Fox News' Katie Pavlich Thinks White Privilege Is Racist and This Is How She Confronted It

Fox News isn't exactly known as a bastion of sensitivity and awareness, but on Tuesday's episode of The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich managed to dismiss the notion of white privilege as both "easy to laugh at" and "quite racist."

"To me ... confronting my white privilege is going to the tanning salon," Pavlich said when host Bill O'Reilly brought up the idea of confronting white privilege.

"You're being prejudiced towards people based on the color of their skin," Pavlich said when asked by O'Reilly to further explain why she thinks white privilege is racist on Tuesday's episode. "I reject this idea that only white people can be racist." 

In addition to appearing on Fox News, Pavlich is an editor at the conservative news site Townhall.com and a contributed editor for Townhall Magazine, according to her bio on the Fox News website. 

A larger trend: Pavlich isn't the first conservative pundit to dismiss the notion of white privilege.

Despite evidence that white Americans are less likely to be arrested or face discrimination in housing and employment compared to Americans of color, there are many people who say white privilege doesn't exist. 

A 2015 study showed that, when confronted with their own privilege, white participants in the study reported feeling "threatened" by the notion that they had somehow benefited from their race. 

Twitter users had a lot to say about Pavlich's comments on Tuesday:

On Thursday morning, Pavlich tweeted back a response to the backlash:

Here's Tuesday's full episode of The O'Reilly Factor below. Pavlich's segment starts at 21:22.