This reminds me of one of my favourite Calvin And Hobbes cartoons
Hobbes) Life’s not fair
Calvin) I know it’s not fair, but how come it’s never “not fair” in my favour?
What is your evidence that teaching about white privilege improves learning about physics? Or is the school in question spending a lot of time in sociology class learning about Newton’s laws and that makes up the difference?
Regards,
Shodan
I’ll stipulate that teaching about white privilege does not improve learning about physics, and that they’re not learning about Newton’s laws in sociology class. And I’ll still call the guest’s idea–that lessons about white privilege in this guy’s physics class are symptomatic of the reasons why the US is behind some other nations in international math and science scores–totally absurd. Do you disagree?
I suspect that the exact phrase isn’t an actual quote, more thematic. However, if you check the Internet, you may discern something very similar. Keywords: " (x) privilege". I suspect that you have heard something similar.
tl;dr
Anyway, to the OP, I think that everybody is missing the point that those who receive anything undeserved are subsidized by those who work. In other words, the complainers are PAYING FOR other people’s free rides.
Everybody is too busy attacking somebody for using the phrase “Check your privilege” to note that the taxpayers are paying for, and are servants of the ones who do no work, and do not ‘earn’ or produce.
nm
You can parachute, but, you can’t hide!
Twas on point and illustrative of the vacuity of the phraseology.
:rolleyes: No, it wasn’t. It was itself a vacuous cheap shot, and a dodge of the real point. If you genuinely think it’s a point worth making, I invite you to make it with elaboration, anticipating the obvious fucking counterpoints I’ll be making to anyone who actually takes the time to make such an absurd claim seriously.
Yes, it was.
Saying “check your privilege” is usually a vacuous cheap shot. That’s why it wasn’t a dodge of any point - it was a demonstration of why “check your privilege” is so worthless.
If you are going to claim that a white man cannot understand the experience of a black woman, then you cannot make any claims about the experience of a black woman. Because, as a white man, your experience is automatically ruled out.
You need to read more and post less. Because you are a white man.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not going to make that claim, so, hey hey, the rest of your post can say whatever you’d like. You’re fundamentally misunderstanding the issue if you think it’s about the ability to understand another person’s perspective.
I don’t think this is the claim about privilege – it’s not that white men can’t understand the experiences of a black woman, it’s that a white man’s assumptions and assertions about the experiences of a black woman are trumped by the actual experiences of a black woman, as related by a black woman. So you can say “I think black women have it easy in X situation because of abc…”, but if a black woman tells you “no, you’re incorrect, and this is why…” and you respond with something to the effect that your beliefs and assumptions (about the experiences of a black woman) trump hers, then you’re “guilty” of not “checking your privilege”.
What is your evidence that it ruins it?
I see a lot of white folks (particularly straight white males particularly, because females have enough shit fall on their heads that they can frequently empathize with minorities at least a little bit) who have this huge blind spot when it comes to how racism works in America, they think that racism is largely over because overt racism is almost universally reviled.
Some folks seem to think that “privilege” is just some fancy new theory that liberals came up with because racism is over (or something like that). They have a blind spot when it comes to the effects of racism and they think its racist to point out that they have a blind spot largely because of their race and by its very nature, their blind spot is invisible to them. Not all white folks have this blind spot but many of the people who roll their eyes at the notion of white privilege do.
Speaking as an Asian American, white privilege is more insidious and harmful because So many people don’t seem to think it even exists and they think that everything they have is because they deserved it in spite of the gross in justice of things like affirmative action, etc. For example, the California state college admissions process is relatively race blind but it was not always so. This was to comply with prop 209 which that was meant to shut down affirmative action. The effect was that black enrollment at schools like UC Berkeley went from ~200 to ~100 while white enrollment went from ~10000 to ~8000. It was the reduction in preference for whites (that the admissions committees didn’t even seem to realize they had) that led to more Asians being admitted. And the UCs don’t even give you much (if any) legacy preference (not a lot of black legacies at the top schools). I can’t prove it but if this sort of preference exists at places like UC berkeley, then I suspect it exists throughout society, and like Berkeley, large swaths of society isn’t even conscious that the preference exists.
I don’t think that’s true. Some, sure, but they’re idiots.
My evidence is the universal experience that, the more time one spends on studying a subject, the more learning takes place, all other things being equal. Therefore, the more time spent studying topics unrelated to physics, like white privilege, the less learning about physics is going to occur.
As if a cite were going to make any difference.
Regards,
Shodan
Except her claim wasn’t that as a rule, less teaching about physics would result in less learning. Her claim was that lessons about white privilege in this guy’s physics class are symptomatic of the reasons why the US is behind some other nations in international math and science scores. Do you agree with her much broader claim?
There is no functional difference between the two claims.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Let’s try not making up your own definitions for words, like you tried with “bigotry”, m’kay?
Seriously, that’s preposterous Shodan. The two claims are barely on the same topic, much less being functionally equivalent.
He’s doing the best he can. Shodan, I won’t make up new definitions, but if you ask nicely, I’ll use very small words to explain the functional difference between the claims.