Understanding and/or becoming aware of white privilege requires knowing about enough of the situations that non whites deal with because they are not white. White privilege is the exemption from just these sorts of specific circumstances and/or situations. Those situations are only thought about when a non white individual tells their own story. Until then, the white individual cannot know about all of the injustices that they are themselves immune to.
— creativesoul
All your consideration is based on the racial premise of skin colour as the most fundamental socio-economic distinction and operator. — Number2018
How can we know that non-white(s) deal with various situations exclusively because they are non-white, and white are exempted just because they are white? — Number2018
One faces complex socio-economic situations, oversimplifies them, then transforms them into mere facts, and finally converts the descriptive truths into the ultimate prescriptive judgements. After all, the final truth has a binding ethical dimension. But who decides that we must accept this truth? — Number2018
Likely, one of the other dimensions is a political will and the intensive enforcement of this will. — Number2018
What if somebody disagrees with one of the stages of the operative process? For example, for a Marxist, the founding social dichotomy is not racial, but the working class and capitalists' opposition. — Number2018
After one becomes aware of the wrongdoing they can also become a willing and knowing accomplice of continued wrongdoing. However, at that time they are not yet willing accomplices to any wrongdoing, for let us not forget that they have just became aware of the wrongdoing. So, an otherwise unknowing white individual becomes aware of the residual effects/affects of racism that still pervade American society to this day.
What personal responsibility do they have? That ought be established by the amount of power they have to influence and/or effect change.
— creativesoul
Actually, you indirectly agree that here is a kind of ‘potential complicity.’ If one unintentionally takes part in systemic racism practices and/or benefit from them, to make it evident, and to make one aware of the wrongdoing or benefiting from “white privilege,” there is the program to develop the process of the enlightenment: the universal truth of systemic racism and white privilege should become widely available, it should become the integral part of the academic curriculum, sportive events, entertainment, the media narratives, etc. After such reinforcement, any dissent, disagreement, or the pretext of being unaware would become nonsensical and almost impossible. — Number2018
This thread is about privilege. It has evolved to be about a specific kind, aka white privilege. Given that my focus has been exclusively upon the exemption and/or immunity from being injured as a result of being non white that all white Americans share, regardless of individual particular circumstances, skin color is quite relevant. — creativesoul
I have taken the Harvard implicit bias test, at least the one on race -- I assume everyone here has -- and got more or less exactly the result I expected: as a white man of my age who grew up where and how I did, I have a slight but noticeable implicit bias in favor of whites and against blacks. I already knew that -- though I'm not really sure how. — Srap Tasmaner
So now what? I'm not sure eradicating my bias is on the table, though I believe my children have less bias than I do and their children will have less than they do. I have even heard psychologists argue that "sensitivity training" of the sort businesses and schools and other institutions pay experts to provide is worse than pointless: not only does it not reduce implicit bias, it tends to make people defensive, resistant to self-examination, and thus less likely to modify their behavior. — Srap Tasmaner
Monitoring my own behavior is what I've opted for. I have decided -- rightly or wrongly I'm not sure -- that racism is acting upon bias, whether implicit or explicit, explicit bias is a failure of the intellectual conscience, but implicit bias you just have to live with, make the effort not to act upon it, be open to recognizing when you have, and improve. Not so different really from dealing with other cognitive biases really, except that other people may pay a price for your failings. — Srap Tasmaner
EDIT: I am not supporting that your version of white privilege is actually helpful. I am just saying that it's fair use. Not really trying to rebegin a debate but just to say that I think a lot of my criticism of your idea was invalid. — Judaka
I have taken the Harvard implicit bias test, at least the one on race -- I assume everyone here has — Srap Tasmaner
Same! — fdrake
I don't think it's possible to eradicate it — fdrake
I had never heard of it. I got "a moderate automatic preference for African Americans over European Americans". Does this mean I'm in the clear? Or do I need to work on eliminating this bias? It could have been because I didn't like the look of one of the white guys. I don't even know the guy but already I don't like him :roll: — jamalrob
I don't think it's possible to eliminate biases across the board, but the dimensions of bias vary, and I see no reason why "racial" bias can't be pretty much eliminated, while other biases remain common (fat/thin, tall/short, etc), largely because I think racism and its underlying biases are not transhistorical. — jamalrob
Let's just say I don't like politics, and it has adverse effect on me when people try to infuse their language so as to elicit some effect from me. Maybe I'm weird. — ChatteringMonkey
The benefit of being white in America is the immunity and/or exemption from being injured because one is not.
— creativesoul
This IS ambiguous. — god must be atheist
I am not supporting that your version of white privilege is actually helpful. I am just saying that it's fair use. Not really trying to rebegin a debate but just to say that I think a lot of my criticism of your idea was invalid. — Judaka
If we then look at loans to white applicants as a proportion of loans approved (or of applicants, or of the population at large), we'll find that as a group whites get a bigger slice of the loan pie than they should. There is a "group benefit" even if each individual applicant is only receiving fair and not in any way special treatment. By comparing relative advantage at the group level to the aggregate of absolute advantage at the individual level (stipulated to be none), we get a result that is mildly paradoxical -- but no more than a racist system with no racists in it. — Srap Tasmaner
I think to be privileged, in terms of the above scheme, is not characterised by acting negatively to the unprivileged; that reproduces privilege and is a component part of systemic racism; to be privileged in some way is to be a member of the category that receives advantages and avoids disadvantages associated with that membership. It can't be 'denounced', it can only 'fail to apply', but you can try and mitigate how much you reproduce the conditions that perpetuate the advantage - through personal effort and activism. — fdrake
to be privileged in some way is to be a member of the category that receives advantages and avoids disadvantages associated with that membership. — fdrake
@Srap Tasmaner↪Srap Tasmaner
1. There exists a system that at least intends to divide people according to a criterion it calls "race".
2. That system marks some members of our society as "black" and some as "white".
3. This system legitimizes violating the human rights of those marked as "black" but not of those marked as "white".
4. The system also legitimizes various sorts of unfair or inequitable treatment of those marked as "black" but not of those marked as "white".
I do not believe there is any disagreement here on (1)-(4).
— Srap Tasmaner
Should it be concluded from (1) - (4) that the society of the US is segregational and racist? — Number2018
to be privileged in some way is to be a member of the category that receives advantages and avoids disadvantages associated with that membership. — fdrake
How exactly are we to read (3)? Are we talking about mandating and enforcing separation? — Srap Tasmaner
In general, are you wondering whether it's possible for a system to be racist against everyone? — Srap Tasmaner
Pure thought question here. What if the following were true:
1. There exists a system that at least intends to divide people according to a criterion it calls "race".
2. That system marks some members of our society as "black" and some as "white".
3. This system legitimizes separating those marked "black" from those marked as "white" whenever and wherever possible.
4. The system also rigorously enforces fair and equitable treatment of those marked as "black" and those marked "white".
Again, this is a hypothetical, I realize these things are not accurate. Given the above statements, would we classify that system as "racist?" — Pro Hominem
Actually, the mentioned consensus functions as an indicator of the conventional understanding of the system. Conventionally, it is understood as racist. It looks like @Srap Tasmaner wanted to avoid the explicit labelling, but cautiously enacted the 'racist' understanding. Maybe, I misenterpreted him/her. Anyway, probably, the general framing and context of contemporary public debatesI do not believe there is any disagreement here on (1)-(4). — Srap Tasmaner
But I'm thinking now that what you're really after is detaching the use of racial categories from the conferring of advantage and disadvantage based on those categories. — Srap Tasmaner
I do not understand if you talk directly to me, or this is just your rhetoric style. In the first case, almost all that you say is factually incorrect. In the second, you have constructed an imaginary white Other, possessing a set of crude features and straight forwarded attitudes. I think that this style is also the expression and consequence of the intensification of identity politics that we deal with in this thread. There is the identification's disbalance: one starts from self-identification, "I am white," then admits being against systemic racism, but does not like its consequence of "white privilege."What about being white makes the moral responsibility to challenge systemic racism greater than having a different skin colour? Why is the onus on being white here at all? If you're going to say that it's because of power, wealth, political influence, social influence and so on, why not actually put an onus on the actual possession of the things which lead to your actions having greater consequences and therefore there being a greater imperative for you to do something?
Secondly, being the beneficiary here doesn't usually actually give you the ability to do something about it precisely because most of the time, you aren't actually even a beneficiary but rather just someone who is not targeted for disadvantages. Most of the time you aren't going to even be aware of it, even if you're aware of the reality. How can you tell if you got a job easier due to your skin colour? Specifically, you, as opposed to just "people generally of your race"? When is it ever the right time to stand up and say "no, you are just giving me a free pass here because I'm white" or "you wouldn't be so generous if I wasn't white"? Overt racism already gets obliterated, you can lose everything if you're caught. — Judaka
Various complicated solutions have been offered here to resolve a moral, cognitive or emotional dissonance. I want to provide another one. One of the latest achievements of gender politics (which is also identity politics!) was the appearance of individuals that have not to have a particular gender. So, in many countries, it become an institutional right. Paradoxically, due to identity politics' latest twist, we are necessarily obliged to have one of the two prescribed races. Does one have a right not to have a race?So where do I fit in? I am fully conscious of systemic racism, but I do not support its practices. Yet I am white. What now? — Pro Hominem
All of us are against racism. Yet, I think that the latest comprehensive definition of systemic racism has a few flaws. It often equips its proponents with the pretension for the possession of the ultimate universal truth of our society and the superior moral position. They oversimplify the complexity of our society and do not tolerate any dissent. So far, their primary achievement is the intensification of identity politics. As our recent history shows, the neoliberal capitalistic system has successfully incorporated various newly constructed identities.What we're already seeing from people who use the term "white privilege" is the results of it being obviously near-impossible to actually look at someone's actions and know with absolute certainty (they will deny it) that racial motivation was at play. Which means that in order to challenge systemic racism in your day-to-day you have to assume racism took place even though you are severely lacking in any hard evidence. It is so easy to be called racist in today's society because of that problem. — Judaka
The framing (the medium) has a decisive role today in almost all vital social domains. This forum shows how dramatic communication between people has changed: compare ours with what took place 30-40 years ago. Judith Butler even proposes that the media should be the leading constitutive part of ‘the people.’I think you are severely overestimating the framings usefulness, — Judaka
If we look at point #1: first, the assertion is not categorical (at least intends to divide),differently from what is asserted in #2, 3, and 4. Next, # 1 does not state that "the system" divides all people into two groups. Therefore, we probably would not classify the system as racist. Yet, the next assertion is
I do not believe there is any disagreement here on (1)-(4).
— Srap Tasmaner
Actually, the mentioned consensus functions as an indicator of the conventional understanding of the system. Conventionally, it is understood as racist. It looks like Srap Tasmaner wanted to avoid the explicit labelling, but cautiously enacted the 'racist' understanding. Maybe, I misenterpreted him/her. Anyway, probably, the general framing of contemporary public debates
fails similar attempts to avoid the direct stereotypic labelling. — Number2018
Was that a yes or a no? It looked like you took both sides. — Pro Hominem
the general framing of contemporary public debates
fails similar attempts to avoid the direct stereotypic labelling. — Number2018
I can tell you all I was really trying to do was give a very broad description of systemic racism, specifically because of Pro Hominem's position: he accepts systemic racism but rejects white privilege. I thought maybe we could stop trying to convince him to accept something he already accepts — Srap Tasmaner
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