Okay, so now what? Nothing you just said answers my question. How am I supposed to identify and refuse individual instances of preferential treatment?
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~That's not the solution to the problem.
So you stated three things when asked to analyse a situation put forward to you by the concept of white privilege
- You were friends with this guy back in high school
- You had good jobs and credit
- You were white
How did this privilege form? White people tend to statistically hang out together more often, thus forming the first part. Good jobs and credit may have another slew of analysis you can do. And the last part is about potential racism.
So what tools do we want to use?
For potential racism, we could attempt to use anti-racism education in public schools. We could attempt to perform more careful neighbourhood planning to have more multi-ethnic/multi-racial neighbourhoods to get kids of different colours to become friends. We could invest in community activities and get different cultures to join in to build more inter-cultural personal relationships.
You are missing the point. Since you and others of your ilk are talking about this situation, surely you must have observed it in action, yes? And being individuals who quite obviously do not wish to benefit from such an inequitable situation (after all, what reasonable human does), you know how to refute these advantages, right?
I'd like to know how you do it.
- You were friends with this guy back in high school
- You had good jobs and credit
- You were white
How did this privilege form? White people tend to statistically hang out together more often, thus forming the first part. Good jobs and credit may have another slew of analysis you can do. And the last part is about potential racism.
He could have also been just, you know, doing his job and looking at the numbers. At least acknowledge that as a possibility rather than assuming racism in a person you've never met.
edited 19th Jan '12 7:47:53 PM by drunkscriblerian
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~![]()
The second option isn't bad. It worked in the military and in the cities. Simple exposure goes a long way to counteract ideas of alienness. The others are more questionable, like you're expected to hate and fear people without interference, and the first is already implemented in every public school and only serves to put people on edge about complexion where they otherwise wouldn't be.
edited 19th Jan '12 7:47:40 PM by DomaDoma
Hail Martin Septim!I think we're both arguing one another is missing the point. I view the discussion of white privilege as an acknowledgement of a problem in order to encourage people to find social solutions to make society more equitable for all. I do not view white privilege discussion as a starting point to then prod white individuals to refuse the privileges they have.
Okay, say I'd rather do that. Since you've observed this phenomenon with your own two eyes, how do you tell when its happening?
That's been my question all along. Dammit, where is Black Humor when I need him??
A lot of the time people seem to oppose the idea of white privilege on principle based on the implicit idea that "if I believe this exists, then it invalidates my personal accomplishments."
Which ignores that most of the shit we do wouldn't happen without society, and that "individualism" as a political/moral philosophy is basically bullshit, so you wouldn't be changing much in that regard by admitting that yes, racism is institutionalized (and has been for several hundred years), and yes, it means that you as a white person will be treated better by the system in general than a non-white...
"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."^^ The thread on "racebending" is relevant here: you can say that American movies as a whole underrepresent nonwhites to a degree that indicates racism, but you usually can't prove that a given movie was cast in a racist manner.
edited 19th Jan '12 7:59:45 PM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulSo, what I'm being told here is that I'm going to be treated better in each and every individual situation, and I while I cannot reliably perceive this preferential treatment (which means in turn that I cannot refuse it), it will always exist?
It seems rather rude of me to assume that each and every other white person I interact with is being racist to a greater or lesser degree, TBH.
edited 19th Jan '12 8:02:28 PM by drunkscriblerian
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~^ It's not that you always benefit, it's that statistically, you have more benefits than hindrances.
edited 19th Jan '12 8:02:46 PM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulIn every individual situation? No, probably not. No sociological process is perfect. It's not a science with hardline laws, like physics or chemistry. In the vast majority of situations where the idea is applicable, however, it will come into play.
Again, though, there is also the element of materialism and classism, which is ultimately what (I, and other, more important and authority-holding people above me, think) racism is born of. So, if you're not a middle/upper class person, you may end up still getting shafted, though not as bad as a poor non-white...
Edit: Well, it's difficult to say that "everybody is racist all the time," because that implies that it's a conscious process.
It's more that we've simply been conditioned by society to think in a certain, warped manner which is generally taken as "normal."
edited 19th Jan '12 8:04:31 PM by Flyboy
"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."^^ Like I already said, we can't. Breadloaf's argument (which I may agree with; I haven't thought it through yet) is that it's pointless to try to avoid personally benefiting—what you should instead do is try to arrange things so that future generations will extend the same benefits to people who aren't white.
edited 19th Jan '12 8:05:05 PM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulThis. Especially because y'all seem utterly convinced of the "rightness" of your statements, you ought to at least be able to give some insight into when it is and is not happening...because I for one would like to know when I'm being given an unfair advantage.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~@DS,
Well, to answer the second half of the question you asked me, the beautiful horrifically awful thing about it is that you can't perceive it, really. It's so ingrained into our institutions, our culture, our society, and into the very way we think that to try and separate ourselves from it is effectively impossible.
The awful truth is, the people who created racism as an artificial control (great theory, complicated theory, a theory I don't totally understand, but I'll try and explain it in more detail if necessary) on the lower class elements of the American populace effectively made it so that we can never get rid of it. Ever. At all.
Racism is permanent. Our society will never actually correct itself, in this regard. The horrible, horrible people that did this to us? They will continue to do damage to our society and our people for the rest of the existence of American society.
So, in essence, you can neither properly perceive nor do anything substantial about white privilege. It exists, it's devastating and terrible, and it's indestructible.
"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."I believe that the statistics indicating that [fill in race here] has [fill in appalling statistic here] chance of [fill in misfortune or failure here] are not a product of any inherent weakness in that race. (Well, I guess they sometimes are in relationship to genetic diseases, but other than that . . .) Anyways, when handed an appalling statistic about the misfortune or failure of a race, if I don't believe that failure is inherent to the race, I must believe either that the statistic is flawed, or that the problem is in some way environmental. I've been hit over the head with too many such statistics, regarding everything from poverty to alcoholism, to believe that all of them are lies.
I think you're wrong, because I and most of the people I know are not consciously racist. True, I've failed those tests of whether you're subconsciously racist, but I will do my part to promote a society in which children will not grow up to be racist, and I believe that if enough other people join me, racism will eventually cease to exist.
edited 19th Jan '12 8:11:55 PM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulIt's not so much receiving preferential treatment because of your race and more not being unfairly judged because of your race. "White" is the default, any deviation from that is seen, consciously or otherwise, as a negative. Similarly, "average wealth" is seen as the default. If you're poor, that's also seen as a negative. If you're black and poor, you're shit out of luck. While, numerically, there are more poor whites than blacks, percentage wise, the reverse is true.
edited 19th Jan '12 8:12:48 PM by Wulf
They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

Finding a solution may be a difficult problem but the point of discussing white privilege is to admit the existence of a problem.
Times may have changed since the 70s but back then when most people refused to admit that White people would statistically gain advantages over non-Whites. But since the privileges continue to exist, they continued to be talked about. As we lessen the gap, at each point there will be people who say "there is no gap remaining", even as there does exist problems between one group being more privileged than the other and so it must be pointed out again, that yes, one group enjoy advantages that the other does not.