Do you believe in White Privilege?

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SR
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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#21 Post by SR » Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:38 pm

.....
Last edited by SR on Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#22 Post by SR » Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:41 pm

Essence_Smith wrote:
tvrec wrote:Ambiguous question in the subject line.

Do I believe in it? No.
Do I believe it exists? Yes, in many places/spaces.
You guys are obviously bright enough to know what I meant... :wink:
(at work, will address a few of the statements here later)
OK, yes I believe it exists and is perpetuated by all.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#23 Post by farrellgirl99 » Thu Mar 14, 2013 3:20 pm

ellis wrote:
Essence_Smith wrote: Those ethnic groups you mention all happen to be white... :idea:
This is one thing that people confuse often. Not all whites are the same. And not all whites get along. I can say the same for people of Asian, Arab or African decent. I've even seen dudes get seriously offended if I confused which African or Arab country they originated from. :lol:

I do not like all whites. And I won't name which ones I dislike.


But more to the topic... I don't believe in white privilege. It "looks like" privilege but it's really centuries of growth set in place, reduced entirely to networking. I could point out black privilege and arab privilege and asian privilege but could also see it for what it is and that's networking.

The basic desire of humans to naturally segregate into groups they feel comfortable in and/or being prejudice towards things they do not relate to is not a bad thing. Thousands of years of evolution have made us like that. ALL races do it. Small business owners tend to hire people of similar race or family lineage. I don't think I'm more privileged than other races. My life is not any easier. Still driving the same truck I bought 10 yrs ago. The credit hrs I pay for at college cost the same and are financed by the same gov't regulated institutions. Financially, I've had to bust my ass for a lot of things and there are a many number of other things I've accepted that I'll never have. Non-financially, I can say the same about accomplishments I won't have the time nor resources to accomplish.

I guess I've gotten to an age where I'm more concerned with myself and family and don't really concern myself with anyone else. I'm more focused. When people get caught up in the measuring contest of races and their perceived privilege, I kinda feel sorry for them. (For the record, I know that's not what ES is doing. But I think even ES could agree some people get so caught up in it that it takes over their life and becomes a conspiracy they must rail against.) Every race is unique and has pro's and con's and this uniqueness we have really seems to be ignored in America as to not "offend" people.
Can you point out black, asian, or arab privilege? I'd like to see what examples you give because I can't think of any societal privileges they get based on their skin color. Unless you consider things like getting stop and frisked or getting called a terrorist privilege.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#24 Post by kv » Thu Mar 14, 2013 5:59 pm

i can answer with what came to my mind "quotas"

when my sister went to high school she had a group of friends who were more like the united nations( black white indian mexican you name it) all extremely bright girls... A students who did the student body, community service, extra credit thing aiming for big schools my sister always wanted to go to cal sate berkeley as did a few of her friends some with lower grade and test scores who all got in ahead of my sister due to race quotas. she actually had to defer a semester to get in. I also have a few friends who married mexican girls and i have watched and talked with them about the advantages they children have received through quotas and grants due to their mixed race ( one of these kids got a 450k grant he wouldn't have been eligible for if he was white)....i think if there is a disadvantage for these races, it's right to try and balance stuff more in their favor... but it can put equally skilled white people at a disadvantage. all the price of balance though...also makes me think of section 9 in ncaa sports for equality between men and womens sports...which is great because it stopped a huge imbalance but as the same time can be swung to make the other side be unbalanced...not as many women play sports as men so there are a ton of underused sports on the women side that have full money coming in to support while over populated mens sports have scholarships and money taken away...it's all big picture stuff in hopes of long term equality but at the same time it can adversely affect people it ideally shouldn't...but it's still progress

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#25 Post by Hype » Fri Mar 15, 2013 10:04 pm

SR wrote:.....

Also,


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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#26 Post by Essence_Smith » Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:27 am

At the end of the day I think the comedians of the world have it down pat...


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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#27 Post by Larry B. » Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:28 am


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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#28 Post by Essence_Smith » Mon Mar 18, 2013 3:17 pm

ellis wrote:
Essence_Smith wrote: Those ethnic groups you mention all happen to be white... :idea:
This is one thing that people confuse often. Not all whites are the same. And not all whites get along. I can say the same for people of Asian, Arab or African decent. I've even seen dudes get seriously offended if I confused which African or Arab country they originated from. :lol:

I do not like all whites. And I won't name which ones I dislike.


But more to the topic... I don't believe in white privilege. It "looks like" privilege but it's really centuries of growth set in place, reduced entirely to networking. I could point out black privilege and arab privilege and asian privilege but could also see it for what it is and that's networking.

The basic desire of humans to naturally segregate into groups they feel comfortable in and/or being prejudice towards things they do not relate to is not a bad thing. Thousands of years of evolution have made us like that. ALL races do it. Small business owners tend to hire people of similar race or family lineage. I don't think I'm more privileged than other races. My life is not any easier. Still driving the same truck I bought 10 yrs ago. The credit hrs I pay for at college cost the same and are financed by the same gov't regulated institutions. Financially, I've had to bust my ass for a lot of things and there are a many number of other things I've accepted that I'll never have. Non-financially, I can say the same about accomplishments I won't have the time nor resources to accomplish.

I guess I've gotten to an age where I'm more concerned with myself and family and don't really concern myself with anyone else. I'm more focused. When people get caught up in the measuring contest of races and their perceived privilege, I kinda feel sorry for them. (For the record, I know that's not what ES is doing. But I think even ES could agree some people get so caught up in it that it takes over their life and becomes a conspiracy they must rail against.) Every race is unique and has pro's and con's and this uniqueness we have really seems to be ignored in America as to not "offend" people.
With all due repect Ellis, I gotta disagree that this phenomenon doesn't exist...pretty much everyone here has vouched for at least a slight awareness of it in their own lives whether it works to their benefit or not. Knowing you as I do, I don't see how you could not see it. Take a look at the link I initially posted, as well as the Louis CK clip...no one's stating that all white people are on an equal playing field...no one's stating that they all get along and live in a fantasy world where they have everything handed to them and don't have to work hard for things. But there are basic advantages that I'm sure are so deeply embedded in your way of life you probably think of it no more than a lot of first worlders think about turning on your faucet and getting clean water...that being said I'm not mad at you (as I'm sure you know), but I think you need to take another look at things...

Now...for the board...aside from the right to use the N word, can anyone here (seriously) tell me what advantages a black person has in the U.S. over a white person?

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#29 Post by Hype » Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:12 pm

If you're a Caribbean black person, there's culture and food, I guess, that white-bread nth generation Americans probably don't really know -- though of course if they have money, they can probably eat it and enjoy the art too.

A work ethic?

What about what Perry said in To The Mosquitos, about wishing he was black so he'd have something to fight for? Is that just an old relic of naive, young, faux-poor NY Jew Perry's attempt to be deep? I'm not sure. I think there may not be single answers to the more general questions about race... It may just be a mess, and you make of it whatever the hell fate lets you...

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#30 Post by Essence_Smith » Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:38 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:If you're a Caribbean black person, there's culture and food, I guess, that white-bread nth generation Americans probably don't really know -- though of course if they have money, they can probably eat it and enjoy the art too.

A work ethic?

What about what Perry said in To The Mosquitos, about wishing he was black so he'd have something to fight for? Is that just an old relic of naive, young, faux-poor NY Jew Perry's attempt to be deep? I'm not sure. I think there may not be single answers to the more general questions about race... It may just be a mess, and you make of it whatever the hell fate lets you...
As you know I am first generation, son of Caribbean folks...its definitely different for us; we are perceived differently, etc so different situations present themselves, etc. There is an aspect of our upbringing that looks down on "american blacks", and there is absolutely more emphasis on discipline and education going on in the home. Imo that just means we may be slightly better equipped in certain ways but doesn't make the overall situation a good one. 11 years after the fact a thing that still sticks out for me is a corporate head hunter asking me on an interview, "are you normally this articulate or are you just doing this for me?" And at the very least she was honest enough to say it to my face...and thats an aside from my point...I think there are just a lot things that come as second nature to white folks that we are at a strong disadvantage with that they aren't awareof , don't care about and won't seek to change... :noclue:

I think of PF's thing as just something cool for him to say, but I think the guy who he was at the time believed it; and good for him for being a white person not too privileged to acknowledge it...

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#31 Post by Hype » Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:48 pm

Agreed on both points there. White people need to eat goat curry. I just can't imagine not even wanting to try it. :rockon:

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#32 Post by ellis » Tue Mar 19, 2013 10:32 am

I guess I've walked on the periphery of everyday life for so long I've never really felt it.

I'm willing to at least say that.

But just to play devils advocate here... if you transplant any white person into a non-white area of the world, and that "white privilege" is still there, then I believe it's a true phenomenon. However, if it only exists in areas of the world where whites are the majority, then it's not really "white privilege" but a symptom of being the majority population.

Or maybe I'm just looking at this thing entirely the wrong way... :noclue:

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#33 Post by tvrec » Tue Mar 19, 2013 2:53 pm

I've travelled a fair bit and, in my experience, white privilege is not contingent upon majority demographics but rather power (in whatever forms you'd care to discuss, wealth, military, etc.) That said, one hardly needs to look past his/her own social contexts in the West. I live in the LA area, demographically, whites are the minority, albeit a slim difference from the Hispanic population. It be tough to argue that the majority = privilege rather than power = privilege.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#34 Post by Pure Method » Tue Mar 19, 2013 6:27 pm

ellis wrote:I guess I've walked on the periphery of everyday life for so long I've never really felt it.

I'm willing to at least say that.

But just to play devils advocate here... if you transplant any white person into a non-white area of the world, and that "white privilege" is still there, then I believe it's a true phenomenon. However, if it only exists in areas of the world where whites are the majority, then it's not really "white privilege" but a symptom of being the majority population.

Or maybe I'm just looking at this thing entirely the wrong way... :noclue:

White privilege exists in South Africa for the same reasons it does in America, and whites are a distinct minority.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#35 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 19, 2013 9:10 pm

I think there's still a little bit of confusion about the meaning of the phrase (trust the philosopher to say that... :dunce: )

It isn't about being a majority "race", or being white in general. It's about the culture and history of white Europeans around the world and the effects of things caused by white Europeans and their culture and history years ago (and today) that are still reverberating and resonating in both white and non-white minds and lives.

Image
This book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Skin,_White_Masks definitely changed how I think about it, and I don't even like that critical/race theory stuff (or social psychology or sociology) usually. Fanon really gets into the mental aspect of White Privilege as a concept, from the black (albeit French Caribbean) perspective in America, France, etc. And even though that book is decades old, I've seen, and spoken to friends about, the same stuff still going on. Black friends of mine still get treated as race-traitors for behaving "white" (as others see it), and are treated as intrinsically inferior in various ways even by those who may be considered friends (frankly it's hard as a white person to always be on your toes for this shit... and as a white male even more so, because you're likely to inadvertently overpower women, too... it takes a concerted effort to avoid this precisely because the culture is so strongly engrained not just in each person, but in the sort of of general daily goings on... like right-handed doors.)

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#36 Post by Essence_Smith » Wed Mar 20, 2013 7:33 pm

Fanon is the truth... :nod:

I think the "acting white" phenomenon is still something that leaves a funny taste in my mouth...I'm 100% with who I am, how I speak, etc but to hear people say "oh you're not really black", etc seems beyond silly to me...I tended to gravitate towards people who simply accepted me as I was regardless of their background and my life is better for it. I was never afraid what kids thought in junior high when I listened to GnR even though Axl was supposed to be racist...I even had a white kid (who hung out with nothing but black kids) call me an Oreo and that didn't mess with me... :hehe:
I refused to be a stereotype either way...so when I go to the projects they say I'm "halfway hood"...i'm fine with that...

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#37 Post by Hype » Wed Mar 20, 2013 9:39 pm



:nod: (One of the most painful movies I've ever seen...)

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#38 Post by Hype » Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:44 am

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... -survived/
FEBRUARY 10, 2013, 7:15 PM
The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours

By JUSTIN E. H. SMITH
In 1734, Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former chamber slave of Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, defended a philosophy dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony, written in Latin and entitled “On the Impassivity of the Human Mind.” A dedicatory letter was appended from the rector of the University of Wittenberg, Johannes Gottfried Kraus, who praised “the natural genius” of Africa, its “appreciation for learning,” and its “inestimable contribution to the knowledge of human affairs” and of “divine things.” Kraus placed Amo in a lineage that includes many North African Latin authors of antiquity, such as Terence, Tertullian and St. Augustine.
In the following decade, the Scottish philosopher David Hume would write: “I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation.”

Hume had not heard of Amo, that much is clear. But we can also detect a tremendous difference between Hume’s understanding of human capacities and that of Kraus: the author of Amo’s dedicatory letter doesn’t even consider the possibility of anchoring what individual human beings are capable of doing to something as arbitrary as “complection.” For Kraus, Amo represents a continent and its long and distinguished history; he does not represent a “race.”

Another two decades on, Immanuel Kant, considered by many to be the greatest philosopher of the modern period, would manage to let slip what is surely the greatest non-sequitur in the history of philosophy: describing a report of something seemingly intelligent that had once been said by an African, Kant dismisses it on the grounds that “this fellow was quite black from head to toe, a clear proof that what he said was stupid.”

Kraus, the rector of Wittenberg, had been expressing an understanding of the nature of human diversity that was, in 1734, already in decline, soon to be thoroughly drowned out by the fundamentally racist view of human populations as dividing into a fixed set of supposedly natural, species-like kinds. This is the view lazily echoed by Hume, Kant, and so many of their contemporaries.

In his lifetime, Amo was principally known as a legal theorist. His first publication, in 1729, which has since been lost (or, one might suspect, intentionally purged), was a jurisprudential treatise, “On the Right of Moors in Europe.” Here he argues, on the basis of a reading of Roman history and law, that in antiquity “the kings of the Moors were enfeoffed by the Roman Emperor” Justinian, and that “every one of them had to obtain a royal patent from him.” This meant, in Amo’s view, that African kingdoms were all recognized under Roman law, and therefore all Africans in Europe have the status of visiting royal subjects with a legal protection that precludes their enslavement.

Historically, this is highly implausible, since much of the continent of Africa was unknown to Europeans at the time of Justinian. Still, Amo’s understanding is remarkably different from, say, Kant’s account of global history, on which black Africans stood, from the very beginning and as if by definition, beyond the pale of history, and therefore led lives of no intrinsic value, lives that could only be given value through absorption into a global system dominated by Europe.

Scholars have been aware for a long time of the curious paradox of Enlightenment thought, that the supposedly universal aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity in fact only operated within a very circumscribed universe. Equality was only ever conceived as equality among people presumed in advance to be equal, and if some person or group fell by definition outside of the circle of equality, then it was no failure to live up to this political ideal to treat them as unequal.

It would take explicitly counter-Enlightenment thinkers in the 18th century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder, to formulate anti-racist views of human diversity. In response to Kant and other contemporaries who were positively obsessed with finding a scientific explanation for the causes of black skin, Herder pointed out that there is nothing inherently more in need of explanation here than in the case of white skin: it is an analytic mistake to presume that whiteness amounts to the default setting, so to speak, of the human species.

The question for us today is why we have chosen to stick with categories inherited from the 18th century, the century of the so-called Enlightenment, which witnessed the development of the slave trade into the very foundation of the global economy, and at the same time saw racial classifications congeal into pseudo-biological kinds, piggy-backing on the divisions folk science had always made across the natural world of plants and animals. Why, that is, have we chosen to go with Hume and Kant, rather than with the pre-racial conception of humanity espoused by Kraus, or the anti-racial picture that Herder offered in opposition to his contemporaries?

Many who are fully prepared to acknowledge that there are no significant natural differences between races nonetheless argue that there are certain respects in which it is worth retaining the concept of race: for instance in talking about issues like social inequality or access to health care. There is, they argue, a certain pragmatic utility in retaining it, even if they acknowledge that racial categories result from social and historical legacies, rather than being dictated by nature. In this respect “race” has turned out to be a very different sort of social construction than, say, “witch” or “lunatic.” While generally there is a presumption that to catch out some entity or category as socially constructed is at the same time to condemn it, many thinkers are prepared to simultaneously acknowledge both the non-naturalness of race as well as a certain pragmatic utility in retaining it.

Since the mid-20th century no mainstream scientist has considered race a biologically significant category; no scientist believes any longer that “negroid,” “caucasoid” and so on represent real natural kinds or categories. [1] For several decades it has been well established that there is as much genetic variation between two members of any supposed race, as between two members of supposedly distinct races. This is not to say that there are no real differences, some of which are externally observable, between different human populations. It is only to say, as Lawrence Hirschfeld wrote in his 1996 book, “Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture, and the Child’s Construction of Human Kinds,” that “races as socially defined do not (even loosely) capture interesting clusters of these differences.”

Yet the category of race continues to be deployed in a vast number of contexts, and certainly not just by racists, but by ardent anti-racists as well, and by everyone in between. The history of race, then, is not like the history of, say, witches: a group that is shown not to exist and that accordingly proceeds to go away. Why is this?

Philosophers disagree. Anthony Appiah identifies himself as a racial skeptic to the extent that the biological categories to which racial terms refer have been shown not to exist. Yet at the same time he acknowledges that the adoption of “racial identities” may often be socially expedient, and even unavoidable, for members of perceived racial minorities. Ron Mallon has in turn distinguished between metaphysical views of race on the one hand, which make it out to describe really existent kinds, and normative views on the other, which take race to be useful in some way or other, but not real. Mallon divides the latter into “eliminativist” and “conservationist” camps, supposing, variously, that the concept can only be put to bad uses, and must be got rid of, or that some of its uses are worth holding onto. On his scheme, one may very well coherently remain metaphysically anti-realist about race but still defend the conservation of the concept on normative grounds.

But given that we now know that the identity groups in modern multicultural states are plainly constituted on ethno-linguistic and cultural grounds, rather than on biological-essential grounds, it remains unclear why we should not allow a concept such as “culture” or “ethnie” to do the semantic work for us that until now we have allowed the historically tainted and misleading concept of “race” to do. We have alternative ways of speaking of human diversity available to us, some of which are on vivid display in Amo’s early life and work, and which focus on rather more interesting features of different human groups than their superficial phenotypic traits.

It is American culture that is principally responsible for the perpetuation of the concept of race well after its loss of scientific respectability by the mid-20th century. Even the most well-meaning attempts to grapple with the persistence of inequality between “blacks” and “whites” in American society take it for granted at the outset that racial categories adequately capture the relevant differences under investigation (see, for example: Thomas B. Edsall’s recent column, “The Persistence of Racial Resentment“) . This may have something to do with the fact that the two broad cultural-historical groupings of people in this country, which we call “white” and “black” and which have been constituted through the complicated histories of slavery, immigration, assimilation, and exclusion, tend at their extremes to correlate with noticeably different phenotypic traits.

An African-American is likely to look more different from an American of exclusively European descent than, say, an Orthodox Serb is likely to look from a Bosnian Muslim. This creates the illusion that it is the phenotypic difference that is causing the perception of cultural-historical distinctness, along with the injustice and inequality that has gone along with this distinctness. This also creates the illusion of American uniqueness: that our history of ethnic conflict cannot be understood comparatively or in a global context, because it, unlike conflict between Serbs and Bosnian Muslims or between Tutsi and Hutu, is supposedly based on “race” rather than history, politics, and culture. But where people are living with a different historical legacy, as in much of European history prior to the high modern period hailed in by Hume and Kant, the supposedly manifest phenotypic differences between “blacks” and “whites” can easily recede into the background as irrelevant.

Amo did not meet a happy end in Germany. His original manumission and education appear to have been a strategy on the part of Duke Anton Ulrich to impress Tsar Peter the Great of Russia, who had recently adopted his own chamber slave, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, as his own son. Gannibal would go on to a career as a brilliant engineer, military strategist, and politician; Amo, for his part, would be largely abandoned by his sponsors when the geopolitical winds shifted, and Russia fell off the duke’s list of priorities.

For a while the African philosopher eked out a living as a tutor in Jena and Wittenberg, and in 1747, after being made the butt of a libelous broadside accusing him of falling in love with a woman beyond his station, he returned to West Africa in disgrace. A French seafarer, David-Henri Gallandat, finds him there a few years later, and writes of meeting a man who “was very learned in astrology and astronomy, and was a great philosopher. At that time he was around 50 years old… He had a brother who was a slave in the colony of Suriname.”

The hopefulness of the 1734 dissertation was now long behind him. It is not known when Amo died, or under what circumstances. What we can say for certain is that he would not spend his final years as a successor to Augustine and Terence, but rather in the degraded position where someone like Kant supposed he belonged: outside of history, philosophically disenfranchised and entirely defined by something as trivial as skin color.

As long as we go on speaking as if racial categories captured something real about human diversity, we are allowing the 18th-century legacy of Kant and Hume, which was never really anything more than an ad hoc rationalization of slavery, to define our terms for us. We are turning our back on the legacy of Anton Wilhelm Amo, and of his European contemporaries who were prepared to judge him on his merits.

FOOTNOTES

[1] This is not to deny that there are limited contexts in which self-reporting of “racial” identity may be informative in a local or regional context. It is indeed helpful for a doctor to know, within the context of the American health-care system, the “race” of a patient. What it does mean to say that race is no longer a legitimate scientific category is that this limited, contextual helpfulness tells us nothing about a natural kind or real subdivision of the human species. The category of “race” can be useful in a local, medical context to the extent that it often correlates with other, useful information about tendencies within a given population. But this population need not be conceptualized in terms of race. Race is a dummy variable here, but not of interest as such.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#39 Post by LJF » Thu Mar 21, 2013 4:13 pm

Essence_Smith wrote:Fanon is the truth... :nod:

I think the "acting white" phenomenon is still something that leaves a funny taste in my mouth...I'm 100% with who I am, how I speak, etc but to hear people say "oh you're not really black", etc seems beyond silly to me...I tended to gravitate towards people who simply accepted me as I was regardless of their background and my life is better for it. I was never afraid what kids thought in junior high when I listened to GnR even though Axl was supposed to be racist...I even had a white kid (who hung out with nothing but black kids) call me an Oreo and that didn't mess with me... :hehe:
I refused to be a stereotype either way...so when I go to the projects they say I'm "halfway hood"...i'm fine with that...

I never understood why people say things like that. Like the reporter from I think ESPN that said he didn't like RGIII because he wasn't black enough. What does that even mean? People complain about stereotypes, but when someone doesn't meet or act that stereotype they aren't black enough or whatever race or nationality. To me that makes no fucking sense.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#40 Post by tvrec » Thu Mar 21, 2013 6:56 pm

this (see above) is what I meant earlier when I said I should avoid this thread.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#41 Post by Essence_Smith » Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:48 pm

tvrec wrote:this (see above) is what I meant earlier when I said I should avoid this thread.
My point in bringing these kinds of issues up is to get people to think about things they may not think about on a day to day basis...I've learned things from some of the people that post here, and if its at the risk of someone saying something I or someone else may not be 100% comfortable with its fine...if I got them to just think for a moment then I feel ok...if we have an exchange and don't see eye to eye, its still ok...its all about the conversation being had...

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#42 Post by Essence_Smith » Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:56 pm

LJF wrote:
Essence_Smith wrote:Fanon is the truth... :nod:

I think the "acting white" phenomenon is still something that leaves a funny taste in my mouth...I'm 100% with who I am, how I speak, etc but to hear people say "oh you're not really black", etc seems beyond silly to me...I tended to gravitate towards people who simply accepted me as I was regardless of their background and my life is better for it. I was never afraid what kids thought in junior high when I listened to GnR even though Axl was supposed to be racist...I even had a white kid (who hung out with nothing but black kids) call me an Oreo and that didn't mess with me... :hehe:
I refused to be a stereotype either way...so when I go to the projects they say I'm "halfway hood"...i'm fine with that...

I never understood why people say things like that. Like the reporter from I think ESPN that said he didn't like RGIII because he wasn't black enough. What does that even mean? People complain about stereotypes, but when someone doesn't meet or act that stereotype they aren't black enough or whatever race or nationality. To me that makes no fucking sense.
At the end of the day, everyone has certain stereotypes in their heads imo because it helps some people to place people into categories they can be comfortable with...I think its silly as fuck, but so be it. I have done my best to avoid fitting into people's ideas of how I should be which includes the token black guy thing, which I've even been called here...I don't go to parties where there's too many of one kind of people, etc...I like being in mixed crowds like how I grew up...even my college band was an irish guy, a puerto rican, me and a chinese guy... :hehe:

I think a lot of black people are painfully aware of how we are perceived and its a lot to deal with...another good example of something a lot of white people don't have to worry about...you can just be YOURSELF and not have to worry for a second how people are looking at you... or viewing you with an assumption that you're SUPPOSED to act a particular way because of your skin color...

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#43 Post by Hype » Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:55 pm

Some of it comes down to trying to establish an authentic identity.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#44 Post by Essence_Smith » Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:35 am

I haven't actually read this in a while but remember someone else mentioning it in this thread:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html
Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

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Re: Do you believe in White Privilege?

#45 Post by Essence_Smith » Fri Oct 03, 2014 12:44 pm

Dear white racists and your fragile fee-fees:
Relax, I'm white, too. Look, I can do the secret handshake and nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Lemme whitesplain something to you, fellow white men: no one buys your bullshit.
That's because your bullshit runs like this: For historically- and presently-oppressed black people to be treated decently, they must carefully avoid doing anything that could be remotely twisted into behaving like a white racist, even if you're squinting and looking at it from five hundred meters away in a thick fog. Because that would be racist, and therefore hypocritical, and if that's the case, they deserve to continue to be oppressed.

Here's the thing you thick-headed assholes totally fail to get: NO ONE DESERVES TO BE OPPRESSED, PERIOD. You can talk all you want about how it's okay for black people to be mistreated if--- but get this, there is no "if". It's not okay, ever. That's why we call it mistreatment. Your error is to think that it's ever justified, and your active misdeed is to constantly search for a justification. Black people, collectively, are not guilty of anything. In fact, a basic principle of civil society is that we reject the notion of collective guilt. Some individual black people, like individual white people, have done bad things, and in those cases, may deserve judicial punishments. But even those people don't deserve mistreatment from some random white guy on the street. And black people in general don't owe anyone anything as a prerequisite for being treated decently. No one does.

Now I know there are a bunch of you in the back of the room waving your hand and getting ready to launch the argument that it's racist to complain about white privilege. No, it is not. Complaining about white privilege is not the same as assigning collective guilt to white people. White privilege is a pervasive feature of our society and our legal system. It's hard to see if you're white (and you're not looking or actively trying not to look), but it is real, it is powerfully destructive, and if global warming had the kind of statistical support that evidence of white privilege has, Bill O'Reilly would be haranguing FOX News viewers to install solar panels.

And here's the subtle point that you folks either can't or won't grasp. White privilege is especially the responsibility of white people to fix, not because we're all racist schlubs like you are, but because white privilege itself means that we're the ones who have the power to change it. Black people don't have that power, again because of white privilege, and not because they aren't sufficiently careful in the way they phrase their complaints about being mistreated. It's our problem and our responsibility as white people to fix not because whites are collectively guilty, but because it is the responsibility of ALL PEOPLE to fight for decent treatment for ALL PEOPLE. It just happens that, because of our shithead ancestors and a helping handful of historical accident, we white people are the ones who can do something about it. When the finger on the trigger is white, it's pointless to ask a black guy to lower the gun.

And quite frankly, given all the shit that our black fellow citizens have put up with, and all the shit they have to deal with every. fucking. day., if some of them lose their tempers and say things that aren't carefully calibrated to kiss your privileged, hypersensitive asses, well, is that actually surprising? You lose your minds when black people just complain verbally about being kicked. Imagine how tough it would be for you to keep your cool if someone was actually doing something to you instead of just talking.

Finally, yes, I know this is pointless. You want to be offended to fluff your fragile egos, and you want black people to please shut the fuck up and stop harshing your mellow. I hate to break it to you, but as long as people are being murdered by the state, given draconian sentences for crimes that in many cases they haven't even committed, and being held in poverty and privation and a constant state of fear, those of us who actually give a shit about our fellow citizens are going, at the very least, to make some noise about it.
In the meantime, if you can't be bothered to do your duty as an American to protect your fellow Americans with the considerable power at your disposal, at least shut the fuck up and stop making an ass of yourself.
Regards,
Your fellow privileged white guy

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