In case folks wonder, I definitely didn’t mean this as a reference to Bob Hayes; that it might be read that way didn’t occur to me until two seconds ago, as I started to post the cartoon on “Alas.” I just used “Bob” because it’s a funny-sounding name (see: Black Adder), and because it’s only three letters long and so requires so little word balloon space.
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Oh, so that’s what Bob Hayes looks like – I always imagined him with a beard and a pipe, for some reason.
I like “Wally.”
Wally the Wonderbread Whitey.
Great toon, Barry. I had a very similar experience to panel 5 when I was a drug-addled teen. I’ll tell ya about it sometime.
O.K. I just Googled “Bob Hayes”. A whole lot of people are upset that although Bob Hayes was a standout player for the Dallas Cowboys, he is not in the NFL Hall of Fame. But somehow I don’t think that’s the guy you mean. I also would be surprised if you’re talking about the guy who wrote for “That ’70’s Show”. Who’s Bob Hayes?
Me.
Boy, I wish I could draw. This would be my own comic in response:
How Bob’s great-grandparents got into the U.S.A.
(picture: Show burning Polish village with dead bodies, terrified people fleeing. Show Bob’s great-grandparents destitute, in steerage class, on boat. Show some of their family turned away, and denied entry.)
How Bob’s grandparents became homeowners.
(picture: Show each grandparent’s history. Grandfather starts out as orphan living on streets. Grandmother similar. They work 70 hour weeks, wear old clothes, eat only day old bread, eventually meet, and continue that way until they eventually save enough to buy a tiny house. They can’t afford furniture for another few years so they use boxes. No word on when they can afford heat.)
How Bob’s dad began his career.
(picture: Show Bob’s dad delivering papers, sweeping sidewalks, and working his ass off. Show Bob’s dad eventually getting a GED as an adult. Show Bob’s dad driving a cab.)
How Bob’s parents became homeowners.
(Picture: Show Bob’s parents buying tiny house and working long weeks, like their parents. Show grandparents helping with down payment.)
How Bob thinks of his family.
(Picture: Show Bob appreciating the sacrifices of his family and how lucky he is.)
How Bob gets called a racist.
(Picture: Show someone assuming and implying that Bob is living a life of ease and that he and his family have had everything handed to them because they were white. Show Bob calling that person an idiot. Show that person calling Bob a racist. Show Bob telling them to $%#@! off and go away.)
How it ends.
(Picture: Show Bob walking away, resentfully wondering why so many complex issues get condensed into bad sound bites. Show the other person walking away smugly, thinking that Bob’s reaction proves they were right.)
As I said, i really wish I could draw.
Wow, Sailorman. You couldn’t make it any more apparent that you have no understanding of the comic.
It’s funny how far to the right this blog (mostly the comments) has raced over the past 6 or 8 months. It used to be a place for interesting debate, now it’s just a place for right wingers to repeat their blindered catch-phrases endlessly.
Oh, well. It was a great place for a long, long time. Thanks for those years, Amp (and everybody else who contributed so much).
Sailorman–While it’s true that plenty of immigrants (particularly Eastern European Jews) did face persecution in their home countries and did immigrate in poverty, doesn’t it say something that we KNOW about their struggles? Yes, it’s true–life for European immigrants wasn’t perfect. But during the time period which both you and Ampersand are referencing, white Europeans were being allowed into the United States in droves. They were able to find jobs, they were able to achieve upward mobility. Why? Because even if they didn’t speak perfect English, they still looked white. My great-grandfather went from being a reindeer herder in Hammerfest, Norway to a middle-class business owner in Wisconsin. Another great-grandfather, who was in fact an orphan, was able to make a life for himself relatively easily as a unionized factory worker in Ohio. All four of my grandparents were able to go to college, three of them graduated.
And what were African-Americans, who had been in America far longer than these relatives of mine, doing? Ah yes. They were being denied jobs in all but the low service sectors, they were only allowed to live in certain places (usually not the best of places), their children went to substandard and (if southern) segregated schools, and if they could manage to achieve the grades which would allow them to go to college (and the money to afford it) they were admitted at far lower rates than white students (with the exception of Traditionally Black Colleges like Howard University) and faced discrimination while in college.
Nevermind the fact that while my ancestors’ lives in Europe generations before that might not have been perfect, they were still legally free people. White Europeans were not property of other white Europeans. They were never traded or sold, they weren’t beaten for disobedience, they weren’t forced to bear the children of their ‘masters’. African-Americans were.
So please, Sailorman, quit it with the lecturing. Yes, white peoples’ lives haven’t always been perfect. But I can’t imagine you’d want to trade places with an (ordinary) African-American.
Jake, even absent the ad hom I have to say it’s a bit amusing to be called a “right-winger.” Are you in the U.S.A? Because while there are certainly people here who are more left wing than I on some issues, I’m way to the left of centrist on a U.S. scale, and there are various issues even within Alas on which
“So please, Sailorman, quit it with the lecturing. Yes, white peoples’ lives haven’t always been perfect. But I can’t imagine you’d want to trade places with an (ordinary) African-American.”
No, I wouldn’t. Blacks and other POC have, on average, reliably had a situation far, far, worse than whites. I have always said as much and will stand behind it now; racism exists and has for pretty much forever. But it’s a complicated situation, with a variety of other factors hiding behind “on average” and “reliably.”
Some things don’t lend themselves to simplicity. I know, I know, cartoons can only say so much, right? Cartoons can only put out sound bites. But that doesn’t necessarily mean “everything simple is OK;” it also can mean “some things are too complex to put in a cartoon.” i think this is one of those times.
Amp handles a lot of political issues, and generally I think he does so quite well, whether or not i disagree with his underlying position. I read this cartoon and it seemed like something which was presented as having general applicability, when I don’t think it does.
Or is this supposed to be one of those “please don’t be offended if I include you in a general statement that you don’t like; if it doesn’t happen to apply to you individually you should just pretend I didn’t say it and ignore it without feeling at all hurt or defensive” moments? Because yeah, those REALLY work well in real life in other situations, so it probably makes great sense to apply them whenever possible.
Grandfather starts out as orphan living on streets. Grandmother similar. They work 70 hour weeks, wear old clothes, eat only day old bread, eventually meet, and continue that way until they eventually save enough to buy a tiny house.
Good for Bob’s grandparents. Amp never said or implied that white immigrants didn’t work hard. But consider adding a picture in the background: Jose’s* grandparents working 80 hour weeks, eventually saving enough to buy land and successfully farm for a while until their white neighbors got jealous or wanted their farm and lynched them in order to be able to buy it cheap. Perhaps Bob’s grandparents didn’t participate. Perhaps they even objected. But they did not have to suffer or fear the same kind of persecution that a non-white person would have. It’s quite possible to be an honest, hard working person who never personally committed a racist crime or even had a racist though but still benefit from racism. It can be as simple as not being the person who becomes the neighborhood scapegoat.
*Yeah, I know, a native US born black would be a more typical victim of lynching but I’m not sure how to make the name work to make it clear who I’m talking about.
It’s an ad hom to say that Sailorman demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the comic?
Also, did I name you as a right winger? Well, if the shoe fits…
I’m way to the left of centrist on a U.S. scale…
Did I say on a US scale? A bit left of center (which is a generous judgment of yourself, IMO) in the US is still right wing.
But I’ll take the rest of my complaints to the open thread before I say goodbye.
Sailorman,
Horrible comment. First, you complain that the comic fails to capture the full nuance of the situation. It’s a silly complaint to make about a 4-panel comic. Especially since In 4 panels He’s managed to show, clearly show how Bob has benefited from being white. This is true even though Bob has never consciously attempted to do so. Bob is totally unaware of how his race has helped him. If you want a more nuanced discussion of this why don’t you revisit one of the many posts amp has written on the topic? The first one that comes to mind was the one about smooth roads. I’ve been reading alas for over a year and this comic neatly captures a number of ideas Amp has discussed in lengthy posts and comments.
I think that rather than complain about the lack of detail Amp deserves praise for making a rather nuanced and meaty comic. It seems clear from your silly comment that you got the point. But you seem upset that he didn’t draw attention to the fact that white people’s lives can be hard also. Personally I wish that he’d worked in a commentary on how expensive counter tops played into the housing crisis. But again, only 4 panels.
Secondly you completely ignore Amps point in your rebuttal. Being white helps. Looking like and fitting in with the people who act as gate keepers to better opportunity helps. It’s not a slam dunk and no where in the comic did Amp show it as such.
I rate your comment as a 1 out of 5. Good job on not using profanity or personal insults. But it’s still a lousy critique of both what he accomplished in a small space and his larger point.
Amp I think it’s a great comic. You are by far the best political cartoonist I know that doesn’t get paid for his work, and I say that even though I don’t agree with all of the points that you make in your work.
Once upon a time European nations practice “mercantilism,” a set of policies designed to promote exports and discourage imports. Adam Smith and others argued that these policies were misguided. Yes, buying things from other nations may help those nations, but it may ALSO help your own nation, too. This is not a zero-sum game; win-win propositions are a possibility, too.
Amp has drawn a cartoon illustrating how black people have suffered from racism, including a number of bilateral interactions where a white person derived a benefit denied to a black person, culminating in the white person professing ignorance of being helped by racism. Yet I would argue that this analysis is misguided. It fails to illustrate how much richer Bob might be if —
– the US had not skewed immigration policy on the basis of race but rather on the basis of some measure of merit,
– blacks had been able to be full participants in growing the nation’s economy,
– his prospects for social interaction had been broadened, and
– his black peers had not been needlessly harassed (or, if you prefer, if his neighborhood had been freed from the predations of white druggies).
In short, the cartoon seems to reflect the premise that policies that hurt blacks must, by default, help whites, as if they were rival sports teams. In individual instances, I expect that this is true. But on a broader level, I expect this is false. I expect that Bob is poorer for all the discoveries and inventions that he hasn’t enjoyed because potential black inventors were denied opportunities. I expect he is poorer as a result of the narrower range of social interactions he has experience. If blacks are excluded from med school, how does that help Bob when he gets cancer? If blacks are excluded from Bob’s neighborhood, how does that help Bob find a buyer for his house? If blacks are excluded from Bob’s social circle, how does that help Bob make friends or find a mate?
At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, consider: Did the Nazi benefit from anti-Semitism? Sure, it’s easy to look at all the loot they commandeered from Jews and conclude that they did. But it’s also not hard to look at the great Jewish minds they lost just as they were embarking on a campaign to conquer the world, and conclude that they could scarcely have adopted a more self-destructive policy.
Similarly, consider places where you think racism has been especially bad, and where you think racism has not been as bad. Which of these places offers the best life to members of the DOMINANT group? If you had to pick the city that offers the highest standard of living to whites in 1965, for example, would you pick Selma, Alabama?
Racism puts Bob closer to the top of the social hierarchy, but it’s the hierarchy of a society that’s impoverished. Perhaps it’s our obsession with hierarchy that makes this issue so obscure. After all, which of us wouldn’t want to live the life of Alexander the Great … as he suffered pancreatitis? I’m a lowly member of a society, but it’s a society that’s rich beyond Alexander’s wildest dreams, so rich that even some lowly members have major medical.
Similarly, perhaps our own society could be rich beyond our wildest dreams if we could only stop impoverishing ourselves.
Yes, racism hurts blacks. But that’s not the same as saying it helps whites. Again, racism isn’t a zero-sum game; rather, I expect it’s lose-lose.
One of your best, Amp. I’ve dealt with classrooms full of well-meaning mostly liberal white college freshmen who know all a fair bit about the history of the civil rights movement, but it’s mostly voting rights, desegregation of schools, and lunch counters; they’ve never heard of red-lining. When I ask them how they benefit from racism, they shrug their shoulders. The dominant race history narratives in this country are designed produce this kind of cluelessness.
Sailorman, your script isn’t really *that* far off my own parents’ situation. But I don’t have any problem with Amp’s cartoon, or think that he’s being smug or oversimplifying. What am I missing? Should I be more defensive or something?
joe, it’s a six panel comic. I mean, sure, Amp couldn’t get nuance into a four panel comic, but there’s plenty of nuance to be had in those two extra panels. The fact that this comic doesn’t contain a full detailed history of immigration, race relations and oppression in the United States means we might as well ignore it.
Thanks to everyone for their comments. DJW, let me know if you’d like a print-quality copy to hand to your students. :-)
Sailorman, I’m not sure where the cartoon said that white people have it easy, or don’t work for what they get. The person was offered “a foot in the door,” not the keys to the executive washroom; the white couple was given a mortgage, not a free house.
What the cartoon does say (in my view) is that white people have it easier than black people, and that the system works in a way that makes it easy for white people to be unaware of how they’ve benefited from racism. I don’t think believing that requires believing that white people are handed the world on a silver platter.
NR, I think that might be true, but it also might not be. I do think white gain a real competitive advantage from not having to compete on an equal basis with non-whites; I’m not sure whether or not the losses to whites from living in a racist nation outbalance the advantages or not.
Of course, there are strong reasons for everyone, whites included, to support racial justice other than immediate advantage.
Mythago,
I’ve been thinking about why I disliked the point of Amps comic despite it being pretty obviously true in general. My initial reaction was somewhat similar to Sailorman’s.
I think it has to do with work ethic. I work hard. I’ve worked hard in the past and I’ve often delayed gratification for a bigger future reward. I picked a more marketable major at a challenging school instead of something more interesting at a party school for instance. I also borrowed a lot of money to do it. I seek out additional work and projects at work and try to do a good job.
Long story short, I work hard and take pride in the fact that I’m productive and successful. I feel like I’ve earned what I’ve accomplished and I resent that idea that my success might be in some way unearned.
This is true even though I can easily see how I benefited from a number of things totally beyond my control.
I wonder if level of defensiveness relates to the extent that your sense of identity derives from accomplishments?
Sailorman, it might also help if your comic idea showed any originality or was in the slightest bit funny, instead of a long convoluted defensive reaction to Amp’s comic. But then, Chris Muir seems pretty successful despite lacking any drawing ability, creativity or humor, so I say go for it.
I know that ‘get over it’ is absolutely not a productive response, but I am (no snottiness intended) having a hard time thinking of a better way to phrase it. Having that initial reaction is one thing, but clinging to denial in order to preserve that feeling of self-worth is another. (And I guess I don’t see that recognizing racism takes away from your hard work; it’s a reflection of how much harder others have to work.)
One of the things Amp is careful to do is not to suggest that Bob, or his ancestors, were deliberately racist, or that they were even aware of how the benefitted. If you look at the panels, all of the racism is taking place behind the white people, or out of their line of sight; there’s not any sense that they’re gloating that they got a loan and the black family didn’t, much less that they’re pushing a black person out of the way to get an unfair advantage. All of the racist language is heavily coded; “right sort of people” can be a dogwhistle for racism, but to a white person who isn’t intentionally racist it could be heard as “nice, hardworking families with good neighborhood values”.
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After a conversation with Amp online, I’m going to stop posting in this thread, so won’t address any responses here. Sorry.
Thanks, Joe! But just for the record, I am paid by Dollars and Sense for my political cartoons.
I think there are interesting points to be made for discussing both Amps and Sailorman’s comic together.
The main comment I will add is that there is one thing that is left out of Amps comic, and that is relative demographcs. To keep the math simple, let’s assume 10% of the nation is african american and 90% are white – the numbers aren’t exactly that, but going back to grandparents, it isn’t terribly off, either.
I’ll just use one of the panels to illustrate where I’m going with this – then panel for the job. Say there are only 5 jobs available but there are 10 applicants. Bob is one of the applicants. Eight other applicants are white. One is african american. Now, racism would give all of the job openings to only white people. Of course, functionally, Bob only benefits from that racism if he is the 6th best person for the job and one of the five best people was the african american. Otherwise, Bob does not benefit from any racism at all, despite the fact that the african american didn’t get the job, because even without racism, if Bob was in the top 5, he’d still have gotten the job. Bob ONLY benefits from racism if Bob is 6th best, and wouldn’t have gotten the job but for one of the 5 slots being left open to him because racism kept the african american out of it.
The same can be extrapolated to all of the other panels. In a society where a relatively small minority is discriminated against (I think african americans are actually about 14% of the population, but that math right now would give me a headache), racism really can only benefit the dominant race on the margins. Because a white person’s primary “competition” for jobs, houses, loans, and so forth are other white people, simply because there are far more of them.
So if you are the smartest person in your class (but are also white) – then you really don’t benefit from racism in the way depicted in this comic for, say, getting a job, because you would have gotten the job anyway. You were the most qualified person.
That’s why I find it rather distatesful to see blanket statements like calling all white people racist (or saying all white people in the US at least benefit from racism) because it is a flatly false statement. A very large number do not. And as we progress drop by drop toward equality, that number only increases.
You could at least make an argument for it in a country where, say, only 5% of the population was white and 95% was black, such as in South Africa – there, probably most white people benefited from racism (though again, there would still probably be a few who did not, the margins would be reversed from what it is in the US because of the different demographics).
DBB, the last time I was engaged in a serious job-hunt, I applied for at least 30 jobs before I got one I liked. Furthermore, my job prospects aren’t just affected by what I apply for; in a very real way, what happened to my parents and my grandparents has an affect on what’s available to me. If you look at all the jobs we’ve applied for throughout all our lives, there are probably hundreds, perhaps a thousand. A small statistical advantage matters when it’s present over hundreds of trials.
Plus, your logic certainly doesn’t apply to redlining, or restrictive immigration practices, or bias in judicial system treatment.
By the way, is it your opinion that my strip is a “blanket statement” “calling all white people racist”?
Actually I rather like this strip. It describes how racist decisions can benefit a person outside of their perception and it does so without castigating Bob for anything other than cluelessness.
I would revise Bob’s speech balloon to say something like “My family earned everything we ever got, we never benefited from racism”, since the racism was multigenerational and there’s no automatic connection between Bob’s standing today and what happened to grandma in 1930. Bob as a teenager getting a stern lecture and another chance is the only thing that’s personal to him.
Also, those are some very modern clothes you have the people in ought-whenever wearing. ;)
DBB: Part of the implicit racism that Bob benefits from is the perception of competence that people have of him because he is white and male. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people* perceive whites and men as more competent than minorities or women. So if Bob is the “fifth best” candidate for a job, and the “sixth best” candidate is black, there is a real chance that the supposed 6th best candidate is actually more competent than he, but is perceived as less competent because of his race. And that’s not even counting the advantages he received from living in the neighborhood his parents could move into because they were the “right sort” (which probably had better schools than the neighborhood the 6th best candidate grew up in), the stereotype threat advantage on standardized tests, the advantages of having similar culture to his bosses and therefore feeling like a more comfortable person to work with, etc.
*And not just white men. Women and minorities also tend to see white men as more competent. It’s a pervesive, societal level problem, not just individuals acting in a racist or clueless manner.
Emphasizing this statement, because that’s really what the defensive reaction boils down to: a need to affirm that whatever I got, I got on my own merit. It also assumes that things like job-hunting, in the absence of open racism, are purely a meritocracy, and that “there are five jobs and ten applicants” is anything like a realistic model of how job-hunting works.
Something DBB’s numbers ignore and that Amp captures well is how the effects of racism are echoed down the generations; because Bob’s grandfather had a job, he can help Bob’s parents afford the down payment on a house. So even if we wave a magic wand and make racism vanish from the world the moment before Bob’s parents apply for a mortgage, they still have an advantage over a black family applying for a mortgage.
“Similarly, consider places where you think racism has been especially bad, and where you think racism has not been as bad. Which of these places offers the best life to members of the DOMINANT group? If you had to pick the city that offers the highest standard of living to whites in 1965, for example, would you pick Selma, Alabama?”
I actually think that this is a “chicken or the egg” situation. Economic pressures often feed the flames of racial animus and competition for scarce resources fosters an “us vs. them” mentality. Ex. The “no jobs for blacks while white men go hungry” ideas during the Great Depression, when service jobs that were the almost exclusive millieu of blacks were demanded by whites when there was no “respectable” work to be had. Tolerance is often a societal luxury that is deemed important when times are good and it’s convenient for members of the tolerant group to do so.
“Otherwise, Bob does not benefit from any racism at all, despite the fact that the african american didn’t get the job, because even without racism, if Bob was in the top 5, he’d still have gotten the job.”
There’s a whole lot of mediocre people out there who get jobs not because they’re the best candidate, but because they know someone, they’re a “people person” who can relate to the interviewer, they seem like a consistent addition to the company culture, etc. You’ve got to be kidding if you think that the best person for the job always gets the job based on cold, hard facts and static criteria that apply equally to all (Why else would certain attire be required to interview? Unless you work in fashion/PR fields it shouldn’t be relevant, and if you’re qualified, flip flops and cut-offs don’t change that.) … in addition to that, what if there’s 10 white candidates and no black candidate, because levels of qualified blacks have been artificially repressed by racism that has created educational disparities and/or pretty much guaranteed a lack of social access to mainstream middle class networks and the job opportunities that they often provide?
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Everybody else has pretty much covered the content, I want to talk about the art. Namely that it’s awesome, except the last panel seems a bit off to me. I can’t specify why – it feels like it’s something to do with his posture, and maybe it’s just that I’ve never actually seen a white person say it quite like that so it just jars with my personal experience. He seems to be more pleading whereas I’ve always heard it a lot more defensively, a little straighter-backed if you will. It works either way, but that’s how I saw it.
Another small, nitpicky thing – although I realise hair styles come and go, I don’t know that I’ve ever known someone’s part to change sides, which Bob’s dad’s part does between panels three and four. I almost thought it was a different person for a second there. (In case it isn’t clear, I’m talking about the way his hair falls to one side or the other – it falls to his left in panel three but to his right in panel four. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that I’ve never known it to happen.)
Thanks Amp! I’ll email you about that; with your permission I’d like to reprint it on a class handout at some point.
I think you’re selling short what you accomplish in this strip a bit:
What the cartoon does say (in my view) is that white people have it easier than black people, and that the system works in a way that makes it easy for white people to be unaware of how they’ve benefited from racism.
Absolutely true, as far as it goes, but you also demonstrate how (as Mythago just said) the injustices perpetrated here continue to effect future generations. The Fair Housing Act in 68 improved the situation in many ways, the but the chunks of wealth the (almost entirely white) revolution in home ownership amongst the middle class has continued to impact the life-chances and opportunities of future generations significantly, even if the income gap begins to shrink a bit.
I know a sociologist who did a paper on the history of the lynching of Latinos in the South-West. It might have been published as a book but his work is hard to find.
Good comic strip in my opinion. Only a matter of time before people were more concerned about how the Whites were portrayed unfortunately.
Wow amazing cartoon and very creative blog!
I know a sociologist who did a paper on the history of the lynching of Latinos in the South-West. It might have been published as a book but his work is hard to find.
Do you have a reference? I’d like to try to find the work. It sounds interesting. Depressing, but interesting.
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Mythago, I think “get over it” is a perfectly okay response. Amp posts a cartoon that makes me feel uncomfortable because it calls into question part of my self worth. At the end of the day he (worst case) made me feel a little bad. This barely qualifies as harm to me.
But that only counts if you’re measuring inputs. If you’re measuring outputs there’s no ‘A’ for effort. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ‘earned’ and “A” but got a “C-” or vice versa. It only matters if you got and “A” and earned an “A”. So if I’ve got the A i really want to think I’ve earned it.
I’m not happy with the metaphor so I’ll try again.
Let’s say I’m very convinced that I’m a good person because I have an important job that’s allowed me to buy a nice house in a good school system and provide for my family. That’s why I’m a good person. Sure I’m nice to my dog, respect my wife and play with my kids. But that stuff is baseline, it makes you barely ‘okay’. To be good you have to accomplish something like was described above. My accomplishments are less worthy, and thus so am I, to whatever extent the system is stacked in my favor. So the more I buy into that the less I’m going to want to hear that I’ve befitted from racism.
I agree about Amp’s handling of the racism behind the scene. I thought that was great.
Also
I’d like it if Sailorman responded for two reasons.
1. I called him silly and Horrible in my comment and I would have been more polite if I knew he wasn’t going to be able to respond. (nothing official, but the social pressure is clear.)
2. I’d like to hear what he has to say about my comments. (Sailorman, my email is time123@gmail.com if you feel like taking it offline. )
Sara No H — I’m glad you liked the art in this strip, as a whole. I actually feel pretty proud of this strip, artwise, because a decade ago I couldn’t have fit 19 figures into a six panel strip and not have it look crowded and cluttered.
Good catch about the hair part changing sides. I know just what happened, too — sometime after I penciled this strip, I decided the composition would look better if I flipped some of the elements of a panel, and so flipped it electronically, but didn’t catch that I had to redraw the hair.
I agree with you that it would be more realistic to show Bob in panel six looking more hostile and defensive. But I didn’t want to make it seem like I’m saying Bob’s a jerk, or an asshole, so I thought it would be better to use extremely nonagressive body language.
Robert: True. The truth is, I suck at drawing fashion — one reason I’ve always hesitated to draw historical comics. But sometimes it’s unavoidable. (I did a better job with the “nativitism marches in place” strip).
“Hereville” has been very easy on me so far because Mirka is a tomboy with no fashion sense; she just wears jumpers all the time. The next story involves one of Mirka’s older sisters, who is a teenager, so doing her clothing will be much more of a challenge.
Just to be clear, I didn’t ask Sailorman not to comment on this thread; he just chose not to, because he’s sympathetic to the concerns about where the discussions on “Alas” are going. As far as I’m concerned, he’s free to comment on this thread if he wants to.
Neat! I’ll email you back.
Oh, definitely. The intergenerational persistance of the effects of racism is — along with how foolish the “if white people don’t see white privilege, then it must not be there” belief is — the primary thing I wanted to communicate with this strip.
Okay, I kinda feel bad because I do feel that my earlier comment was rude to Sailorman, but at the risk of being rude to another commenter, I still feel I must say that at this point of DBB’s comment, I knew I didn’t have to read the rest.
Why? Well, he does an in depth focus on probability starting using this fact, but it’s all rendered irrelevant because – even accepting that 1 in 10 people in America are black – he ignores the fact that that is not a constant in community by community. I live in Seattle, so when I’m looking for a job, I’m not competing with people in Atlanta, New York and Miami. I’m competing with people from Seattle (or people willing to relocate, but that’s a small percentage of total applicants). There are places where the number of blacks is closer to 5 or 6 or 7 in 10, or maybe 0 in 10.
But the thing is, racism, both subtle and overt, have a lot to do with the distribution of blacks in this country. If you live in a city and the percentage of blacks is around 0, odds are you live in a former Sundown Town. If you don’t know what that is, I advise you inform yourself, this post by Dave Neiwert is a good place to start. The existence of such towns greatly reduces the area of the country where black people are allowed to live. And then of course when you get to cities where black people do live, as in panel 4 of Amp’s comic, the most desirable places are off limits to them.
Yet another great cartoon. Thanks, Barry.
Though I do think nobody.really@12 brings up a good point — I think it would be very difficult to argue that whites have derived a net benefit from living in a racist society, compared to living in a non-racist one. I notice quite often ways that whites (and the more-priveleged set in general) are hurt by racism (and other injustices); it continually confounds me that they seem so blind to it.
If I could draw, I’d probably draw a cartoon about that. But I can’t so I won’t.
About six months ago you were talking about printing a book of your political cartoons. Is that on the back burner now that you’ve printed Hereville? I still want one.
I did print a trial run, but I wasn’t happy with how the printing came out, so decided not to print any more until I could fix the problem. Eventually I figured out what I had done wrong, but the problem is something that would take a lot of time to fix; essentially I’d have to re-lay-out the entire book starting from scratch. But I’ve been too busy with “Hereville” to take the time for that.
I definitely plan to redo that book and get it into print, hopefully sometime in the next three months.
I think it would be very difficult to argue that whites have derived a net benefit from living in a racist society, compared to living in a non-racist one.
Imagine a tank of lobsters being transported to a seafood restaurant, where they will be cooked and eaten, a journey of some hours. Some places in the tank are more comfortable than others; the lobsters vie to hold those places. The lobsters who manage, through fair means or foul, to hold onto a “good place” have a more comfortable journey – but they are nonetheless cooked and eaten at its end.
The lobsters would all be better off if they were in the ocean, swimming around and eating whatever it is lobsters eat, mating and driving off their offspring and doing whatever the charming native folkways of lobsterkind are.
So the ones who get ahead, they’re benefiting. It’s just that they could, theoretically, be doing so much better without the need for the struggle.
What this comic (and Sailorman’s response) reminded me of is a very personal interaction I have in my own life. It is not exactly the same, but humor me on this analogy, ok?
My sister and I are both white females, both came from working class parents with a strong work ethic, and are both first-generation college educated with advanced degrees. Inasmuch as we can be similar, we are as sisters. The main difference in our lives is that she is able-bodied and I am disabled. (I am very obviously vision and hearing impaired.)
My sister is a very hard worker and has a successful career. I would not say that she hasn’t “earned” her successes because she put her nose to the grindstone, made the right decisions to get to her goals, and met her goals by working hard.
The difference between her and I is that she has always had the OPPORTUNITY to work hard. For her, say the goal is “D”. If she worked hard at A, it would get her to B. If she worked hard at B, it would get her to C. If she worked hard at C, it would get her to D. She pretty much has always had the benefit of the assumption that A B C=D. There was an obvious return to her investment.
For me, A may or may not = B, which may or may not get me to C, etc. And the time I will have to spend at any one of these steps (working just as hard or harder than my sister, is usually longer and may offer me less return on my investment.)
To use real life examples: My sister could earn money in high school by babysitting or doing high school fast food jobs. It was relatively easy for her to get the opportunities to work hard. I sat around a lot in high school earning way less money because people were less inclined to hire a deafblind babysitter or fast food worker. She had the opportunity to work hard.
She was in honors programs and I was in special ed, which didn’t even allow me to take the qualifying tests for honors programs. She worked hard in her honors programs because she had the opportunity to work hard.
She got through college more quickly than I did because she was able to work to pay for college at a much increased rate than I did. I did work, in high school and college, but I spent much more time job hunting and doing volunteer work to get my foot in the door or begging for more hours than she did. She did work hard to put herself through college, as did I, but the benefits allowing her to work hard gave her more opportunities.
Most notably, she got many jobs and internships, etc. by word of mouth. Someone would recommend her and she would get hired. I had people who were also willing to vouch for me, and they would come back to me apologetically saying that they put in a good word for me but that the other person said that they just didn’t know if they could see themselves hiring a disabled person.
In her case, with all of these opportunities to work hard, she was able to build on her success over time. In my case, any accomplishment I earned in the past by hard work was not likely to count for anything past my disability. Her past accomplishments led to more opportunities to work hard and earn more successes. I have to start over proving myself at every opportunity as if I have no past. I have to defend myself for things that may or may not happen in the future. I have no past and no future in regards to earning things, her past accomplishments are step ladders for her and no one expects her to prove that she will never make a mistake in the future she cannot foresee.
So, I have never understood this argument that sailorman gives. No one is saying that white people didn’t work hard to earn their successes. But don’t they understand how fortunate they are to have those opportunities to work hard? And how frustrating it is when you want to work hard, you have the skills, you have played by the rules, yet there is no return? Working hard and earning success is a privilege that is not afforded equally to everyone in society. Why is that so hard to understand?
As an interesting epilogue here, my sister has now reached the proverbial glass ceiling in her career. She is finding that she has reached a point that she cannot move out of. A B C is no longer easily equal to D. She is seeing younger, less qualified men jump past her in promotions and opportunities. And I’m sure they worked hard, too.
joe, not disagreeing with you, but “get over it” tends to put people’s backs up more rather than making them think. In the case of a Cartoon Bob who’s genuinely clueless that’s probably what you want.
Great post, Leora.
The lobsters would all be better off if they were in the ocean, swimming around and eating whatever it is lobsters eat, mating and driving off their offspring and doing whatever the charming native folkways of lobsterkind are.
IIRC, lobsters are scavengers and will eat anything. Including their offspring.
However, the analogy isn’t perfect because even if all the lobsters worked together, they couldn’t get back into the ocean, improve conditions in the tank, or even decrease the probability that they’ll get eaten at any given moment. Conditions for people as a whole would probably improve if racism suddenly disappeared and all people’s success depended only on their abilities. (Well, for that to be true sexism, homophobia, etc would also have to disappear. But getting rid of racism would be a start.)
Wow Leora. Excellent posts derive from real life examples. I’m glad you put it in perspective for people who think we are saying that white people don’t work hard. It’s not necessarily about that. It’s about the opportunities missed.
Leora’s post is excellent.
That was a well-illustrated argument, Leona.
Raznor – As soon as I saw you say you didn’t need to read the rest of what I wrote to actually see what I was getting at, I guess I don’t need to read past where you said you’d not read my comment. Great way to have a conversation, though!
And for everyone else who has a problem with my numbers – I’ll repeat what I originally said – I know the numbers are not real, they were just for illustrative purposes. No matter what the exact numbers are, the fact is, whites vastly outnumber blacks in this nation, which makes it really hard for any form of racism to benefit ALL whites because, as was my original point, the main person a white person competes against for jobs or anything else is another white person, simply because there are more of them. Sure, there are some communities where the population locally is mostly one race or another, even a minority – but then in those communities I bet you’d see most of the jobs held by someone from that community (in other words, a minority). Certainly that is true of the elected positions. I see that here in Michigan, where Detroit’s mayor is african american and most of the power positions are held by african americans.
I’m not claiming that no one benefits from racism indirectly. I’m simply pointing out that many if not most of those white people who do benefit indirectly are those on the margins.
And one other point – affirmative action. Guess what. It exists. That never seems to be remembered in discussions such as these – you need to factor that into the equation too. Affirmative action is supposed to make up for the ‘grandfather’ inequities discussed in this thread – yet it seems to have been forgotten. There are plenty of places that explicitly will hire ONLY a minority for a given position and will preferentially promote minorities. And there are programs that give loans only to minorities (who couldn’t otherwise get one) and so on. There are lawsuits filed, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not, for discrimination based on race for failure to hire or for firing. That also has shaped employer behavior. That is also out there. You have to consider that too.
Affirmative action means that theoretically, the 6th best candidate can be african american and she’ll be the one who gets the job over the 5th best white candidate.
Oh, and one more thing, for the comment about whether or not the 5th best is really the 6th best person based on racial bias – forgive me for mentioning law school, but I’m used to law school fact patterns in discussing things – what does that have to do with this? Well, in a law school fact pattern, facts are absolute (to allow you to focus on the legal issue) – so there, when you say ‘6th best candidate’ you mean ‘6th best candidate’ – not just by perception, but in actual empirical reality. So what you describe about perceptions, about say a 6th best white person candidate versus a fifth best black person candidate is not invalidating what I said, it is merely showing the mechanism for how that racism would benefit that 6th best white person on the margins. Which was exacltly what I was talking about.
And Amp, I’m not saying your comic says that every white person is a racist – though it is certainly the sort of thing that is implicit with those who do make such a claim. One could get the impression from it that all white people benefit from racism, and that is something which is flatly false.
“There are plenty of places that explicitly will hire ONLY a minority for a given position”
Please may I have a list of these establishments?
Sure. And they were a very poor illustration, as has been pointed out repeatedly.
Funny you should mention law school, because I too grew up in Michigan and went to law school there. I had an awful lot of white classmates who (like you) were convinced that affirmative action is an unfair leg up for minorities in a world where white people are judged purely on merit. Of course, these same classmates had no problem at all with the idea of using personal connections to further their careers.
Which takes us right back to the point Amp was making: race-based advantage gets handed down. If , say, your uncle’s old Detroit Athletic Club buddy can put in a good word for you for a clerkship, you think of that as “networking”. You don’t think of the fact that maybe in your uncle’s day, the DAC wasn’t quite as welcoming to minorities (or, for that matter, women). If your best friend’s dad went to U of M with the hiring partner of a firm you want to work at, you probably aren’t morally troubled by U of M’s giving a boost to “legacy admissions”.
I did not comment on the relative merits of Affirmative Action – I just pointed out that it exists and it needs to be taken into account when considering this issue. I don’t claim it cancels out the passive advantages that might accrue to some from racism – it may, it may not, it likely depends on the specific situation.
BannaDanna – surely you’ve heard of Affirmative Action? In some places, the way it is implemented is by setting aside certain jobs for minority applicants. Again, I don’t comment on the relative merits of doing so – maybe it just cancels out any racism advantage in a given company. I don’t know.
I don’t doubt that networking is a great advantage – but that is a class advantage, not a race advantage. Obviously there is some correltation between class and race, particularly historically, but they are still different things. For instance: My parents both come from very poor families and grew up poor. And so even though my dad is now a lawyer (his second profession, actually), they really have few “connections” and I got none that helped me out with my job prospects. So as it stands, the job I got out of law school I got entirely based on my performance in law school, and I may be unemployed after that job expires.
And mythago – please tell me where you learned ESP to read my mind and (as it turns out incorrectly) say what I think about Affirmative action? I did not say anything about it except that it exists and so it needs to be considered in the context of this conversation about “passive advantages of racism”.
And as for whether my illustration was a poor one, well, no one has yet actually come close to providing any rebuttal to the core basis of my illustration, which was that passive racism benefits those on the margins. It is simple demographics. Even on the class scale it works out the same way because there are far more poor white people than poor black people in the US. None of those poor white people are getting connections like you mention nor are they profiting from any loans given to their grandparents. In fact, a lot of people at the lower end of the income scale are finding out now that they are losing their homes, and losing their grandparents homes as the housing bubble collapses.
Why is it so difficult for some people to hear that perhaps not every single white person is a racist or even benefits passively from racism?
I don’t believe this could be a complete explanation — under the “family connections” theory, you’d expect children of first generation immigrants to have similar problems to underrepresented minorities — and they don’t. Further, Japanese-Americans in California seem to do pretty well, even though their grandparents were treated very badly.
There’ve been a lot of Russian immigrants to the US in the last twenty years; on the whole, they do well enough for themselves, even though they showed up poor, without family connections, and with a recent legacy of forced labor and involuntary servitude.
“BannaDanna – surely you’ve heard of Affirmative Action? In some places, the way it is implemented is by setting aside certain jobs for minority applicants. Again, I don’t comment on the relative merits of doing so – maybe it just cancels out any racism advantage in a given company. I don’t know.”
You’re being intentionally vague… “some places”, like where? If, as you claim, these places are legion, you should be able to easily name some that are especially notorious for doing this. What you seem to be describing — albeit vaguely — are racial quotas, which — at least in the U.S. — are totally illegal.
So, again: you are pointing out an instance of a disadvantaged white person to argue that there is no real advantage to whites as a group from racism. This is the kind of argument you are supposed to learn not to make in law school: “Well, my great-uncle smoked like a chimney and lived to be 94!” doesn’t prove that smoking is in fact neutral, harmless or really only dangerous to a handful of smokers.
Imagine how well they’d be doing if they hadn’t been treated very badly.
Regarding your illustration, if racism means that the one black candidate is out of the running, then *all* the other candidates benefit; there are now effectively nine, not ten, people competing for those five jobs. Even if Bob doesn’t ultimately get hired, he got an unfair boost over 10% of the applicant pool. Certainly the other five white candidates who got that job benefitted. And don’t you agree that the racist exclusion of one candidate is wrong whether or not Bob got a job from it?
Mythago – sure, racism is wrong, but just because it is wrong to benefit the “6th best” person based on race, that doesn’t mean that this actually benefits numbers 1 through 4. There are a lot of wrongs out there that, while wrong, don’t actually personally benefit me. Many of them are quite the opposite.
One could argue that it actually harms numbers 1 through 4 because now they are working at a company that rejects qualified appilcants for race in exchange for less qualified applicants – giving them a competitive disadvantage over a company that does not do this.
In any case, in my illustration, a “10% boost” is meaningless – either you were within the top five and got a job or you weren’t. Four of those people would have gotten the job anyway, so they didn’t get any “boost” – they got a 0% boost – and one of them, the “6th person”, got a 100% boost – a paying job. Some things just don’t translate across people like that – if one of the top five applicants has a baby, they are not all 20% parents – four are 0% parents, one is 100% a parent…
Banna – It is true that blatent quotas have been outlawed now, for the most part, though for a while there many places had them, such as cities only giving contracts for road repair, for instance, to minority businesses who hired minority workers. Now, they can’t be that blatent about it, but they can call it a “plus” factor and probably do a similar sort of thing, as long as everyone pretends it isn’t a quota. Again, I don’t comment on whether that is right or wrong – it simply is – and the intention of it- the intention of affirmative action – is to “even the playing field” and also get more minorities with a foot in the door, so their grandkids can supposedly benefit from what is talked about in this thread. If affirmative action actually works as advertised, you’d think it would cancel out the dynamic alleged in this comic.
Mythago:
Careful about attribution there!
I’m not claiming racism isn’t a problem, nor that past racism is harmless. I’m claiming that long-past racism is not a decisive cause of the problems of the black community today. I think looking back more than two generations in search of the cause of current troubles is ultimately futile, not that there aren’t problems, or we shouldn’t care about their source.
“If affirmative action actually works as advertised, you’d think it would cancel out the dynamic alleged in this comic.”
But there’s no housing, immigration, arrest, or bank loan AA, and there never has been. Furthermore, that version of “total AA” that has never existed (nor the limited, occupational kind that does exist) hasn’t been going on for a century enthusiastically (as opposed to begrudgingly) practiced by businesses and government orgs, sans the aforementioned legality parameters.
“Now, they can’t be that blatent about it, but they can call it a “plus” factor and probably do a similar sort of thing, as long as everyone pretends it isn’t a quota.”
How do you know this is being done? Inherent in this is the assumption that businesses love AA and would violate the law to aggressively practice it, even though the complete reverse is more likely: businesses do just enough to get by to avoid being sued for discrimination — the bare minimum. I really don’t think people are that gung-ho about what they often truly believe would be participating in discrimination against their own group (sans class, religious, cultural, gender, sexuality, and appearance reasons), even when legally threatened.
“I’m claiming that long-past racism is not a decisive cause of the problems of the black community today. I think looking back more than two generations in search of the cause of current troubles is ultimately futile, not that there aren’t problems, or we shouldn’t care about their source.”
Luckily — or not — we don’t have to go back more than two to find virulent, anti-black racism that systematically barred black people from institutions that are pretty vital for socioeconomic ascension. Both of my parents were taught in legally segregated schools, and my mother distinctly remembers being a victim of housing discrimination in the mid 70s.
Some businesses and institutions are very loudly and proudly anti-discimination – The University of Michigan sued in court (though ultimately lost) to keep racial quotas in its admission process. Not every business does the bare minimum not to get sued. Some businesses do much more out of a progressive intent. Others go far beyond it for fear of being sued – mutli-million dollar lawsuits are nothing to sneeze at. That can put a smaller company out of business entirely. So it is a concern. Some companies are also afraid to fire or discpline minorities for fear of lawsuits. Maybe this is the only way you can get rid of discrimination – I don’t know – but I do know that we have used up an awful lot of words here now in this back and forth over what I would think would be a fairly simple and noncontroversial factual statement that not all white people benefit from racism, even passively.
Sure, some people do. I never said otherwise. But many don’t. Why should this be such a point of contention? Can we at least agree that many white people, in fact, derive no benefit from racism, and then we can just leave the argument to the details about who benefits (or not) and when they benefit?
In fact, I’m sure many lose – for instance, if your company engages in racism in its hiring, and then gets sued and loses, or even has to settle for a lot of money, then because of that, jobs need to be cut (or the company goes out of business) – then rather a lot of white people can lose everything – their jobs, their homes (can’t make a mortgage payment if you are unemployed) and so on.
Any company that engages in racism has the threat of that hanging over its head, and over the heads of all of its employees.
Heh. The U of M also aggressively defends its legacy admissions program–not much anti-discrimination there.
Can we at least agree that many white people derive a benefit from racism, and then leave the argument to the details about who benefits (or not) and when they benefit? That’s the same thing, right?
Your defensiveness is exactly what Amp is talking about–the need to shift the discussion first to how racism does or doesn’t affect white people. Nobody has said “every single white person always benefits from racism all the time”, so I’m not sure why you feel the need to refute that statement.
(By the way, as a law student or attorney, you know that the millions-of-dollars-of-lawsuits thing is bogus, if you’ve ever taken an employment-law class. Two words: insurance defense.)
NotACookie – if you run a footrace, and because of your skin color I start you 20′ behind everybody else, is it “no big deal” if you win anyway, or finish with a decent time? Do we ignore the unfairness of making you start behind everybody else because, hey, you did all right?
“Maybe this is the only way you can get rid of discrimination – I don’t know – but I do know that we have used up an awful lot of words here now in this back and forth over what I would think would be a fairly simple and noncontroversial factual statement that not all white people benefit from racism, even passively.
Sure, some people do. I never said otherwise. But many don’t. Why should this be such a point of contention? Can we at least agree that many white people, in fact, derive no benefit from racism, and then we can just leave the argument to the details about who benefits (or not) and when they benefit?”
Dude, don’t be like that. Tell me when anyone here said that “all whites benefit from racism” in the first place. I’d like a verbatim quote, pls, hold the salt. Your reckless disregard for accuracy during the construction of your argument (not to mention the fine strawman you’ve built) is what I have a problem with, not your premise, and now you’ve decided to defend the former with the latter, when it works the other way around.
Here’s a recap:
You: “2+3=4”
Me: “No it doesn’t, not with that 3.”
You: “What do you have against 4? 4 is a perfectly good number, and here is why 3 is integral to the creation of 4 when added to 2…..”
Me:”Are you sure you don’t want to check that… maybe subtract 4 from 3 –”
You:”I really don’t see how you could possibly contest the validity of 4 as a number, and in light of that, “checking” would be a total waste of our valuable time and energy, don’t you think?”
“simple and noncontroversial factual statement that not all white people benefit from racism, even passively.”
Furthermore, if it’s a simple, uncontroversial, factual statement, then why do you believe that it needs saying, repeatedly and emphatically, at that? Who are you trying to convince?
Well, I’m glad to hear that we all agree that white people, in general, don’t benefit from racism. (Though certainly some individuals do).
If no one was claiming otherwise, then I apologize for my mistake, and we can all be merrily about our business.
And Mythago, if you went to law school, then you also ought to know something else – that insurance companies are notorious for not paying, even when they are legally obligated to do so – half of my contracts class cases were cases of insurance companies avoiding paying what they were legally obligated to pay. As a result, all sorts of legal doctrines were put in place to keep them from getting away with that evil shit – unfortunately, the recent Michigan Supreme Court majority has stripped away every single last one of those doctrines, putting Michigan back somewhere in the late 1800’s in terms of contract protections for consumers.
You can be insured and still go out of business when sued – if for no other reason than your insurance rates then go up higher than you can afford. At the very least, higher rates could mean having to lay off workers. Which was the main thing I was getting at. And it also can mean negative feedback and losing customers as well. You seem to be saying that being sued for discrimination doesn’t matter for the bottom line because of insurance. I beg to differ.
“Some companies are also afraid to fire or discpline minorities for fear of lawsuits.”
My father… and all of the other black employees at his job except the dude who cleans the toilets were fired about a few months ago as a result of… guess what? Complaints a black woman made about racist graffiti carved into her desk, carvings that she showed my father and several others… him and the other folks reported it to the EEOC, the higher-ups got wind of it, they got laid off. This is also after my father had complained about similar stuff in the restroom. According to a guy (non-black) who still works there, supervisors said they got rid of the blacks because they “didn’t want the NAACP” in there. The woman wasn’t interested in suing before, but she is now.
I think that’s a very misleading analogy. Many groups that were victim of severe disadvantage in the recent past perform as well or better than the national average. To put it in your terms — a twenty foot head start doesn’t matter much if the race of life is a marathon.
If you go back a few generations, you’ll find that a very large fraction of the country had ancestors who were severely disadvantaged. The degree to which one’s non-immediate ancestors — say, more than 50 years ago– were disadvantaged is a poor predictor of individual achievement. I think even recent disadvantage is a lousy predictor. As late as the 1970s, large populations in the USSR and China experienced conditions far worse than American inner cities; yet we don’t find children of immigrants from those countries being hopelessly disadvantaged in America today.
I think to make the “past discrimination” argument hold, you’d have to say more than “blacks used to be disadvantaged and so we owe them” — you’d need to show they were disadvantaged in a qualitatively different way from other groups. My sense is that the issue isn’t so much past disadvantage, as the current, and near-current, failings of urban schools, policing, and politics, and so forth.
If you want to help the disadvantaged, you’d be better off focusing on failing inner-city neighborhoods and schools, rather than race, which is a remarkably poor marker for recently disadvantaged ancestors.
” large populations in the USSR and China experienced conditions far worse than American inner cities; yet we don’t find children of immigrants from those countries being hopelessly disadvantaged in America today.”
Aren’t immigrants — especially to a country as far from the ones you mentioned as the US is — often self-selected from among the upper echelons for not just SES, but self-motivated and enterprising attitudes? You’ve got to be quite plucky to decide to just “up and leave” to a completely different country. Also, changes in the prevailing culture that result from immigration matter a lot… I’d imagine it’s harder for, say, a Burakumin to succeed in Tokyo than New York. Living in the country that sees you negatively matters, and there are most definitely varying degrees of being seen negatively. For instance, anti-Italian sentiments tapered off much more quickly than anti-black sentiments have, and I’d argue that when they co-existed, the latter was more virulent.
“My sense is that the issue isn’t so much past disadvantage, as the current, and near-current, failings of urban schools, policing, and politics, and so forth.”
But addressing these things doesn’t preclude having a sense of historical continuity, and I’d posit that it’s vital to making these changes. Otherwise, people draw the conclusion that things are bad because disadvantaged people just suck at life and aren’t as industrious as the rest of us, because things are equal now (which they’re not, but that’s a book). And people aren’t at all excited about helping people who they think are like that.
It’s considered cheating to claim to have won an argument simply by announcing loudly that everyone agrees with you, even though they don’t.
I think I was not sufficiently clear with my comment about insurance. Insurance companies sometimes do not cover their insured, which is where bad-faith claims come from. But when they do (and remember we’re talking about business defense here, not HMOs), the defense of the lawsuit is funded by the insurer, not the business. It’s a myth that a) lawsuits are all likely to result in million-dollar net compensation and b) they all come out of the poor innocent business’s pocket.
Then why give the twenty-foot head start in the first place? Or the twenty-year head start? Is it no big deal if you tie 20# weights to the legs of an Olympic runner because, shoot, they run fast no matter what?
If you shoot a supergenius in the head and he suffers permanent brain damage that costs him 40 points of IQ, is it no biggie because an IQ of 120 is still way above average?
Hard to say. In the 1870s Western states opposed passage of the 15th Amendment (enfranchising black males), even though they had almost no black citizens, out of fear of giving the vote to Chinese immigrants. And although blacks had been voting in Rhode Island since the 1840s, that state still opposed the amendment out of fear that it would extend voting rights to members of “the Race” – meaning the Irish. See Alexander Keyssar’s The Right to Vote: the Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2001) at 102.
(And Happy St. Patty’s Day!)
“Well, I’m glad to hear that we all agree that white people, in general, don’t benefit from racism. ”
Say what? Dude, you just completely retooled your own self-professed premise.
How did we go from:
I’m doing the bolding here… if it even works
“Can we at least agree that many white people, in fact, derive no benefit from racism”
and
” a fairly simple and noncontroversial factual statement that not all white people benefit from racism”
and
“Why is it so difficult for some people to hear that perhaps not every single white person is a racist or even benefits passively from racism?”
to
“Well, I’m glad to hear that we all agree that white people, in general, don’t benefit from racism. ”
You’re in law school, right? So you know quite well that “many”, “not every” and “not all” do not equal “____ people in general”. The latter strongly implies virtually all.
Your 4 is now 6. You said it too many times for everyone to not remember that you said something completely different to start with. Your sleight of hand isn’t subtle, it isn’t clever, and it’s insulting to everyone here who discussed this subject with you in good faith.
Manual trackback. Just because I write computer software doesn’t mean I know how to use it!
From the beginning, my argument was that only those on the margins benefit from racism, which strongly implies that most don’t, which goes along just fine with “in general” by your own definition of what that implies. No sleight of hand here, no matter how much hand waving you do to imply otherwise.
I further added to that the notion that racism within a company can actually HURT that company and the people in it, further nullifying the notion that people are helped by it.
As for million dollar lawsuits – I never said they were common or that millions were commonly paid out – in actual fact it is the THREAT of million dollar lawsuits that affects behavior. And no company in its right mind would want to risk one, regardless of how well they are insured. It is rather disingenuous to ignore that and to ignore all of the other negatives associated with being sued in that manner. Even if it is a totally frivolous suit, there will be millions of people in the public who, upon seeing the headline about the lawsuit, will assume that the company is really guilty, full of racists, and will perhaps never buy that company’s products again. Not exactly a good move for the company. The mention of a lawsuit can also bring down stock prices. To suggest that none of this matters because hey, they probably have insurance, is utterly ridiculous.
On top of that, any company that was actually doing racist policies would more likely lose and would also more likely have multiple suits filed by multiple people. And if they then did not stop their racist practices, they’d get sued again – and eventually, no insurance company is going to sell a policy for such a company. Just how easy do you think it is to get car insurance after you’ve wrecked your 20th car?
Getting back to the comic itself – I think what bothers me about it is that it really does imply that passive racism benefits every white person – rather than just those on the margins – because it shows pretty much every phase of “Bob’s” life as benefiting from passive racism – which means Bob is either the most marginal person in existence, seeing as he seems to be the ‘6th best’ at everything he does, or passive racism must pretty much benefit every white person. Now, I realize the limitations of trying to convey in a comic of a six frames a general idea – and I’m not saying this was deliberate – but it is an inevitable consequence of illustrating this idea (passive racism benefits) in this manner, which was part of why I think it is a good idea to point out that it isn’t everyone who potentially benefits, just those on the margins.
“Can we at least agree that many white people, in fact, derive no benefit from racism”
Misattributed quote on my part… came from Mythago, my bad.
How do immigration policies that let millions of people in the country during large swaths of our history while categorically refusing others (Akhay Kumar Mozumdar v. United States, Chinese Exclusion Act, etc.) qualify as a “marginal benefit”, taking into account the amount of white Americans who can trace a significant part of their heritage to recent European immigration? This kind of racism directly aided whites in becoming and staying an overwhelming majority in the U.S. — the very thing that you claim as vindication. You keep saying “marginal”, but who would be marginal, and who can claim to know that they aren’t and never have been marginal?
Furthermore, these aren’t all parts of Bob’s life … they’re important moments in Bob’s lineage over generations. Bob himself only gets the free pass on drugs. That’s the thing… if Bob doesn’t get everything in his life due to racism, he feels as if he got nothing. However, he also probably feels as if his family got nothing from racism that they have, and especially nothing that they’ve given to him — that they came to the U.S. with nothing, pulled themselves up with their own bootstraps, and gave him wholly untainted benefits and opportunities, which would be false.
And yeah, I’m enjoying my new bolding skill.
Oh boy. The links between racism and US demographics are, well, complicated.
If Amp wants to have a cartoon illustrating why blacks specifically are such a small percentage of the US population, he might want to re-draw the first panel to depict a man in a powdered wig in 1807 pounding a podium and demanding the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Arguably it is this policy, rather than some “African Exclusion Act of 1924″ or whatever, that had the largest influence on the size of the black population in the US. As a result, roughly 95% of all the Africans brought to the New World as slaves went someplace other than the US. In parts of the New World where the slave trade lasted longer – Brazil, the West Indies – the percentage of the population that has African ancestry is much greater.
Now, was the prohibition on the trans-Atlantic slave trade motivated by racism and a desire to limit the size of the black population in the US? I expect so. But I expect there were other motives as well. As I say, it’s complicated.
Yes, and we don’t buy that argument. You said that we did, and in a manner that once again proves why recycling old online debating strategies from people far more skilled at it than you only ends up with you looking like an amateur.
Re-read BananaDanna’s post #74 before you dig that hole any further.
I don’t know about self-motivated and plucky. Among East Asians at least, it’s incredibly common for families of a certain class to move to the West for their children’s education, by which I mean so they can go to an Ivy League. I’d say it takes more enterprising initiative for some of these families to buck this trend. But you’re definitely right about SES factors.
It’s really not that complicated to anyone who’s aware of the world outside the US. Every nation has a stigmatized subclass whose history of discrimination goes back to the roots of its history. And most Western nations, at least, have successful immigrants who built themselves up from nothing. The feat of the latter group is greatly commendable but the two groups are anything but equal and comparable.
During one of the threads about IQ, I posted a link that talked about this group in Japan that had low levels of education, high crime rates, and low scoring on intelligence tests – in every way “deserving” of their position as the Black community in America is. Funny thing is they are genetically identical to other Japanese people but have been marked as the descendants of something of a servile caste. I’ll find that thread if I can.
Now why do I bring this up? I think you can contend that no special measures to help historically and persistently disadvantaged groups should be made in any society, in full knowledge that this is a problem in every society. But I think it’s much harder. I think the Right wing thrives on a general feeling of “Black exceptionalism”, that America is straddled with this problem with race that other countries don’t have to contend with. (Hence why America scores so low on so many international measures among developed countries, such as murder rates; it’s not because of the disastrous social and economic dogma we’ve been following for the past 30 years, we just have a lot of Black people.)
Which is, again, incorrect. Do we need to go over your job-applicant hypothetical one more time?
I’m assuming that you’re still a law student, or you work for an insurance-defense firm, if you think that every business is terrified of “million-dollar lawsuits” or that people automatically assume the defendant in a civil lawsuit is guilty. (Pick a jury sometime. Trust me, they will quickly disabuse you of that notion.) Ditto your argument that any discriminating company will rack up the lawsuits; I assume this is a lite version of the Libertarian argument that karma, er the market, punishes the wicked in the long term. You cannot possibly believe this is true unless you also believe that there is no discrimination anymore, ever. (How could there be? Dude, we have lawsuits! Everybody behaves!)
Amp’s cartoon does not show every phase of Bob’s life as benefitting from racism. We don’t see Bob buying a house or applying for a job. All Bob, directly, gets is a pass on drug use. What the cartoon does show is the cumulative effects of racism over time, even when the white people in question don’t deliberately take advantage of it, or perhaps don’t even know it’s happening. It’s giving a 20′ head start to every single runner on a relay team, and then insisting that the last guy had no unfair advantage because he ran very fast.
“During one of the threads about IQ, I posted a link that talked about this group in Japan that had low levels of education, high crime rates, and low scoring on intelligence tests – in every way “deserving” of their position as the Black community in America is. Funny thing is they are genetically identical to other Japanese people but have been marked as the descendants of something of a servile caste. I’ll find that thread if I can.”
I made reference to them a bit earlier… the Burakumin, descendants of folks who did “unclean” work in feudal-era Japan. Today, they commonly live in lower-income enclaves called Burakus… employers look at their addresses and refuse to hire them because they don’t want their companies to have an “unclean” image, and mainstream Japanese often do extensive family background checks before marriage to, among other things, make sure they don’t marry one. Koreans in Japan aren’t doing that great either, despite statistically negligible genetic differences between them and the Japanese. Also, Asian immigrants come into Australia and thrive, while Aborigines are in a very similar situation to American blacks socially and economically, despite having been there since day 1.
Ok, for all those who are claiming that it isn’t just those on the margins, it is more, first, approximately what percentage of white people do you think actually do benefit from racism at least passively? And what empirical data do you base that conclusion on?
I used demographic data for my claim (the fact that african americans are a small population relative to whites demographically).
I think it is probably impossible to talk about this without at least establishing that baseline where everyone is coming from. I’ve given my baseline. I’m curious for yours.
“I’ve given my baseline.”
Could you be so kind as to provide a percentage of those whites who you believe to be “marginal”, based on current population data? It’s only fair. In addition to that, racism just isn’t white and black. Approx. 30% of the population is non-white, roughly half of which are black (12-13%). And you haven’t addressed the criticisms of your interpretation of the cartoon yet, mister.
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I think you’ll find, DBB, that racism is a bit difficult to prove with empirical data. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, though*.
And for the record, I do think that most white people passively benefit from racism, even if it’s something little, like being afforded the benefit of the doubt where a person of colour probably would not be given the same. An easy example I can draw from my own life is from just people-watching – usually at the malls – security forces and shopkeepers are usually much more suspicious of groups of teens of colour than groups of white teens, and I’ve explicitly heard groups of toc referred to as “gangs” at least twice. A bunch of white kids out seeing a movie does not connote “gangs,” but a group of kids of colour do … think about that.
(*Take rogue waves for example. Mariners spoke of them for quite a long time before scientists finally managed to record one’s existence in 1995. What empirical data could not speak to, experience covered.)
Banna – you first – just kidding.
I don’t expect exact numbers. I don’t pretend to have any, though at the most, at the very maximum, I’d think that you could go, based on your numbers, 3/7th of the population of whites – and I think that is frankly too high.
I get that from the simple numbers – if 70% of the population is white, and if you assume (for the sake of argument) that it is a zero sum game for employment, etc (which it really isn’t, but let’s be really conservative here) then, for instance, at most, on a one for one basis, if every job was decided based on racist criteria, then there would only be as many whites who gaines jobs based on that as there are minority people who lost them – which would be 30% of the population out of the 70%. Still leaving those who benefit from racism in the minority. Of course, I don’t think the number is that high. But there you go, there’s the maximum number I’d think it would be. (And frankly I’d think it would be much less because it isn’t a zero sum game, number one, and number two, not everyone makes racist hiring decicions and so forth these days, and number three, there’s also affirmative action).
Your turn.
Sara (and I almost typed an H…)
I don’t deny racism exists and I really don’t expect an exact number, either, just a ballpark of what people think. Even majority / minority would be an interesting bit of data to know, at least in term’s of people’s thinking.
You think it is a majority, based on your anecdotal experience. And I can see that happening (what you describe). I think I’ve heard it in the pullover context as “dwb”. Though I wonder, was that mall in an area with a mostly white population and where those giving the benefit of the doubt also white? Or were you seeing security guards of color thinking toc were gang members? Not saying what that means one way or the other, just curious.
What empirical data do you have that racism only affects those on the margins?
Racism isn’t just about being hired for a job. It affects who gets more readily promoted among those who have jobs, and who gets treated with more suspicion among those who don’t, as well as the 99% of everyday life that isn’t spent looking for a new job.
The people who haven’t ever benefited or hurt by racism are those who have never had to compete with people of other races. In some areas of the country, this is a reasonable approximation.
Ah, but you see, DBB, it’s more than jobs. Only 1 panel out of 6 is job-related. Taking the holistic nature of the cartoon into account, I think that it’s spread pretty widely, yet thinly, throughout the population … to what degree, I honestly can’t say, because it depends on how far down the line you want to go. How far down the line do you think is appropriate, and do we count immigration, drugs, loans, the “whole hog?”
Instead of Bob getting everything as you erroneously suggested and Tom (another WM) getting absoutely nothing, I think while Bob might get a pass on drugs, Tom may get a job, Jill may get a loan, Irina may get citizenship, Chris, Irina’s son may just get Irina’s hard earned American money… and perhaps, they get absolutely nothing else , but the one thing that they may have recieved may very well be life-changing, that one thing that they needed to get the opportunity to work hard, to show that they’re capable, and achieve great things through primarily their own doing. Therefore, Bob, Tom, Jill, Irina and Chris are understandably upset and insulted when anyone would suggest that they have privilege, because when most people hear “privilege” they think silver spoons, Rockefellers, and being coddled through every step in life and cushioned by a healthy trust fund… and what they know about their own lives doesn’t correspond with that at all, and seemed much more like having to prove themselves time and time again to a whole lot of other white people, some of whom may have treated them very unfairly because of religion, national origin, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, what have you. But no one’s trying to say that they were coddled and experienced no hardship (or even very little), or making an attempt to cheapen their struggle — I’m not, anyway. I personally gain encouragement from stories of others with their own loads to carry that succeed through hard work and dedication. But that doesn’t mean that that one opportunity doesn’t matter, or that minorities who have lacked these opportunities are categorically where they are because they just didn’t work hard enough like everyone else did.
And that’s why I sign my name the way I do :) Granted, sometimes people still get it wrong, but meh.
I should probably add that it’s not just my anecdotal experience. It’s mine, my mother’s, my brother’s, my friends’, my family’s, and the voices of tens of hundreds of thousands of people of colour across the country. (The internet is a great way to find them all – but anthologies containing similar stories are becoming quite popular also.) I know that “the plural of anecdote isn’t data” but I still think it says something that so many of us experience similar misfortunes.
As to the mall – the one in particular that I am thinking of used to be more white, but it’s since become the “bad” mall compared to another mall just five minutes away that has Bloomingdales, Sacks Fifth Ave, etc. as anchor stores. “Bad” meaning that there are increasing numbers of people of colour shopping there, and their presence seems to upset some white people, who now go to the other mall. Security, as I mentioned, but also store managers, most of whom are also white. The security guards of colour I have seen (few and far between, they are) seem to disregard teenagers regardless of colour as teenagers.
In case you’re wondering, I used to work at that mall, which is where I’m pulling my experiences from – actually talking to the guys with the walkie-talkies coming by our store to make sure everything was “all right,” which seemed to happen in proportion to the number of poc present.
Case in point: back when I worked there (couple years ago now) I routinely saw security guards breaking up groups of teens of colour “loitering” near the movie theater. They weren’t loitering, they were waiting for friends, but they were asked to scoot about – which usually sent them into our store, since it was right next door. Just last week I saw a bunch of primarily white teens (some Asian kids, and maybe one or two Chicanos) standing in a circle in the parking garage, enacting some kind of Fight Club moment, and the (white) security guard standing near the elevators didn’t say a thing to them.
BananaDanna:
This is a question of tactics — does emphasizing past racial injustices help us formulate policies, or rally support to policies, to help today’s disadvantaged? I would say that it does not. There’s a great deal of injustice in the world, much of it not based on race. If you want to fix injustice, you should concentrate on those — of whatever race and background — are treated the most unjustly. And there’s only a loose correlation between disadvantage and race.
As I see it, the real problem is how to fix broken schools and law enforcement in depressed urban areas. I don’t think a racial lens is helpful here — on the contrary, I think it’s divisive and alienating. Being poor and black in East Oakland is a grim experience for most — but being poor and white in East Oakland is little better.
“Divisive and alienating” carrying the implication that if you dare to talk about race at all, you’re the problem and racism isn’t. Or, perhaps, that because white people are so touchy that we’d better not talk about racism because then they’ll just get defensive and nothing will happen.
Those who ignore history are doomed, etc., and if we only focus on what happened to Bob in the last panels, we miss the story of how he got many advantages due to past racism.
You know, the last time I was at the mall someone started singing about needing a napkin. And a bunch of passers-by joined in. Including the mall security guy. Who was black.
So think about that.
O.O If you were actually there for that, you have my undying envy.
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I think the cartoon is cute, but I also think it erases a lot of what has made people who weren’t “White-White” 100 years ago (Irish, Poles, Jews) suddenly be “White”.
I think that what’s more accurate for a lot of white people in this country is they came here because some other country kicked them out (Irish, Poles, Jews), they experienced discrimination when they came to the States, and after a while they became “White”. When that happened, all the right doors suddenly opened and life was much better.
What hasn’t happened yet, that has stuck blacks in the “still discriminated against” category, is they have yet to become “White”. The Vietnamese who came here in the 70’s and had their fishing boats burned or sunk are now a lot whiter than the working class blacks who managed to get houses in working class neighborhoods in the 70’s and were never lynched, shot with fire hoses or had police dogs turned on them. The difference is that the Irish, Poles, Jews and now Vietnamese, Indians and others are “White”. Not pink-skinned-people, but suitably acceptable for neighbors, co-workers, marrying your daughter, and so on.
So it isn’t the case that “Bob’s Grandfather” never experienced discrimination, but for a large number of values of “Bob”, his grandfather definitely did. Bob Sr. was any number of ethnic slurs until the day he wasn’t, and then Bob Jr. got the job Bob Sr. never had a chance to get after going to the school Bob Sr. was never admitted to and married the daughter of Joe Sr. who probably thinks Bob’s entire family are a bunch of filthy micks[*], but it’s too politically incorrect to say that anymore, so he’s making the best of it and getting him a membership in the local country club with all the benefits of hanging out with other “white” people that come with it. And as a result, their first born male, Bob III, will have all the benefits of being “White” that neither Bob Sr. nor Bob Jr. ever had. The End.
It isn’t, I don’t think, that Bob III got where he did because Bob Jr and Bob Sr never experienced discrimination. It’s that today, in the current social environment, Bob III is “White” and LeRoy is still “Black”.
What I think creates this backlash isn’t denial-denial, like “Oh, those stupid white people, they got it so good”, it’s that the States have so many immigrants and children thereof, and so many immigrants, and children thereof, did experience discrimination up until the day it stopped. And when it stopped, it stopped, like someone turned off a switch. So the memories of Grandma and Grandpa talking about leaving the old country, only to come here and be treated like dirt, are still fresh in the collective memories of the 2 generations removed from the old country off-spring.
Whiteness is not necessarily, as Amp seems to be implying in his strip, about Bob Sr. and Bob Jr. getting the goodies. It’s about the general state that whoever is white this year gets the goodies. And that’s why I think white people freak over accusations of denial.
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[*] For reference, some of my ancestors were filthy micks.
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I think that we are missing a very vital part of the immigrant experience in these comments here – black immigrants. Many of the commenters here have assumed that the black population has remained completely stagnant after slavery. However, as anyone who has ever taken an africana class know, black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean (and their children), are much more represented in higher education, especially the Ivy Leagues, and in other ways that we take to be measures of success in our materialistic society.
So this talk about how Asian immigrants or Polish immigrants shows that racism doesn’t benefit many white people is just untrue. African and Caribbean blacks experience the same exact racism that American blacks do (maybe more sometimes because of their accents). However, the difference lies in the fact that, as someone mentioned earlier, the people who immigrate into the US are usually extremely hard-working, smart, plucky people. They are the top tier (in terms of abilities, not necessarily money). My own parents immigrated from Jamaica. They were extremely poor; however, they were smart and they worked hard. Now, I’m at the University of Pennsylvania. So to compare them to the African American community or any other immigrant as a whole in terms of success is just not fair to African Americans.
An extremely interesting fact is that though the children of black immigrants usually do better than the average African Amrican, the grandchildren of black immigrants do just the same. Why is that? Because the racism that they encounter in everyday life eventually combats any boost that they may have had from their family’s immigrant experience.