Does white privilege exist in the US?

[OddityCrisis]

I’ve eaten sushi, I, however, do not know the experience of being a Japanese person.

Once Fukushima is done radiating the oceans, then revisit that sushi. Sunshine Unit Equity is achievable.

Sunshine and rainbows, I see what ya did there.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Please define “hood”. Thanks.

If you don’t know what a hood is then I don’t know why you’re even in this conversation.

 

[Pommer]

If you don’t know what a hood is then I don’t know why you’re even in this conversation.

I’d just like to know which dog-whistle I’m hearing, that’s all.

 

[OddityCrisis]

Please define “hood”. Thanks.

I think it's urbanic slang for a, "hoodie".

 

[BNR32FAN]

I’d just like to know which dog-whistle I’m hearing, that’s all.

I tell ya what, go to the corner of Jensen & Kelly st in Houston Tx and look for some guys wearing red and ask them what a hood is. I’m sure they can explain it better than I can.

 

[OddityCrisis]

I tell ya what, go to the corner of Jensen & Kelly st in Houston Tx and look for some guys wearing red and ask them what a hood is. I’m sure they can explain it better than I can.

And wear blue when you do it. It's more patriotic.

 

[Pommer]

I tell ya what, go to the corner of Jensen & Kelly st in Houston Tx and look for some guys wearing red and ask them what a hood is. I’m sure they can explain it better than I can.

They’re not here and you are which is why I queried you.

This “we all know what we’re talking about here” doesn’t cut it: what did you mean by “hood”?

 

[OddityCrisis]

Hood, California - Wikipedia

 

[Ana the Ist]

evidence that a problem exists? This thread is full of such evidence. You don't like it so you disregard it but that isn't logical at all is it?

Evidence that white privilege exists. I'm not disputing that problems exist....of course problems exist.

 

[rturner76]

Unfortunately, the political left in this country will not fix this. The more they can keep blacks scared and dependent, the more they can count on their votes. If they were going to actually make a major dent in solving these problems, they would have to abandon too many of their talking points and advocated policies. It sounds to me like business ownership, education, and intact families would be the three legs on the stool to step on to get out of this hole. But I really don't see the American left as truly interested in working towards any of them. They have too many special interests invested in the opposite of improvement in each of these areas.

Well yes and no. Truthfully the welfare system is dysfunctional. There is no exit strategy in the design of the program. One generation follows the next in the system. No job training, daycare assistance or education is included in most welfare programs. This is where the left has gone wrong. In their desire to help the needy, the current system keeps people needy.

Still, eliminating these programs outright would leave people completely destitute. WHere the right has gone wrong is treating the issue of poverty with "Law & Order." Locking up drug addicts and drug dealers with no hope of rehabilitation. Instead of locking up drug offenders, there should be job training and employment agency programs for these people during their probation. We can't make drugs legal but for non-violent offenders, there should be some kind of training available that can utilize the entrepreneurial determination that led them to the drug game. Also, prison rarely helps drug addicts because drugs are available in prison. Drug treatment and vocational rehab should be the way instead of mass incarceration.

Am I way off here of do you agree with some of this?

 

[BNR32FAN]

They’re not here and you are which is why I queried you.

This “we all know what we’re talking about here” doesn’t cut it: what did you mean by “hood”?

I sincerely apologize I thought you were being facetious. I didn’t expect that you didn’t actually know what a hood is. A hood is a community typically in an area of low property value that is predominantly overrun by criminal activity and drugs. In a nutshell they’re the most dangerous areas to live in America.

 

[rturner76]

Personally I think the military GI bill levels the playing field for those who are in poverty by making a way for everyone to receive a college education. Sure maybe it’s not the most desirable way of going about it but it does open up the door to a college education for everyone. Sometimes in life you just gotta take what you can get and do the best you can with it.

There are also Pell grants and Stafford loans that make Community College possible for anyone with poor parents. I think part of the problem is people not having fathers or at least a quality mentor who encourages the young person to achieve something better than just getting by. I know the government can't fix that part. People just have to make better decisions about their life and some who have no positive example to emulate really don't have a plan for their adult life.

That goes for back and white people in poverty.

 

[Jipsah]

Prison population
Black males = 34%
White males = 29%

So the conclusion must be that the gummint is randonly arresting and imprisoning Black makes, yes? Hmmmm...

US population
Black population 13.4%
White population 61%

So is the solution to arrest more whites or fewer Blacks?

I cant tell you why the judges are racist.

What if they aren't? What if it's it's simply that Black makes commit >30% of the crimes? We can quibble about the precise numbers, but Blacks commit arrestable crimes at many times the rate of whites. The rate of Black on Black crimes alone make that fact frightenly clear. Blaming it on "racist judges" is a fig leaf, and in fact is saying in essence "Blacks aren't bad, whites are bad!" and is just as racist as blaming all crime on Blacks.

As the shrinks say, the fiorst step in recovery is admitting the problem. There's a big problem in the Black community, and at center it's cultural. There is no coherent structure there any more. The Black family is shot (whites are heading that way as well, but let's peel one tater at a time) religion has lost most of its influence, and the popular culture applauds and encourages bad behavior. The results are readily apparent. The general response - chant "White Supremacy", "Institutional Racism", "White Privilege", ad infinitum. "Blacks aren't bad, whites are bad!" Two edged sword, promoting racial division while insuring nothing is done to actual causes. Just denounce the Bad Guy du jour.

Why is their environment more dangerous? Poverty. When there is less job opportunities people are more willing to go to desperate measures such as stealing and dealing drugs to make money

I don't think so. There are a great many places where people live in comparative poverty and where crimes of violence are rare. I do, however, believe that drug laws should be done away with as incentives for criminal activity.

What causes the gunfire in the cities? Once again we live in a broken world with broken people. There is alot more negative influences in the cities and even the music glorifies violence, drug usage, adultery, anger, hatred, victim mentality, etc

In other words, the culture promotes, or at least tolerates, criminal activitu. Now we're approaching the nub of the thing.

Its a broken world not just for the poor but also for the middle class and upper class. Ive met some great loving people with money that care about the poor and homeless. I would never stereotype them all but alot of people with money simply dont understand what the poor and oppressed go through. They dont see it because they are unfamiliar with the environment. And often their wealth and greed blinds them

I reject "class" as a factor, since in the US "class" is a simply a matter of who has money. The problem as I see it is culture. It isn't about race, pitting one set of phenotypes against another. It isn't about "class", which is an especially meaningless term in the US (I am biracial (white/Asian) old Christian man, relatively affluent, college-educated, and living in a poor part of the rural South. What "class" am I?) It is, as I see it, about culture. Having a foot in two different cultures makes we aware of that sort of thing, and it all seems entirely obvious to me.

What's to be done? First, admit the bloody problem! Black people are slaughtering each other in the streets, and it isn't the fault of whites or Asians or Latinos or any other convenient scapegoat. Black children are going to school and leaving them uneducated, not because of racism, but because the prevailing culture amongst Blacks places no value in education, and there's no family structure to provide discipline. I can run on and on, but I reckon you've gotten the drift by now.

Of course, this is where the Correct response is to denounce me as a racist White (and/or Asian) Supremacist, to blame Institutional Racism for all the ills facing the Black community on Old White Christian Men, and insuring that nothing at all is done that might help Black kids in the US to stand a fighting chance prospering in this country.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Yes you are correct, there are other disparities. In families of multiple children, there a "typical" roles that develop between siblings. The oldest child is most often the "hero" or "mascot." Often in large families, the eldest child becomes responsible for their younger siblings. They become almost like an "assistant manager" of the family doling out discipline, making bro and sis do their chores, telling them to be quiet when mom has a headache. Protecting them from bullies. Giving "love advice" etc. It basically can train them to think like a manager organically.

Then there are the other roles kids fall into like the "scapegoat" who is often the middle child. The "peacemaker" who can be anyone but is often the youngest. Of course, there are other roles and they aren't always determined by birth order. Also, in European culture, especially Western Europe, any inheritance left by the parents would go to the eldest child. This was done to keep the family's "fortune" in tact and not divide it up, making it a smaller inheritance for the next generation. So for millennia, the oldest child has been born into leadership and I believe they are typically expected to achieve more.

The disparity between whites and minorities is similar as there has been a type of inheritance passed down since colonization and before. This does not mean that all white people have been given an advantage. It just means, they like all races, are more likely to be accepted by other white people. Not all business owners and/or managers are white however, there are more white males in upper management, CEO, and board of director positions. A white male will likely feel more comfortable and compatible with another white male (also within that, people who are Irish are more comfortable with Irish, German, English and so on).

It's not that all of these white people in positions of power are evil racists (though plenty are), it's just an inheritance type thing that people from the same place feel related on a certain level and they will look after their own. The old man hires a protege he feels is most like him to take over his position when he retires.

Do you think all of this is nonsense? Do you agree with anything I am saying here?

You're describing the way you think things are....

Which part is the problem?

 

[Jipsah]

"Does white privilege exist in the US?"
Does a bear poop in the woods?

Apparently it didn't work for the white side of my family. All poor farmers and factory workers, none educated beyond high school. First BA in my dad's family, me. First MA, my oldest daughter. First MD, second daughter. First engineer, me, second, baby daughter. Only multilingual children in my dad's line? My kids and grandkids (English, Korean, Danish) The jokers in the deck? My mom, and later, my wife, who hold to the idea of Education First, Last, and Always, and that family was all about raising kids. Left to my dad, and to a lesser extent to me, we'd have raised yet another generation of time-clock-punching mediocrites. Not that there's anything morally wrong with punching a clock, but it hardly represents a life of privilege, does it?

Anything that has happened in our family to raise them above the level of their white kinfolks can be credited wholly to the two little hard-nosed hard-headed Korean matriarchs that my dad, and later I, chose to marry. When they encountered racism or endured "micro aggressions", and they did, they shrugged it off and kept pushing. Privilege? Not bit of it. Just old-school Confucian-based cultural badassery that said "My kids WILL be the best", and directed all of the family's energys toward that goal.

Worked out pretty well.

 

[Sketcher]

Well yes and no. Truthfully the welfare system is dysfunctional. There is no exit strategy in the design of the program. One generation follows the next in the system. No job training, daycare assistance or education is included in most welfare programs. This is where the left has gone wrong. In their desire to help the needy, the current system keeps people needy.

Still, eliminating these programs outright would leave people completely destitute. WHere the right has gone wrong is treating the issue of poverty with "Law & Order." Locking up drug addicts and drug dealers with no hope of rehabilitation. Instead of locking up drug offenders, there should be job training and employment agency programs for these people during their probation. We can't make drugs legal but for non-violent offenders, there should be some kind of training available that can utilize the entrepreneurial determination that led them to the drug game. Also, prison rarely helps drug addicts because drugs are available in prison. Drug treatment and vocational rehab should be the way instead of mass incarceration.

Am I way off here of do you agree with some of this?

I see where you are coming from, and I understand that many drug dealers do so out of economic desperation. But I have a couple of hangups about what you proposed as worded:

1) Drug dealers often ruin people's lives. A relative of mine got involved with one, and eventually got on cocaine, and went off the rails with cocaine, did not take care of herself, and died, leaving a young son behind. Primarily, that is her fault, but remembering Genesis 3:14 and Mark 9:42, there has to be some penalty on the dealer for that. It needn't be death, but having a direct hand in ruining a life like that needs to be punished.

2) How many dealers act fraudulently or unscrupulously? If you take a fraudulent or unscrupulous person who was a drug dealer and vocationally retrain that person to be a shopkeeper, then you still have a fraudulent or unscrupulous shopkeeper. Many of us do not want to do business with fraudulent or unscrupulous shopkeepers, so there would have to be more than just vocational training for these offenders, and I don't know that the state can provide that.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Apparently it didn't work for the white side of my family. All poor farmers and factory workers, none educated beyond high school. First BA in my dad's family, me. First MA, my oldest daughter. First MD, second daughter. First engineer, me, second baby daughter. Only multilingual children in my dad's line? My kids and grandkids (English, Korean, Danish) The joker in the deck? My mom, and later, my wife, who hold to the idea of Education First, Last, and Always, and that family was all about raising kids. Left to my dad, and to a lesser extent to me, we'd have raised yet another generation of time-clock-punching mediocrites. Not that there's anything morally wrong with punching a clock, but it hardly represents a life of privilege, does it?

Anything that has happened in our family to raise them above the level of their white kinfolks can be credited wholly to the two little hard-nosed hard-headed Korean matriarchs that my dad, and later I, chose to marry. When they encountered racism or endured "micro aggressions", and they did, they shrugged it off and kept pushing. Privilege? Not bit of it. Just old-school Confucian-based cultural badassery that said "My kids WILL be the best", and directed all of the family's energys toward that goal.

Worked out pretty well.

Except privilege doesn't mean someone just gets everything they want. It simply means that all else being equal, being part of the privileged group means more or better opportunity. The key wording here is "all else being equal". If I'm lazy, but my non-white coworker is a hard worker, then their hard work probably will give them a leg up over my laziness. But if we are both equally hard workers, and I don't have to deal with any prejudice, racism--overt or otherwise--then odds are I will have more opportunities. If we see this not just in lone incidents, but as a recurring issue over and over again, throughout the country, in all areas of society, and over years or even decades--that indicates that this is a systemic issue.

You mention members of your family encountering racism, that's not something that I as a white person have to deal with. That's white privilege. Being white isn't going to be an obstacle for me in opportunity. I'm not going to have to deal with the same kinds of problems that non-white people have to deal with. by virtue of the fact that I happen to be white. That's white privilege.

I'm not saying non-white people can't succeed, because obviously they can and do. But it seems obvious to me that, again, all things being equal, I don't have to overcome any obstacles for opportunity on the basis of my race. There is no systemic problem of white people not being able to succeed in life. That's white privilege.

And privilege isn't exclusively white. All manner of privilege exists, and in different contexts. Acknowledging this shouldn't be controversial. It shouldn't be controversial to acknowledge that someone born in wealth has less obstacles to overcome for opportunity than someone born in poverty. I'd dare even say this is common sense.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Sketcher]

How do you blame broken families on anybody but the family members themselves? And how can anyone work for intact families? I really don’t see how that’s possible.

When you subsidize single-parent homes through welfare, you get more of them. Urban violence and incarceration rates are also major contributing factors in the inner cities.

 

[SilverBear]

That’s completely irrelevant because the median income for blacks is well above $19,000. Between $30-$45k depending on what site your looking at.

but he wasn't talking about all blacks was he?

 

[SilverBear]

Evidence that white privilege exists. I'm not disputing that problems exist....of course problems exist.

to quote you:

You haven't proved a "problem" exists.