Climb down from the cross, please; someone else needs the wood.
I can’t because of all of these Goddamned nails. They hurt badly and I am not even Jewish.
No. The over-saturation of media covering the subject is just illuminating one group of people in contrast to another in terms of their accomplishments. Thus making it seem as if one is inherently at more of an advantage and given more opportunity. This is the modern world, everybody in this country is given equal opportunity. One can argue all they want saying otherwise, but at its basic form, everyone is at the same potential and works up from there, some get luckier and inherit. There are those who stagnate more than others. Simple as that. It really is an economic thing, all about planning. It is almost as if people want to believe there is a conspiracy against a group of people just to justify a political agenda. It isn’t so. This ‘original sin’ of being white, as media love to portray is childish and obnoxious, work hard you go places, don’t and you don’t. Has nothing to do with race at all, unless of course the media says it does, right?
So:
- Everyone is equal and comes into the world with equal abilities.
- All of the self-selecting forces exist - persistence, grit, commitment to professional success - but groups like minorities and women opt out of upward mobility, leaving white men to rise to the top.
- All of the other external forces, like systemic racism/misogyny, do not exist, and are not factors in professional success.
Got it.
:smack:
And yet, fascinatingly, the number of practicing doctors and lawyers is mostly men - as of April 2017, 66% of practicing doctors in the US are men and as of 2015, 65% of lawyers who are members of a bar in the US are men.
Do you still believe that if you had been born female you would have been in the 34% or the 35%?
When I was in college, I remember a class dealing with Plato and Socrates and every one of my classmates saying if they had been there they would NEVER have found Socrates guilty. I said I likely would have, because I don’t think I’m exceptional.
In their imaginings virtually everyone is virtuous.
Media bad!
As Shagnasty said in the post you quoted,
And yet he also holds the contradictory belief that if he were female, he’d be part of the 34% or 35% to be right where he is now. I’m pointing out that the two beliefs Shagnasty holds are inherently contradictory, assuming he wasn’t born in the future, likely a safe assumption.
“Women are treated fairly now, therefore if I had been born a woman X years ago I would have been treated equally then”
Is a flawed construction, both if you accept its assumptions and if you don’t.
Because it pays extremely well and I don’t believe they really “work” that hard.
I don’t buy it. I see plenty of executives in my line of work and most of them don’t do shit. Oh, sure, they go to plenty of meetings or create lots of PowerPoint decks. But I’m absolutely convinced that if 99% of them just stopped showing up to work, the company would continue to work just fine. Maybe even better.
my emphasis
mc
32% of black families with children live in poverty, as compared to 18% of white families with children. If white and black heads of household are equally capable and have equal opportunity to take care of their families, why do so many more black parents chose not to?
That’s a hell of a projection there. There’s no reason to tack on “because white people should always been in front” to the statement “minorities shouldn’t get to cut the line”.
Again, there is this implication that white people get everything handed to them and are therefore fair game for any policy that “evens the playing field”.
Working-class and middle-class white people are not at “the front of the line”. They wake up in the morning, drag themselves to their crappy, often dirty, dangerous or tedious job at whatever mill, factory, plant, office, retail store or dining establishment that employees them. Then they struggle to make ends meet like everyone else. What they see is the government creating special programs to give helping hands to minorities or illegal immigrants and they wonder why no one seems to give a crap about them when their plant closes.
Even for more affluent whites it’s the same thing. I studied and got decent enough grades in (public) high school. Got into a good college. Managed to graduate with a degree in engineering. Sure my parents helped pay for college, but now I’m at a disadvantage because neither my parents went to jail or smoked crack?
Shagnasty, like the white male privilege thing, you’re looking at it from YOUR perspective, not anybody else. Probably, Lola loved you. But she didn’t walk up to the trailer one day going “I must take care of these babies! It is my destiny!”
More likely, she was so far beneath your family, socioeconomically speaking, that working for people who “lived in a single-wide tailor next to my grandparents property,” was appealing. The fact that you got a decent human being was a bonus.
White male privilege is not something white males get. It’s a thing that non-white and/or non-males DON’T get.
You’ve been groped by gay guys and/or women? You might have endured it, but did you ever feel powerless over your gropers because they are the norm? You could handle it, right? Not because you’re stronger or tougher, but because you knew that, for people like us, it was unusual. At no time did you feel like my wife. “Asshole grabbed my ass again. Ninth day straight on public transit and a different asshole groped my ass again. It’s so common, I’ll just ignore it, because who will I complain to, the straight white guy who will probably tell me it’s my fault for having a pinch-able ass?”
White Male Privilege isn’t something YOU experience. It is something that others DON’T get to experience.