The Best Explanation of White Privilege?

[xbuzzerx]

Correction.

You're never going to have someone inform you that your housing value went down because too many white people moved into your neighborhood, Bankside.

 

[bankside]

Actually you're off on some separate discussion with yourself about anally tracing whether or not people directly are connected to someone who owned slaves or whatever else.

I've given you multiple examples of how white privilege in white socities goes way beyond that and you're just sitting there saying "no one can bring anything to my points." As far as I'm concerned your point is a semantic one, you're saying white privilege doesn't exist, only racism does. THe fact that racism exists in white societies in such a way that nonwhites experience it in many ways and degrees whites never will is precisely what the term white privilege means.

No; yours is not the only definition of "white privilege" I've had to rebut in this thread. Other posters have said it has something to do with slavery benefiting white people. I've rebutted it.

And by dismissing my point as "semantic" you are conceding the point but saying it is irrelevant. It isn't irrelevant. A privilege is a perk or an undue reward. The ability to live freely in civil society is not a perk or an undue reward. To call it that is very dangerous; rights get recognised but privileges are subject to debate. "Privilege" is a very loaded word, and if you've not studied soviet propaganda, or rwandan radio transmissions in the 1990s, or indeed anything from any struggle or any war ever in history, then you would probably think that words don't matter.

And since we're not even arguing that racism is really real, why reduce it to a term that will alienate the vast majority of the population with a reasonable suspicion that instead of fighting racism and guaranteeing all a place in an equal world, they are instead the targets of malign suspicion.

 

[Rolyo85]

Any benefit from slavery was burned up in the Civil War, and more than compensated by the subsequent welfare, crime, affirmative action, food stamps, housing, child care, scholarships, etc, etc.
African Americans do have a legitimate complaint about the flood of immigrants pushing them aside. But the slavery card is about milked dry. No one alive or his parents have ever been a slave or owned one. Not sure if there are any grand children of slaves living. Three of my great grand fathers and six of their brothers fought to end slavery but none of our family ever owned one. 400,000 norther soldiers died to end it.
Attempts to make living Americans feel guilt or debt to African Americans falls on deaf ears for good reason.

Did you seriously just say color minorities have no other problem in society, except for immigrants?

Do you realize the blatant unmasked racism of that statement?! You're literally saying that black people are only good for low level jobs, since those are the ones immigrants normally do...

You're so getting reported on this one...

 

[xbuzzerx]

And by dismissing my point as "semantic" you are conceding the point but saying it is irrelevant. It isn't irrelevant. A privilege is a perk or an undue reward. The ability to live freely in civil society is not a perk or an undue reward.

That's precisely what the ability to get up in the morning and say "I have decided I'm not going to think about race/my race today", or "I'm not going to be racially profiled today", or any other example, is. An undue perk. People who can get up and say those things are white. They're not brown or black people who've just behaved very well and earned it.

You are simply spinning that around and saying "it's everyone's right not to be treated in a prejudicial manner", but so what? We're still talking about a right that is only fully observed for whites and less so for everyone else. That's what the term white privilege refers to.

And yes, you're playing semantic games to disavow the term because you don't like it. You consistently take this slant on every topic that hints at the advantageous position white people hold in our society.

 

[Rolyo85]

No; yours is not the only definition of "white privilege" I've had to rebut in this thread. Other posters have said it has something to do with slavery benefiting white people. I've rebutted it.

And by dismissing my point as "semantic" you are conceding the point but saying it is irrelevant. It isn't irrelevant. A privilege is a perk or an undue reward. The ability to live freely in civil society is not a perk or an undue reward. To call it that is very dangerous; rights get recognised but privileges are subject to debate. "Privilege" is a very loaded word, and if you've not studied soviet propaganda, or rwandan radio transmissions in the 1990s, or indeed anything from any struggle or any war ever in history, then you would probably think that words don't matter.

And since we're not even arguing that racism is really real, why reduce it to a term that will alienate the vast majority of the population with a reasonable suspicion that instead of fighting racism and guaranteeing all a place in an equal world, they are instead the targets of malign suspicion.

1. You've rebutted nothing. Just so we're clear, since you kinda just throw it out there as of its a fact.

2. Having advantages over others in a supposedly equal situation (job application, scholarship... pretty much anything really) IS a privilege. Having rights is of course a default, but white privilege isn't about your rights, it's about the nuances of how much better they're respected when it's about white people. Even when they aren't necessarily ignored or trampled for blacks.

For example, when you have a lot higher chance of getting chosen for a promotion, how can the black guy claim his rights have been trampled? They weren't. He just wasn't picked. And with equal qualities to yours, he is way less likely to be.

Is that not a privilege you're having?

 

[Rolyo85]

That's precisely what the ability to get up in the morning and say "I have decided I'm not going to think about race/my race today", or "I'm not going to be racially profiled today", or any other example, is. An undue perk. People who can get up and say those things are white. They're not brown or black people who've just behaved very well and earned it.

You are simply spinning that around and saying "it's everyone's right not to be treated in a prejudicial manner", but so what? We're still talking about a right that is only fully observed for whites and less so for everyone else. That's what the term white privilege refers to.

And yes, you're playing semantic games to disavow the term because you don't like it. You consistently take this slant on every topic that hints at the advantageous position white people hold in our society.

Word.

 

[bankside]

That's precisely what the ability to get up in the morning and say "I have decided I'm not going to think about race/my race today", or "I'm not going to be racially profiled today", or any other example, is. An undue perk. People who can get up and say those things are white. They're not brown or black people who've just behaved very well and earned it.

You've just given away your idea of equality: a world where brown or black people behave well and earn the right not to be racially profiled. It is a repugnant idea. Brown or black people are born with the right not to be racially profiled. They have nothing more to earn before exercising that right. That's how rights work! Any time someone interferes with that right, it is racism, and it should be stopped. But white people didn't get a magic perk that day just because a racist cop didn't pull them over. They got their due.

The words don't matter to you because you are still arguing on the basis of a fundamental concept of equality that is totally wrong. Except the words do matter to you, because you are still arguing on the basis of a fundamental concept of equality that is totally wrong.

You are simply spinning that around and saying "it's everyone's right not to be treated in a prejudicial manner", but so what? We're still talking about a right that is only fully observed for whites and less so for everyone else. That's what the term white privilege refers to.

And yes, you're playing semantic games to disavow the term because you don't like it. You consistently take this slant on every topic that hints at the advantageous position white people hold in our society.

No one will ever fully exercise their equal rights, ever, if they think that my exercise of those rights is an unjustified perk. I don't like the term because it will never lead to equality.

 

[DigitalFudge]

Any benefit from slavery was burned up in the Civil War, and more than compensated by the subsequent welfare, crime, affirmative action, food stamps, housing, child care, scholarships, etc, etc.
African Americans do have a legitimate complaint about the flood of immigrants pushing them aside. But the slavery card is about milked dry. No one alive or his parents have ever been a slave or owned one. Not sure if there are any grand children of slaves living. Three of my great grand fathers and six of their brothers fought to end slavery but none of our family ever owned one. 400,000 norther soldiers died to end it.
Attempts to make living Americans feel guilt or debt to African Americans falls on deaf ears for good reason.

I would report this if I knew how to.

 

[Rolyo85]

You've just given away your idea of equality: a world where brown or black people behave well and earn the right not to be racially profiled. It is a repugnant idea. Brown or black people are born with the right not to be racially profiled. They have nothing more to earn before exercising that right. That's how rights work! Any time someone interferes with that right, it is racism, and it should be stopped. But white people didn't get a magic perk that day just because a racist cop didn't pull them over. They got their due.

The words don't matter to you because you are still arguing on the basis of a fundamental concept of equality that is totally wrong. Except the words do matter to you, because you are still arguing on the basis of a fundamental concept of equality that is totally wrong.

No one will ever fully exercise their equal rights, ever, if they think that my exercise of those rights is an unjustified perk. I don't like the term because it will never lead to equality.

You didn't really read his post, did you?

 

[xbuzzerx]

You've just given away your idea of equality: a world where brown or black people behave well and earn the right not to be racially profiled. It is a repugnant idea. Brown or black people are born with the right not to be racially profiled. They have nothing more to earn before exercising that right. That's how rights work! Any time someone interferes with that right, it is racism, and it should be stopped. But white people didn't get a magic perk that day just because a racist cop didn't pull them over. They got their due.

This is utter fiction on your part. Didn't you just mention reading comprehension in the other thread?

The words don't matter to you because you are still arguing on the basis of a fundamental concept of equality that is totally wrong. Except the words do matter to you, because you are still arguing on the basis of a fundamental concept of equality that is totally wrong.

No one will ever fully exercise their equal rights, ever, if they think that my exercise of those rights is an unjustified perk. I don't like the term because it will never lead to equality.

Here's what you don't get, Bankside, and Rolyo already said it: equality is more equal for whites than for others in first world white societies. On paper we all have the same rights. In actual practice things like white flight, police responses to emergency calls, housing values, school funding, racial profiling and a thousand other things break down along racial lines.

It ultimately doesn't matter that you're sitting a pedastal saying "well no what whites get isn't special, it's what everyone regardless of race should be able to get/expect!" when, in reality, only whites get those things, is why the term white privilege exists.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Well... how far back do you go? Slavery existed globally for millenia, from BC times through the AD1800s, in most major civilisations.

Extrapolating thus, we're almost ALL benefiting from slave labour.…

Yes, how far back do you go?

 

[xbuzzerx]

Yes, how far back do you go?

It's not a question of how far back you go, it's a question of how much is the impact of those events still relevant in the present. In Australia, as an example, the issue of land-taking from aboriginals remains relevant because aboriginals today are still legally battling over many of those issues today. Many tribes here have similar issues, the Palestine-Israel conflict is largely similar. Middle class Jews who've been in the U.S. for three generations don't talk about pogroms against them in Russia because it no longer has an impact on their immediate daily reality today. For many minorities that's not the case. Slavery and its immediate aftermath of slavery-in-all-but-name sharecropping resulted in entrenched poverty and broken family issues which are yet to fully rectify even in the 21st century world.

 

[bankside]

You didn't really read his post, did you?

I did, but did he? I read the most foul idea that departs from some finer words in the American contribution to equality "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…."

 

[xbuzzerx]

I did, but did he? I read the most foul idea that departs from some finer words in the American contribution to equality "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…."

You misread on purpose for lack of an argument. There's really no other conclusion I can reach as you utterly put the opposite words into my mouth and claimed I said them.

 

[pat grimshaw]

This guilt-trip you're pushing is OK for some but not for the Middle class Jews.

It all seems like a one-eyed obsessive view to me as an Australian who pays dearly in taxes every single yearl over and over for the small pox that killed natives back in 1789.


http://blogs.news.com.au/dailyteleg...com.au/2011/06/19/the-cost-of-sit-down-money/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-07/20111107-cdep/3650560
http://aliceonline.com.au/2011/06/19/the-cost-of-sit-down-money/

 

[xbuzzerx]

^ So how come this guilt-trip you're pushing is OK for some but not for Middle class Jews?

I didn't say it wasn't okay for middle class Jews, and in fact we probably hear more via movies and pop culture about the holocaust than we do about any other catastrophic event in human history, and have multiple museums devoted solely towards that topic. I said that if you don't hear them talking about pogroms in Russia 90 years ago, it's because it no longer has any relevant impact on their life today. Which is not the same when you're talking about the impacts of slavery or the impacts of Native extermination and land grabbing.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Queen Tina Turner came here to make Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome back in in 1985.

She visited the northern towns. She knew about the "sit-down money scandal" (see earlier post) and all the rorting* and she told the locals—

You're getting SO much money paid to you each fortnight. and You can choose to be a winner or you can choose to be a loser.


Little has changed since then.




* there are continuous troubles over the generous subsidies paid to the northern settlements. One housing scheme spent more on administration than houses. The cost per house worked out to be almost $900,000 each!

 

[xbuzzerx]

Blah blah yes aboriginals in Australia are just filthy rich and millionaires from money and valuable property being handed to them, I'm sure stats will bear that out.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Blah blah …

Blah blah indeed! You two university debaters ignore everything which doesn't align with your one-eyed obsessive theoretical ideology of Universal and Eternal Guilt.

And by the way, Marx was good in the 19th century but not so relevant in the 21st where most states now are welfare states.

 

[Centexfarmer]

Any benefit from slavery was burned up in the Civil War, and more than compensated by the subsequent welfare, crime, affirmative action, food stamps, housing, child care, scholarships, etc, etc.
African Americans do have a legitimate complaint about the flood of immigrants pushing them aside. But the slavery card is about milked dry. No one alive or his parents have ever been a slave or owned one. Not sure if there are any grand children of slaves living. Three of my great grand fathers and six of their brothers fought to end slavery but none of our family ever owned one. 400,000 norther soldiers died to end it.
Attempts to make living Americans feel guilt or debt to African Americans falls on deaf ears for good reason.

So this Texan, who's ancestors fought and died for the Confederacy, and who can trace his family's heritage back to Jamestown, Virginia (Pre-American Revolution), and who's ancestors were shot in the back and burned, and buried in a mass grave at General Santa Anna's orders at the Battle of Goliad, should blame some one of a different color than me and "pretend like" we don't all share the same history?

THANK YOU SO MUCH for illustrating the ignorance that Corporate Media, from Fox News to MSNBC has perpetuated against the American Populace/Electorate.

The Reality?

Republicans want immigrants (especially illegals) as an excuse to keep wages for the working class low (including minimum wage), and the Democrats (Liberals) want to show themselves as sympathetic to the persecution waged upon them by Republicans/Conservatives...primarily for votes.

Meanwhile back in your email inbox, and your Facebook Notifications, we're bombarded everyday with which group to blame, and who's getting more than their fair share without paying anything.

WHILE COMPLETELY distracting us from the fact that our Media (Liberal or otherwise) are bought, paid for, and owned by CORPORATIONS.

The only "Privilege" is what is given by those who control the "information" and the venue in which to distribute that information.

Those who "buy" into it, and then post in message boards the paradigms that continues that perpetuation either can't think for themselves, won't think for themselves, or are nothing more than Internet Trolls who like to stir the pot.

Which are you in your own estimation?