We tried being nicer, turns out that when you say “Thank you, sir, may I have another”…you get another.
I don’t know, maybe it’s a just a result of a butterfly effect from somebody watching SNL a long time ago, and taking it seriously.
This is patently false. I don’t have a problem with the term “racial injustice”, and I highly doubt I’m the only one.
You’re not (the only one). I’d prefer the term to “white privilege” as well.
I watched the Bill Maher video, and I’m sorry, but that’s pretty weak tea. I don’t see how “some folks complained that an Amy Schumer movie with fat jokes is fat shaming, and one even suggested casting a black woman” is good evidence that a sneering “woke” progressivism that chases off well-meaning white men is endemic to entertainment media, or is in fact any more convincing than your original contention that it’s just obvious so you shouldn’t have to bother demonstrating it.
“Bill Maher ranted about it” doesn’t prove its true, any more than “Joe Rogan ranted about it” is evidence that the moon landing was hoaxed.
Maybe your discomfort with the term “white privilege” can be viewed as a parallel to the discomfort non-whites have to deal with as a result of the underlying concept?
Reality and truth are often not comfortable, but we still have to carry on anyway. If it were always comfortable, we would never make any progress, so perhaps the discomfort is necessary if we actually want to eventually bring about change?
Right. Looking at polling in the 50s and 60s (I’ll find a link when I have time), white attitudes about MLK Jr. and the CR movement in general are quite similar to white attitudes about Black Lives Matter and similar progressive social justice movements now.
Yeah, “racial injustice” makes it sound like it is someone else’s problem to deal with. “White privilege” acknowledges that it is all of our problem to deal with.
Maybe not now, but how will you feel after a few years of conservative media telling you how offensive the phrase is?
Don’t you wonder at all why it’s specifically conservatives who have a problem with the phrase “white privilege”? The reason is that conservatives have been told by conservative media that the phrase is bad. And they’ll be told that the replacement phrase is bad. And they’ll happily agree. Because this isn’t really about the language.
There will certainly be people who respond this way, diversion, etc. But there is also a subset that can probably be persuaded or be made aware where they otherwise wouldn’t be. The question for me and what I would be considering, is what is the most effective method to accomplish the intended goals. Because the folks who would divert probably Armey going to be persuaded either way so those people shouldn’t be the most influential in the decision on tactics.
If the goal is to persuade and raise awareness, is sneering and condemnation typically effective? Maybe it is and things are going swimmingly. If that’s your evaluation, then keep doing more of the same. For me, I’d consider that people who agree with you are saying the messaging is ineffective.
Got any thoughts as to how to raise awareness without those who need it being able to dismiss it as sneering and condemnation?
I was thinking more along these lines.
Is it, really? Then you should have no trouble demonstrating it.
You may have absorbed enough of the arguments behind it so you feel this way but trust me “white privilege” does not in any way suggest “it’s all of our problem to deal with”.
Okay, so what the proposed solutions to “unintentional and unconscious” discrimination out there? Because I don’t know that any results of telling whites they’re “white privileged” over and over is scientifically verifiable. If, 50 years from now, things are better for blacks, as they are better than 50 years ago, are we going to be able to point to that as a significant factor?
I would guess a major factor is because liberals are less likely to take issue with phraseologly fellow liberals coined.
And how would you suggest I do that?
Exactly. Whining about the language is a diversion.
It’s what you’re already hearing and reading, and what some are indignantly objecting to rather than considering the possibility. The fight against ignorance is so difficult because ignorance has so many defenses available to it.
Sure. That’s the stage we’re at today, so that’s where the battles are being fought today. The fight against ignorance is constantly being fought because it constantly achieves small victories, that over time become large victories, and can be recognized as such eventually.
Good things are seldom achieved in one great leap, but rather in small things, piled one upon another.
It wasn’t a conscious language change that (finally) got most white Americans (or enough of them, anyway) supportive of the Civil Rights movement, and it’s not any conscious language change in the present that will make resistant white conservatives embrace various social justice causes. I’m hopeful that they’ll get onboard, and I’m certainly open to any and all tactics, including patient explanation, satire, and social shaming, to try and turn them into allies. But MLK and CR activists weren’t the problem in the 50s and 60s; bigots and order-minded “moderates” were. And the same goes today, more or less. Progressives aren’t the ones standing in the way of social justice, including fighting white privilege/racial injustice. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
No one is saying a conscious language change will solve all the problems but how you frame an argument matters. When the term “white privilege” was coined there were still vestiges of obvious and plain language “white privileges”. Things that white people were allowed to do and black people couldn’t. I don’t think it’s outlandish to suggest new terminology might be more persuasive.
As I jokingly said earlier, paternalistic racists abolished slavery. Do you think “check your white privilege!” would have been a winning catchphrase in 1880?
Why are you using the past tense? Such things do continue to exist, therefore the terminology is still accurate.