White Privilege?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-KBFuobhDk[/youtube]
I vote that white privilege is real. But so is black privilege, asian (yellow) privilege, and brown (mexican/arab) privilege…there is any and every type of racial/ethnic privilege.
I will go into this more in detail later, if this thread produces results. What say you?
I agree with the synopsis that ‘if there is white privilege, there is asian privilege’. Jon Stewarts example of white privilege was growing up in a white neighbourhood, in a white home, which promoted certain values which left a lasting impression in young William O’Reilley, which culminated to result in a successful career.
And I don’t think there’s anything strange to suggest that asian households and asian neighborhoods tend to promote their own set of values which tend to leave lasting life-long impressions on asians which tend to culminate in relatively successful careers.
The point I think people miss when they talk about ‘white privilege’ is its relevance. If you take a white guy and a black guy who are, in all respects except race, equal, will the white guy tend to have a better life? Yeah, maybe on average the white guy will have a slightly better life. On the other hand, if you take a guy born into wealth and a guy born into poverty who are, in all respects except wealth, equal, will the guy born into wealth tend to have a better life? The answer is not just ‘yes’, but an Emphatic, unabashed, no-quiver-in-the-voice, no hesitation, ABSOLUTELY he will have a better life. (Exceptions are there of course – some wealthy guys just end up becoming weird depressed drunks, I don’t know. Guys who start out poor sometimes find their own wealth, or just their own happiness without wealth).
But the differences of averages in the second case is much more stark than in the first case. Much more stark.
Wealth is a HUGE predictor of ‘privilege’. Race is, at best, a minor predictor.
If we want to increase equality, we should increase equality along the dimensions that matter most. ‘Race’ is not the dimension that matters most anymore. It matters a little bit. The amount of air-time it gets is highly disproportionate to the amount of privilege race actually transmits. Let’s keep things in perspective.
Ditto
You mean, let’s keep things in your perspective. Your perspective is fine, makes sense, and i see where you’re coming from, but at the same time i wonder, how do you really know just how much race matters nowadays? It may not matter much to you, and so you might tend to think it doesn’t matter much to anyone else either, but that alone doesn’t make it so. Are you prepared to dismiss as irrelevant or unreal the experiences of those who find themselves at a social disadvantage because of their race, and if so, on what grounds?
Well, first of all, self-reporting that ‘I’m at a disadvantage’ is transparently unreliable. If I find my black doppleganger – identical to me in every way except that he appears black – and he tells me that he’s had a much harder life than I had … in the same vein that you ask me, ‘how do you know?’, I can ask him, ‘how do you know?’
How does he know he’s had significant disadvantages as compared to my life? How does he know what advantages or disadvantages I experience?
Now, I will grant that I don’t know what level of disadvantage my black doppleganger actually will experience in his life. And I’m not even necessarily saying that it’s so minimal that we can ignore it.
What I’m saying is that my black doppleganger, relative to me, is a lot less worse off than I am relative to my rich doppleganger. Even not knowing much about the experiences of my black doppleganger, I see how black people live. They aren’t slaves, they go to school, they get an education, they have social interactions and have fun and have intellectual stimulation and get laid and married and fall in love and have careers and have kids and get fat and old, etc. His life may be somewhat worse than mine due to his blackness, and I may even be underestimating how much worse it is, but even if I am underestimating it, I’d be really super duper uber extremely surprised if his race made more of a difference than the income of our parents.
Well it’s not about who’s had a harder life, it’s about a particular form of hardship that some people face. Obviously a black guy with a billion dollars is better off in a lot of ways than a homeless white guy, but it doesn’t discount the particular difficulties he may have faced as a result of being black.
He doesn’t. He doesn’t know yours any better than you know his. But that’s my point. If we are going to say something to the effect that race doesn’t matter much anymore then we are presuming to know the disadvantages others face better than they do. That’s just as transparently unreliable as saying “I’m at a disadvantage”, no?
Sure, i can agree with that.
Just read this interesting couple of articles:
https://medium.com/message/whiteness-3ead03700322
https://medium.com/message/how-white-people-got-made-6eeb076ade42
My takeaway:
This whole ‘white vs black’ thing was, from the outset, a way for the ruling class to trick the peasants into hating each other more than they hate the ruling class. If white peasants and black peasants see themselves as peasants with a common cause, there’s risk of them cooperating to fight the ruling class in order to make a better life for themselves.
So if they can trick white peasants and black peasants into thinking they don’t have a common cause, common interests, then they can lessen the power of the peasant class by dividing them, thereby solidifying more power for themselves.
So, there’s an interesting dynamic there: white privilege was created, manufactured, by the ruling class in order to trick the peasants into not cooperating. Now, all peasants got the short end of the stick, but the slightly shorter end went to the black peasants in particular.
And now, in today’s day and age, the black peasants (and the white people who sympathize with them) are apparently quite upset about white privilege. Right? Lots of articles by feminists and liberals and etc. about white privilege and how it’s bad.
But the irony is that the way they’re fighting ‘white privilege’ is PERPETUATING exactly what the ruling class wanted: the white peasants to not cooperate with the black peasants. Black peasants, instead of cooperating with white peasants to make a better situation, are just using their intellectual power to write a bunch of articles fighting white people and white privilege.
Instead of black peasants bickering with white peasants about white privilege, they should be doing what we all should have been doing centuries ago - standing together, white and black, to fight for our common interests.
So all these debates about white privilege are just another victory for the ruling class. Maybe we should stop letting them win so easily.
Another Marxist simpleton trying to paper over the cracks in the liberal project.
Here’s the truth: races exist because without them no evolution.
Some races have evolved more intelligence than others; intelligence is the driving force in hominid evolution. Hence, they will always out compete them in the modern world.
To admit this though will cause social unrest and disturb the delicate economic balance between production/consumption.
Better to turn blacks into consumers, same as they did with women, increase customer base/profits, encourage race mixing to create conformity on a biological level.
Enter ‘privilege’ to cover up the deficit in the meantime.
(All the time the white working class must take the hit in economic and biological terms).
Define evolved intelligence.
I don’t see why it matters, humans are humans. Just like dogs are dogs, do we see racism between dogs over fur patterns and colors or breed? No, this only proves to show how foolish racism or race superiority truly is.
Which is why I request Eccl to define evolved intelligence. It seems crucial to her argument.
I’m not buying that bs. “One race more intelligent than another” Do you realize how absolutely ignorant you sound? One race over another? When we’re all the same race? Yes, that makes COMPLETE sense. You do realize the only reason skin color is the way it is is from natural selection/environment and to do with the sun right? Our race is all the same, human. This is the 21st fucking century age of information, I am absolutely sick and tired of people not acting like it.
Natural selection has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with geography and where this group is located on the map with the sun/environment.
There are girls in Africa who created a generator to run off of piss, can you do that? How about Asia creating and manufacturing a huge majority of technological devices? What about America having it’s own sense of innovation? How about Germany revolutionizing the world during WWII? Is this all “Intelligent race over other race”? No. Anyone/Everyone have the capabilities to use their mind and think, to problem solve and create.
ROFL, I happen to agree with you and that is why I want her definition. Chill.
Not you, saying it to her after I read that ridiculous argument.
Aaah ok. It is ridiculous and it is utterly closed minded. Intelligence needs to be defined by those who argue so. They tend to have good sized holes in it.
If things were left up to the ignorant or misinformed, we’d still be back in the cave.
Yes and no. It is the ignorant that generally tries the unknown and the misinformed that stumbles on to untried. It is fear and hate that keeps progress hindered.
There is rarely anyone immune to ignorance and failure.
Ever since record of human existence there has been non selective breeding.
There is also non selective money and resource distribution.
So, the wisest and nicest people are not controlling the economy or making the next generation of human bodies and genes etc.
The world we have now is still ignorant and misinformed.
Also, things in the cave were not all that bad.
Yes, I realize the world is controlled by the fools… Wise men are shoved to the bottom.
We’re still in the cave in a sense. We never overcame the jungle, we simply created our own. Lack of compassion, lack of knowledge, lack of a lot of things in this time and era.
At least back in the cave, man had respect for nature…
The ignorant and misinformed are scared of the unknown… Unknown can lead to advancement.
Difference is new, new is change, change is advancement. Difference and new are also unknown, hence they are different/new.
Our natural advancement process has been and is currently still being delayed, by ignorance/fear/misinformation and the illusion of knowledge. Conformity as well, since conformity is same. There is no new/difference in same.