I think “hate” or “hatred” are far too strong words, but I understand the sentiment. How often do we hear cracks about “white girls” or “white soccer moms” or “white men” or “old white men”, and everybody is supposed to be in on the joke. You even see these terms in published articles. And it’s never condemned the same way as when someone makes the mortal mistake of commenting or generalizing about “black women” or “black guys”.
Again, on the list of things to be upset about in the world, it’s way down the list. But you can’t pretend it isn’t true to some extent, either. If you want to write it off as an insult to “white privilege”, feel free. But that term itself is an example of race-based derogatory generalization. Tell poor families in Appalachia that they have white privilege over wealthy black families in the DC suburbs. Why don’t we all stop generalizing about groups of people based on skin color? Now, those short people, on the other hand…
Why are bothering to take him seriously? I have friends and acquaintances that say all sorts of goofy things, and I don’t spend a nanosecond of my time researching them.
Do you think it is possible?
Most of the people I hear complaining about “white men” or “white soccer moms” (a term I don’t think I’ve actually heard) are white people, like me. I think white guys like me should get a pass when complaining about white people, just like Jews (again, me) are free to make Jewish jokes.
As far as hatred from people of color, it sure hasn’t been my experience. My daughters are half POC, (0.5C) and they love me. Most of the time anyway.
Of course, things today are very different. In today’s post racial America, he’d be called a divisive race baiter stirring up identity politics. Lock him up!
Speaking as a white man, if these are as the bad times for us, I remain extraordinarily lucky I was born a white man.
Indeed, being born a white man is quite literally the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me, and I’ve led a pretty lucky life.
There is not a shred of doubt in my mind you profoundly disliked King when he was alive. Virtually all conservatives hated him; he was an extremely disliked man - indeed, he was probably the most despised American in America for a time.
Furthermore, your characterization of his approach, positions, and beliefs is comically wrong. Saying that King only asked for people to be treated the same is roughly analogous to saying that Stephen Hawking was just a skilled wheelchair user. King was in his later years as much an anti-war activist as he was a civil rights activist. He was an avowed socialist who held that economic justice was as important as racial justice, and he was a vocal supporter of affirmative action who supporting the idea of a multi-billion dollar federal jobs plan just for black people. King was a radical all the way.
He was also, in the eyes of many Christians, a heretic; King plainly stated that he did not believe in the virgin birth or the literal resurrection of Christ. This was a guy who did not moderate his opinions.
Are you being serious? I don’t know anyone who thinks like this. For one thing, nobody alive now was either a slave or slave owner, and neither were their parents or grandparents. How many generations back should wounds (as legitimate as they might have been) fester or warrant revenge?
As for the hunted animal analogy, I’m not generally aware of animals seeking revenge, let alone for their great-great-great-great grandparents.
The OP is adrift in a vast sea of deplorables and— for whatever reason— has no ideas of his own on whether and how to deal with them. It’s just fortunate that we’re here to help.
So why is it, do you think, that after just loving white people soooooo much back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the black people of today are so ungrateful? What happened to turn them against their former friends?
It would seem to be only natural if some American minorities harbored ongoing general resentments towards the historical privileged race, a very human response indeed. We’ve still got a lot of work to do to patch up a past that didn’t always give everyone a fair shake.
This retroactive beatification of MLK, however, is pretty amusing to those of us who lived through the sixties. The man was reviled by huge numbers of American white people. The FBI considered him a threat to national security.
I think the sort of white people who think that there is intense hatred of them by POC are folks are are accustomed to hearing nothing from POC or about POC, and the mere fact that POC are coming to their attention as anything other than eyes-down servants shocks them. That a POC would speak up and wish to be heard would be “uppity”; that they make these radical claims that things aren’t perfectly wonderful and fair must mean they’ve gone nuts. The world is wonderful as it is (well, was before they started talking), and for them not to realize that means that they’re completely insane - and for them to do something so radical as to complain about it (when all good POC stay unseen and unheard!) means they’ve gone ballistic! Only the most furious of furious people could possibly be so incensed as to dare to complain - if they’re a POC, that is. White people are expected to complain because they only complain when things are actually bad and their problems are actual real problems.
Well, unless those white people are members of the left, doing something so obviously stupid like pretending that POC shouldn’t be perfectly happy with the way things are and say “please, sir, can I have some more” like good POC do. Those white people, the left, are doing everything they can to sow division and anger against whites, and it makes no sense. Because, clearly, there are no actual problems to be addressed; any such talk is just radicals radicalizing the insane POC for presumably nefarious reasons. Why can’t we all agree to Make America Great Again, like it was back when POC (and women) knew their place?
They do, when using the actual intended definition of “white privilege”. Which is unfortunately named because it lends itself to mistaken comparisons like this one as people have knee-jerk defensive reactions to the term “privilege”. Maybe it should be called “Black deficit” or something, I dunno.
Take a poor white dirt farmer and a rich black dude, dress them in identical clothes and send them into a store and the black dude will get more side-eye and shit from store staff and security. Have them stopped in identical cars and the black dude will have different experiences with the police. Send their kids to the same school and the black kid will experience different things from the faculty. Not every single time but often enough that simply having dark skin will, on balance, be a detriment to your experiences versus having lighter skin. The concept that, all else being equal, you are disadvantaged by society due to preconceptions based on your skin tone, not “This one white dude doesn’t earn as much as that one black guy”.
I’m sure your friend will be able to look anywhere on the planet, cherry-pick, confirm the bias, and hastily generalize to support his (her) claim.
Quite frankly, I’ve seen Christians use a similar fallacious argument – from the time when the Rome dominated ‘civilized’ Europe (when it was not fallacious) through and beyond the time when Germany dominated ‘civilized’ Europe, and into modern times.
And, quite frankly, I’ve seen people of other cultures and skin gradients make the same mistake*.
I tend to think the whole attitude and exercise are attempts to justify hatred of a class of people in an era when admitting to having an X-ist% view is considered unacceptable.
My own perspective is rooted (for me) in a single-panel Ziggy cartoon that I once saw in a magazine. The constantly-troubled permanent loser that the syndicated comic is named for is lying on a psychologist’s couch with his eyes wide open in dismay. The psychologist is sitting in a nearby chair with stereotypical pen-and-notepad in hand giving Ziggy the simple explanation in the caption: There’s no reason to be paranoid because nobody is ‘out to get you.’ In fact, 99.9% of the world couldn’t give a damn about you one way or the other.
–G
Whether you interpret that as a logical mistake, or an emotional mistake or what is up to you.
% Where X = religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, weight-to-height proportion, et cetera and -ist is a bias against people with X characteristic.
