The Best Explanation of White Privilege?

[Rolyo85]

Yes, your thread.

Incidentally that comic does still not apply to many white Americans , who had to do it all themselves and never had any black slaves or even servants.

That's actually incorrect, since whatever position the white Americans were born into, if they were born in America, it IS the result of slave labor.

I don't like it when some people here cry racism for bullshit, but historic revisionism is not sexy.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

That's actually incorrect, since whatever position the white Americans were born into, if they were born in America, it IS the result of slave labor.

What you are saying doesn't make sense at all and what you mean is probably incorrect.

This idea that every single white American who was born in the US is somehow responsible for slavery in any real way is laughable.

 

[xbuzzerx]

it doesn't upset me I just think race is a waste of time and stupid

and if we as a society want to move on we just have to stop seeing people color

The concept of waking up and "not thinking/talking about race at all today" is part of white privilege.

You think nonwhite people can just not think about it or have it come up everyday just by sheer willpower?

- - - Updated - - -

What you are saying doesn't make sense at all and what you mean is probably incorrect.

This idea that every single white American who was born in the US is somehow responsible for slavery in any real way is laughable.

Responsible for, no, an indirect beneficiary of, yes. Same with Native land-taking.

 

[pat grimshaw]

That's actually incorrect, since whatever position the white Americans were born into, if they were born in America, it IS the result of slave labor.

I don't like it when some people here cry racism for bullshit, but historic revisionism is not sexy.

So does that theory of yours apply in reverse?

You are responsible for all this.

Sex slavery plagues Romania and Bulgaria
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/0...t-him-on-the-steps-of-a-bulgarian-courthouse/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2006/...ndidates-trafficking-dc-idUKEIC87273820061228

 

[DigitalFudge]

DigitalFudge....You've created an interesting thread that should be easier for you to shed a Light on than any other person on this site.....You have disclosed in this forum that you are Biracial and you were raised by your White & Black Parents. YOU are the only person in this thread that grew up relating to BOTH Cultures. You SHOULD be informing US not the other way around. The rest of the Guys in this thread were not raised by Interracial Parents...

Have you discussed issues about White privilege with your White parent and if so what response did you get?

Your thread is VERY personal to White Jubers and you owe it to us to tell us your experience since you were raised by a White Parent. I'm surprised you havent said a single word about your own experience...

I don't have a white parent, can you show me some receipts as to where I said that? I must have been on something.

I'm not breaking down my lineage but both my parents are mixed, Mom's father is from Ireland, Dad's mother is Native American.


However both of them have a parent that is 100% black which in America makes them black. To America, the census, the general public, I have two black parents. I am black. Neither of them were afforded white privilege. I think you know that.



Now lets not derail too much here.

Yes, your thread.

Incidentally that comic does still not apply to many white Americans , who had to do it all themselves and never had any black slaves or even servants.

I can't even.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Responsible for, no, an indirect beneficiary of, yes. Same with Native land-taking.

The native land-taking is obvious, because those lands still belong to the nation, but what does any Amish family from New England have to do with privately owned slaves on a plantation in Mississippi?

What does a Polish-Jewish family who fled to America in the forties have to do with what happened on a farmhouse in Georgia during the American Civil War?

How much did either family benefit?

 

[xbuzzerx]

The native land-taking is obvious, because those lands still belong to the nation, but what does any Amish family from New England have to do with privately owned slaves on a plantation in Mississippi?

What does a Polish-Jewish family who fled to America in the forties have to do with what happened on a farmhouse in Georgia during the American Civil War?

How much did either family benefit?

Substantially considering an enormous swath of the U.S. economy was dependant upon slave labor for centuries.

 

[refujiunderground]

So does that theory of yours apply in reverse?

You are responsible for all this.

Sex slavery plagues Romania and Bulgaria
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/0...t-him-on-the-steps-of-a-bulgarian-courthouse/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2006/...ndidates-trafficking-dc-idUKEIC87273820061228

@ the video. oh lawd. he's lucky they didn't kill his ass.

 

[pat grimshaw]

@ the video. oh lawd.

Those Bulgarians fight dirty.

The guy at 1.55 wants to commit the worst punishment that peasants can do— sodomising him the same way they did to Gaddafi when they captured him.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Those Bulgarians fight dirty.

Course, what it has to do with the topic is anyone's guess.

 

[pat grimshaw]

^ How come the theory propounded in post #64 for rich Americans doesn't apply for the non-rich Bulgarians?

 

[bankside]

That's actually incorrect, since whatever position the white Americans were born into, if they were born in America, it IS the result of slave labor.

I don't like it when some people here cry racism for bullshit, but historic revisionism is not sexy.

It's ridiculous to think that most white people have a stack of slave labour shares handed down to them from their ancestors that they can cash in when they don't feel like making an effort.

The whole point of this thread is to show how middle class people are completely fucked over by the income distribution at the top of the scale.
The whole point of "white privilege" is to make a bunch of middle class white people feel as though they are getting a sweet deal out of life, when the reality is that most people are struggling regardless of race. That's why it's counterproductive.

Pretending an inequality problem is really a race problem as American progressives do, is just a way to alienate the same people whose input is necessary to fix it.

I get the impression a bunch of people think that all white people live like Donald Trump. It's just bad politics, and the "privilege" whine will never solve racism.

 

[pat grimshaw]

** Roly hasn't yet told us if his blanket generalised national guilt program work in reverse**

 

[Rolyo85]

The native land-taking is obvious, because those lands still belong to the nation, but what does any Amish family from New England have to do with privately owned slaves on a plantation in Mississippi?

What does a Polish-Jewish family who fled to America in the forties have to do with what happened on a farmhouse in Georgia during the American Civil War?

How much did either family benefit?

The Polish-Jewish family has nothing to do with slaves, but the position they were allowed by the society in which they settled, was based on racial dynamics, which in the US are based on a history of slavery. Thus, their American-born children are born into white privilege.

 

[xbuzzerx]

It's ridiculous to think that most white people have a stack of slave labour shares handed down to them from their ancestors that they can cash in when they don't feel like making an effort.

The whole point of this thread is to show how middle class people are completely fucked over by the income distribution at the top of the scale.
The whole point of "white privilege" is to make a bunch of middle class white people feel as though they are getting a sweet deal out of life, when the reality is that most people are struggling regardless of race. That's why it's counterproductive.

Pretending an inequality problem is really a race problem as American progressives do, is just a way to alienate the same people whose input is necessary to fix it.

I get the impression a bunch of people think that all white people live like Donald Trump. It's just bad politics, and the "privilege" whine will never solve racism.

You're really dense on this topic, bankside. No one said any such thing. But let's get real. The degree to which little things like oh I dunno the entire American textile industry (remember "cotton is king?"-- oh wait, aren't you Canadian?) were predicated on slave labor, not to mention the example of Native American land and the fact that any cent made in these continents makes one a beneficiary of that legacy, really makes this "oh white people never benefitted in any way, however indirectly, from these historical events" specious.

No, you don't need to live like Donald Trump to have indirectly benefitted, or for your family to have done so, in ways that might not be readily apparent.

In simplest form, this is like saying "no.... no person in the first world benefits from cheap manufacturing labor in the third world." Even if you don't personally shop at Wal*Mart or wherever else, or avoid products made in Mexico or China, you subsist in an economy which is largely driven by these things.

 

[xbuzzerx]

** Roly hasn't yet told us if his blanket generalised national guilt program work in reverse**

Let's ask George Bernard Shaw what he thinks.

 

[refujiunderground]

Those Bulgarians fight dirty.

The guy at 1.55 wants to commit the worst punishment that peasants can do— sodomising him the same way they did to Gaddafi when they captured him.

just went to the 1:55 mark and there it is. that security guard was about to fucking rip his pants open and the crowd in the background yelling out something. looking like a prison rape scene straight out of oz. that guy just about to just submit.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Yes. As soon as the "revolutionaries" got Gaddafi they sodomised him with a metal bar. You can find it on video.

That's what peasant men do to each other.

 

[bankside]

The Polish-Jewish family has nothing to do with slaves, but the position they were allowed by the society in which they settled, was based on racial dynamics, which in the US are based on a history of slavery. Thus, their American-born children are born into white privilege.

You're really dense on this topic, bankside. No one said any such thing. But let's get real. The degree to which little things like oh I dunno the entire American textile industry (remember "cotton is king?"-- oh wait, aren't you Canadian?) were predicated on slave labor, not to mention the example of Native American land and the fact that any cent made in these continents makes one a beneficiary of that legacy, really makes this "oh white people never benefitted in any way, however indirectly, from these historical events" specious.

No, you don't need to live like Donald Trump to have indirectly benefitted, or for your family to have done so, in ways that might not be readily apparent.

In simplest form, this is like saying "no.... no person in the first world benefits from cheap manufacturing labor in the third world." Even if you don't personally shop at Wal*Mart or wherever else, or avoid products made in Mexico or China, you subsist in an economy which is largely driven by these things.

xbuxxerx, i think the word you're looking for is solid, not dense.

No one doubts that the US economy was at one point based on slavery, for which many of the world's most cruel and undignified criminals escaped unpunished and unaccountable. In terms of its economic effects, you can even reasonably argue that old American institutions are nicer than they would have otherwise been if they actually had to pay free people to build them. The Capitol would not have been as fine a gem. The east coast ports would not have been as serviceable. The refined heritage architecture of the southeast would have been less spectacular. Grand Central Station would have been more plain. Fortunes that endowed libraries, concert halls, and scholarships would have been impoverished, all if not for the barbaric practice of treating people as disposable capital inputs.

Let's say there is for the sake of argument, after averaging things out over the centuries, twenty years adjusted to the present day of Total GDP economic output paid for in the blood of free humans treated as slaves. Even then it does not show that any particular white person benefits from this fantasy of white privilege. If it gives a dividend at all it is to the country as a whole: black, white, asian, native, gay, straight, male, female. Anyone can use Grand Central, anyone can attend the Capitol, anyone can open a business on an east coast port. And to the extent that opportunity is not available equally to modern Americans, it is because of a specific act of racism or sexism or homophobia toward someone, on the part of someone who should be held accountable for that act. But an entire segment of society cannot be accountable based on the accident of their skin colour at birth; that's just ridiculous. And more to the point, the math just doesn't work out: just because some white person was (or is) unfairly advantaged simply does not mean it is a general condition applying to white people (it's the Fallacy of False Composition). Particularly when the majority of white people are also being fucked over by economic inequality.

To expect white people to do something about racism is absolutely fair, as we must expect all people to fight it. But to expect white people to do something about this illusory white privilege is to ask another drowning man to hold still so you can climb out of the water on his shoulders. It's laughable, and it just will never work.

 

[Rolyo85]

You are both right, and not. I mean, yes, people shouldn't be "accountable" for specific acts of racism, but white privilege isn't specific acts. Yes, opportunities are supposedly equal, but even so there are a million subtle ways in which skin color still means a certain social status - if not always, then most of the time. It's not about being accountable - nobody can help being born white, nor should they feel guilty about it. But we should be aware of the fact that being white makes life easier and opens more opportunities to us. And we can do whatever we want with that awareness. But ignoring it or making up reasons for why what's clearly there doesn't actually exist, is just wrong.