Bingo. Race is just one facet anyway. We're all born with various advantages and disadvantages, none of which we have any control over. Just as an example, some people are better looking than others ... and those people tend to have an advantage, because they're better looking. They can get better jobs, better pay, etc. all because of the way they look.
So what?
The rest of us just have to work a bit harder. That's how life works. Stop whining. No, life isn't fair. Deal with it.
I realize that the context is different in the U.S. vs the rest of the world, but would you say "life isn't fair, deal with it" to slaves in the South in the 1800s? Or to segregated blacks in the 1900s? Or to women who couldn't vote?
Or, to use a more modern example, to Muslims who are facing prejudice and persecution because of the actions of extremists?
Throughout history, "stop whining, deal with it" has tended to be the refrain of the privileged.
Yes, I would say exactly that.
I would tell them to accept their situation, not whine about it, then break free and run to the north. Many did just that.
When they got to the north, I would encourage them to work hard and make a better life for themselves through hard work. Many did just that.
Yes, they would need to work harder than insert privileged example here to have a good life. Because they're starting from zero. And that's fine. Because that's life.
Many of us start from zero or worse. Many of us were hurt or are being hurt by someone's unjust actions. That doesn't mean you try to rig the system.
We are born with thousands of disadvantages and thousands of advantages. You simply can't engineer a system that will compensate for all of that to create some sort of utopia. We tried that before. It didn't go so well.
In your examples, nobody would break free and run to the north if they didn't recognize the inequality in the first place.
Also, is that really what you want to say on a public forum? You want to say that ending slavery was the slaves' responsibility? Interesting.
Not what I said, you need to buy new reading glasses.
Doing anything starts with the individual. If you're a slave, that means resisting and running away. If you're a white dude in the north, that means supporting abolition. You get the idea. That's the only way to get anything done.
> Recognizing privilege and inequality is not "rigging the system."
Recognizing? You're not interested in recognizing.
You're interested in discriminating against those you recognized as privileged to benefit those you recognized as disadvantaged. Which is bad enough, but really much worse because of the you part ... and the you part is always the privileged.
This isn't the minorities standing up for themselves ... it's just the privileged stacking the deck again. The only way to make sure absolute justice and fairness is to make sure the deck is never stacked. Ever. For any reason.
That is fundamentally different from a society with legal equality for all individuals. Yes, some groups will be more popular than others. It's hard to see how that can ever be avoided.
Of course, if you are a slave, you do really need to deal with that situation as best as you can. Does anyone dispute that?
Just like the other arbitrary things that can needlessly hold a person or group of people back, if it can be fixed why not fix it? What's wrong with dealing with it that way?
You seem to suggest to that people keep quiet, keep their head down and not rock the boat.
That's a defeatist attitude and suggests that you don't think any effort should be spent trying to correct something that's broken in the world.
If the fix is "lay guilt upon and attempt to disadvantage all people of a certain skin color because some of that skin color have had an easier time in life", then it doesn't seem like much of a fix, does it?
Racism and bigotry need to be wrong in all cases or the moral authority against them is diminished.
Because your cure is worse than the disease.
> you don't think any effort should be spent trying to correct something that's broken in the world.
I think racism is bad. I think it's bad in all circumstances because it corrupts our meritocratic society.
Using racism to fix racism is dumb. Because racism is bad in all circumstances.
80% of humanity lives on less than $10 per day. Do you not believe that among those billions of people, there could be many who are just as smart and hardworking as you, but have no access to the physical, social, and cultural capital they need to rise above subsistence living?
If your so-called meritocracy only applies to 10% of the earth's population, it isn't much of one.
And no one is using racism to fix racism. Only someone who is desperately clinging to that advantage they have for being white would say that.
There's no part of examining privilege that says race is the only facet of one's existence soooooo at least you don't disagree with it there.
To even make a statement like that is like getting mad at "breast cancer awareness" because "it's not the only kind of cancer."
I can't emphasize enough that literally nobody is claiming that race is the only facet of one's existence.
I've been told off + blocked on twitter for chiming in about something I have intimate personal experience with, because white male.
Or the semi-famous video "you're a WHITE MALE!" (language warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0diJNybk0Mw
If it helps to hear this from a white male who is a believer in recognizing white privilege and male privilege: being white and/or being male are sometimes disadvantages too!
In most of America, you can't be male and teach young kids these days. People (parents) will wonder if you're a child molester, and get weirded out by the prospect of you helping kids go to the bathroom even though they'd be fine with a female teacher doing the same thing.
Recognizing something like that isn't incompatible with recognizing male privilege.
The point that you're [ missing | skirting ] though is many folks use the existence of privilege to ignore/bully/hate (eg, my YT link above, the white professor who got berated on campus, etc etc).
Did black kids pick some fights with me in school because I was white? Yes. It's a real thing that happens.
It's a fallacy, of course, to dismiss a belief just because some of its believers are assholes, even if they're being assholes in the name of that cause. I mean really, no group or belief on this Earth could ever pass that criteria.
However, oftentimes white males say the same exact things. You can kind of enumerate them, "Not all white males," "White people can be poor," "Hey, you're black, can you explain...?" etc.
Many answers to these questions can be found here: http://theteej.tumblr.com/post/122334039549/hi-white-friends...
I don't expect you to read it. But if you want to understand why people get frustrated when you chime in about something it's probably because they've heard the thing that you're saying a gazillion times already and are tired of responding to it. They don't owe you a response.
Finally, I'll reference John Green and say that if you're doing something that multiple people tell you is offensive or bothersome: Stop doing it.
Does that include people telling you Social Justice rhetoric is offensive or bothersome?
To be honest, I don't normally try to defend this sort of thing on the internet because it's hard to establish a connection. I can't listen to your experiences, BurningFrog, and empathize. I'd like to. Because I think that that's the only way to change your opinion, and I think this is important.
That said, since I fully expect you to tell me that championing social justice is bothersome I'll let you know that you'll be the first person to tell me that [which I find surprising, although I suppose it's because I truly don't discuss it much].
You are aware that Irish and Eastern Europeans, and on and off through history Greek and Italian, have had all those same problems right?
Literally nobody is denying that Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, or people from unfashionable parts of Brussels, or your mother's uncle's cousin from Estonia, have faced discrimination at various points in time, and perhaps still do today.
White Privilege should just be called White Devil.
It absolutely does not imply that white people are bad, or that white people are devils, or anything of the sort.
The concept of white privilege is a way of viewing things that challenges us to observe freedoms that we as white people have that others don't always enjoy.
For example: as a white person, if a cop pulls me over, I may be treated unfairly. But whatever happens, I generally know that I won't be treated badly because of my race. He certainly didn't pull me over because I'm fucking part Welsh, I can tell you that! Black people don't have that privilege. Now, 99% of the time, maybe their race doesn't have anything to do with their interactions with the police. Most cops are good people. But wouldn't it suck to be black and never really know if a cop was going to treat you badly simply because you're black? And that at least once or twice in your life, it probably will happen? That's some bullshit I don't really ever have to deal with in my life. A privilege I have, if you will.
Now, like I said above, I can't help but wonder if we do need some new terminology here.
I am certain that I have not changed your mind. Again, I'm just defining the concept for you. You can agree with it or disagree with it at this point. That's cool. But your post made it very clear that you had no understanding of the concept. Probably because the term "white privilege" itself was a turn-off. You probably thought it was an attack on white people. It's not.
Those that are different always have some disadvantages. We should be working towards fair societies, not replacing one type of discrimination with another.
Can you explain in detail?
I could clamor for tall rich sportsmen to "send the elevator down for me". That it's their responsibility and so on. What you should do is reflect on exactly why you'd think I should feel silly for saying that, and the other guy to not. Would you tell Michael Jordan to check his privilege if he told a group of average white male nerds to reflect on theirs?
It's simply intractable to add up everyone's advantages and disadvantages
it's the wrong path to focus on group attributes/trends when you start talking about individuals.
As you say, every individual human being certainly is more than the some of their labels. But when gross inequalities between groups emerge, it's lunacy to suggest there are no greater group-wide forces at work on scales greater than the individual.
Would you tell Michael Jordan to check his privilege if he told a group of average white male nerds to reflect on theirs?
I'm not even sure what you're getting at here. He is a part of some privileged groups (rich people, people with one-in-a-million athletic ability, men) and not others.
I could clamor for tall rich sportsmen to "send the
elevator down for me". That it's their responsibility
and so on.
Gross inequalities between groups _can_ exist, but that tells us _nothing_ about any particular individual within the group, only that individual's chances _when no other information is available_. But other information _is_ available when looking at an individual.
You seem to be suggesting we somehow theoretically add up all one's advantages and disadvantages- But that means... Considering the individual. Great, I agree. Since we are doing that, phrases such as "recognize your male privilege" mean nothing to an individual male, because it is very possible that individual male has severe disadvantages that make singling out the maleness aspect ridiculous- It would be like telling a minority male shot by a cop to reflect on his privilege of not generally facing sexism like a woman does (setting aside that a "male" privilege here is actually a disadvantage, but you get the idea).
In general people have an obligation to help the less fortunate, I agree.
I'm not sure what you are getting at with your school example.
If Town A had a cancer rate 5 times higher than the national average surely you wouldn't say, "Well, look, those people are individuals, and an individual's cancer risk is affected by lots of things -- diet, exercise, genetic predisposition... to heck with looking for differences between Town A and Town B."
Clearly you'd want to start investigating things that affect Town A on a town-wide basis.
I wish this comment would be at the top instead of the ones talking about skin color. I just don't understand the United States obsession with looking at discrimination in a black vs. white way. Discrimination against minorities is what it really should be termed.
All over the world, politically dominant segments of population discriminate against the politically weaker. Sunni vs. Shite, Catholics vs. Protestants, Hindu vs. Muslim, Brahmins vs. Dalits, Western Europeans vs. Eastern, Chinese vs. Taiwanese, the list is endless. You can interchange the phrase "white privilege" or "is it because i'm black" with any of the above minorities, and the effect would be the same (in the relevant country of course).
Shifting the conversation from discrimination of minorities in general, towards discrimination specifically based on skin color is a very narrow minded view, and in my opinion, more likely to cause harm than trigger solutions.
I'm all for helping people that have been disadvantaged in life. What I'm not okay with is the fact that society expects me to do anything on the basis of my skin color or gender. I will do something if I think it's the right and moral thing to do, not because a bunch of people on the internet told me it was the right thing to do.
I think the disconnect lies in that many people (such as yourself) believe that it's such a clear cut thing when in reality it's much grayer, like everything else in life. Essentially, stop telling other people how to live their lives.
In your example, it's the cop that's committing the infraction. And yet, I'm the one that is expected to improve the situation, despite the fact that I've never been racist.
I don't feel "guilty" if a white cop murders a black person, just like I don't feel guilty if I see somebody in a wheelchair. I do hate it, and I do try to consider how lucky I am, and maybe hopefully think about how I can make that situation better, or at least not make it worse.
The idea is literally just to recognize that the inequality exists.
Obviously the hope is that once we recognize that inequalities exist, we might want to address them somehow. Maybe as a society, maybe just as individuals being more mindful of how we treat others.
Like if I get resumes from "Edmund Smith" and "Jamal Brown." Should I automatically hire "Jamal Brown" because he "sounds black?" Hell no. Should I take an honest look at myself and make sure I'm not making assumptions based on what I assume to be Jamal's race and what I assume people of his race are like? Yes. If I work at a large company, should I maybe even look at the data and see if we as a company are rejecting "black sounding" candidates more often than "white sounding" candidates of equal qualifications? Probably, yeah, because it's the right thing to do and our company is only hurting itself if our hiring process is being compromised by inequal hiring practices.
Anyway, even if you hate those examples I just gave, know that the goal of recognizing privilege is awareness.
Prima facie, the use of the term leads people to believe that an identifiable group of people (white people) has obtained things which they do not deserve (privilege). A typical human response to being told that another group has things which were unjustly obtained is resentment and hostility. This is inevitable and obvious. The term is by its construction divisive.
> It's not.
That's merely an assertion. The term is a tool. Some people use it to try to effect positive change for certain groups of people (I'm assuming this includes you). Some people very much can and do use it as a weapon to enact their idea of retribution.
Out of the car and put your hands on the hood, Taffy.
Am I going to find any sheep or coal in your vehicle, sir? Maybe some really bland food?
~
For instance, Irish-Americans did not have a particularly great time in the US in the mid-19th century by any means, but they had a much better time than African-Americans. They faced serious discrimination, but they rarely were assumed to be runaway slaves.
I think it's useful to acknowledge that even today, some groups of people have basic privileges like being assumed not to be a thief that everyone ought to have, and we can acknowledge that without reducing it to a simple white-nonwhite line.
It's worth going back to the original essay discussing "white privilege" -- the text can be found at http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html. A few highlights:
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed. 5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented. 6. When I am told about our national heritage or about civilization, I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 12. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race. 13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
Irish people in American get to do all those things today, as do Italian-Americans! When's the last time you were called a credit to your race? Me, never -- even though once in the past, the US government tried to deport a Finn under the Oriental Exclusion Act (John Swan, 1909) and Finns were regarded as backward and slow. Times change and that hasn't been a problem lately.
You've never heard of "White Trash" or "Rednecks" (a.k.a Bogans in Australia) or how "uneducated" the South is in America (nevermind that Alabama outranks California in graduation ranks)?
> I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
And yet, here you are. Speaking for all of us.
And that doesn't compare to what Jews went through 50 years ago. What's your point? There's always a bigger sob story around the corner. You deal with it and move on. The moving on part is important.
> whereas prejudice against "people of color" is still very much alive.
And that prejudice will amplify if you continue treating people of color differently. By providing special privileges to make up for the sins of the past, you are fomenting racism today. Every white guy who didn't get a job because of the color of his skin is now a newly minted racist. And while he really should direct his ire toward misguided leftists, in the end, he'll blame the person of color instead ... which is sad.
And that prejudice will amplify if you continue treating people of color differently.
Equality is the goal; recognizing inequality is part of how we get there.
That's your goal. I don't share it.
I want equal opportunity, not equal outcome. We will never have equal outcome because we're all different and that's a good thing.
And I don't care if you're disadvantaged because of a thousand different reasons. None of us are born equal. We have no control over that.
What we can do is make sure that the bar is the same for everyone. That's the only equality I'm interested in.
> recognizing inequality is part of how we get there
That is a terrible approach because you have no idea if the inequality arose out of unjustified discrimination, innate differences in talent, effort invested, or a thousand other things.
I would much rather focus on making sure that the bar is set to the same height for everyone, regardless of color, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, or any other damned thing people decide to group themselves or others by.
I should have been more specific, but if it makes you feel any better: I did mean "equal opportunity" and not "equal outcome."
Why did you write something so vitriolic based on an ambiguity? But ultimately, yes, my fault for being ambiguous.
> And that prejudice will amplify if you continue treating people of color differently.
Do you have a source for this? Such policy has real concrete effects with statistics you can point to. You can see the real positive effect it has on certain groups of people.
The only effect on white people I've seen documented is that racists have another bullet point on their long list of talking points to stir up their voter base. It doesn't bother normal people.
As a potential candidate, if you're going home and blaming affirmative action for the reason you didn't get hired, it says a lot about the way you think. Mainly, that you blame other people for your problems, specifically minorities, which is an odd conclusion to come to.
Yeah. It's called deductive reasoning.
You scream about the evils of racism and what harm it's done to our society ... and your solution is more racism, just in the opposite direction? Smart.
How about no racism at all? I think that's better.
> Mainly, that you blame other people for your problems, specifically minorities, which is an odd conclusion to come to.
It is an absolutely odd conclusion to come to. It would make more sense to blame people like you. Unfortunately, human beings aren't purely logical and when they see another person at the job they should have had ... they blame that person, rather than the policy that put them there.
What's worse, nobody knows if that policy is at fault or not ... so people assume that they got fucked over, because it's always easier to blame someone else than yourself. So you've now created a society that resents success, because it's assumed that success only comes to the privileged classes like minorities, etc, rather than to those who earned it.
Congrats on making a full circle.
I will say, though, that it doesn't seem completely crazy to be angry at a system that is purposely favoring people with a race other than yours. I'm not asian, but I have heard that asians get the most points "docked" from them automatically when applying to colleges because asians study harder/do better on tests in general. It's not just that certain racists think that, it's that it's literally built into the system. If you study really hard despite a poor upbringing and get an A- on a test, and then know that it really only counts for a "B" for other races (even those that grew up in rich families with personal tutors), that wouldn't bother you even a little?
And the sentiment you mention in your last sentence goes both ways. Lots of non-white people complain about not getting a job or otherwise not getting opportunities because of their race. And that's when there isn't an actual documented system in place that enforces it! I am sure some of them are absolutely right, but it's unlikely all of them are.
Except of course during all those times where some whites were discriminated against, people of color always had it worse.
You are aware that Irish and Eastern Europeans, and on and off through history Greek and Italian, have had all those same problems right? You know that 'White Privilege' you talk about is really just for those of Germanic origin, right?
Because I'd hate for you to look like an idiot telling someone who could have faced all those issues when they moved to Western Europe, the US or Canada that it's all wine and roses for them.
White Privilege should just be called White Devil. It jsut paints such a simplistic view of the world, not a real one, but one that is useful for rhetoric.