And nobody has ever said that a white woman got her job to fill a quota or after casting on the sofa. Nu-huh.
Do? Simply be aware of the situation so that one does not make unconsidered decisions or accept unconsidered decisions from others that relies on ancient prejudices.
Hit and miss examples:
If running a store, make sure that if bags are examined at the exit, everyone’s bags are examined rather than simply the bags of “suspicious” people (who, mysteriously, somehow, will turn out to have been mostly black people).
Refrain from assuming that any black employee “only” has his or her job due to Affirmative Action.
If a court system has a policy of sending selected drug offenders to drug rehab instead of prison, set up objective guidelines to determine the candidates for the program rather than allowing prosecutors and judges to use “gut feelings” to pick the candidates (who, mysteriously, turn out to be predominantly white).
The point to the discussion of white privilege has never been to set up procedures or practices to prevent it. Procedures and practices are needed to address overt or institutional racism and this is a situation that cannot be addressed in such fashion.
Discussions of white privilege have never (outside a tiny number of extremists) been a call for public action, but simply a call for people to consider their own, private actions. And the call is not to white males, but to everyone, because blacks are just as likely to buy into the assumptions behind white privilege as whites are.
It is a call for a people, in general, to reflect on their their unconscious prejudices, to make them conscious, and then to change them.
That the list in the OP was pretty poor has been demonstrated, but the situation that the list identifies is real as demonstrated in other ways.
Gotcha so it’s white shaming. It is also a cover for angsty youth to make excuses. Adopting the concept of white privilege is defeatist. It basically attempts to turns blackness into a handicap. This BS is as old as slavery.
I don’t think the article serves its ostensible purpose very well. In theory, it’s about fighting racism, but in effect, it’s like most political facebook posts: preaching to the choir rather than convincing anyone to think differently or more clearly.
Of course it’s oversimplified language and can be criticized because nearly every point is literally inaccurate. IMHO, these flaws make it “meh-worthy”. Regardless, for nearly every point, there is a definite real underlying issue.
If it raises awareness of bias and causes people to question their own thoughts and behavior, then great. However, I suspect it falls far short of that. Instead, like most facebook political rants, it merely reinforces those who are already convinced, and runs the risk of alienating those it should be trying to convince.
I see the irony.
That is a lot better way to put it. Anyone who doesn’t realize that some people get a luckier break than others (due to all sorts of reasons in addition to race and sex) is foolish. I’m just not convinced that the original article serves much of a purpose.
You beat me to it, and included a few I’d have omitted. However, I don’t think there’s much of an advantage to being Christian, except in politics. Perhaps more benefit in “looking like a Protestant”, though.
I agree. I hope we can empathize with the reasons why people are motivated to make these posts, even if we find them less than helpful.
I agree, that’s the empathetic way to read it.
I agree that posts like this tend to antagonize the very people that it should try to appeal to, if it had a truly forward-looking purpose, rather than as a cry of pain.
I think the best way to interpret it is as a cry of pain, and regardless of the flaws, we have to acknowledge the pain is real pain.
I see your point, but I think that this example doesn’t serve that purpose very well.
Wow, isn’t that a racist thing to say?
Much better. You’re absolutely right.
Anyone who says “I’m not biased” is almost certain to be fooling him- or herself. The sensible approach is to say “I choose to be unbiased,” and be on the lookout for cases where one falls short of the goal.
You’re doing exactly what you accuse “some people” of doing. There’s no reason for anyone to accept that your own particular interepretation of this phrase is the only valid one and everyone else’s is invalid.
No, actually it did not occur to me that you were attempting to limit all discussion of the term “white privilege” to the very specific situation you were describing, and I assumed you were giving an example.
My point is that what black people object to about the assumption that they benefited from affirmative action is that it devalues the amount of work they did and qualifications they have by suggesting that they got it easy (compared to whites) due to affirmative action. And this is the exact same thing that people might object to about white privilege - that it devalues the amount of work they did and qualifications they have by suggesting that they got it easy (compared to blacks) due to white privilege.
You want to address this, then do so. But don’t be hyperfocusing on specific instances of your own choosing where you feel this might not apply and then pretending that the broader issue doesn’t exist.
^This! Yes.
Also, consider the needs of everyone in your country, not just those who are like you, when you vote.
#2- Has the author ever heard of the Darwin Awards? Practically every day, the tragic death of some white guy is fodder for jokes. JonBenet Ramsey’s parents have been mocked loudly for years. Fred Goldman was mocked by late night TV comics for ages. Hpw can anyone argue that the parents of white kids who die receive universal sympathy and compassion?
#4- White kids with Southern accents or Brooklyn or Joisey accents are regularly patronized and mocked by people who assume they’re morons.
#5- That stat is meaningless. If a doctor tells me, “Based on your genes, there’s a 1/3 chance you’ll eventuall contract Bogus Disease,” well, it’s completely out of my hands. But whether I go to jail or not is certainly NOT out of my hands! Even if 1/3 of black males get arrested at some point, I can truthfully tell a black kid, “Don’t break the law and you won’t go to jail.” Wow, how simple!
#16- Right… a white kid who dresses like a gangsta rapper will NEVER be dismissed as a wannabe or a “wigger.” It’s only black people who get called out for imitating celebrities of a different color.
Bullshit.
I am quite aware of white privilege and I am not ashamed to be aware of it and I am absolutely not ashamed to be white. Where do you get this nonsense?
It certainly does not “turn blackness into a handicap” to ask everyone to examine their unconscious motivations or behaviors.
Given the way that the term was coined and the way that it has appeared in various philosophical and sociological tracts for forty years, I think that asking people to not impose some random view of their own upon it is more than reasonable. Do you, indeed, side with those people who misconstrue the phrase “Chosen People” (not in expressing any anti-semitism, yourself, but simply agreeing that other people have some right to twist the meaning of the phrase to their own ends)?
Except that the only way for people to take it that way is to ignore the actual discussions and explanations that have been published on the topic.
#1 I don’t want to check everyone’s bags at my store, but I won’t let people walk out the door with stuff. It’s a cost/benefit analysis. So, like every store, I will stop people I suspect of shoplifting. And since blacks commit shoplifting at a disproportionate rate (not due to genetics, but a simple fact) then if my security is doing their jobs right, then they will naturally stop blacks at a disproportionate rate. Is it their fault for doing their jobs correctly???
#2 I’ve got a great solution for that: end affirmative action. Then nobody will ever suggest that a person got his/her job because of it, nor will unqualified people hold these positions solely based on skin color.
#3 If we can’t trust prosecutors and judges (especially judges, the title of their job says it all) then we have bigger problems than white people not feeling guilty enough.
Just these three suggestions are, IMHO, ridiculous. Apart from the affirmative action example, is there empirical evidence that blacks are subjected to these things because of racism? The only studies I’ve seen make a prima facie case and stop there.
For example, the study might say that X% of whites are given the death penalty for murder, but X+Y% of blacks are given the same. Then the data stops. Is that extra Y% due to racism to the exclusion of everything else?
What’s important is how the phrase is used by speakers and not how it’s used in “various philosophical and sociological tracts”.
Again, what we are discussing here is why white people might get upset at the term. If you’re saying that these white people should not get upset at its usage in “various philosophical and sociological tracts”, maybe you’re right, but perhaps people who get upset at the term are not objecting to various philosophical and sociological tracts to begin with.
No, what people are getting upset about is the common usage of the word, so you don’t get to drag out the alleged usage in various philosophical and sociological tracts when that’s not the issue. (FTR, I have no idea how the various philosophical and sociological tracts that you refer to use the term, but think that regardless you are not being straightforward in choosing to focus on the supposed meaning as used in these specific sources.)
No one has any right to “twist the meaning of [any] phrase for their own ends”, whether looking to get upset or looking to say that people shouldn’t be upset.
I don’t know how the phrase “Chosen People” is used, whether in “various philosophical and sociological tracts” or by the common people (I don’t know if the latter use it altogether). But if the circumstances of this phrase were similar to “white privilege”, in that it had a wide usage that was perhaps at odds with its usage in various philosophical and sociological tracts, then I think people have a right to assume that those who use it at variance with the various philosophical and sociological tracts usage mean what they say and also count.
No, at most these people are ignoring some discussions and explanations that have been published on the topic in favor of focusing on other usages which coexist with the former.
The one trying to ignore things is you, in insisting that no one can react to the common usage of a phrase by real people and the implication of this usage because of your claim that “various philosophical and sociological tracts” use it otherwise and that is all that counts - an argument that has no rational basis.
If you are stopping people because they have coats that are bulging oddly or they keep looking around for security cameras and you happen to catch more black shoplifters than white, I see nothing wrong with that. If you are following black people around because they are black, then you are being racist and demonstrating that white privilege is a reality.
:rolleyes:
I have made no claim that anyone should feel guilty and have explicitly indicated that I don’t, so you can drop that straw man.
As to “trusting” prosecutors and judges, there is plenty of evidence that we should not, but it is not due to overt racism, so what is your answer to that? Rather than passing laws or otherwise getting heavy handed about the situation, those who call attention to white privilege are asking no more than that people stop and consider their actions and reactions so as to work toward eliminating various societal disparities.
I have not even thrown racism into the discussion. I think the situation is a bit more insidious than that with longsanding cultural assumptions coloring the views and actions of people who are probably actively opposed to racism.
The specific situation to which my third point referred is a program in metropolitan Cleveland. In order to keep from flooding the jails with non-violent prisoners, a program was established to allow first-time offenders for various drug crimes to agree to drug counselling in place of mandatory jail terms. It was considered a really good program. However, the criteria to get admitted was that a prosecutor and/or judge had a gut feeling (technically, “in their professional opinion”) that a person would do well in the program while no objective criteria were set up.
After a few years, the program was reviewed and it was discovered that whites were disproportionately being offered the program. The recommendations came from both white and black prosecutors and judges, but when those who were denied the program, (or were never even told that it was available), were compared against those admitted to it, it was found that among people of similar job histories, incomes, family sizes, family structures, criminal records, and so on, whites were admitted with a much higher prevalence. In fact, whites with worse histories were admitted at a higher rate than blacks with better histories.
By relying on their gut feelings, the majority of people in positions of authority just assumed that whites were better prospects than blacks to succeed, yet there was no better incidence of success for people who were in the programs from whites than for blacks.
It was simply a matter of white privilege and the solution should be to establish concrete guidelines rather than letting white people have all the advantage.
Actually, there are more than one definition of the word, so a claim that they are just upset about “the” common usage is nonsense. At that point, you are attempting to control the usage in the way that you are accusing me of doing.
If you are unaware of the meaning of “Chosen People” and are unaware of the way that it is corrupted by various people, then my analogy simply failed. I would have thought that you were aware of it. ::: shrug :::
If the topic comes up and a person reacts as though one meaning was intended, that is simply a matter of not knowing. When the actual meaning is pointed out and that person refuses to recognize it, it becomes a matter of willful ignorance.
I’m not sure “Chosen People” is a good analogy - that’s a term that is used by the people to whom it refers. “White Privilege” is a phrase used to describe a condition that applies in addition to people who are not using the phrase - therefore, it is more significant how they, the target, interpret it.
The use of racial epithets is a better analogy.
For example, when Black folks call each other the N-word, this has a very dofferent meaning that when non-Black folks use it - if one is using a term understood to refer to one’s own group (and only to them) one “owns” the meaning more fully that when using the very same term to refer to other people. In the latter case, how other people (namely, the targets of victims) are likely to interpret the term is more significant.
That’s why, for example, the fact that one Black man may use the n-word to refer to another in an affectionate or ironic manner does not give me, who is not Black, “licence” to do the same. I may well argue that I meant it the same as those Black folks when refering to each other - but context tends to trump what I, subjectively, intended. It would be unwise to make assumptions here.
Now, one may argue, “white privilege” is not an epithet, it is a neutral description of a sociological fact. However, that is begging the question. Whether the term is being used as a neutral description of a sociological fact, or as something more in the nature of an epithet, depends again on context.
Out of curiosity, would you maintain that the practice of focusing police attention on males is an example of sexism and demonstrates that female privilege is a reality?
I think that usage is most common. But even if it’s not, the same point remains.
We are discussing whether there is any reason for white people to be upset at claims of white privilege. As long as there is a common usage of the phrase as I’ve described it, then my point holds.
Your position is only that any definition of the phrase other than your preferred one doesn’t count. Which is why you are the one trying to control the meaning of the term.
I, by contrast, have done nothing of the sort. I freely concede that I don’t know about the meaning of the phrase as used in the “various philosophical and sociological tracts” that you focus on, and concede that the meaning in these sources may be as you say. What I don’t agree with is your insistence that this and only this alleged usage is what counts and no one can react to any other meaning.
If it’s used one way in a specific instance and someone else refuses to acknowlege that this is the way, that would count as willful ignorance. But if someone refuses to accept the decree from tomndebb that his preferred meaning of the term, used in his beloved “various philosophical and sociological tracts”, is the only meaning that may be discussed, then that is not willful ignorance (other than on the part of tomndebb).
I see. Your position is that anyone can take offense at any statement by any other person, regardless of the intent of the speaker or the history of the statement, and simply shut down discussion by claiming to be insulted.
That is a pretty effective way to avoid discussion.
I’ve not said this or anything similar.
It’s hard to see how someone might be making this characterization of my position in good faith, but you never know.
The Central Park Five would disagree with you.
FWIW, I don’t think this particular case supports your position.
Whether these kids were guilty or not has never been fully clarified, and even the DA who pushed for the reversal of their convictions said - as a point in their favor - that they could not have been guilty of the attack on this jogger because they were busy elsewhere assaulting other people at the time.
Had they not been part of “a mob of 40 Harlem teenagers [who] invaded Central Park to assault, rob and harass joggers, bikers and others”, they would probably never have been arrested.
That said, I agree in general 1) that completely innocent people of all races do get arrested and convicted, and 2) that completely innocent black youth are more likely to get arrested and convicted than completely innocent white youth.