What constitutes privilege?
- Thread starter DaveC426913
- Start date
I ant certain about bein Cletus or not... its complicated.!!!
My sister said I was found in a box down by the creek???... but hell... she had red hair but everybody else in the family had dark brown hair... SOoo...
But we did eat possum soup at least once... dad cooked it... an I guess he learned how at the orphanage he was raised in... an also how to cook J-bird pie.!!!
I don't know if he spelled good or not... don't remember any thang he wrote except for signin my report cards... but it was a real perty signature... ever leter was perfect.!!!
Mom was a good speller... could work crossword puzzles like magic (used a ink pen).!!!
I got farther in school than my Mom Dad an 2 sisters... but mom an sisters Got there GED years later.!!!
Ah ya got me goin... memories... love 'em
My sister said I was found in a box down by the creek???... but hell... she had red hair but everybody else in the family had dark brown hair... SOoo...
But we did eat possum soup at least once... dad cooked it... an I guess he learned how at the orphanage he was raised in... an also how to cook J-bird pie.!!!
I don't know if he spelled good or not... don't remember any thang he wrote except for signin my report cards... but it was a real perty signature... ever leter was perfect.!!!
Mom was a good speller... could work crossword puzzles like magic (used a ink pen).!!!
I got farther in school than my Mom Dad an 2 sisters... but mom an sisters Got there GED years later.!!!
Ah ya got me goin... memories... love 'em
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Yeah. Considering the shitshow cluelesshusband's affectational shenanigans caused in the 'bell tolls' thread, In think I'm going follow through to ensure I, for one, don't make that mistake again.
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Privilege & Priority
So much for that. Looks like you just couldn't stay away:
But since you decided to check in and do your little turn, then we might as well check in on your sense of privilege, i.e., the "Bell Tolls" thread:
This kind of insensitivity causes problems.
Do you really think "venting their feelings about other forum members" is all that people are doing?
Don't insult them like that. Maybe that's all you're capable of doing, but there's more going on here than you are willing to recognize.
Meanwhile, the question of venting feelings about make-believe people is not irrelevant to a discussion of privilege. Unless, of course, one is privileged enough to insist otherwise.
And a related question also reaches back toward discussion of privilege: Why would the history of an issue be irrelevant to discussion of the issue?
So much for that. Looks like you just couldn't stay away:
But since you decided to check in and do your little turn, then we might as well check in on your sense of privilege, i.e., the "Bell Tolls" thread:
This kind of insensitivity causes problems.
Do you really think "venting their feelings about other forum members" is all that people are doing?
Don't insult them like that. Maybe that's all you're capable of doing, but there's more going on here than you are willing to recognize.
Meanwhile, the question of venting feelings about make-believe people is not irrelevant to a discussion of privilege. Unless, of course, one is privileged enough to insist otherwise.
And a related question also reaches back toward discussion of privilege: Why would the history of an issue be irrelevant to discussion of the issue?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Yeah, I get to do that. It is, after all, a thread started by me, about a topic I had wanted to discuss.
But I've turned off direct pings, so now it will stop showing up in my alerts.
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Wizard of Whatever
Registered Senior Member
I would like you to push the idea of white privilege to some of the dwellers in the Appalachians or Ozarks. You might get out alive.
This might help:
"In Search of Justice: White Privilege in Appalachia"
Wizard of Whatever
Registered Senior Member
So, do blacks, browns, yellows, reds, and mixed. If anyone has privilege these days it's them. If whites have privilege, I guess I missed out.
Also, you missed the point, there are underprivileged people in places other than the black ghetto and brown barrio.
"Waaaah. Life is sooooo hard. How could I possibly have had 'white privilege' if my life is this bad!"
And you really don't seem to understand what "white privilege" even is. It is about systemic and/or statistical advantages. Individual white people can still have a shitty life while being the beneficiary of "white privilege". It is not a guarantee that your life will be easy. It really just means that, on the whole, your life as a white person, no matter what it is, would likely be worse if you were also black, due to additional barriers that you would have faced, either now or at some point along the way.
But, hey, whine about your life, why not. That's soooo much easier to do. 'Cos, you know, we really care.
Ah, the tu quoque fallacy. Or "whataboutism", if you prefer that. Personal hardship, or being underprivileged, doesn’t negate white privilege. Privilege is about structural advantages, not guaranteed comfort for every individual.
I assure you: if you are white, you have been the beneficiary of white privilege at some point in your life. That your life might still suck and be something you want to whine about won't alter that. But if you were also black (all other things being equal) you'd have almost certainly had a worse time of it at some point. Even if that worse is shittier than your current level of shitty.
Historically, a kind of self-sabotage to some degree, at least back in the early days (arguably far less applicable in this era).
Some of the lingering attitudes and ways are descended from 18th-century Ulster Scot culture (which was somewhat distinct from the additional 19th-century Scotch-Irish wave, that was less "backward"). Contrast to, say, the more successful German migrants of the times who also settled there.
Includes thought orientations like crab bucket mentality, anti-elitism (populism), a tendency to live in shacks, illegal booze making, substance abuse, promiscuity, and outputting their own colloquial language and proto-hipster slang as another expression of defiance.
All due to centuries of being persecuted back in the Isles -- homes had to be constantly rebuilt due to being burned down, so don't waste time and resources repeatedly constructing fancy ones. The oppression and inter-societal quarreling generating animosity toward authority and the higher classes. The need for self-sufficiency (hunting, fishing, poaching, pilfering, etc) producing the outward appearance of laziness, rowdiness, and inadequacy at securing and maintaining conventional employment. When they immigrated to America, that population group's customs continued even under different environs, via momentum of tradition and identity.
It wasn't just whites in the South and hilly or mountainous regions that were influenced by the viral effects of those 1700s migrants, but ironically groups of agrarian and freed Blacks that they interacted with or occasionally lived beside over the ensuing as well as much later decades. When the latter migrated to industrial northern cities, those "urban hillbillies" gradually developed into current inner-city subcultures. According to very early 20th-century accounts, businesses regarded the white or classic "true" rednecks who also migrated to be much more difficult to assimilate than Black workers (perhaps a feeling of false "privilege" or false pride underlying the psychology of the former).
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There sure are. But if are underprivileged white people in the same place they are still at an advantage compared to the black people in the same place.
Being white does not guarantee success. Being black does not guarantee failure. But being born white means you are playing the virtual reality game known as "life" on the easy setting.
Wizard of Whatever
Registered Senior Member
Was true in the past I agree, especially in the south. But since the advent of Brown and the Great Society and affirmative action and DEI I perceive that the problem is more with them and their sub-culture.
"Them" being the blacks?
Wizard of Whatever
Registered Senior Member
Any minorities being given privilege by those acts, which probably were more blacks than others.
They're not being given privilege by those acts. They're having the barriers of the past taken down such that it only feels like they're being given privilege by those who are now not getting the white privilege they expected/anticipated.
Yes, there are some instances where non-whites are now favoured, but usually only to aid in the overall rebalancing of privilege. But, sure, that's now an excuse to say how unfair it is. I mean, centuries of lack of fairness to them doesn't matter, it's only the unfairness to the whites in this moment that matters, right?
And sure, you're not a racist.
Careful, you might be accused of serious mental health problems↑ for scrutinizing this argument against privilege.
Minorities are not given privilege by equal rights and DEI acts. They are given equality. This upsets some whites, of course, because the unspoken assumption of white superiority favored them for so long.
I was involved in one such DEI effort at MIT in the late 80's. It worked. MIT went from 25-30% women in both undergrad and graduate to very close to 50% - without any reduction in admissions standards, and without any preferential treatment for financial aid.
Just to be clear, there are some DEI programs that do give minorities something like "preferential treatment" - which is a temporary advantage to bring that minority group up to the equality it should really be experiencing, in order to do it far quicker than simply applying equality from now on.