Underline added. Really, you think it’s 100% equal out there? That’s like saying 100% of white men making over $100,000 per year are Republican. I like hearing people get all fired up and say extreme things, but that doesn’t mean we have to believe everything we hear.
And you know what? I’m sure I didn’t get into some schools that would have taken me if I wasn’t a white male. Harvard Law School, for example. But (partly) because I’m a white male, I had lots of other options and came out on top. White Privilege in action.
Okay, I think that’s an incredibly weak case, based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence.
Here’s some contrary evidence:
This study in 2004 found that names more associated with white Americans got more callbacks for job interviews than names associated with black Americans with identical qualifications.
This one found that black graduates of prestigious schools like Harvard had about the same chance of getting job interviews as white graduates of state schools like UMass Amherst.
Depends on the school I guess. I was a member of a University Board of Trustees for about 10 years (2006-2016) We certainly encouraged the admissions staff to seek a diverse student body. For most institutions, more applicants “meet standards” then they have room for, so choices have to be made.
Life doesn’t begin at 18, with a college application. Those 18 years are filled with racial disparities in poverty rates, school quality, and de facto segregation. Not everyone gets the same chance to develop abilities and meet standards.
Interesting. I would be more inclined to think names wouldn’t be a barrier for black/white. but more so for people with religious names.
As a side note, I talked to a couple of non white males today at work (in fact, just now) and they tell me that anyone, regardless of race, who is willing to work for what they want in this country, can achieve it. You just have to make a choice between working for it or not.
Do you have actual countrywide statistical evidence of this, not just your own personal opinion or the couple of guys you talked to?
That’s been much of the challenge in recent years. People - especially whites who are used to privilege - use their own experiences to judge how much change is happening. And they are apt to run those through a filter: every boost for people of color is noticed while any similar advantage for whites is ignored. And they assume a zero sum game, that it’s not possible that whites and others can both simultaneously increase.
When people of color shout about the thousands of ways they are still slighted in their everyday lives they should be taken seriously. It’s natural to want to disbelieve, because of the onus that puts on one’s self, but the reality of white privilege, whether or not it’s finally on decline, is overwhelmingly true. Complaints by people of color should be thought of as a MeToo movement that’s been going on for decades.
So your position is that the current disparities in income and quality of life between different groups primarily reflect that minorities are generally lazier than white people? Why do you think that is?
This, and your description of the contents of her talk and the resulting response from the audience makes me want to see some sort of confirmation of your version of what went down. I have read her poetry and some articles by her (for example this article from NY Times Magazine) and I have never read anything by her that was as blunt as what you have described.
Perhaps she is speaking from personal experience here, rather than statistically. AFAICT her husband is white, and she has a daughter, although I can’t find out if it was with her husband or someone else. But maybe that is her experience.
Good thing she is a poet rather than a statistician.
Cite. Notice that the trend upward started from a historic low in 1999. I don’t recall any black Presidents then.
Left-wing fruitcake blames everything on white supremacy. Film at eleven.
White privilege is a motte and bailey argument. There is majoritarian advantage. More products are made for right handers than left hander, for gentiles than jews, and for whites than blacks. That is just the result of numbers.
However, that does not mean that white people get all the opportunity or that it is a huge advantage to live a good life.
More anecdotal evidence. Just as convincing as if I said that I happened to speak to 74 thousand non-white people and they all agreed that there are, in fact, differences in opportunity based on race and other factors unrelated to merit.
White privilege is real, it is a problem, it needs to be corrected, and we have a long way to go,
and
Democrats do a disservice to our cause by talking about it too much. Work behind the scenes to level the playing field. Don’t talk so much about it publicly. It just alienates white voters whose votes we need to win. We don’t need to pander to racists, we just gotta avoid rustling white peoples’ jimmies too much in the upcoming election, or else we get 8 years of Trump.
There aren’t any Democratic politicians I’m aware of who are making a big issue out of it. It’s individual people on the small scale; local people, college lecturers, activists of all stripes. Their intentions are good. The problem is that today, no rhetoric exists in a vacuum, and a drop can cause a ripple. With the internet and social media being what it is, one person’s outlandish statement can be easily spun by the conservative machine as being representative of the Democratic and liberal view as a whole.
Then, once that happens, once people have accumulated an arsenal of public controversies to bring up during debates - eventually the bigger politicians will get asked about it and have to discuss it in public, and it has the potential to reflect badly on their platform and distract from issues that have more potential to bring people together rather than drive them apart.
