Viewership may be up, but so is disdain. I do not have the numbers to back that up, just the sense I get.
I feel good about the links making my point. Frankly, I find your objection disingenuous and defensive.
If that is your point, you have yet to grasp the concept of white privilege.
Their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, I don’t know of a single white nationalist who isn’t simply a racist with a refurbished public image. If you choose to believe otherwise–that segregationists and white nationalists are not closeted racists–that’s on you.
This attempted dig would bother me a lot more if you understood what white privilege actually is.
Are you saying his parents were gay?
Regardless of how you find my objection, it is quite valid and relevant.
It’s not that I dispute that one might experience certain privileges because of the color of his skin. I reject that the concept of white privilege is a useful lens for looking at the world.
The point is not about the people who push forward that concept but rather the concept itself. You have a point that the definition of racism as contained in many dictionaries requires an element of superiority. But the idea that we need to judge and categorize people by race is problematic. And that is something that white nationalism, segregation, and the concept of white privilege have in common.
Luckily for the MSM they aren’t paid by public opinion, they’re paid by viewership.
We are in agreement–race is a problematic construct. But at this juncture, need has nothing to do with it. The fact-on-the-ground is, the construct of race is so deeply ingrained within our (?and every?) culture/society, it is not going away within the foreseeable future.
So you’re correct–there is no need for the construct of race. But sadly, it is cleaved to us nonetheless, and thus must be addressed.
The three are superficially related, in that all are race-based. However, that is where the similarity ends (along with the validity of your thesis in this regard). White nationalism is an ideology, and segregation is one of its manifestations/policies. The ideology of white nationalism is rooted in the assumptions that 1) race is a taxonomically valid construct for delineating humans into subgroups; and 2) the white race is superior to others.
In sharp contrast, white privilege is in no way an ideology. Rather, it is a sociological construct developed to explain certain aspects of social behavior as they relate to race. It has no underlying ideology. Further, it makes no assumptions concerning the biological validity of the concept of race (much less the assumption that the white race is superior).
So, as they sing on Sesame Street:
One of these things
Is not like the others…
For some of you who have been out of the University setting for awhile, you might find this informative. This activity is commonly used to teach college students about White Privilege, and it’s sometimes mandated by corporations as part of diversity training. It might be used at your kid’s high school.
You can decide for yourselves if you think some of this might have the opposite effect of what is intended. You can look more into the rhetoric about the White Privilege Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack exercise, and see what the responses are to anyone who disagrees with it, or who thinks that it might actually exacerbate tribal identities. Hint: You’re a racist.
Notice her assertion that meritocracy is a myth. Saying that some people have more difficulties rising out of poverty is very different from saying that there is no meritocracy in the US, and it ignores the fact that we have so many minorities (particularly immigrants, including those of African descent), who are able to reach the middle class within a decade in this country. Note: My pointing that out would be seen as evidence racism, and defense of my privilege.
In other news, many college students, and other adults in corporate settings have been encouraged to take the IAT as a diagnostic test for implicit bias. Some corporations have mandated the IAT as part of their diversity training. Here are some of the big problems with treating it as if it’s a diagnostic test for racist behavior, or even a reliable test for knowing if someone is inherently racist. It isn’t.
Humans have a sense of fairness. I mentioned this in another thread, but lets say we have a white kid from the trailer park. His dad committed suicide when he was six, and his mother is an alcoholic, and he’s obese, and attending an under performing school, and nobody had the money to put braces on him so he’s not very attractive. That kid by virtue of his birth is sitting at the top of the dominance hierarchy, privileged, likely unaware that he’s an oppressor who has experienced a lifetime of unearned advantage. Very real history of the oppression of AAs aside, It’s not difficult to see why making race the most important descriptor can be really problematic when looking at individual people, or to use the language of the SJSs how describing him in this way results in distorting his humanity.
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This essay is by a Princeton student.
Responses to his essay were as you might expect. He got skewered.
In Time Magazine, Princeton freshman Briana Payton writes: You. Are. Privileged. It is OK to admit that. You will not be struck down by lightning, I promise. You will not be forced to repent for your “patron saint of white maleness” or for accepting your state of whiteness and maleness.
Clutch writer Jovanna Blaize calls Fortgang a “poster child for white male privilege” and says, “Must be nice to be white and delusional and privileged.” Salon’s Kate McDonough labels Fortgang a “jerk” and a racist, and describes his argument as “ridiculous baby tantrum thoughts.” In another viral piece, the writer calls Fortgang a “complete fking ahole” who “misses the point of everything.”
Anyway, you guys can decide if you think this kind of thing is a remedy for inequality or discrimination or not. It seems that we’ve adopted some of this pedagogy, and we’re now several years into it. The idea of micro-aggressions and triggers have only been big since maybe 2012 or 2013. I guess we’ll see if this stuff makes our race situation better or worse.
Checking out now. I’m teaching every morning this fall, and it’s going to seriously impact my ability to read and talk politics.
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White privilege? I think it exists, but it’s overstated. To the extent it represents a door opening for one person, but it being closed for another, the racial issue is less determinative as compared to the class aspect. Are the prospects of a urban black kid really that much worse than a rural white kid’s in terms of getting a fair opportunity at a entering society’s privileged sectors?
In terms of identity politics, it has been a disastrous distraction - ask the Democrats. To be clear, identity politics is not the same as being legitimately concerned over racial discrimination. Rather, it’s a strange diversion into cultural Balkanization when we’ve spent generations trying to preach against the sins of cultural Balkanization.
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You are misunderstanding me. Acknowledging the concept of white privilege is not inherently racist, shouting it at someone to shut them up is. And that’s exactly how we see it being used, over and over again.
We are having a discussion about the concept of white privilege, yes. The racism arises when you’re trying to have a discussion about something else, but your ideas are declared invalid strictly because of your skin color.
Like this.
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Frankly, it’s the distinction that is superficial. Yes, white privilege isn’t really an ideology. But the claim that it is a useful construct for looking and the world and shaping policy is.
If your definition of privilege is just that there are racists in the world and not being discriminated against constitutes a privilege, then it’s undeniable that white privilege exists. Just as black privilege, asian privilege, etc., superficially exist. I don’t really have a problem with this construct, but I also don’t think it’s useful for making decisions or policy (other than the decision to not go that part of town or something similar).
If you think it is a useful construct for making policy or framing a debate, then yes, that is an ideology.
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When it comes to discussions concerning powerful, personal, consequential, and psychically threatening ideas, shouting is all too easy to lapse into, but is rarely if ever helpful.
No, that is not my definition of privilege.
I do not see these constructs as existing in any meaningful way in America, but am willing to be convinced otherwise.
I think gravity is a useful construct for discussing/framing a wide-ranging set of issues in physics. Does that make gravity an ideology?
This is a statement I can agree with. Which brings me back to the same question I posed earlier. Where’s the positive in all of this? How is this rhetoric improving anyone’s lives? Who does it help, and how?
EyeDentist you’re fighting the good fight but I quit this thread long ago when it got so esoteric it started missing the whole point.
I have to answer your question with a question: Given that we (you and I) agree that white privilege exists, and (presumably) you would agree it is a matter of at least some import, how are we to talk about it if we don’t call it by its name?
Edited to say I thought that video clip was very good: Light and nonthreatening in tone, made reasonable points. To me, it is the flip side of the very angry video you posted upthread. Do you disagree? Because if you are presenting it as another example of ‘rhetoric that doesn’t improve anyone’s life,’ I’m very confused.
Again, discussing the concept is not racist or bad by any measure. This is pretty easy to agree on.
Using skin color as the test of whether someone’s idea is valid is racist. Very, very racist. And if you are of the opinion that doing this to white people is somehow not racist because you can’t be racist towards white people, can we not agree that it is at minimum a BAD thing to shout down voices strictly because the skin color of the person?
Curious about your thoughts on the latter.
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What is your definition of privilege?
As I see it, there are really two factors that get rolled together into the concept of white privilege.
The first is basically just racism. There are still racists in the world and insofar as they have an effect on the world, they make the world worse for the people they discriminate against. This should be fought against, but we can just call it racism. The white privilege construct is unnecessarily obtuse when addressing this type of behavior.
The second is basically wealth. On average, white people have more wealth and this gives advantages to their children. Undoubtedly, at least part of this discrepancy can be traced to past racism. However, race is an imperfect proxy for wealth and considering wealth is not difficult to measure directly I see little purpose in using race to compensate for wealth. The degree and ways in which we should try to level the playingfield against inherited wealth is itself a large discussion, but race basically muddies the waters on this issue and is unnecessary.
And this is where it becomes an ideology. You believe in one type of privilege and not the other and think that should roll into policy.
Bringing the concept of ideology into a physical science setting is a rather rough transplant. But as an example, I design circuit boards. Although circuit boards experience gravity, it has basically no effect on their design. There is a distinction between something existing and it being useful for a given application.
In politics, the goals you want to achieve and methods you chose make up an ideology. And white privilege fits squarely into that discussion.
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Privilege pisses me off. One of my friends eats like complete shit and maintains a 6 pack year round. And he recently started strongman training with our small group and is absolutely killing everything already despite training sporadically at best the last two years.
Fuck his genetic privilege bullshit. We gotta fix that.
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How I feel when I walk into any gym and I see high school kids lifting 3x my lifts. Or when my wife talks about her time at Alabama and seeing the football team lift. It was either Mark Ingram or Eddie Lacy, they wouldn’t let them max because they already would hammer out 675 lb squats for 8. My lanky ass won’t ever get there lol.
So, to make sure I understand: Your objection is not to discussing the issue of white privilege; rather, it’s to the tendency of some people to use the term as a discussion-squelching cudgel.
Like I indicated above, I’m not a fan of shouting during what is intended to be a discussion. Skin color doesn’t affect that one way or another.
White privilege refers to a wide-ranging web of unearned socioeconomic and cultural advantages white folk enjoy simply by dint of their skin color. These advantages came into being as a result of longstanding, deeply-rooted historical inequities related to race.
Your ‘white privilege = overt racism + wealth inequity’ thesis cannot account for much of what constitutes white privilege. For example, when I was learning to read (think books of the Dick and Jane genre), to the best of my recollection every individual depicted was white. Now, per you, this was done either 1) because the publisher was an overt racist, or 2) because wealth (?). Which was it?
(All that is not to say that racism doesn’t play a role in the continuing existence of white privilege. It is also not to deny the existence of wealth/class privilege.)
Actually, this is where it becomes apparent you cannot support the assertion you made concerning the existence of black and/or Asian privilege as meaningful concepts in America.
You’re the one who seemed to define an ideology as “a useful construct for making policy or framing a debate.” I’m simply responding to your argument.
Indeed. But I would argue that the sociological construct of white privilege is useful vis a vis understanding race relations in the US. Circuit boards, probably not so much.
Who said anything about politics?
Aren’t some of the Antifa full-blown communists? Communism lead to the deaths of 50 million Europeans and millions of others, not to mention lives lived out in utter misery as well as torture and forced labor. Wouldn’t a neo-communist be guilty by this measure of guilt, that is, before he left the building?
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