White Privilege

Just looked up the EDL, and they seem to be fine with Muslims who don't want to instate Shari'a divorce courts.

Anyway. Holy hell, I thought soccer was some supervillain's secret mass insanity trigger before you dragged neo-Nazis into it. Now I might have to whip out holy symbols when the subject's brought up.

Just looked up the EDL, and they seem to be fine with Muslims who don't want to instate Shari'a divorce courts.

Not according to their rap sheet.

Over here, the EDL are well-known as racist thugs - their 'but we only want to oppose (insert inflammatory thing associated with non-white people here)' stuff is a pretty transparent attempt to gain legitimacy.

edited 20th Feb '12 7:25:40 AM by Iaculus

Charming.

Why is Alan Moore not getting the hell out, again?

EDIT: But, see, you're contributing to one of my main points again. White people treating their wives like property is horrible; non-white people treating their wives like property is merely "inflammatory" - fuel for white racism, not evil in and of itself.

No. Sorry. Whether your chosen assimilation metaphor is fondue or salad, arsenic is not on the ingredients list.

edited 20th Feb '12 7:44:36 AM by DomaDoma

Delicious, delicious anti-intellectualism.

A sociological minority is defined by power, not numbers. Hence, blacks in South Africa are a minority, even if they're the numerically superior group.

And, women have not actually always been the oppressed gender, are not the "default" oppressed gender, and will not necessarily always be the oppressed gender.

I think perhaps with the Football 50/50, Basketball mostly Black, and Hockey mostly White, it goes like this.

Hockey is really expensive to maintain. Not only do you need protective gear like football, you also need to rent a rink. So high schools that have hockey teams are more likely to be in wealthy areas and more likely to be white. Most schools have a football team because that's the big American sport, so the split is more even. Basketball is pretty inexpensive in comparison to hockey so it's more likely to be a secondary sport in poorer areas than hockey.

I think the thing with Asians and Latinos in baseball is mostly because of importation of talent, though.

The thing is that whilst sharia's treatment of women can get pretty bad, it's a red herring in this situation. Not only is the EDL using it as justification to kick out Muslims in general, regardless of their opinion on the matter (and adherence to sharia law is hardly universal in Islam), the UK's sharia courts are purely civil and subordinate to UK law in all aspects. For instance, if you have a legally-recognised UK marriage, you need a civil divorce in addition to a sharia divorce in order to end it. They're just one of many flavours of tribunal that you can choose to access under the 1996 Arbitration Act, and not even the oldest and most numerous - those would be the Jewish Beth Din courts.

This article has a nice summary of the facts, as well as some pros and cons.

In summary, it's possible to be opposed to sharia divorce law (i.e., because there's a regrettable tendency for women to get pressured into using it), but you don't have to join the EDL to do so, and checks and balances against it do already exist.

edited 20th Feb '12 8:30:31 AM by Iaculus

So when you say that sociological minorities, as distinguished from numerical minorities, are the ones disadvantaged by institutions, you're using a tautology, you intellectual, you.

Anyway, listen to Top 40 radio. Is there anyone on who hates women as much as Beyonce hates men? Do sociologists acknowledge this at all?

edited 20th Feb '12 8:30:14 AM by DomaDoma

So what did Beyonce have to say? And just to check, by 'anyone on', do you mean 'anyone on the Top 40'?

Yep. I think hip-hop is still pretty bad, but I haven't heard much in years and anyway you'd discount that for dumb cultural reasons.

Beyonce, on how men are naturally lying, drinking adulterers who swear they'll clean up their act but never do.

See, when you say something like that, what I hear is "I am going to ridicule whatever you say no matter what it is, so you might as well stop listening to me".

Yeah, all right. Snide LJ-isms appear to be rubbing off on me. >.<

If you want to say a group is disadvantaged, then say that and be content with it. Don't say something that typically means something completely different and then redefine the term to say it means disadvantaged in a certain context if all that does is muddy up the discussion.

Technically speaking, words mean whatever we agree upon that they mean, but since their purpose is CLARITY of communication, if they're working counter to that purpose, then maybe you should think about using different words.

Bless you, Karkadinn. I think I'm stealing that for half the definition debates I get into.

But we DON'T mean disadvantaged. At least, not always.

Look at the income charts I've linked before; they look very much like white people and men get extra money above what everyone gets and not much like people are losing money for being minorities. And there is a difference; if black people and women were LOSING money, there would be substantial differences between minority categories, especially for minority women.

Instead, everyone (overall median column) makes about $25-30k a year, except white (and Asian) men who make about $40k a year. There's almost no penalty for being a minority woman over being a white woman. There IS a $5k loss for being a minority woman over being a minority man but it pales in comparison to the $15k loss of being a white woman relative to a white man. It looks a lot like how it would if white men were getting extra money (two main pay classes, white men and everyone else) and not a lot like how it would if minorities were losing money (pay docked per minority group membership).

...That's kind of sidestepping the point I was making to make another point entirely, you know. Not that that necessarily invalidates the point you're trying to make, either.

Edit, with some thought, to address the above at least cursorily until I can devote more time to it: If you want to argue that all those rich white men in umpteen-digit salary positions are overpaid and should be brought down to 'normal' levels, then I'll agree. But if you're going to tell me that the average white man working the average 40/30K and under job is overpaid and should also be brought down to the lowest common denominator, then I'm going to argue that that's ultimately self-destructive, especially in a global economy where there's always more down to go. I want most people's wages, the lower and middle class's wages, to rise, because I feel that they deserve to rise, and I don't feel that framing the situation as 'you get paid too much' is, for MOST jobs, a helpful one.

edited 20th Feb '12 11:55:16 AM by Karkadinn

I don't know that this follows. The object, for example, would be to say "the institutions of the South African government typically favor whites over blacks, thus rendering black people in South Africa as a minority."

I will use the technical terms used in the science relevant to the discussion, thank you.

You wouldn't be taken seriously if you complained about a chemistry discussion where technical terminology is used, and I won't take you seriously in a discussion on social issues where you complain that technical sociological terminology is used.

However, if you must receive clarification on what I mean, you may read this and then come back when you don't need to worry about confusion on the technical terminology.

That was an amazingly condescending response, and I'm not going to reply to it because anything I say would break the rules of this forum.

This is why I need to stay out of these threads.

Because it's bloody irritating.

This is what that terms means in this particular field of study. Again, would you think you'd be taken seriously if you complained that any other scientist was using the proper terminology for their field of study to refer to routine ideas? If you want clarification, that's fine, but I don't see the point of trying to avoid what is the proper term for something that is essentially a basic concept of sociology.

Yeah, and I shouldn't be allowed to talk about what the weather is like unless I can classify a cumulus cloud. Okay. Enjoy your superior education over us bumpkins, then.

If you're going to talk about the weather with your buddy, no. If you're going to try and go and actually conduct meteorology, then yes, you should be able to tell the difference between the various types of clouds.

I don't even see how it's an unclear concept. Minority = a group that is subordinate to another group that possesses cultural and social authority. The numerical quantity being irrelevant.

Sorry, I'm going to jump out of lurking-mode for a second.

Karkadinn: I think people are irritated because "that's not what minority REALLY means" is splitting hairs, pedantic at best, and wrong at worst - especially in the context of a sociological discussion where, yeah, it's commonly understood what it means to be a "minority". Most words have multiple definitions with various meanings - to insist otherwise as your point of contention smacks of a derailing tactic instead of a desire for genuine discussion.

No, I'm done.

I'm just creating a tangent anyway, when my intention was to move the topic ON from that divide, not prolong it.

I could respond, but I'm not going to, because it would be counter to the reason why I said anything in the first place, so I'm out.

You can call that a victory if you want.

@Msnoodles: Also jumping out of lurking here, but I read it as the other way around. I saw it as Karkadinn arguing that words have multiple meanings, and Flyboy insisting that we all use the definitions he's providing. But this is all offtopic anyways.

I'd still like to point out that Black Humor's post up there is exactly why I don't support the White Privilege argument.

edited 20th Feb '12 2:02:07 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Words do have multiple meanings, yes, but this is ultimately a discussion about a sociological phenomenon, and so to argue that the definition of a common sociological term should be disregarded merely because it means other things elsewhere is pointlessly pedantic.

Yes, it means other things, but in this context, it has a very simple and field-specific definition that isn't really all that confusing.

Edit:

I don't follow. Why?

edited 20th Feb '12 2:03:54 PM by Flyboy

Yeah, but you're forgetting that the people you need to be convincing are people who likely have no college education, and quite possibly haven't finished high school. The sort of people who use "theory" to mean "hypothesis".

Edit ninja: Because it's the same old argument of "I don't care if you're living at the poverty line, you're white and you need to be punished."

edited 20th Feb '12 2:06:36 PM by DrunkGirlfriend