Cite.
If having a lower-than-average poverty rate is white privilege, then black married couples have white privilege.
Regards,
Shodan
I assume that’s meant to dispute someone’s post, Shodan, but I’m not sure which post that is.
Was he? I mean, you’ll note that I never said that black people need to stop having so much melanin in their skin either but regardless: are those things “black” things, and is avoiding doing them “acting white”? Because that would certainly be an interesting claim.
Should I have said “most”? You painted with a pretty broad brush there so the implication was that your views at the very least applied to the majority. I didn’t see any references to “some” blacks or specific subsets - did you forget to put those in?
And I’m also curious about these white progressives and blacks who are saying “black people can’t be expected to compete on merit with whites and Asians.” I mean, I suppose one could note that that phrase could interpreted to mean “the existence of significant societal barriers affecting black people prevent merit and hard work from being sufficient conditions for success” (which is the argument that Dr. Putnam is making) or to mean “black people aren’t capable of competing in a system based on merit and hard work because they’re not good enough” (which is the argument racist assholes use), and that the ambiguity in interpretation could be used by disingenuous individuals to imply a conflation between white progressives and racists, but I’m sure that’s not something you would do. Perhaps you could clarify exactly what you meant, to avoid the rest of us jumping to conclusions you didn’t intend.
ETA: BTW, I meant to thank you for your helpful suggestions. The next time SamuelA complains about white people being shot, I can tell him that they should have obeyed the law in the first place. And that when white people are discriminated against, those white people should just change the way they act. Problem solved!
Since most of the problems in the black community do not come from white privilege, you will be mostly wasting your time.
Eric Garner and Michael Brown and Jamar Clark and most of the others BLM fulminates over did break the law and resist arrest.
OK, let’s see your data. Not anecdotes, data - what percentage of white people who resist arrest get shot vs. black people who get shot resisting arrest under the same or similar circumstances?
If blacks don’t vote, that isn’t white privilege.
Read the OP.
It’s backing up my position. White female headed households have a poverty rate of 30% (cite). Black married households have a poverty rate lower than the national average. Maybe there’s a privilege there, but it doesn’t seem to be white.
Regards,
Shodan
I am not sure why you find it so interesting - crime, out-of-wedlock births, and dropping out of school are indeed “black” things, in the sense that they are disproportionately encountered among blacks in the US as compared to other groups, like whites and Asians. This is a truism. And that disproportionate occurrence explains most of the negative outcomes also disproportionately encountered among blacks.
See my previous cite. Single female headed households are disproportionately in poverty. A large majority of black children are born to unwed mothers. Do the math.
You’re welcome. Yes, white people should obey the law and not resist arrest, and then they (mostly) won’t get shot. So should everyone else, and then they will (mostly) not get shot.
ETA -
First, you need to establish that those white people are really being discriminated against, and it is not just a smokescreen or an excuse. Then, knock yourself out.
Regards,
Shodan
Honestly, most of that lists looks like “cocktail party talk” bullshit so liberals can feel like they are “doing something” about racism and privilege. I don’t see how those points change anything. Because at the end of the day, the kid who grows up in a good home in a safe neighborhood where education is valued is going to have advantages over someone who grows up in a high-crime, economically depressed neighborhood.
That’s blatantly ignoring historical fact. Yes, most of the problems endemic among American blacks—lower asset ownership, higher incarceration rates, less representation in leadership positions, lower education rates, and so on—are indeed rooted in centuries of white privilege and anti-black oppression and discrimination.
If you apply the narrowest possible focus to your statement—that is, if all you’re really saying is that no white person nowadays is immediately physically coercing any black person to commit a crime or consume illegal drugs or have unprotected sex, etc.—then that is mostly true. (Although even that’s not entirely true, given the extent to which, for example, white supervisors sexually exploit nonwhite employees in menial jobs.) But any broader interpretation attempting to claim that white privilege bears no responsibility overall for most of the problems of black communities is a barefaced denial of historical reality.
White privilege is enormously unjust no matter how much of the problems in various communities it’s responsible for (and I already know we disagree on the extent of its influence).
Whether true or not, it doesn’t conflict with my point.
We’ve gone back and forth on this many times. Lots of data has been presented (about police conduct as a whole, not just for shootings) that I find compelling and you do not – the Ferguson report, various disparities in arrest rates and drug use, shooting disparities, etc. The one I find most compelling I’ve presented many times (if you need it again I’m sure I can dig it up, but I think I’ve memorized the numbers): 50% of black Americans report that they, personally, have been mistreated by law enforcement, while only 3% of white Americans do. Unless you think that black Americans are overwhelmingly more dishonest (i.e. lying about police misconduct) or overwhelmingly more stupid (i.e. unable to identify actual misconduct) than white Americans, then I don’t see how this can be ignored or dismissed. It’s an utterly massive problem that huge amounts of black Americans see law enforcement as dangerous and malicious enemies, and telling them or implying that they’re lying or stupid, and that any problems they face are of their own making, probably isn’t the way to solve that problem IMO.
Whether true or not, this doesn’t conflict with any of my points.
Whether true or not, this doesn’t conflict with any of my points.
That’s exactly what they did for years and years. Does the name Jackie Robinson ring a bell? You should read about the shit the Dodgers got for hiring him, and the shit he got from the racist white players.
Given the obviousness of the policy that you should hire from the entire pool of candidates, not just a subset, it sure took a while, didn’t it?
Which doesn’t make it a “black thing” unless one is deliberately attempting to link being black and committing crime, much in the way our current president repeatedly referenced “black”, “urban” and “crime” as inextricably linked things during the campaign. Is that what you are attempting to do? Or should we now make statements like “Murder is overwhelmingly committed by men, therefore it’s a man thing and men who don’t want to be considered murderers should act female.”
Correlation is not the same as causation.
So the math says the large majority of black children born to unwed mothers are poor. Wow. Are you saying that being poor is a “black thing” too?
Of course, black people are more likely to get shot than white people engaging in the same behaviors (in fact they’re twice as likely to get shot even if they’re unarmed). So I guess black people have to be extra-law-abiding.
Oh look - white privilege in action.
Well, that’s one for SamuelA. It’s a point he makes a lot, so I’m sure he’s got plenty of evidence for it.
Yes, of course it conflicts with your point. A large majority of the time, people who don’t resist arrest don’t get shot - black or white.
You made the following claim -
If you can’t back up the claim, there is no reason to believe that you have any such privilege.
Yes, it does.
Choosing whether or not to vote is not white privilege. Therefore, the result of getting or not getting the politicians you want is not the result of white privilege.
Again, yes, it certainly does conflict with your opinion. Single female-headed households tend to be poor. Even if they are white. That’s not white privilege.
Regards,
Shodan
Whether true or not, I never made a contrary claim.
I already know you don’t believe it. We’ve gone back and forth on this and related issues probably dozens of times. I have no illusions that I can convince you. I just described the data that I found compelling, while I recognize that you do not.
It’s okay to disagree.
Whether true or not, I have not made any contrary claim.
Whether true or not, I have not made any claim contrary to this.
Remember how you put some “alls” in there when I didn’t? Same here as with “inextricably”.
Well, that’s a little clumsily worded, but I think you are getting the idea.
I assume you would say the same thing about your cite from The Independent.
I don’t think you did the math right. Earlier you put in “all” and “inextricably” where they didn’t belong - here you left “disproportionate” out when it did.
You’d have to take that up with him.
OK, at least we have established that poverty, police shootings, and electing white politicians is not a result of white privilege. Progress, I guess.
Regards,
Shodan
Ahh, I see that Snarkmaster Shodan has returned! Welcome back! Let me know if the thoughtful Shodan, who’s actually a pleasure to debate and even disagree with, returns. These are tough issues worthy of thought and consideration, IMO, even when we disagree.
In sports, your merit is what you put on the field. It is right there out in the open, and anyone who’s fairly knowledgeable about your sport can judge it pretty accurately. Therefore, a team owner has less ability to use non-merit hiring criteria - the team would lose.
This is not to say that owners (and scouts and coaches and players) aren’t prejudiced, or that sports hiring practices aren’t influenced by an old boys’ network, because they are. What I’m saying is that outside of sports those things are much easier to get away with, because the same kind of public scrutiny is not there.
And yet your comments once again fail to contain any qualifiers to suggest that your blanket statements aren’t intended to be read as applying to, if not to all and in all cases and times, then to the vast majority in the majority of cases and times. Have you got some new form of autocorrect that removes the word “some” from your posts?
And I duly note that your answer to the question asked isn’t “no”'.
I am indeed, murderer.
You are certainly welcome to, but they make a better supported case than you do.
And this would change the point I made how? If anything, it provides an alternate view that all the things you are classifying as “black” things are actually “poor” things.
I’m sure he can speak for himself.
Do you know what the word “disproportionate” means? How about “most”?
When I mean some, I say “some”. When I mean most, I say “most”. When I mean greater than one would expect from their distribution in the population, I say “disproportionate”.
Good for you!
Why does your study establish causality and mine only correlation? That seems excessively glib.
Then don’t try to get me to speak for him.
Regards,
Shodan
This rhetorical device you are using is better suited to other forums. Please do not name call.
[/moderating]
She’s not in the “fixing things” business. She is in the “white privilege” business.
So, to properly answer the original question in the thread title:
Yes, merit systems are methods of enforcing white dominance, because (for most practical purposes) the ones that are used aren’t actually based on merit - they just like to make that claim. And if all such systems were suddenly based on pure merit and nothing else, the results (in terms of white vs not white) would gradually change.