I am in large agreement with your whole post.What prevents the poor black, the poor white, the poor African, Asian, and South American immigrant, the poor illegal alien, the poor Aboriginal American, from becoming a "success in his own eyes and the eyes of his fellows", is access to wealth, real opportunity, real avenues to pursue advancement.
Poverty keeps the oppressed oppressed -- not racism. — Bitter Crank
Poverty keeps the oppressed oppressed -- not racism. — Bitter Crank
it isn't just "white privilege", but "white, male, married, protestant, upper-middle class, straight, moderate conservative privilege". — swstephe
We seem to be hard-wired into the process of "othering". — swstephe
Power comes from privilege — swstephe
Also, it isn't just "white privilege", but "white, male, married, protestant, upper-middle class, straight, moderate conservative privilege". It isn't just who oppresses whom, it is about the dominant social and cultural "narrative". We seem to be hard-wired into the process of "othering". — swstephe
Everyone else is difficult to trust, (they might become mindless violent savages trying to steal or destroy privilege), irrational, (they think differently, otherwise they would choose to be as similar as possible to privilege), and immoral, (their view of right and wrong is different than what is trustworthy and rational). — swstephe
They once asked me what race they were. — swstephe
Even if we don't deliberately oppress them, it harms those who have been "othered". — swstephe
If you raise a kid, always telling him he is stupid, then he will act that way, not bother to get an education and bypass opportunities. — swstephe
I watched the protests in Furgeson and heard CNN reporters, (even non-whites), saying that the protesters should essentially be more submissive to authority so they would be taking seriously. — swstephe
The psychology of "othering" and privilege is harming society and the economy. — swstephe
Would you rather live in a Brazilian slum or Beverley Hills? — swstephe
I'm surprised when Libertarians are opposed to illegal immigrants. — swstephe
It would seem to me that completely open borders with liberal employment would be the best economic option. — swstephe
I don't believe in "race". — swstephe
Power comes from privilege. — swstephe
So, I'm free of white stigma on 5 of 7 counts, being a white male but single, atheist, working class, gay, and a leftist. I guess I couldn't properly oppress anyone if I tried. — Bitter Crank
Maybe we humans are hard wired to prefer people like ourselves, and if that is so, then there isn't very much we can do about privilege, racial preferences, and all that, beyond being more conscious of how we operate. We have a host of behaviors that are hard wired, as well as behaviors that are the product of cultural software -- not that cultural software's influences are feeble. I don't know how much is hard wire and how much is cultural software. — Bitter Crank
True, we do "other" some people, and some people other themselves, too. (Othering one's self isn't 'self oppression' -- it's cultural definition.) For instance, gay men used to be viewed very much as other, back say... before gay liberation, 1970. Before and after Gay liberation some gay men adopted styles and manners that made sure they were perceived as other. I can't speak for straight blacks, of course, but it would appear that straight blacks have also adopted styles and manners that make them othered. — Bitter Crank
Not quite. Privilege comes from power, but what does power come from? Power generally comes from control of the means of existence--in other words, control of production and distribution of goods--all of it, more or less. Those who control the process of wealth creation (they own land, factories, etc.) can afford to project their power in the form of financial rules, lending practices, rental management, guards, police, and so forth. This framework wasn't built just yesterday, of course. It has been installed, remodeled, and reinstalled many times. For us, it was installed during our colonial period--under the control of England. We kept it. — Bitter Crank
Mao said that power comes out of the barrel of a gun. As a last resort, maybe. But if you have enough wealth, you can employ hired guns who will generally shoot sparingly. The threat of power coming out of the gun barrel (especially when the gun is pointed at one's esteemed self) is enough to keep people in line. — Bitter Crank
We all look different now because of thousands of years of hard-won survival in varied and difficult circumstances. I think there are "races" (four of them) and there are discreet ethnic groups too. — Bitter Crank
BTW, re: the chimpanzee experiments... Dogs have been found to have a similar response. If one dog notices that he is not getting rewarded, and the other dog is (dogs aren't fussy about the reward itself) the unrewarded dog will stop cooperating. And the rewarded dog doesn't worry about the unrewarded dog -- so dogs are a more realistic representation of our esteemed species. — Bitter Crank
And sometimes, the "other" is exactly all three of these things. — Thorongil
Race doesn't exist as a biological concept, so they were of the human race and no other. Race as a social construct needs to die and stop being perpetuated as if it matters. — Thorongil
What does? Being white?! — Thorongil
Yes, and many, many white parents effectively tell their children just this. You seem to have a bone to pick with a certain small social class (the rich), whose skin pigmentation happens to be white, not with the latter in and of itself. Or at least I hope so. — Thorongil
Some of these faux protesters were simply looters and thugs, burning, quite ironically, many black owned businesses, among other things. To the extent CNN reported this, they were being accurate. And they should have been more peaceful and submissive. Freedom of assembly does not entail theft and arson. — Thorongil
And it's never going to stop. But if you want to fight it, you don't blame a person's skin color. — Thorongil
You're surprised people are against illegality? — Thorongil
Maybe, but then the laws would have to be changed first. — Thorongil
Yes you do. Remember the people you don't like? The people who are "white, male, married, protestant," etc? You're also a sexist apparently, since you don't like the fact that they're male. Like you, I'm not a fan of Protestantism or conservatism broadly speaking, but I don't care one iota what skin pigmentation or gender a person happens to be. — Thorongil
When I see bad code, I want to debug it — swstephe
Othering is pervasive. — swstephe
Should your average woman, for instance, be expected to not bat an eye when she finds somebody who is obviously male but dressed as a female in the women's toilet? Should she be expected to celebrate their gender diversity, and figuratively pat the man? woman? boy? girl? or whatever on the back? (No Touching!) I don't think so. — Bitter Crank
What prevents the poor black, the poor white, the poor African, Asian, and South American immigrant, the poor illegal alien, the poor Aboriginal American, from becoming a "success in his own eyes and the eyes of his fellows", is access to wealth, real opportunity, real avenues to pursue advancement.
Poverty keeps the oppressed oppressed -- not racism. — Bitter Crank
But I'm talking about assuming that everyone in those groups has those attributes, which justifies mistreating and excluding those groups as a whole. — swstephe
My enemy is human biases and assumptions — swstephe
so it would be unfair for an international news agency to realize someone is a white Southerner and immediately call them a member of the KKK and suggest that they are too racist to be listened to. — swstephe
While trying to be helpful, or just gather voting support, she said something along the lines of "if the people were white, this problem would have been solved by now". I was a bit shocked, since the only famous person I know from Flint is Michael Moore, who is considered "white". A quick fact check said that 1/3 of Flint is white, so I wondered why she dismissed it as a problem of racism, rather than a problem of dismissing an entire group of people based on a generalization. — swstephe
I thought Libertarians rejected the authority of the state to pass laws which restrict the free market. — swstephe
I didn't say I don't like privileged people. — swstephe
I didn't say I don't like privileged people. — swstephe
...isn't just "white privilege", but "white, male, married, protestant, upper-middle class, straight, moderate conservative privilege — swstephe
if the people were white, this problem would have been solved by now — swstephe
You want to fix people. Fortunately we aren't code. A lot of the whining, bitching, carping, complaining, and so forth about race, gender, ethnicity, etc. boils down to a wish that everybody else would just get debugged. We especially want the people who are assholes to get debugged. Why can't assholes see themselves as the obvious assholes they are? Why don't they reform? Why don't they just get their asshole code fixed? — Bitter Crank
If cognitive bias is everywhere, if othering is pervasive, if personal preferences are ubiquitous, maybe that is the way we are, rather than a deviation. Perhaps? I'm not looking for an excuse for people to hate and hurt each other. People can live, have lived, and do live peaceably with people who are quite unlike them. Sort of the way street dogs behave. Put us into pressured situations where we are forced to compete for artificially (or truly) limited goods, and we start behaving badly amoungst ourselves. — Bitter Crank
I'm a leftist too, and I've been reading leftist, liberationist stuff since the early 1970s. Some of it is really quite good, liberatory, and helpful. A lot of it is clearly based more on leftist dogma than any leftist's actual experience. (I'm not arguing for the social darwinist alternative, of course.) Leftist dogma is often disconnected from the real world. Leftists are, of course, idealists in many ways, and idealists tend to take extreme uncompromising stances. I've been there (dogmatic extreme idealism) several times.
Take, for instance, unlimited immigration with open borders. Nice ideal -- freedom of movement, freedom of labor, freedom of capital, no borders, etc. Who wins, who loses? It is not and can not be, a nice rosy win-win situation. Both the donor and recipient countries sharing unlimited immigration can experience a lose/lose situation. The donor country loses the bulk of its talent and young people, and the receiver country gains more workers than it has resources to employ and support. — Bitter Crank
Angela Merkel is ready to admit a million or two, or three refugees/asylum seekers/immigrants from the middle east. She wants the rest of Europe to get with the program.
I readily grant that the situation of Syrians and various others is wretched. They need a place to stay, at least for a time. But if they stay, Europe will need much more robust growth than it has now to absorb them as workers. Europe has absorbed some, but by no means all, of previous waves of immigration/refugee/asylum seeking people. It is not producing enough jobs to keep it's German, Spanish, Polish, etc. youth properly employed. Who has first claim on the jobs? The natives or the latest arrivals? — Bitter Crank
I've known a number of transsexuals, a few quite well, and most of my friends have been deviants of various kinds, over the years. Clearly, transgendered persons do not pose any threat in a public wash room, any more than any random person might. But sexual individualization can be outlandish even to the sexual minority life-style sophisticated, much less to the previously uninitiated person.
... — Bitter Crank
Who does this? If there are such people making such absurd sweeping generalizations, then they are ignored and small in number, as one ought to expect and as they ought to be. — Thorongil
Not all biases are bad. Being biased towards the good, the true, and the beautiful is surely no vice. The problem you have is with biases towards the bad; when people prefer the bad and make assumptions based on this preference. This is unfortunate indeed, but ineradicable. Nor does it have anything to do with being white skinned. It's a fault in human behavior that we also witness in our ape relatives, the chimpanzees. Or take the rare white-furred cubs sometimes born to black bear mothers, known as spirit bears by Native Americans. As they grow older, these bears are sometimes ostracized, or you might say, "othered," by their black-furred counterparts. All of this is to say once again that you are opposed to that which is an innate tendency in various sentient species, not every example of which is necessary bad, though most of time it is. — Thorongil
Which is why, to my knowledge, they don't and haven't done this. The destruction and torching of buildings and cars in Ferguson, however, was not as isolated or on the fringe as you seem to think. The reason it was reported was because it was significant. — Thorongil
It depends on which libertarians you're talking about. Many who apply this label to themselves are likely very confused. My retort was about people in general being against unlawful behavior. I see nothing wrong with that, especially if the law in question is not self-evidently unjust. — Thorongil
So what are you saying? That you don't like people with biases? Why bring up skin pigmentation if that's not your target? — Thorongil
To put an anthropological spin on this.. all this talk of "white privilege" "power", "class", "law", "economics this and that", is all a very European-centric way of looking at it. — schopenhauer1
Wondering if you "suffer" from "white privilege"? Know the signs! (Just a random, not well thought out list): — swstephe
The trouble with “white privilege” is the same as “blackness” — it is a condition which one can do nothing to obtain, and can do nothing to get rid of. I can not confer privilege on a black man, nor can he confer upon me the benefits of his heritage. — Bitter Crank
Racism won’t go away if we all just stop thinking about it, obviously, and it isn’t going to go away as a result of endless harping on it, either. What will help is more voluntary, friendly and casual interaction among whites and blacks, coupled with openness to mutual acceptance. I don’t know how to engineer that happy process. We’ve tried lots of different schemes and some work some of the time with some of the people. Some have backfired. — Bitter Crank
I would have thought a more balanced title such as "what are the pro's and con's of ..." would be more appropriate. — YIOSTHEOY
Well even someone who has never touched a woman cannot get out of the conundrum of a loaded question like "did you stop beating your wife yet?" Loaded titles are just as bad — YIOSTHEOY
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