the playing field isn't level yet- white households headed by a high school drop out 3x wealthier than black households headed by a college grad

[KaraBulut]

What do you take from that fact? What kind of policy or legal change should it lead to and on what grounds should we advocate for it? Would anything be different as far as the solutions we might adopt if 12.5 million people in those shoes were all white? All black?

Payday lenders depend on people who literally live from paycheck to paycheck. Sure, there are people who have an unplanned expense and need a payday loan to make rent or other recurring bill. What happens with a lot of people who are using payday loans is that the loans are eating up a portion of their paycheck and it becomes a cycle of getting loans paycheck after paycheck.

It's one thing to get a loan because your kid is sick or your car needs to be repaired or because of some unexpected expense. It's another thing altogether to get a loan from one creditor to pay another creditor.

Some of the CFPB's rules around payday lenders talk about things like "loans with interest rates exceeding 36%". That's a big clue about what needs to change: usury shouldn't be legal. In some states, the lenders are charging what would equate to a rate of 600% per year for a 2 week unsecured loan. These loans should be made through a regulated bank with interest rates comparable to credit cards and they should be longer term loans.

The CFPB rules made a lot of progress is simplifying the language in credit contracts; a lot of lower-income people sign debt contracts without really understanding what they're getting into. Organizations like churches would be better served in helping teach financial literacy and financial management instead of enabling payday lenders. It's a win-win. If their congregants were better off financially they would be able to contribute more in the form of tithes.

The factor that needs to change is the hardest: what people are spending their money on. It's astonishing how much debt lower-income Americans are carrying; and the sad fact is that they don't have much, in terms of long-term possessions, to show for it. There's a of pressure to get that latest iPhone, to buy that nice car, to buy the latest fashions, to put it all on credit cards. Interest rates are going to be going up, so there will be rewards for those who save money and significant hardship for those who are carrying short-term debt.

The Republicans and the banks have their sights on the CFPB. The CFPB came about because of the 2008 debt crisis that nearly crashed the US economy. Don't vote for Republicans who don't support Fair Credit Practices and the CFPB.

 

[peeonme]

Perhaps one way to begin to correct our thinking about “working-class whites and minority groups” is to recognize what it means to be working-class.

Even then there is a spectrum of working class people, from the working poor to the high pay skilled trades. Percentage wise I have no doubt that the number of minorities is disproportionate to the population when it comes to the working poor.
Generally these low pay jobs offer little to no health care to a work force that has a disproportionate problem with hypertension, diabetes, stoke and heart problems. Which would give account for the reason that there is a disparity in the races when it come to wealth accumulation.

 

[opinterph]

But back to the original (and long-abandoned) subject of this thread:

… The study focuses on changes that were expected after the Black Civil Rights movements of the 1960s

Is that a surprise coincidence? I don’t see any reference to the Civil Rights movement in the report and the data used in the analysis only dates back to 1989. Though Oliver and Shapiro previously concluded that “sedimentation of racial inequality” illustrates the legacy of discrimination that continues to exclude a large portion of blacks from opportunities opened under the Civil Rights laws, there is no similar acknowledgement or discussion in the 2017 report by Meschede, Taylor, Mann, and Shapiro – who is also coauthor of the 1995 book, Black Wealth/White Wealth.

 

[opinterph]

(Somewhat paraphrased)

“Privilege” is more or less divorced from political history, or marketing, or realpolitik, or any other discipline outside bubbles of “queer theory” or “gender studies” or “crit lit”

There is no “white privilege” although there is still some racism.

While you may not appreciate the name that somehow got associated with the concept (i.e. privilege), you seem to acknowledge its basis – so long as you are permitted to call it by a different (and more generic) name.

If people use the term, it seems permissible to find ways to translate the core concept during contemporary communication, rather than first insisting on amending the glossary.

Is white privilege a form of racism or is it just one of the oddities about how things evolved – like red = stop; green = go?

 

[opinterph]

… there is a spectrum of working class people, from the working poor to the high pay skilled trades.

There isn’t an official definition of “working class.”

The Center for American Progress Action Fund sponsored a report last year in which they considered the working class to be “participants in the labor force with less than a four-year college degree.” Yes, it’s a spectrum.

What Everyone Should Know About America’s Diverse Working Class​

 

[bankside]

Payday lenders depend on people who literally live from paycheck to paycheck. Sure, there are people who have an unplanned expense and need a payday loan to make rent or other recurring bill. What happens with a lot of people who are using payday loans is that the loans are eating up a portion of their paycheck and it becomes a cycle of getting loans paycheck after paycheck.

It's one thing to get a loan because your kid is sick or your car needs to be repaired or because of some unexpected expense. It's another thing altogether to get a loan from one creditor to pay another creditor.

Some of the CFPB's rules around payday lenders talk about things like "loans with interest rates exceeding 36%". That's a big clue about what needs to change: usury shouldn't be legal. In some states, the lenders are charging what would equate to a rate of 600% per year for a 2 week unsecured loan. These loans should be made through a regulated bank with interest rates comparable to credit cards and they should be longer term loans.

The CFPB rules made a lot of progress is simplifying the language in credit contracts; a lot of lower-income people sign debt contracts without really understanding what they're getting into. Organizations like churches would be better served in helping teach financial literacy and financial management instead of enabling payday lenders. It's a win-win. If their congregants were better off financially they would be able to contribute more in the form of tithes.

The factor that needs to change is the hardest: what people are spending their money on. It's astonishing how much debt lower-income Americans are carrying; and the sad fact is that they don't have much, in terms of long-term possessions, to show for it. There's a of pressure to get that latest iPhone, to buy that nice car, to buy the latest fashions, to put it all on credit cards. Interest rates are going to be going up, so there will be rewards for those who save money and significant hardship for those who are carrying short-term debt.

The Republicans and the banks have their sights on the CFPB. The CFPB came about because of the 2008 debt crisis that nearly crashed the US economy. Don't vote for Republicans who don't support Fair Credit Practices and the CFPB.

I’m aware of the mechanics of payday loan exploitation. I’m happy to say when we kicked our conservatives out after 40 years in power that was one of the first changes the new government made in Alberta. It’s a very modest change but it is already helping people who struggle, of any colour.

See here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-payday-lenders-suffering-bill-15-1.4114628

What I notice about your recommendations and our new law in Alberta is it isn’t aimed at a particular ethnicity. I don’t think that weakens it as a useful measure. In Alberta this will help a disproportionate number of poor aboriginal families. But it isn’t there to help them because they’re aboriginal. It’s there to help them because they’re poor. In so doing, it helps all albertans victimised by payday loan predatory lending. It helps them equally, regardless of ethnicity.

We have sort of done ethnic-compensation in the past. But have we on examination? Canada has paid compensation to Japanese Canadians held hostage in concentration camps during the Second World War on account of their ancestry. And we’ve paid compensation to aboriginal Canadians who were more or less kidnapped from their families and taken to church-run, state sponsored indoctrination schools, to “kill the Indian within the child” where they would be beaten for speaking the first languages they ever knew, cree, or ojibwe, too risky, and given the involvement of the church they had a bunch of sexual abuse as well as physically, all hushed up over the decades. Compensation made sense because the survivors were still alive, so were many of the perpetrators. And while the victims were specifically victimised because of their ethnicity, even then the compensation was based on victimisation, not the fact that the recipient was of a particular ethnicity. Japanese Canadians had to have been interned or had property confiscated to receive compensation, it wasn’t granted just on account of having a certain family tree. There was a specific wrong to be righted.

The reason I mention this is because any analysis of inequality is useless in a vacuum. It ought to connect with some policy options that might improve equality and allow people to realize their potential unencumbered by injustice. But then the way you analyse things is critical to the options that follow. To show that black people have, statistically, been more likely to suffer, is pretty damn easy. But if the entire analysis revolves around ethnicity, it leads to stupid policy outcomes.

With a racial analysis of inequality, Alberta could have allowed payday loans to do business on the same terms as usual,missing the link. But to improve racial parity, they could have just paid some special development bonus on the basis of ethnicity. Call it compensation. If so, the problem would not have gone away for cree albertans, it would have just been deferred until the money was spent. And not one damn thing would have ever been done for al the other albertans, including white ones, who were fucked over by payday loan racketeers. Ethnicity isn’t enough.

 

[KaraBulut]

Is that a surprise coincidence? I don’t see any reference to the Civil Rights movement in the report and the data used in the analysis only dates back to 1989. Though Oliver and Shapiro previously concluded that “sedimentation of racial inequality” illustrates the legacy of discrimination that continues to exclude a large portion of blacks from opportunities opened under the Civil Rights laws, there is no similar acknowledgement or discussion in the 2017 report by Meschede, Taylor, Mann, and Shapiro – who is also coauthor of the 1995 book, Black Wealth/White Wealth.

It's implicit.

The data from the 2017 paper is based upon a sample. It's true that the data from the sample starts in 1989 but the authors make several references to events that occurred before the start of the study: for example, that several older Black family members weren't eligible for Social Security (why? because the parents were working for employers who weren't paying their SSI, e.g. domestic work, day labor).

There's also an implicit assumption in the study: equal access to higher education. Prior to the civil rights movement, many of these black college graduates would not have had the ability to attend universities, much less attend the same universities as their white counterparts.

 

[bankside]

While you may not appreciate the name that somehow got associated with the concept (i.e. privilege), you seem to acknowledge its basis – so long as you are permitted to call it by a different (and more generic) name.

If people use the term, it seems permissible to find ways to translate the core concept during contemporary communication, rather than first insisting on amending the glossary.

Is white privilege a form of racism or is it just one of the oddities about how things evolved – like red = stop; green = go?

It didn’t “somehow” get associated with the concept, Peggy McIntosh invented it in 1988. Until then, and even for a decade after, when we noticed that someone was unable to use all of their rights, we said they were a victim of racism or a victim of homophobia, or a victim of sexism, and then we said they were entitled to have all their rights respected, and we imposed measures to ensure they could enjoy all the benefits of their equal rights. During that time, opponents of equality tried to invent the term “special rights.” Or they would try to claim we were “special interest groups” who wanted something extra, above and beyond what everybody else wanted. But by keeping the focus on equal rights we defeated those arguments. I watched what happened in Canada play out in the States a decade later. The strategy changed and we redefined the terms of the conversation. We got more consistent about the fight for equal marriage. We stopped using the term “gay marriage” and comedians even made fun of it. “I had lunch, not gay lunch. I parked my car, I didn’t gay park it. The question is not ‘Will you gay marry me?’ It’s will you marry me.” Once again just like the famous “basket of deplorables” subtle semantics can make a huge difference to the outcome of a political fight. I saw US marriage equality activists embrace the same winning strategy at about the same point in our respective histories, and it worked. Talk about rights. Talk about equality.

So anyway, until McIntosh, we knew damn well that morons were standing in the way of the equality and we had names for these people. Homophobes. Racists. Sexists. Anti-Semites. It was clear who the victims were. It was clear who the problems were. It was clear how to fix it. We’ve had a lot of human rights successes from the end of the Second World War to the 90’s, and they were all based on that formula.

Along comes “privilege.” Option 1, it’s a perfect synonym for racism, totally redundant but maybe not actually harmful if you feel like learning a random new word some white lady said on Donahue.

Option 2. It actually means something. Something different from “racism” or “sexism” or “homophobia.” If so is it a good insightful useful word that unfolds from a useful analysis of our circumstances?

I have a fairly strong view on this and what it does to my chances of cementing or sinking the gains in my equality I’ve seen in my lifetime. Or of helping anyone else with theirs. What’s your view?

 

[smokeshadow]

Don't know if this study fits into the OP's original post, but I thought it was interesting: https://www.thenewcivilrightsmoveme...ago-connected-to-death-of-black-people-today/

 

[opinterph]

Peggy McIntosh invented [the concept of white privilege] in 1988. Until then … when we noticed that someone was unable to use all of their rights, we said they were a victim of racism …

People are able to use all their rights, but they must also recognize that Jesus and Santa Claus are both white.

I don’t think Ms. McIntosh’s invention displaced racism as a descriptor. It is a deeper look into things that are hidden under the surface. Her efforts stimulate awareness; which, in turn, encourages us to pay closer attention to the world around us. It is the awareness that some people find uncomfortable.

In terms of prosecuting injustice on the basis of white privilege, I’m not sure that's executable. The privilege may be a symptom of the greater problem of overt racism, but it’s somewhat innocuous – though it exists in plain sight.

"White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and "Some Notes for Facilitators" (The National SEED [Seeking Educational Equity & Diversity] Project; 1989)

White Privilege.

I am curious to know if you think usage of the term in speech and appropriately applying it to describe a given situation is harmful to progress. I note that harm can include distraction from more productive efforts and therefore may bear an opportunity cost.

How would you advise the chief economist of a 12-million member labor organization to correct his lexicon such that the point he’s trying to make would be more honest and effective?

The notion of the white working class implicitly embodies a view of white privilege.

Why Aren't We Talking About Working-Class Americans of Color? (AFL-CIO; November 2016)

 

[TX-Beau]

It didn’t “somehow” get associated with the concept, Peggy McIntosh invented it in 1988. Until then, and even for a decade after, when we noticed that someone was unable to use all of their rights, we said they were a victim of racism or a victim of homophobia, or a victim of sexism, and then we said they were entitled to have all their rights respected, and we imposed measures to ensure they could enjoy all the benefits of their equal rights. During that time, opponents of equality tried to invent the term “special rights.” Or they would try to claim we were “special interest groups” who wanted something extra, above and beyond what everybody else wanted. But by keeping the focus on equal rights we defeated those arguments. I watched what happened in Canada play out in the States a decade later. The strategy changed and we redefined the terms of the conversation. We got more consistent about the fight for equal marriage. We stopped using the term “gay marriage” and comedians even made fun of it. “I had lunch, not gay lunch. I parked my car, I didn’t gay park it. The question is not ‘Will you gay marry me?’ It’s will you marry me.” Once again just like the famous “basket of deplorables” subtle semantics can make a huge difference to the outcome of a political fight. I saw US marriage equality activists embrace the same winning strategy at about the same point in our respective histories, and it worked. Talk about rights. Talk about equality.

So anyway, until McIntosh, we knew damn well that morons were standing in the way of the equality and we had names for these people. Homophobes. Racists. Sexists. Anti-Semites. It was clear who the victims were. It was clear who the problems were. It was clear how to fix it. We’ve had a lot of human rights successes from the end of the Second World War to the 90’s, and they were all based on that formula.

Along comes “privilege.” Option 1, it’s a perfect synonym for racism, totally redundant but maybe not actually harmful if you feel like learning a random new word some white lady said on Donahue.

Option 2. It actually means something. Something different from “racism” or “sexism” or “homophobia.” If so is it a good insightful useful word that unfolds from a useful analysis of our circumstances?

I have a fairly strong view on this and what it does to my chances of cementing or sinking the gains in my equality I’ve seen in my lifetime. Or of helping anyone else with theirs. What’s your view?

Bankside, everyone in the South was aware of the concept of White Privilege long before whoever that is came up with a clinical term. We just called it Jim Crow. Pretending it doesn't exist is a losing proposition. Or perhaps you Canadians are just so sanctified it's impossible for you to understand.

 

[bankside]

Ugh it’s cringe-worthy to read again. Unmitigated nonsense. It’s hard to imagine how to fit more nonsense inside the bounds of a printed page without opening up a wormhole to another dimension or something

When women gain full recognition of their equality, I get more in my backpack. When black people gain the right to drive and be pulled over without undue risk to life and liberty, I gain more invisible assets. We all do, because what she fails to contend with is that equality is not a zero-sum game, and the things on her list are accessible to anyone in an egalitarian society. To construe them as privileges is to take things which are the ordinary expectations of equal citizens and turn them into optional, disposable perks. It is at best a side-show “My bandaid! White Santa!” But not an innocuous side-show. While we debate bandaid variety, people in your country are still denied their due process at traffic stops based on skin colour, and that sounds like a right. Did I hear you say “People are able to use all their rights” already?? That’s why at best, it is also at worst simultaneously: a dangerous distracting sideshow that ignores rights and posits a bunch of disposable privileges. That’s a path to eroding civil liberties for all. They’re “just privileges” after all.

Ugh. That McIntosh has done more to halt the progress people still desperately need than anyone. I sincerely think it appeals to people who enjoy both feeling important enoughand validated by being “privileged” and also magnanimously guilty about it.

 

[opinterph]

Question: Can the “legitimate concerns” of white Americans include a commitment to white racial dominance? …

[SIZE=1][COLOR="#FFFFFF"]reverberation[/COLOR][/SIZE]

… Trump voters also may have reason to feel that something precious is being taken from them. Maybe it behooves today’s Democrats to take those grievances more seriously than they’re inclined to.

The Party of Hubert Humphrey (The Atlantic; James Traub; April 2018)

The other side of the coin:

But focusing on white political conflict … obscures the racial dimensions of white politics, rendering invisible the historic interest—across much of white society—in preserving white racial hegemony.

… [Traub’s] argument depends on not having a sense of the depth of commitment to white racial dominance among many white Americans, a commitment so deep that the decades after the 1960s would see millions of whites abandon cities and other public spaces rather than back or accept integration. To counsel sympathy for this commitment and behavior, as Traub does, is to acquiesce to dynamics of racism that entrench disadvantage, increase inequality, and weaken the movements that aim to ameliorate both.

Democrats Shouldn’t Give in to White Racism (Slate; Jamelle Bouie; April 2018)

 

[opinterph]

a wormhole to another dimension

Did Benvolio’s observations last winter represent “legitimate concerns?”

November 2017:

On Racism and White Privilege (Teaching Tolerance)​

What you are missing is that liberals, academic and political, have developed an ideology that everything whites do is wrong. It is only a matter of deciding which category of wrongness it fits into; if it is not racism, it is white privilege, whiteness, white supremacy or white nationalism. And, they are teaching it in schools and universities. If you think "everything" is an exaggeration, the OP is a writer who thinks mathematics is white privilege because some of it was devised by and named after whites; Another link by opinterph is a [writer] who complains that the shampoo given in hotels is white privilege because it is not black specialty shampoo, and that blacks are oppressed in that their products are together in the store and not spread out; another link …

It is an ideology designed to inflame the minority voters, and justify more limitations on human freedom.

 

[peeonme]

White Privilege: The Perks

White people receive all kinds of perks as a function of their skin privilege.

Consider the following:

When I cut my finger and go to my school or office’s first aid kit, the flesh-colored band-aid generally matches my skin tone.

https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/on-racism-and-white-privilege

Re: the playing field isn't level yet- white households headed by a high school drop out 3x wealthier than black households headed by a college grad

The title of this thread sets up an 'us versus them' dichotomy, an indictment of whites who get 'privilege'. It doesn't question why black families would choose to stay in an inner city where violence, drugs, auto insurance and logistic concerns actually make it more expensive to live there than to move to a suburb. When you look at the numbers auto ins. is much higher in Detroit than in Warren (just across 8 mi. rd.) You pay an extra 'city' income tax to Detroit, major food stores are few and far between so a person either drives 10 miles to shop for food or goes to the corner store that gouges them. The rent might be cheaper in Detroit, but many homes are poorly insulated and are energy inefficient. The cost of heating and cooling negates any savings on rent.
Most schools in the 'burbs turn out better students with higher test scores, the class rooms have fewer student and are better equipped.

So why stay in the 'hood?, the answer is simple really. Who in their right mind wants to live around those who have been type cast as the white privileged, oppressive racist? How prevalent is racism? We don't see cross burning or lynchings. Thank God for that. No, it's subtle, it's the band aids. It's the shampoo and the panty hose. You could call these things 'majority perks', but it doesn't pack the same punch as the 'white' privilege line does.

So, I now know why I did so well as a high school drop out, it wasn't because I studied on my own, by my self to improve my skills. Nope, I am white and my band aid matched my finger.

 

[bankside]

Did Benvolio’s observations last winter represent “legitimate concerns?”

November 2017:

As spectacularly fun as it would be to debate the ghost of benvolio I picked up a few more burrs on my last hike that I need to finish jamming down my urethra.

Ffs.

I’ve read the original McIntosh, the rehash of it from teaching tolerance, and benvolio’s sad attempts to credit good white christian republicans and only good white christian republicans with every noble human endeavour ever undertaken. He is the other side of the identitarian coin.

What benvolio does is cite some sort of crackpot theory from progressiveland to justify what are explicitly racist claims. In the thread you point to he simultaneously ridicules the notion of mathematics being a vector of white supremacy, while explicitly claiming that math as a field is an invention of whites, and implying that they invented it on account of some kind of white superiority.

All of his ideas were racism dressed in a thin layer of bullshit. One way to stop them from taking hold, in the way agitators whip an inattentive and stressed-out public into a mob with falsehoods like that, is for sensible people to discipline their own ranks to stop furnishing the likes of benvolio with crackpot theories from progressiveland. Objectivity is real. Math is not a racist plot. It’s fine to discredit the source or the motivation for sharing the source. But it’s fine to discredit the nonsense it reports as well.

What’s more reassuring to an undecided voter? The knowledge that benvolio is sharing dubious politically biased news sources? Or the knowledge that centrists and progressives flat-out regect the nonsensical idea that math is racist.

 

[bankside]

Peggy McIntosh apparently has a bunch of lists for her white “privilege” and her christian “privilege” and her straight “privilege” and she must run through them every once in a while like worry beads or something.

I have to take this on with respect to her straight “privilege” because it’s impossible to talk about her other lists without someone using racist logic of their own to claim that I have no right to argue a point about racism because I’m white. Or they use misandrist logic to argue that I have no right to argue a point about sexism because I’m male. So because I am gay, in their minds I am at least “qualified” to hold an opinion about heterosexual “privilege” unlike actual heterosexuals.

So let’s look at her straight “privilege” list. I haven’t seen it. She referred to it but I can’t be arsed to google it. But judging by the calibre of all the other lists, I’m going to step out in a limb and say that she has vast amounts of straight privilege because she can buy his-and-hers bath towels and I am denied this critically important opportunity.

Here I am like a fool all these years worrying about the right to marry my guy or see him in hospital or plan our retirement together one day, and this whole monogrammed bath towel privilege situation just slipped right by me. I have been so blind.

Ffs these lists float between trivializing real problems, muddying the waters and distracting from actual racism, sexism, or homophobia that continue to corrode people’s equality. Like roadside stops in the US, or anti-poor voter ID laws, or sexual ignorance promotion laws, or medical abortion interference laws, or continuing to deny participation to healthy low risk gays in blood or organ donor programs as though our sexuality made us diseased pariahs. On one hand. And on the other, elevating total nonsense like my booboo bandaid colour, or which aisle my hair products are in, or whether I can get fucking his-n-his bath towels.

Christopher Hitchens once said “you can get away with the most extraordinary offences to morality and truth in this country, if you’ll get yourself called ‘reverend’,” and it’s clear to me that is also true if you can get yourself called “professor.” Academia is at risk of this nonsense infiltrating too. Sokal showed that. I have no idea why this McIntosh person has a teaching post if this is all she’s got.

 

[bankside]

People are able to use all their rights, but they must also recognize that Jesus and Santa Claus are both white.

I have to ask because I’m still troubled by this. Do you mean to assert that as a rule, people now have all their rights? That all we have left to worry about is “privilege?” If so then racism, sexism, homophobia are different from privilege in your view?

I am curious to know if you think usage of the term in speech and appropriately applying it to describe a given situation is harmful to progress. I note that harm can include distraction from more productive efforts and therefore may bear an opportunity cost.

I am trying to outline specifics here in my last run of posts. Yes I think it is harmful.

How would you advise the chief economist of a 12-million member labor organization to correct his lexicon such that the point he’s trying to make would be more honest and effective?

Focus on equality and fairness. Never ascribe a situation to inherent characteristics of identity. Use language that makes the point comprehensible and marketable to all. “Police that tone” as the kids these days would say.

No:

• “Capitalists exploit the workers”
• “The One Percent must fall”
• “People before profit!!!!!!!1!!!!11”

Yes:

• “Business has been good for the past few years and workers did their share to make the recovery happen. It’s time we give them their share of the returns now that we’ve turned the corner.”
• “It’s normal for investors to want a good return on their capital. It’s normal for workers to want a good return on their labour. We’re in this together to make a profit with well-paid jobs.”
• Shorter: “Profits for employers + Well-paid jobs for workers. Win-win! That’s our goal.”
• ”Win-win, not win-lose”

 

[bankside]

He is the other side of the identitarian coin.

To expand on this point, I am equating the logic of McIntosh and Benvolio, and claiming that her progressive take just feeds his:
From her list:

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

She feels this is lamentable. Benvolio feels it justifies his ethnopolitical nonsense. I feel it is irrelevant. The substance of my country’s history and yours, back when we were joined at the British hip, is a history of white-coloured people developing institutions and deciding laws and setting the terms for the development of our nations. That’s a fact: our laws, institutions, language, cultural trends and consequences thereof, for better or for worse, reflect the development of ideas that formed not exclusively, but largely, in the heads of a bunch of dead white people from what is now the UK.

Benvolio sees some kind of magic in that that justifies a particular compliance with whatever he thinks those dead white people would have wanted, and it’s clear to me from rereading his posts how he thinks the whiteness itself is somehow the juice that makes it all happen. The power that drove it all. The white power, if you will.

I think it’s bullshit because there was nothing magical about the whiteness of my ancestors. Somewhere along the way somebody recognized that skin colour shouldn’t matter in the way we treat each other, and we started treating it like a right. That was a smart powerful idea because it’s true. When you believe it, the whiteness of my ancestors is irrelevant. Benvolio’s arguments fall apart. There’s nothing special about the fact that the dead people who claimed North American land for dead white kings were white. To dismiss benvolio’s arguments though is to also dismiss McIntosh’s. There is nothing lamentable about the fact that the history books of our countries teach us about a bunch of dead white people. That’s what they were.

And in other threads I’ve been skeptical of the value of “representation.” It ties in here too. We don’t have to be all matchy-matchy with the people who inspire us. I don’t need to wait for “White Gandhi” to come along because I claim the right to be inspired by actual Gandhi just as he was. We don’t need to wait for “Gay Einstein” to come along because I claim the right to be inspired by actual Einstein just as he was. McIntosh’s idea of needing our role models to look like us or sound like us or pee like us is fundamentally Benvolian.

 

[KaraBulut]

... It doesn't question why black families would choose to stay in an inner city where violence, drugs, auto insurance and logistic concerns actually make it more expensive to live there than to move to a suburb.

Are you saying this because you believe that black families all live in the inner city?

That's about as offensive as asking why poor white people work in coal mines and live in trailers in small towns where alcoholism and drug addiction are prevalent.

Although neither question has any connection to the Fed study.