It is also harmful because the women who say “yes” often internalize their experience in such a way that they have a hard time sympathizing with the women who say “no”. Cuz in their mind, saying “no” is making a choice. “You could get promoted too, if only you put on a little make-up, stop dressing like a spinster librarian, and not go running to HR every time the boss pinches your butt.”
I got every benefit of the doubt. I was never mistreated by cops. I was never mistreated by the education system. I never witnessed a family member mistreated by cops or by any other powerful institutions of society. If I had faced all those obstacles faced by so many black kids, would I be as successful as I am today? I doubt it. Maybe I’d still be doing okay, but I seriously doubt I’d be in as good a position as I am now. The black kids I knew growing up were generally better behaved then me, and were less likely to do dumb youth things re: sex and drugs and lawbreaking… and generally they are not doing as well as I am now, or as well as our other white upper middle class peers. Because their families weren’t as well off, and because of all the other obstacles they faced, just for being black.
Ann, I am already on your side regarding police reform. If policing is inherently unfair (and by that I mean race is taken into account) then it needs to be stopped.
If it’s the police being in the bad parts of town (where more crime happens) more often, well that’s just fine policing in my opinion.
Regarding the actual issues you bring up, I didn’t impregnate anyone in my early childhood but I don’t imagine any abortion or child rearing would have come from my parents. My mistake, my problem. Drug usage just wasn’t a thing for me, athletics taught me that my body was my temple. Not needed, not wanted AND illegal. Thanks, I’ll pass.
Recurring drug charges are usually what puts people in jail (for drug offenses anyway), AFTER being caught multiple times. Are they unconvinced that life can go on without the drugs? Do they not know it’s illegal? Do they not care?
I put no words into your mouth. Sorry if you felt personally offended by an observation that you chose to take personally. But it’s just words, just feelings, as you say, words and feelings don’t matter, so you should be able to get over it just fine. It’s not like I told you that you and your child should have to leave and did so using racial slurs at you, which you assure me, no one should take any offense to or be bothered by.
You know who income taxes were initially levied on? It wasn’t the poor. It was the wealthy. Redistribution of wealth has been the obligation of the wealthy since we’ve had wealthy people. It has fallen on the government to mandate such a redistribution in more recent times.
We have a society where you have to work to survive, and then we do not put out enough jobs that pay a living wage. Then we blame the people for not getting paid a living wage. This only makes sense to someone that wants those people to suffer.
Lets say we put 10 people in a room, and we toss in 6 sandwiches. Do we tell the 4 that didn’t eat that they just need to try harder next time? At what point should the people rise up and demand more sandwiches, rather than continue to fight each other for less than can sustain them?
Those against the safety net demand that people fight harder over inadequate resources. Those for a safety net demand that there be enough resources for everyone.
But the parents were very often children who grew up under bad circumstances.
People who were unlucky enough to be born into a bad start don’t automatically become magically cleansed of either the physical or the psychological results of that bad start when they turn 18, or 21, or whatever you’re defining as adulthood.
For that matter, some single parents conceived/engendered their children while they were themselves children by any reasonable definition, and some under force or credible threat.
Here’s another problem with it.
In a lot of people’s eyes, black people are colossal failures because black people have not achieved what whites have. Black people are always being judged in comparison to white folks. So in all the ways they fall short, black folks are expected to hang their heads and promise to work harder. White folks, being the dominant group, have the privileged position of never having to answer for all their shortcomings relative to black people. It will always be assumed that if there are any shortcomings in the first place, they don’t really matter. What matters is talking about all the ways the minority group is abnormal. White = normal.
You mention schools. A “bad” school no longer means a school where students don’t get a decent education. No, a “bad” school means one that doesn’t have the offerings and achievements of an “excellent” school. It doesn’t matter that those offerings and achievements are luxuries that don’t necessarily imbue students with extra aptitude. No, in this framework that we’ve set up now, “excellent” means “what well-to-do people are entitled to have”. “Excellent” = “normal”. If you fall short of “excellent”, then you must be abnormal and thus bad. It doesn’t matter that “bad” is actually good enough. If it’s not at the top, it sucks…
That’s what it means to be black in the US. We can be decent. We can be “good enough”. But as long as we aren’t achieving as well as white people, we will be lectured to about our poor work ethic and how we need to work on ourselves. Just being decent and good enough aren’t enough. As long as we’ve got white success hanging over us, people will always think we suck.
And in fact take that as evidence that “throwing more money” at the problem is useless.
This is intensified by the fact that middle class white people LOVE stories about how poor urban schools/kids suck. They like stories about how kids suck in general. If i want to be the life of the party, all I have to do is bitch about kids today, and the more alien or exotic the stories (poor little LaDasha) the better. Because it reinforces the narrative that white people are doing so much h better because they ARE better. And I am sure those stories get told and retold because they confirm that narrative. They justify white flight and private school and all of that.
Obviously, I don’t tell those stories. I can’t tell you how fast people lose interest when you want to talk about “urban kids” in positive ways.
And what can be done to stop the perpetuation of that? Bad choices lead to bad outcomes.
News at 11.
Also your kid’s problem, then, if you’d had one. The chances that you alone at, say, 15, in this society, could have properly supported a child financially, physically, and emotionally are miniscule.
And also the mother’s problem, especially if her parents had the attitude you ascribe to yours and apparently have yourself.
First of all, some people do go to jail for a first drug offense. I haven’t time to hunt up the statistics; but there may well be racial/“bad neighborhood” differences in what percentage get let off with a scolding or probation.
Second of all, some of the drugs are extremely addictive. Since society routinely lies to children and says that all illegal drugs are equally terrible, it’s not surprising that many people who discover this isn’t true don’t believe the warnings about the ones that actually are.
Third, people in pain will very often self-medicate. If they don’t think they’ve got a reasonable expectation of getting the right medicine, many people will take whatever they can get. This is probably even more true of psychological pain than of physical pain – somebody who’s strong psychologically is better equipped to deal with physical pain; somebody who’s been damaged psychologically may be prevented by that very damage from dealing with it properly.
The bad choices are not only being made by the people you’re blaming them on.
It is also a bad choice to say, in effect, ‘because your ancestors got a terrible start, so will you and so will your children, in perpetuity; plus which we’re going to blame it on you by claiming that you chose to be in that position.’
If enough people would get their heads out of that space, it might be possible to offer enough assistance, without a side helping of required abasement, to get significant numbers of our society out of that hole.
Look, what you are attributing to me and what I have said, multiple times, is completely off base.
I want recognition, not abasement. With recognition comes acceptance that "hey, maybe it isn’t all racist policy, maybe there were a lot of bad choices involved and what we can NOW do to stop making those same choices. "
Because I can guarantee you that if the choices persist, it matters not one whit what help is offered, it will likely not change situations.
That cycle has to be broken somewhere, ancestry or not, someone at some point stands up and say “no more”
Rather than answering the question about whether you would have stood up or not -how would you answer the question of “Would you be happy being treated as if you were a black citizen?”
Or to put a bit of a different slant on it, how much would someone have to pay you in order to change your family’s skin colour to black, and otherwise remain in the same situation that you are currently? Would you do it for free, and if not, why not?
Who says “all”?
Maybe if you can recognize that at least some of the harms come from racist policies, then we could get somewhere. As long as you make it all on “them”, we can only go around in circles.
Do you recognize that racism, though “illegal”, still exists, and still causes harm to black communities?
Yes, let’s talk about drugs.
The trend these days is to work with people arrested on drug offenses and sentence them to rehab instead of jail time…drug courts and the like. Because, as more and more white people got arrested, we all got concerned about redeeming the lives of users.
Rehab options vary. Inpatient rehab programs of 30 days or more are expensive and usually self-funded or family-funded or paid for by private insurance. It’s mostly an option for the affluent, even though those programs are far more effective programs than outpatient rehabs. But good inpatient programs are out of reach for for people that don’t have the time, money or insurance.
And look at the current opioid epidemic -which had largely affected whites -and how addicts are treated compared to the treatment of crack addicts during that epidemic.
The opioid addicts are sick. They are victims of the pharmaceutical companies and cartels and post-recession financial despair. It’s a public health crisis and the discussion is about Narcan and rehab. There’s not much focus on the crimes committed for drug money and the effect on the rest of the community. There’s not much demand for longer jail sentences and no one’s demanding life long incarcerations after multiple offenses in order protect the community, unless it’s a Mexican dealer. Because these people are worth saving.
Whereas the crack epidemic was a criminal justice problem. The focus was on cleaning up the streets and preventing the other drones caused by addiction. The focus was on getting the “vermin” off the streets, with disproportionate jail sentences and “three strikes” laws. Because those people weren’t worth saving.
Some will claim that the opioid crisis occurred during a more enlightened time but that’s only part of in. Even back in the 80’s laws regarding crack cocaine were disproportionately harsh relative to laws regarding powdered cocaine.
Now, let’s circle back to the mostly white opioid problems cause there’s a meteor-sized hunk of irony here.
White people became addicted to prescription drugs at a greater rate because they were prescribed those drugs at a greater rate than black people. Doctors were less concerned that they’d become addicted and more empathetic to their pain. When the trend shifted to heroin, Mexican heroin dealers set up shop in mid-sized cities across the US. These dealers were blatantly racist and would not sell to black people, which gave whites in this city an “advantage” in terms of access to heroin.
So, there was this one time white privilege actually hurt white people. But that’s the exception, not the rule.
Saying “no more” does nothing and breaks no cycle. What would do something would be to make public policy less racist and more just, fair, and equal.
I disagree with you and agree with Ashtura on this - by your own cite, the definition of privilege is:
a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most: the privileges of the very rich.
a special right, immunity, or exemption granted to persons in authority or office to free them from certain obligations or liabilities: the privilege of a senator to speak in Congress without danger of a libel suit.
a grant to an individual, corporation, etc., of a special right or immunity, under certain conditions.
the principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities.
I’ve bolded the portions of the definitions that make the term “privilege” different from “advantage” - “privilege” is implied to be “special” and “beyond the advantages of most” - not something that the majority of people have. I expect this is why many white people bristle at the term (at least I can guess, since I’m not white myself), because they don’t see themselves as getting special treatment. I do wonder if a lot of people might see the term differently if white people where a tiny majority of the country’s population, yet still faced far fewer hurdles than the average person. Then it could much more credibly seen as a “privilege of the few” rather than “the default”.
I have come to accept how the term privilege is now being used, but I still don’t think it is a good term. Another connotation with privilege is that it is something that can be taken away (eg. driving privileges, etc.). I think people will react more favourably to “let’s level the playing field” rather than saying “let’s eliminate your unfair advantage” even if they amount to the same thing. Anchoring “normal” as the white experience implies that we should be working to change society so that POC are treated like white people are now - which I think is what everyone wants. We could also level the playing field by having society treat whites equally poorly to POC, but who wants that?
Ultimately I think for many people, it would be more productive to educate them on just how tough POC have it (I appreciate many of monstro’s posts in this thread describing many of the effects of the often unseen disadvantages that black people face in society), rather than making white people think about “how good they have it”.
Do you think it is more important than academics? That’s my point.
I cringe whenever I hear “Of course I want the best for my kids! Don’t all parents want the best for their kids? What kind of horrible parent are you, that you don’t want the best for your kids!!”
No, not all parents want literally the best for their kids! A lot of parents want what makes the most practical sense, whether it is the “best” or not, since they aren’t in a race against anyone else. They aren’t always looking at what the Jones’s are doing or not doing to gauge their success. They want their kids to be happy, healthy, and productive, but they don’t care about equipping them with bragging rights. They don’t lose sleep over the fact that they only have average stuff to offer their children, since average is generally good enough.
Seeking the “best” isn’t always bad, but it is when it comes to public commodities like education. When the best school is always the one that just happens to have all the resources of a typical upper-middle-class district, then of course all the other schools are inferior. When we’ve got folks out here espousing the idea that good parents are those who provide the best for the kids, those folks are also saying you suck as a human being if you aren’t the best. Even if by all counts you’re average.
As you say, throwing money at the “inferior” schools will never make them “good enough”. Because we know that the best schools will always have money being thrown at them at the same time. Unless you stop that from happening somehow, it’s an arms race.
- There’s a significant difference between “maybe white people will respond more favorably to different terminology” and “the word privilege is inaccurate.” I am arguing against the latter, not the former.
- You have to get really into the weeds and define the problem with very strict (and arbitrary) boundaries in order to logic your way out of “privilege” being an appropriate word. If the people experiencing the advantage aren’t less than 50% of the population then you can’t call it a privilege? Really? And where do you draw the lines? In Washington DC there are juuuust barely more black people than white people. So can we say that white people in DC are privileged? And if the population balance flips, does the privilege disappear?
- I get it. The core of this argument is that experiencing the status quo isn’t a privilege, because, so the argument goes, it’s just the way everyone is supposed to be treated. But here’s the thing: in our system, it’s not the way everyone is supposed to be treated. In our system, black people are supposed to be pulled over more than white people. Black people are supposed to be put into jails disproportionately. Black people are supposed to not be able to afford to live in certain neighborhoods. Black women are supposed to be dying from childbirth disproportionately. This is how the system is designed to operate. The status quo is inequality. And the power to change the system lies predominantly in the hands of white people, who at best resist change to a system that is structured to keep black people out of white communities and out of positions of power and stability.
- I think that most people who resist the idea of “white privilege” are also going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming across every attempt to “level the playing field”. Because they are fundamentally unwilling to see their own role in upholding and benefiting from unjust systems, I have doubts that they will willingly accept any change that they perceive as even inconveniencing them. I fight for the term “white privilege” because if we can’t even allow that phrase, is it reasonable to expect forward progress on combating the consequences of massively disproportionate wealth distribution, or the myriad of other issues that will require work and sacrifice and change from white people and communities?
In this context I think “best for kids” may involve working two jobs to pay the rent and put food on the table instead of being able to help the kids with homework. We privileged types get to pick where we live based on schools. We privileged types get to decide Harvard vs. Stanford.
Minimum wage not keeping up with inflation, healthcare costs possibly bankrupting people, crappy expensive housing all limits the range where people can choose. I understand best for the kids being the best in the range of the possible, not the absolute best. If people’s choices ever come near the absolute best, then we’ll have solved the problem.
I don’t think it hurts to ask, though, what the unprivileged internalize by always hearing the privileged’s prescriptions for parenting. The privileged rarely say “good parents provide the best that they can” or “good parents provide the best that they achieve.” They just say “best”.
I won’t name names, but there was a thread some time back where we were talking about underachieving poor students and how the parents are largely to blame. A poster condemned those parents for being too tired to go to an evening PTA meeting, cuz obviously not going to PTA meetings is a sign you’re a horrible parent who doesn’t care enough.
But how many of our own parents attended all PTA meetings? My parents only went to the special ones that involved my participation in some way . If it was a regular business meeting, hell no. Driving cross-town in rush hour traffic after having a hurried dinner and a long day at work just wasn’t happening. But amazingly enough, my parents produced two kids who’d go on to get doctorates. They could have dragged their behinds to PTA meetings to signal to everyone that they were good parents. But they decided to just raise their children to be good people and not worry so much about “signaling”.
We didn’t grow up in the safest neighborhood despite my parents being able to afford something safer. They decided that the neighborhood we lived in had some benefits that we wouldn’t find in safer neighborhoods. This is unfathomable to a lot of privileged folks. For them, they can’t imagine how the “best” would ever have a trade-off outside of financial costs.