Gabriel blogs:
Being White in American society (possibly European society as well because they’re douchebags too) means that you know that people that look like you run society. If something goes wrong in your life then (barring unique circumstances like being from Appalachia or something) you can take solace in the fact that you’re White and just integrate yourself into a high social or economic class by befriending (or marrying) another White person better off than you. You have the benefit of living in a world superpower where the default rules of the society were set up by people in similar social locations to benefit people like you. This is not by any means to say that all White people actively participate in the privilege, because they don’t. However all White people do all participate. Simply put, American society is easier for those (of all colors) who have lighter/fairer skin.
While I agree that white privilege exists, the statements about social class seem somewhat in error. Especially if the author wants to stretch it outside of America. I live in England now and class affiliation is etched upon people by means of accent. People seem to be extremely aware of it, how it creates rank and where they are within that rank.
But even in America, being from a working class background makes you an invisible minority among the rich. Yeah, there’s passing privilege that can happen, but marrying up is not generally the ticket out of poverty. I can’t imagine taking solace in it.
I also am skeptical about glibly figuring that “oh, you can marry your way up”. It’s not all that particularly simple. Rich folks tend to marry other rich folks, not working class people, and vice versa.
Also, don’t think this phenomena is limited to America. Lighter-colored people tend to have higher status in other cultures as well, if what my Indian (as in subcontinent, not Native American) friends tell me is true.
Oh goody I’m a douchbad because of where I live. This author can kiss my but.
I didn’t agree with the assertion that not all white people use privilege. Since privilege is encoded to the body unless you have an out of body experience every single day of your existence you are using your privilege. People may not want to use it but they cannot help the way that they are treated by others.
I think the author’s conflating white privilege with class privilege. The two have a good deal of overlap but aren’t the same at all; you get middle-class black towns, and you get very poor white towns. The author’s making it sound like they both operate the same way which isn’t true at all – there’s different measures at work. Social immobility is not the same thing as white supremacism.
Well Jack I guess I would venture a comment here even if I don’t read so good ya know……….
From Gabriel: “ Dealing with people from random small towns that have a general hatred for gay people, “terrorists”(anyone they can’t label as Black, White, Asian or Hispanic), and Mexicans (anyone Hispanic), but surprisingly don’t mind Black people (yeah right) ”
Since these are people from random small towns I can only assume that the author would belittle the great majority of citizens of small towns and accuse this same population of hatred (not cold respect for differences, not simple disinterest, not apathy, not self interest, but tangible, philistine hatred) for all of the folllowing: gays, arab terrorists, hispanics, and blacks. Is it your belief that this statement is at all accurate. I ask this because this is what he uses to lead up to his statement about white privilege.
“ Being White in American society (possibly European society as well because they’re douchebags too) means that you know that people that look like you run society. “
Ok, folks who run the country are white. Given the statements above must we always in time and in every circumstance assume that white people will mistreat nonwhites. That whites will individually mistreat nonwhites. The the next encounter between the races will always result in white supremacy.
Why are members of European society douchebags.
“ take solace in the fact that you’re White and just integrate yourself into a high social or economic class by befriending (or marrying) another White person better off than you. “
I had no idea that social and economic mobility was so easy.
Tell me how this is not defamation on a grand scale.
To call America a “racist ” nation is ridiculous, because this implies that there
are other parts of the world where there is no racism.
Racism exists everywhere on the planet, and whites have absolutely no monopoly on it. It has probably existed as long as people of different races have been in contact with each orther. So do other forms of prejudice everywhere.
There’s sexism, xenophobia, antisemitism and other forms of religious
prejudice, and hostility between different groups everywhere.
In China, you could say that Chinese have Chinese privelege, as there are
many ethnic minorities there , and there is rampant prejudice and terrible
maltreatment of them there, not just against the Tibetans.
Take the Uighurs in the far west of China near Afghanistan. These people are muslims and an eastern branch of the Turks, and many have caucasian features. To them, Xinjiang is West Turkestan, and they are an occupied and
oppressed people. The Turkish language was brought to Turkey and Iran
about a thousand years ago from this region, and the Turkish the Uighurs speak compared to the Turkish of Turkey is comparable to the pure Castillian of Madrid compared to the Spanish of Mexico city.
Large numbers of Chinese have been settled in East Turkestan, a vast region of scorchingly hot deserts and populous oaseses by Beijing, and many
Chinese look down on the Uighurs, and call them stupi, dirty and too religious. Yet the Uighurs are a people with a rich culture and are renowned
throughout central asia and elsewhere as musicians, poets and scholars etc.
If this isn’t blatant racism, I don’t know what racism is.
Let’s face it, inequality, injustice, prejudice, oppression, cruelty , brutality
and slaughter exist everywhere and have for thousands of years.
Madrid to the Spanish of Mexico city.
Robert Berger,
Yes…. and it just so happens that in the US, institutional racism exists that benefits those who are white. In this context, it is important that we speak of this. The fact that racism in the US is being called out is not an excuse for the racism in other countries.
No, it doesn’t. That makes no sense.
—Myca
White privilege, while very real, and something you can’t entirely remove your participation in, is a process that keeps poor white people down, too. We DO get some privilege, and the carrot in front of your face that you MIGHT be elevated to rich white “nobility” through the business world etc. It’s a plot to turn us against the minorities, who we, in truth have more in common with than the rich. It’s all part of preventing class warfare by creating racial warfare.
Myca’s right. But it’s equally true that racism is hardly unique to the U.S. and there are many examples of worse racism in other countries.
That’s no excuse for us, though. Americans are responsible for fixing racism in the U.S. It’s up to other countries to both recognize and fix racism in their countries.
Heh. Very true. To this day, the single greatest incident of racism I ever faced was at the hands of Air India, who refused to seat my family until all Westerners were first on board.
But what does this mean? While I’ve seen evidence that white privilege exists even in communities not subjected to colonialism (especially for women), I think at the end of the day it would be very hard to detach color consciousness from imperialism. Any White Westerner will be treated like an aristocrat in India, much different POC tourists in the West.
Having said that, India is a rich culture, and there’s all sorts of relationships of domination that have nothing to do with western imperialism. Dominant cultures, creeds, castes, and families exist in every society. Worse still, in many societies, privilege is reinforced by the state, like say Muslim privilege in Saudi Arabia, to give you an obvious example. In India its caste; though its officially outlawed, her 50yr disastrous experiment with Fabian Socialism institutionalized it thruout the License Raj. Only now, with the arrival of globalization, free markets, and capitalism, do we see real progress in the elimination of this evil.
Which brings me to America. American racism is deeply limited by her liberalism; the bill of rights, individualism, and of course capitalism. These freedoms allow oppressed people to realize their dreams, despite the bigotry of society. Free markets in particular are a great liberating force, which is why America remains a beacon of freedom for POC around the world.
!
“If something goes wrong in your life then (barring unique circumstances like being from Appalachia or something) you can take solace in the fact that you’re White and just integrate yourself into a high social or economic class by befriending (or marrying) another White person better off than you. You have the benefit of living in a world superpower where the default rules of the society were set up by people in similar social locations to benefit people like you. ”
Look, racism is bad. But it isn’t the only, only, only bad thing in the world. For the most part just being white most certainly does not allow you to intergrate yourself into a high social or economic class by befriending or marrying another White person better off than you. Most (in the very technical sense of ‘a large majority’) of white people don’t have that option. The idea that sharing skin color automatically gets you past class shows a profound lack of understanding about how class actually works.
“You have the benefit of living in a world superpower where the default rules of the society were set up by people in similar social locations to benefit people like you. ”
Again this is a completely ridiculous statement. A vast majority of white people may indeed have the benefit of living in a world superpower where the default rules of the society were set up by people who have a similar skin tone, but certainly not “by people in similar social locations” and certainly not “to benefit people like you” for any of the non-skin tone variables which can readily be found among people of all races.
The quotes exhibit a frankly racist confusion which ascribes to all white people all of the characteristics of an extremely tiny minority of fantastically rich and powerful white people.
Which is not at all to say that being white doesn’t help in all sorts of ways in the US compared to being Asian or Black or noticeably Hispanic. It does. But Gabriel has totally gone off the deep end about how it functions.
The author seems to have a really idealized version of class mobility. Last time I checked, whites weren’t jumping up and down the social ladder left and right regardless of white privilege
NOTE: I fully believe in white privilege. But I don’t believe all white people have an easy time climbing the socioeconomic rungs
Yes, there’s inequality in America, and blacks are sometimes the victim of terrible maltreatment and discrimination ,and many are terribly disadvantaged. But that doesn’t mean that everything is hunky dory for whites,
and they automatically breeze through life with no problems.
Being white is in itself no guarantee whatsoever of getting into college,let alone a prestigious one, or graduate ,law or medical school, or automatically getting a great job, and living on easy street. Everybody has to compete for these things, and even if affirmative action were abolished, it still would not be any guarantee
of whites getting any special priveleges in education and emplyment.
Most whites in America are not out to get blacks and keep them from getting a good education and earning a decent living. They are just trying to live their own lives, and have their own problems.
As individual people, they have no control over what happens to blacks .
But if you compare America to other countries, and conditions people have lived under over the centuries, we are actually one of the most egalitarian societies that has ever existed. If you think things are bad in America, people in many parts of the world are treated atrociously by the government, and there is absolutely no fairness and justice.
Inequality and injustice are rampant all over the world, and always have been. And in pointing out how bad things are in other countries, I am not in any way using this as an excuse to condone maltreatment of blacks in America.
“But if you compare America to other countries, and conditions people have lived under over the centuries, we are actually one of the most egalitarian societies that has ever existed”
Provide proof for this statement, including actual knowledge of world cultures both historical and present.
Robert, looking back over all of your past posts and comments, not just from this thread but from all of them, I see two things. Privilege, of course, but also a near-compulsion to attack straw-men rather than engage the ideas being presented.
Please work on the second of these.
—Myca
The problem isn’t in the last three sentences–the conclusion is fine–but in the fact that the argument is poor. in this case, I have read enough good arguments on the exact topic to know the conclusion is correct, but on the grand scheme of things I think this argument is pretty weak.
First, the circular exclusion is a joke: you’re all privileged, and if you’re not privileged then I’m not talking about you, so you’re all privileged.
next, the “hey, you can marry up!” issue is … odd. no mention of the differences in abilities which come between sexes, or how marrying to gain stature (instead of happiness, love, etc) may itself be a social issue. Or of a lot of other stuff.
[shrug] plenty of good stuff out there on white privilege, but i don’t think this is it.
“also a near-compulsion to attack straw-men rather than engage the ideas being presented.”
Well, that, yes, but damn, it gets on my nerves when people make statements that make no sense if you actually know something about world cultures, past and present. “Marriage has always been between a man and woman.” “America is the most tolerant culture of homosexuality that has ever existed.” I mean, they might as well be saying, “I am totally ignorant of all anthropology.”
I mean, to give Robert the benefit of the doubt, maybe he has some sort of objective data that he can attempt to bring to bear against the obvious counterexamples to his argument. But I doubt it.
Robert Berger isn’t the “usual” Robert, is he? It doesn’t look like the same writing style.
No. “Usual” Robert was banned and stomped off, and besides, I believe his last name was Hayes.
I don’t hink I’ve been setting up any “straw men”. If you compare conditions in America in the past with those of today, inequality,injustice and discrimination were far,far worse than today. Blacks suffered from Jim Crow laws, lynching, not being allowed to vote, denied admission to college and medical and law school, routinely subject to humiliating comments by bigoted whites etc, women could not vote or work in most fields, Jews were also discriminated against, and so forth.
Of course things are not perfect today for blacks, other non whites and women, but if people who lived a century ago could come back and see how vastly different things are, they would be flabbergasted.
And there is still a great deal of inequality and injustice around the world, and more powerful peoplkes still oppress weaker ones terribly everywhere. Which countries are better for women, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan ?
Whee, that wasn’t your argument. Now: prove your assertion that modern America has one of the most egalitarian cultures that ever existed.
We invented chocolate chip cookies.
They represent one of the most perfect combinations of light and dark, sweet and salty, and crispy and chewy, that has ever been invented on the entire planet.
We also invented New York Super Fudge Chunk.
Like the cookie, NYSFC is a perfect combination. Although it loses some of the crisp appeal, it has inherent to it some added social commentary, insofar as it contains a reversal of the normal majority white/minority black ratio found in many lesser ice creams such as the plebian “Southern Strategy” fudge ripple.
These blendings of diverse ingredients to form a cohesive and tasty whole can only have been developed in the most egalitarian country no earth. The chocolate chip cookie, standing alone, is surely all the proof that is needed. But with the added support of New York Super Fudge Chunk, the case is sealed.
I meant to say that Xinjiang in China is EAST Turkestan, not the western part, which is the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, except for Tajikistan, which is Persian,not Turkish speaking.
I’m afraid every one has completed missed the point of what I was trying to say.
I didn’t mean to say that everything is wonderful in America, and that there’s no racism and inequality etc; of course there is. What I meant to say is that America is no more racist than the rest of the world, and that people are oppressed and horribly maltreated everywhere by by ethnic groups that are in power where they live, and many governments oppress ethnic minorities terribly everywhere. And that racism, prejudice and oppression have existed for thousands of years everywhere, long before whites ever settled in what is now America, and that atrocities have been committed by ALL races.
I was not trying to excuse or condone racists acts and speech in America; just to point out tthat these happen everywhere.
No, Robert, we didn’t miss your point. Your point was to derail the thread with irrelevancies, and also to make random assertions that you can’t prove (and then totally duck those assertions).
If you can’t stay on topic from now on, we’ll ban you.
“I…LIKE…FLAME WARS!! BYAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”
–Gov. Howard Dean
Mandolin:
That’s not really something that can be proven. Obviously Robert could rattle off a long list of societies current and historical that are much worse than the present-day US in terms of racial egalitarianism, but anyone who disagreed with the claim could simply accuse him of cherry-picking. Really, the only way to evaluate the claim is to look for counterexamples. No doubt you know of several, so why not just name them and be done with it?
Personally, I can’t think of any, but I don’t know much about the experience of racial minorities in Europe, which seems like it would be the best place to look for counterexamples.
Yes, obviously, it’s not provable precisely. However, he’s making a very broad statement, including *all cultures that have ever existed*. So, presumably, if I say something probably all anthropologists would recognize like, “What about the pre-contact pueblo cultures?” he would be able to say, “They don’t count because x.”
Surely, he should be able to tell us what measures he’s using, what cultures (world! and historical!) that he has evaluated to make this claim. He can provide the evidence that he thinks backs up his statement, if he has any. Still waiting for that evidence, or even an explanation of why he thinks he can find it.
And I’m still waiting, and will continue to wait, because he never had any idea of what he was saying. He was just bullshitting, emptily, and making a grandiose statement. I’m willing to be proven wrong on this, but only by… wait for it… a well-supported argument, from him, suggesting that he had actual reasonable, well-thought-out, fact-based reasons to back up his claim.
Alternately, if he can’t even manage a meager support of it, he should probably back off the claim instead of continuing to bullshit.
And actually, there are a number of studies of comparative anthropology, and the more you move into sociology, the easier it gets to compare things. If he were to say, “Look, by the X measure of xeno0hobia/philia, you see that Americans score higher than X% of cultures, including past cultures evalutated by historical data, and exhibit many of the behaviors associated with egalitarianism such as: a, b, c, d, e, f, g” then that would be a reasonable argument supporting his statement, and it wouldn’t involve just “a list of societies.”
The claim could probably still be countered effectively (since, at least as I’m aware, the evidence suggests that American society is really, really far from egalitarian), but at least it would prove that Mr. Berger wasn’t a monkey pattering randomly on a typewriter and stringing sentences without any thought behind them.
Have you considered the possibility that he has a long list of cultural and anthropological references, which he didn’t bother posting because of the obvious supremacy of my CCC/NYSFC theory?
That is my hypothesis, anyway.