Because we have a dream that our children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Just because something has “always” been a certain way doesn’t mean it alwaysmust continue to be so. Until a few hundred years ago it had “always” been the case that nations were ruled by autocrats who claimed to have been anointed by God. Things change, and we have the power to make that change for the better.
No idea what you’re talking about here. BLM is a distinct group with distinct goals related to police violence and mistreatment.
No, this is not what he said, not in any way at all.
Agreed – it’s not just, and no one here is judging an entire race guilty of some original sin.
That’s fine – no one is advocating that you be forced to give up your house. And while a few assholes might use the concept of a privilege as a cudgel, there are plenty of reasonable discussions about it that have resulted in a lot of progress.
Yes, we went from being ruled by outright autocrats anointed by God to being led by corrupt oligarchs who are anointed by wealthy men.
I don’t believe in dreams, and I don’t believe in humanity’s ability as a whole to change. The structure underneath never changes, only the coat of paint it’s covered with.
Not to puncture your snit again, but note that taxpayer funding comes from all the taxpayers, not just the white ones.
(If we’re going to sulk about the issue of unfairness because of hypothetical reparations to black Americans for slavery and discrimination, the people who really get the short end of the stick in that deal are the Northerners. Not that the American North didn’t participate to a lesser extent in slavery too, and not that the North wasn’t also complicit in oppression by not forcing the dismantling of Jim Crow laws and other institutionalized discrimination much sooner than it did. But by and large, it’s the American South that has done the lion’s share of the oppressing of black people, and yet it would be the wealthier North that would do the lion’s share of paying reparations. Ah well, social justice is not a precision instrument.)
But nobody is actually doing that. You really have some serious accuracy-in-reporting issues.
I’m asking again: why do you keep talking like this in a thread about Confederate statues? Especially since you have repeatedly stated that you are not opposed to the removal of the statues.
Here’s what it comes down to—There is a systematic, ingrained series of prejudices that disadvantage certain groups of people in our society and you reject any sympathy for the goals of the entire range of groups and individuals who make some effort to raise awareness or effect change because you perceive that someone somewhere might think it would be a nice thing for some white people to voluntarily sacrifice some of the benefits they have accrued as a result of this privilege.
What matters more to you is that someone somewhere might think that you might be capable of giving something up. Because of that you wash your hands completely, not only of the duty to take action but of any responsibility to even listen to or care about structural problems in society that result in holding people back from success all the way to condemning them to be shot in the street.
What kind of person does that make you?
So why are you sporadically claiming to be “concerned about justice” and “concerned about police brutality”, etc.? If you believe that the human species is fundamentally incapable of overcoming its oppressive tendencies, why are you (sometimes) advocating actions based on the opposite belief?
Overall, you seem to be advocating for ideals of justice and equality when you want to condemn the prospect of non-white people potentially having some kind of structural advantage over you, and falling back on cynicism about the impossibility of justice and equality when you want to evade confronting the unfairness of your having some kind of structural advantage over them.
As a subjective individual, seeing change would be nice. Dreams would be nice if they could come true. Justice as an individual is something one should be concerned about. As an objective and realistic person, I know it’s not possible. Not in the current political climate. Not as long as we have Southern states.
The issue of the non-white being made du jure inferior in status to the white is a virus that infected this country at its very outset. As soon as the North accepted the South into the Union for its cotton and crops, and kicked the issue of slavery down the road for future generations to deal with, the virus set in. As soon as the South refused after the War to recognize the Black man as an equal, and instituted Jim Crow, and the North did little to do about it, gangrene began to set in.
This country was essentially founded upon a Faustian bargain with the Devil. At this point, the virus has so infected the body that there are deep hatreds, unparalleled polarization, and mutual distrust that will take generations to fade. This virus is combined with humanity’s history of oppressing one another. To deal with these issues now, due to the hatreds and resentments means that equality will have to be forced, where one group usurps another’s place at the head of the table. Someone will have to pay, whether it be in the form of reparations or things like Affirmative Action being put into practice more. Where I draw the line is I do not want to be the one to pay. I wash my hands because I do not view myself as having responsibility. I have “unearned advantages”, I won’t deny that. But I pay for for my unearned advantages by obeying the law, being respectful to my betters, and treating each man and woman like I would want to be treated.
If equality was going to be done cleanly, the time for that was in 1865, or 1789, or prior. It’s too late now for any clean, equal, blind justice to be instilled. There is too much water under the bridge.
So you wouldn’t be willing to expend any effort, or make any sacrifice, to try to improve the plight of those in this country disadvantaged or discriminated against due to their race? If you would be willing to expend effort, then what effort would you be willing to expend, or what sacrifice would you be willing to make?
I think there are polices by government, and practices by private individuals, that could help improve the plight of disadvantaged people, which in the long run would benefit us all. Is that not a reasonable discussion to have?
Your pessimism seems completely over the top to me. As bad as things are, they’re still a lot better than they were during slavery or Jim Crow. Is it really that unlikely to you that things might be able to be improved by things we could do now?
What, like ending affirmative action?
Feel free to make this case, if you think this would help.
Not trying to denigrate your commendable commitment to basic law-abidingness and civilized behavior, but I think you’re kidding yourself when you imagine that it somehow “pays for your unearned advantages”.
The whole point about unearned advantages is that you can’t “pay for them”. You received them not for your law-abidingness or nice manners, but just for the accident of your belonging to a historically privileged group in our society.
Contrary to your often-expressed concern, nobody is actually blaming you for the accident of your happening to be a white person, or for your involuntarily acquiring a somewhat privileged status just for being white. But nobody is going to buy your assertion that you are somehow “earning” that unjust advantage merely by being a reasonably decent human being, either.
My effort would be to elect leaders who would demilitarize the police, work in tandem with state and local leaders to institute harsher penalties for police brutality, and other similar messages. I would support a politician who offered a plan of restructure and revitalization of the country which included more funding for poverty-stricken areas (regardless of race), more funding for under-funded and undermanned schools (regardless of race), and which offered more jobs and more opportunity for all people, regardless of race. That is my contribution.
I’m not a marcher. When people were out marching during the Occupy Wallstreet era, I didn’t join them, and those were mostly White kids marching against First World problems. White upper class kids who had the money and time to be out marching. Activism has always been the work of those who had rich daddies; I don’t. I don’t come from Marchers. I come from soldiers and medical professionals. I’m in training to be a Guard, and will be heading back to school to become a Nurse. Everyone has their place. Mine and my family’s has never been with the activist class. We’ve been the ones either protecting the activist’s right to march, or policing them and their counter-protesters, or tending their wounds.
It’s unlikely that they’ll be improved in my lifetime. I’ll be 27. I do not see racial harmony happening by the time I’m 30, or by the time I’m 47.
It’s convenient for you that such a contribution requires such little effort. Which is probably the position of most Americans – they’d like to do what’s right, they just don’t want to make much of an effort.
All big advances in progress in America have required people to make sacrifices and expend major efforts.
I don’t think everyone has to be an activist, but everyone should make effort to not misinterpret the aims and words of activists. Progressive and liberal activists, for the most part, are not saying white people are evil, or guilty of great sins, or anything like that. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding – a gross concept error – for the concept of privilege in society. They’re not demanding that you give up your house, or be punished in any way whatsoever.
Such pessimism also makes it easy to avoid expending effort and making sacrifice. If you thought there was a possibility of progress, would you be willing to expend significant effort, and make major sacrifices of time and money, to help make that progress happen?
That’s the thing though; I don’t *have *to earn them. My own sentiment is that I earn my right to life by being a decent person and making something of it. All these other things are moralism and philosophy, arbitrary. None of it has any basis in scientific fact. Injustice is a sad thing on a moral level. But morality is on the whole subjective. For example, right there, you disagree that I earn privilege by being a decent person; I disagree; it’s subjective. There is no science in this. There is only choice. The universe, to quote a more eloquent man, is indifferent.
It’s sad, but life’s a genetic lottery. I was born with the disadvantage of being ugly and having a receding hairline. We all get fucked in some way. I can elect who I can that’ll do what they will to improve society, I can be nice to other people, but that’s the limit of my contribution.
Same with this statue issue. If the issue came up for a referendum, I’d vote to remove the Confederate statues. But I’m not going to be the one helping tear them down. Not my place. Doesn’t help anyone I love. But yeah, I’d vote to remove them, because public order is better served by having them removed, and voting requires the least amount of energy.
These are macroevents. I’m focused on microevents that directly effect my own life and those around me.
:dubious: For someone who’s so calmly philosophical about the fundamental and ineradicable injustice of existence and the impossibility of establishing objective moral principles and all that, you sure do get pretty bent out of shape when contemplating the possibility that you might lose out to an applicant with less experience on a job application or have some of your tax money used for racial-oppression reparations.
When other people are unfairly disadvantaged, you’re all “Oh well, too bad, morality is arbitrary and unscientific anyway”, but if you might be unfairly disadvantaged, you’re all “HOW DARE YOU!!”
Like I said:
Like I said, “This country was essentially founded upon a Faustian bargain with the Devil. At this point, the virus has so infected the body that there are deep hatreds, unparalleled polarization, and mutual distrust that will take generations to fade. This virus is combined with humanity’s history of oppressing one another. To deal with these issues now, due to the hatreds and resentments means that equality will have to be forced, where one group usurps another’s place at the head of the table. Someone will have to pay, whether it be in the form of reparations or things like Affirmative Action being put into practice more. Where I draw the line is I do not want to be the one to pay. I wash my hands because I do not view myself as having responsibility. I have “unearned advantages”, I won’t deny that. But I pay for for my unearned advantages by obeying the law, being respectful to my betters, and treating each man and woman like I would want to be treated.”
This doesn’t address the charge that you are, in fact, willing to get angry and stick your neck out at the possibility that you, personally, might experience some hardship, but are unwilling to do so for the possibility of others.
Which is very common, unfortunately. But isn’t it admirable to be willing to get angry and stick your next out when others are experiencing hardship? Isn’t that something worth striving for?
So what? According to you, all that faff about responsibility and fairness and morality is arbitrary, subjective, not based on scientific fact.
So why should anybody care whether you think you have responsibility or not? Why should anybody care whether you think you’re being treated unfairly or immorally? It’s all subjective and there’s no science supporting your claims anyway.
You have completely kicked out all the supports, such as they were, from underneath your previous appeals to any kind of principled position in favor of justice or fairness.