This seems relevant here…
(note that Daily Kos is getting a lot of criticism for this that I’m seeing)
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This is more the liberation from buckets that comes from being a total outcast, not from being privileged. It’s less “this conversation is about something I don’t care about but relate to” and more “this conversation is about something I care about but can’t relate to”.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
You can opt out of many obligations more easily than one’s race.
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Thanks for posting it.
I can’t help but physically shake my head whenever the issue of jobs in the coal industry crops up. The coal industry is dying because oil & gas are so much cheaper and easier to produce. And that’s WITH all those terrible EPA regulations, etc. that supposedly make it so hard for an honest billionaire to make a buck. In fact, oil & gas are so cheap that half of the rigs, drills, etc. are sitting dormant because the price is so low it’s not worth pulling any more out of the ground. Almost all of the jobs for the North Dakota drilling rush have disappeared and many of the operators (who didn’t figure it out quickly enough) have gone bust. Producing more oil and gas just depresses the sale price that much more.
Coal isn’t coming back. It has nothing to do with Democrats, environmentalists, or whatever. The 0.01% can’t make enough of a profit off of it. That’s it.
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Pointing out in a joking way that you as a white male are undoubtedly affected in some ways by those categorical memberships strikes you as “fucking low rent”? Sheesh, is your white masculinity really that frail?[quote=“LearnedCoward, post:407, topic:90681”]
One of the reasons why this issue is so confusing is because it’s okay to say “they’re not attacking you”, but “they’re not attacking me” just sounds arrogant. What do I do at that point besides say, yes, you are attacking me, and I’ve had enough?
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How about by realizing that when people say “I hate it when men/white people do that!” they’re not talking about you if you don’t do that?
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It depends upon how one defines success. I can relate in that I often avoid being paid, because I try to avoid participating in an economy which facilitates exploitation, and arguably does not even define or measure wealth very well. Success in that system can equal buying into one’s own oppression. We do not all define success in the same ways.
That said, it doesn’t automatically makes one’s contribution fake, either. Sometimes people are accused the opposite, that they are fake if they refuse pay. There is no pleasing everyone.
I’m not. But:
- The Midwest has proportionally more rural space than the Eastern seaboard. Particularly the northeast.
- More of the populations live in these spaces compared to cities.
Therefore, I don’t think it’s unfair for people to think that the average person in the Midwest is more likely to be rural than the average person on the eastern seaboard.
I dunno. I don’t think the average person keeps up with all the elections in every state. For people who don’t know anything about the electoral politics of a state, I think it’s reasonable to make the assumption that elected officials are supported by their constituents. Whether or not that would be a reasonable assumption for a given person to make the same assumption about the US writ large probably depends on how closely they’ve been following the news.
I disagree that it’s stereotyping to use data to inform your sense of a place. Individuals should certainly be treated as individuals, but that extends to you, too. Acting like coastal elites are sitting around shitting on the Midwest over their pour-over coffee isn’t helping anyone, either.
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How would you react if someone insulted your family? I can speak critically of my family, because I do so out of love and out of a place of knowing, but I don’t want total strangers to insult my family. Not that I think anyone here is literally insulting my literal family, but when emotions get heated it can feel that way sometimes.
There are cultural issues here as well. Having people think less of you because of where you came from instead of who you are is not a good place to be. I don’t know if this is literally happening or not, but it can feel like that at times.
I think the broader issue is that @singletona082 and myself understand the mindset we’re talking about in this thread, even though we don’t agree with it. Explaining it is not the same as agreeing with it, or even being sympathetic to it. It seems like any explanation that drifts toward “people are complicated” rather than “people are evil” gets shrugged away as trying to justify bigotry. I’m not trying to justify anything. I just realize that people hold on to unhealthy beliefs for complicated reasons that can’t be easily explained academically.
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I’ve lived with my family and their quirks for all my life, if someone considered the racist statements from my grandfather offensive and evidence of all too common white male activity, I would accept that in its proper context versus defending his “culture” and his growing up on a farm in West Virginia.
Nor do I make excuses for issues with my own sexuality conflicting with their “values”.
Excuses aren’t really something I’d go out of my way to craft for ill and harmful behavior.
And that’s what this thread is about. Victim complex that justifies harmful, hateful behavior.
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This is needlessly confusing.
People have stereotypes, period. Stereotyping is not necessarily bad. Stereotypes come from what we know about something, generally speaking. However, many stereotypes can be bad, especially if they are formed on negative things. Also, upon meeting a person, someone thinks of that person as that person and not the stereotype, even though they still hold the stereotype. All of this is demonstrably true.
I also never said that coastal elites actively or consciously harbor stereotypes of people in the Midwest, or anywhere else where they haven’t visited or don’t know a lot of people. Simply that these stereotypes exist, and they can be negative.
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I agree that people tend to generalize (see, I am doing it now), and that can be a powerful tool for human pattern recognition. But they also create stereotypes based upon what they merely presume they know. And often have difficulty in deciding which similarities/differences are really significant.
But I think that some are quick to disregard the participatory aspects of societal thought-forms. Yes, stereotypes exist, but they do not only happen to exist from nowhere. Not unlike economies, governments, etc they are made and perpetuated by the participants. We inherit a lot from those who have come before us, but this does not mean that we need to passively accept such stereotypes. In the present we also re-negotiate them.
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Maybe we have to start from the perspective that we can’t talk about emotionally charged things without people sometimes getting hurt and just ready ourselves to apologize and listen rather than arguing and defending. And when we get that wrong we apologize and listen instead of digging deeper. And so on and so on.
I don’t think we can make talking about race something we can do without hurting white people.
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Sadly I have been out of touch with my fox new watching friends.
I probably wont have to visit my father in law for a while.
Holy fucksocks;
Not only is this thread still going, but it’s more overrun with self aggrandizing persecution complex than ever.
Newsflash:
#LIFE IS NOT FAIR, and VICTIMHOOD IS NOT A DESIRABLE CONDITION.
Everyone has problems, and some of those problems are detrimental; but if your answer to someone else’s problems is to immediately harp on ‘how bad you have it too’ then you’ve inherently made yourself a part of their problems.
#Strife, inequality and hardship are unfortunate facts of life, not a fucking competition; please GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELVES, already.
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[quote=“Melizmatic, post:423, topic:90681”]https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder769/56370769.jpg
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I like Janet’s version:
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And some persons use their problems to shrug off the hurt of another. Being white and poor and having disdain for others. Being a white woman who doesn’t take racial justice into feminism. Being queer but upholding racist ideas.
Instead of struggling with how to be a better human in the face of any problems, they want to whine about not getting offered chopsticks and how persons have a low opinion of them because they support Trump and/or his causes.
This thread has eaten its tail.
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That’s precisely the issue.
That’s why the playing the Persecution Olympics is a pointless waste of time, which does nothing to solve anyone’s problems… but I guess it makes the participants ‘feel better’ about not actually doing anything to try to come up with any viable solutions.
Agreed.
The original message was legit, but it’s gotten lost amid all the hand wringing and deflection.
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I try to brainstorm solutions with people, but then they complain that potential solutions would be denying that a problem exists now. It seems that people often lack patience for doing anything together unless others frame the situation the exact same way that they do. How is activism possible when those who see a need for change get bogged down with the realism of how things are, and don’t make the leap of actually changing things to how they could be?
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Would you say you’re the true victim here?
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