people were oppressed, the people doing the oppression were white, they attempted to justify the oppression using a world-view in which one's ethnicity is more relevant than one's character as an individual, and there were few if any white people questioning the system and advocating for racial equality. This was not conducive to making the distinction between 'this white person who personally wronged me' and 'this person who didn't technically do anything to me, but shares skin colour with the people who did.'
Anti-Semitic persecutions, however, were generally not preceded by any action by Jewish people other than 'existing while not being exactly like us', and were perpetrated under circumstances which had very little else in common.
I am willing to listen if you can offer any examples of white people who were minding their own business, not harming anyone, and were persecuted for being white; or if you can describe a 'way of drawing the cost-benefit differently' that does not fall into either of these two categories.
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