DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Time to end political correctness

Then what system would you suggest instead?

I don't buy that at all. Police target poor white neighborhoods too. The law doesn't discriminate when using the poor as targets because poor people can't afford a defense.

Where the disparity in percentages lie, is because there are far more successful white people. So if you look at the numbers, it doesn't show as many whites being targeted by police by percentage.

Poor white neighborhoods have all of the same symptoms that poor black neighborhoods do. Crime, drugs, police harassment and so on. Attacking those problems by class rather than race would bring far more people to the cause that effects them both.

Pretty sure it's been a long known fact that I am a communist irl. It's usually heavily implied.

I'm not making fun of you or trying to be a condescending azz. It was a legitimate question.

Yes. The poor will always be the most targeted in capitalism. They're literally low hanging fruit. They will always be subjected to abuse by the ruling class. The problem arises that there are more successful white people and more unsuccessful POCs due to the institutional racism that has and continues to be a problem since this country's inception.

I can answer this but won't. You wouldn't like the truth and I
don't need the heat.

Sorry. Didn't mean it to be attacking. Thought it was more casual way of saying "communism".

You have your truths and I have my truths, the difference is I am a man enough to say what I feel and man enough to deal with the consequences.

man up because I would love to see your logic lol

I deal with Captains of industry and the wealthy on a weekly
basis so I know the Truth of why things are the way they are.

I am also wise enough to keep it within my Tribe for there is only grief for those who tell the truth these days.
?
Did you see the reply I got to the consideration of Colin Powell being a roll model for possible solutions? Nobody wants truth.

Which is why, going back to your previous post, that coming up with better terms, might not be a bad place to start... you take any white person who started with little and amounted to something, or started with little and still has little, and tell them they are benefitting from "white privilege" and you are going to get an argument. It's not terribly difficult to see why a lot of people perceive that as, "You didn't work for what you have, it was handed to you." and they look around at either their meager existence or the fruits of their hard work and respond with, "You think this was handed to me?"

When you paint a position that appears as divisive, division will be what it causes.

Gosh, can you prove to me the opposite on each of those questions? I'd bet you can't. And here I thought it was because I have a great resume, I know my stuff, and I have good manners because my parents beat them into me proper.

I can assure you my current job was not 'given' to me because of my color. Luckily a former coworker, who I did not know worked there, stuck his head into the interview and said, "Stop interviewing and hire him". He's from Columbia, before anyone asks me, so he didn't have 'white privilege' either.

As for the cops pointing their guns at me, the first time I reached for my wallet, which was in my left, inside jacket pocket, without thinking. I stopped moving and told the cop, "My wallet is in my jacket pocket." He took a step back, and told me to pull out my wallet slowly. I did, and no shots were fired. The second time was when I was mistaken for a cop killer. I saw a picture of the guy, and I would have pointed a gun at me too. I always do the same thing when stopped by cops. I'm polite. I don't make sudden moves. I also comply with their orders, like 'hands up', 'don't move', 'get out of the car with your hands up, face forward, walk backwards to me', etc, etc. I've let one cop to search my car because I was in a hurry, and I told one to get a warrant because I had time to kill. I even told the cop I had time to kill.

Which question exactly? I must have missed it.

j/c

Here's something that addresses race, class AND "W.P." I found it to be keenly interesting. link is here



EXPLAINING WHITE PRIVILEGE TO A BROKE WHITE PERSON...

By Gina Crosley-Corcoran
thefeministbreeder.com


Years ago, some feminist on the internet told me I was "Privileged."

"THE [F***]!?!?" I said. (edit: Clem)

I came from the kind of Poor that people don't want to believe still exists in this country. Have you ever spent a frigid northern Illinois winter without heat or running water? I have. At twelve years old, were you making ramen noodles in a coffee maker with water you fetched from a public bathroom? I was. Have you ever lived in a camper year round and used a random relative's apartment as your mailing address? We did. Did you attend so many different elementary schools that you can only remember a quarter of their names? Welcome to my childhood.

So when that feminist told me I had "white privilege," I told her that my white skin didn't do [s***] (edit: Clem) to prevent me from experiencing poverty. Then, like any good, educated feminist would, she directed me to Peggy McIntosh's 1988 now-famous piece, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."

After one reads McIntosh's powerful essay, it's impossible to deny that being born with white skin in America affords people certain unearned privileges in life that people of another skin color simple are not afforded. For example:

"I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."
"When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."
"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."
"I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time."
If you read through the rest of the list, you can see how white people and people of color experience the world in two very different ways. BUT LISTEN: This is not said to make white people feel guilty about their privilege. It's not your fault you were born with white skin and experience these privileges. BUT, whether you realize it or not, you DO benefit from it, and it IS your fault if you don't maintain awareness of that fact.

I do understand McIntosh's essay may rub some people the wrong way. There are several points on the list that I felt spoke more to the author's status as a Middle Class person than a White Person. For example:

"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."
"I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me."
"I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed."
"If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege."
And there are so many more points in the essay where the word "race" could be substituted for the word "class" which would ultimately paint a very different picture. That is why I had such a hard time identifying with this essay for so long. When I first wrote about White Privilege years ago, I demanded to know why this White Woman felt that my experiences were the same as hers when no, my family most certainly could not rent housing "in an area which we could afford and want to live."

And no, I couldn't go shopping without fear in our low income neighborhoods.

The idea that any ol' white person can find a publisher for a piece is most certainly a symptom of class privilege. Having come from a family of people who didn't even graduate high school, who knew not a single academic or intellectual person, it would never occur to me to assume that I could be published. It is an absolute freak anomaly that I'm in graduate school considering not one person on either side of my family has a college degree. And it took me until my thirties to ever believe that someone from my stock could achieve such a thing. Poverty colors nearly everything about your perspective on opportunities for advancement in life. Middle class, educated people assume that anyone can achieve their goals if they work hard enough. Folks steeped in poverty rarely see a life past working at the gas station, making the rent on their trailer, and self-medicating with cigarettes and prescription drugs until they die of a heart attack. (I've just described one whole side of my family and the life I assumed I'd be living before I lucked out of it.)

I, maybe more than most people, can completely understand why broke white folks get pissed when the word "Privilege" is thrown around. As a child, I was constantly discriminated against because of my poverty and those wounds still run very deep. But luckily my college education introduced me to a more nuanced concept of Privilege; the term Intersectionality. The concept of Intersectionality recognizes that people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not privileged in others. There are many different types of privilege, not just skin color privilege, that impact the way people can move through the world or are discriminated against. These are all things you are born into, not things you earned, that afford you opportunities others may not have. For example:

Citizenship - Simply being born in this country affords you certain privileges non-citizens will never access.
Class - Being born into a financially stable family can help guarantee your health, happiness, safety, education, intelligence, and future opportunities.
Sexual Orientation - By being born straight, every state in this country affords you privileges that non-straight folks have to fight the Supreme Court for.
Sex - By being born male, you can assume that you can walk through a parking garage without worrying you'll be raped and that a defense attorney will then blame it on what you were wearing.
Ability - By being born able bodied, you probably don't have to plan your life around handicap access, braille, or other special needs.
Gender - By being born cisgendered, you aren't worried that the restroom or locker room you use will invoke public outrage.
As you can see, belonging to one or more category of Privilege, especially being a Straight White Middle Class Able-Bodied Male, can be like winning a lottery you didn't even know you were playing. But this is not to imply that any form of privilege is exactly the same as another or that people lacking in one area of privilege understand what it's like to be lacking in other areas. Race discrimination is not equal to Sex Discrimination and so forth.
And listen, recognizing Privilege doesn't mean suffering guilt or shame for your lot in life. Nobody's saying that Straight White Middle Class Able-Bodied Males are all a bunch of assholes who don't work hard for what they have. Recognizing Privilege simply means being aware that some people have to work much harder just to experience the things you take for granted (if they ever can experience them at all.)

I know now that I AM Privileged in many ways. I am Privileged as a natural born white citizen. I am privileged as a cis-gendered woman. I am privileged as an able-bodied person. I am privileged that my first language is also our national language, and that I was born with an intellect and ambition that pulled me out of the poverty I was otherwise destined for. I was privileged to be able to marry my way "up" by partnering with a Privileged middle-class educated male who fully expected me to earn a college degree.

There are a million ways I experience Privilege, and some that I certainly don't. But thankfully, Intersectionality allows us to examine these varying dimensions and degrees of discrimination while raising awareness of the results of multiple systems of oppression at work.

Tell me, are you a White Person made uncomfortable by the term "White Privilege?" Does a more nuanced approach help you see your own Privilege more clearly?

What an absolute load of twaddle.

I kind of figured that you'd not be swayed by it. It's why I placed the "j/c" at the beginning of the post.

Some messages get through, some get lost. Depends on the message, the messenger, and the audience.

Crap shoot.

I have White Privilege and I like it so much I passed it onto
my Children too.

[insert wry chuckle here]


I get it, 40... but to be honest, it's also kinda built into the system for ya.

And there's a takeaway here that I think many folks aren't seeing: the term "White Privilege" isn't a statement about an individual's accomplishments or lack thereof- it's a description of a social construct that is based upon systemic inequity.

One of our other posters here described quite accurately the concept of "building up from Ground Zero." It's Step One of the American Dream, no doubt. Now consider for a moment, the person who begins his quest from a 20-30 ft hole in the ground. Person A my start with nothing, but he still has an advantage over Person B. It's not his fault that the playing field is slanted... he's just playing his game like everyone else. It doesn't make him a bad person. It doesn't make him a bigot, a racist, a White supremacist or a demon.

At the same time, those who have lived outside the prevailing culture know from their own experiences and from the experiences of their forebears that THE SYSTEM may not have rewarded 'Person A' like J. Paul Getty or John D. Rockefeller, but that it HAS had mechanisms in place that impeded the growth potential of those it deemed "The Other."

They've seen it every day of their lives... in ways that are all but invisible to those who are NOT "The Other." It's one of the central reasons why phrases like "There are two Americas" only ring true to those who have lived in "America #2." Folks whose heritage is aligned with "America #1" simply cannot see it, even if they individually haven't risen to the top of the socioeconomic food chain. In fact, I believe that it rings hollow to them precisely BECAUSE they haven't risen to the top. The message is lost on them, because of one very important difference:

They've always had the luxury of considering themselves individuals- because for the most part, they've been treated that way by society. By contrast, American B has been required to carve out his individual identity with the added weight of carrying his "otherness" along for the ride. That 'weight' manifests itself in a million different ways:

Difference in education quality
Difference in employment opportunities
Difference in ability to accumulate wealth for his progeny
Difference in ability to buy a home in a neighborhood that will appreciate in value (redlining, etc) [see #3]
Difference in ability to get a loan from the bank [see #3]
Last hired/first fired

The list goes on and on and on. And it's still invisible to those who aren't confronted with it every day.

Every. Single. Day.
No days off. No weekends off. No vacations from Reality.
Ever.

______________________

The most important responsibility a parent has is to equip their children with the tools necessary to become successful adults. In the homes of responsible Black parents, two of those tools are both called "The Talk." The one most discussed on these boards is the step-by-step protocol Fathers teach their sons to follow when dealing with the constabulary. It's a necessary survival tool that every young man of color NEEDS to know, because of the realities of life in America. The other "talk" usually occurs as the child begins going to school, and is repeated like a household mantra throughout their 'Wonder Years.' My Momz was the one to chant it to me, ad nauseum:

"Bobby- in this world, you'll have to work twice as hard, be twice as smart, twice as tough, and twice as careful as [insert name of White childhood friend here] to be considered HALF as worthy. If you want to do better than half, you'll have to do even more. It's not right, it's not fair- but that's how it IS."

40... these parents are not trying to set their kids up to be militant Black Panthers, or to 'poison their minds' about the evils of The White Devil. They are doing the only responsible thing they can to help their children begin their adult journeys from a hole that's perhaps only 5 or 10 ft. deep, instead of the 20-30 ft maw their parents began to climb out of.

IMHO, the term "White Privilege/Advantage" is a misnomer. A euphemism. It's too polite... too 'PC,' if you will- for what's really the case. I believe it should be called exactly what it is:

Systemic Repression.

And no one individual is fully at fault. It's just a feature of the way America built herself since the late 1600's.

There are people I know who flat-out reject what I'm saying because it simply doesn't fit with their already-established world view. That rejection doesn't make my life, my experiences, my reality any less true or any less based in experiential FACT. It just means that they aren't trying to hear what I'm saying. It doesn't make me angry or frustrated (usually). I don't consider them to be enemies or bad/insensitive people. It just means that I haven't yet come up with the right combination of words to help them see/hear the sincerity with which I approach this very important issue.

As long as this tilted system remains in place, I will continue to address it... with candor, with sincerity, with passion... and with respect to those whom I'm trying to reach. I do it because I can still envision a better America than the one we presently have. And because I love this country which has given ME the opportunity to achieve my life's dreams, it's the least I can do for other Americans less fortunate than I.

.02

(Sorry to make your eyes bleed with one this long, but I've been holding back for awhile now-)

Meh. It's the equivalent of black people saying "life sucks".

Guess what...life sucks for white people as well.

The main difference is that black people blame white people for life sucking.
It's always convienent to have a scapegoat.

I just want you to know I read your entire post and now must
absorb it, think about it, and kick it around before I utterly reject it.

or perhaps not.

Oh, come on Eve. You know how great it is to be in the majority. We are totally privileged. I mean, look how many women are in power. Look at how much money women make. Look at how many women have been President of the United States.. Oh, wait.........

damn it's like that?

maybe they shouldn't have made gays have equal rights at all then.

those silly lesbians, with their "equal treatment" and all that.

Absolutely no clue what your post was trying to convey.....

White women are used as the gold standard for modern day feminism. The stat that women are paid 77 cents to every dollar a male makes is based on the income inequality that white women face. Women of color are not paid 77 cents per dollar, but less than that. So even while being in a marginalized group, you still benefit from being white. However, I would like to say that you are still part of being in a marginalized group and "better off" doesn't mean "equal".

I thank you for at least considering it.
It's all I ever really wanted for/from my submission.



If that be the case, then my time was worth it, on any level.

What in the bejebus are all you redneck, potato eating, burrito munching, watermelon eating, slant eyed, towel headed wearing, burrheaded, camel jocky, crackers talking about?

Like I said: "Two Americas." I should have mentioned that this concept extends beyond just race. You have your own personal reasons to question the status quo- and you'd have my support if you decided to press the issue of equality for your own reasons.

In many ways, my fight is YOUR fight.

I have decided you are right about White Privilege.
To me it is something that developed over time and was
not a plan. More of a natural development.

look, something like that isn't really something to be offended over, just FYI.

If i lived in China, chinese people would get treated better by other chinese than foreigners, in general.

same with anywhere else.

Hell, while in Germany, americans always looked out after other americans, because when it came to soldiers, we weren't exactly liked by the local population.

What people are trying to say is that if you took a step outside the bubble, and looked at it from somebody else's POV, it's there.

No!

There is no excuse for Racism and Privilege, we have come
along far enough as a people to know this now.

I am still waiting for someone to answer my question, why do whites who went to jail have a better chance for getting a call back from a job then blacks with no criminal history?

Erik?
Pit?
Eve?

Maybe "White opportunity" would be a better term than "white privilege" ?

Although I think any term that creates a division is counter-productive to a solution.

The answer is pretty obvious, It's Experience.

Every manager I know, be they White, Asian, Indian, or Hispanic has their own "I hired a Black person" horror story.

Do you have proof of that, or just more anecdotal theories?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915472/

Funny. You're quite the one to use anecdotal evidence. In fact, I don't think you've ever posted anything other than anecdotes. Now you're going to start criticizing them? Fair enough.

you know he's just call the article crap. say something like "lol @ the source" or "more liberal bias".

something like that.

You are correct, I was talking to a buddy of mine and he basically said that as soon as the word "white privilege" its used its a road block and people get defensive like they are being attacked. Just like swish said, people are NOT bad people because they have privilege, its not like white privilege is the same as calling someone a bigot.


eve said



Her statement is the problem with privilege. In this specific instance regarding this study, blacks with no criminal record do have a reason why life sucks for them its because they are not getting the jobs that white criminals were getting. With no jobs, how do they support their family? The white criminals are benefiting because they are white.....there is no other reason... Now these same blacks with no jobs would be more inclined to committing crimes because they must support their family.

Don't use the job experience as an excuse because this has been going on for a very long time (50+ years) across multiple industries and the article that CHSdawg posted specifically said entry-level jobs. (I had another scholarly article to post but he beat me to the punch)

Again I am not attacking anyone just stating data, you are not a bad person because you have a privilege, everyone needs to be aware of it and hopefully they will want help fix the problem.

did you see 40's? "black hiring" statement?

wowzers.

40 is a troll, i don't take him seriously lol. I have more issues with the fact that no one calls him out on his bs.


If I say a comment like that everyone would be down my throat.

I think one day I will just throw a troll comment and see what happens.