But aren’t the voters just choosing from whats on offer? Isn’t the voter turnout, a silent majority that goes unrepresented, a data point in the idea that in politics, its not a buyers market?
And aren’t politicians who are elected proposing policies that purport to have an effect on the world that is not always materialized?
OK, let’s not drag my beloved science into this discussion. Light is not both a particle and a wave – light is composed of photons, which behave with the properties of both particles and waves. One could argue that our misapplication of our macroscopic meaning of the 'particle" and “wave” in the quantum regime is the problem, but since you’re making a semantic argument in the opposite direction this might not be a helpful avenue for you.
tl;dr STAY OUTTA MY TERRITORY.
We campaign in poetry and govern in prose. And it’s harder to govern when the people with whom you have to work refuse to read.
Not contingent upon, just that they got that specific privilege while the black vet’s family did not. This is easily researched to see that it’s true.
You’re the one making it inflammatory by claiming the white family somehow stole the right to a mortgage from the black family. You’re implying that there was only one mortgage available between the two families. Not true. If both families had been white, they would have both been eligible for the loan thanks to the VA Bill. If both families had been black, neither would have gotten one, or only for lesser value properties in redlined areas with little chance of equity improvement.
Are you willfully twisting this around to suit your fears, or do you not understand the difference?
That actually validates @anon67050589’s citation of a dictionary, because the historical usages of the term are relevant. Historically, the bourgeois assault on the aristocracy included attacks on feudal privileges. I’d say, though, that the logic of the history of the term is relevant. The basis of power of the rich is that they’re rich, so talking about their privileges is redundant – unless you’re talking about powers they have that aren’t directly related to their being rich. Those aren’t legal privileges – those generally went to the guillotine along with the aristocracy. It tends to refer to a lot of extra-legal systems, “old boys’ networks” and that sort of thing, the sort of thing that allows Donald Trump to go bankrupt and then go back to being a billionaire. So, by extension from the privileges of the rich, you have other sorts of privileges, which are generally extra-legal and thus deniable or invisible.
It’s met with misunderstanding and antagonism from some quarters, and general acceptance in others. Which quarters are which, matters. In general, I see white people objecting to the concept of white privilege, men objecting to the concept of male privilege, etc., and most often, I think this comes out of widespread acceptance of structural racism, sexism, etc.
There’s a subset of objections that come from people who insist (often with good reason) that they’re principled opponents of these things, but that they feel the language of privilege is alienating or misleading. I don’t think it is; in fact, I think there’s a tendency to deny just how common white racism is and how common misogyny is, and how much pressure there is to pretend otherwise.
For me, Ferguson was a wake-up call, though I’d had enough wake-up calls in the past that I shouldn’t have needed it. What struck me, immediately after the death of Michael Brown, was that there were a lot of white people whose immediate reaction was to openly celebrate the fact that the police had murdered a young black man, and most of the rest were casually dismissing the significance of that.
Part of where I’m coming from is that, in the 90s, I was part of a socialist group that argued emphatically against this sort of usage of “privilege”. At the time, I was embroiled in heated arguments on a college campus with identity politics advocates. I think we were right to be critical of their arguments, but wrong to attack the concept of “privilege”. We were, in practice, alienating most activists of color, by making it clear we were rejecting anything they had to say before they had a chance to say it. The main problem I had with identity politics, in the 90s, was that it pre-emptively ruled out any concept of solidarity, and was thus a dead-end. In recent years, the limited excuse of countering that bad argument with another bad argument has become invalid, since I don’t see the identity politics crowd ruling out working with allies or denouncing socialism anymore.
Leaving one’s baggage at the door, acknowledging that white privilege, etc., exist, is a precondition for solidarity. Why should people of color trust white people who won’t even acknowledge the problem?
Hahaha, fair enough - though I think the fact that I got it wrong just proves my point about complexity and layers of meaning and language being imprecise (even in science, where it’s important to be VERY precise, there’s ambiguity)
I understand the difference perfectly, and it is just that difference that makes the word privilege completely inappropriate. What you are talking about is some people being denied their rights. You are not talking about someone having some sort of special privilege. Because being able to act in the economy without being discriminated against because of your race is a right, not a privilege. I am not denying the injustice. I am denying the appropriateness of the terminology so many people seem fixated on enforcing generally. Being fairly considered for a mortgage is a right, not a privilege.
Not to go too off topic, but It doesn’t sound like we’re coming from completely different camps, the point in contention is where government comes in. I don’t think any candidate is going to run on an unpopular platform, so making sure that people want this and are vocal about it is the best way for it to be then taken up by anyone running for mayor/governor/president.
My disagreement with you is that I don’t think anyone is proposing real change in this area right now, so asking for people to vote for change is not an option.
This is about as useful as wandering into a discussion about organic food and proclaiming loudly that All Food Is Organic because we can only metabolize carbon compounds.
Words can mean different things at different times and in different contexts. it happens
Yeah, white people lost their shit, because they were scared that the black panthers were coming to come get them, and this was somehow PROOF!!! The 60s were so turbulent and so much was happening, not just in the US, but around the world.
When thinking about this stuff sometimes, it just boggles my mind that some of us can be so easy to scare and so very insecure.
I have been harassed about the same by noticeably non-white people when I was hanging around with primarily white friends as I have by white people when with primarily non-white friends. And honestly, the idiots who do the harassing are usually focused oh me when I’m with black friends, I suppose because I’m the one that stands out as “different”. I don’t tell random strangers about my life, no, but I would venture to say that you probably don’t either. It’s not that I hide it, it just seems silly to introduce myself by saying “Hello, I’m really part black, and you are?”. That being said, I’ve never really experienced anyone’s treatment of me change when I HAVE told them. Some people do treat it with a sort of novelty though, like they’re confused or intrigued, but that’s never lasted long. As for the grandparents thing, yes I have other grandparents, but only one other set actually lives in America. I’m only really a second (or maybe it’s third) generation American myself if you don’t count the background in slavery. My grandmother (the one who married my black grandfather) had moved to America from Ireland. The other set of grandparents only moved here in the past decade. And it was because my mixed grandparents were established that my other grandparents had an easy transition, so if you want to call that half white privilege I’ll concede that.
You know, my only problem with this song (which is a great song, BTW) is that it ignores the agency of poor, working class, or petit bourgeois whites, who benefited from white privilege. Sure, they are pawns in some sense, but plenty of historians have show that poor, working class whites often pushed for and actively supported policies that were racist, because they understood the benefits they reaped from it.
Today, I think that the tea party politicians, like Rand Paul, use those racist dog whistles because they know it will get them votes, not because they are “tricking” the populace. What they do in congress might be different, but they know which cards to play to which audiences.
Yep… systemic racism is a thing of the past… Unfortunately… if I may paraphrase Faulkner for you, the past isn’t dead… it isn’t even past. MOST ESPECIALLY here in the south:
http://review.gawker.com/what-james-baldwins-if-beale-street-could-talk-tells-us-1696489449/+jparham
Even in a cosmopolitan city like Atlanta, you can’t miss how it intertwines with your daily life - let’s not even get into a city like New Orleans, which I recently visited for the first time since Katrina.
Look - I grew up with the legacy of systemic racism staring me in the face on a daily basis… my hometown was still in many ways highly segregated. The KKK still held rallies and handed out flyers on the main street. The MLK holiday was marked by a small and tense march every year. My school had a tiny black minority, and at times tensions could be rather high.
You;re willfully ignorant if you can look at what’s been going on recently and still think the past is past. We are nothing but our past, individually and collectively. Until we white people can have the strength of character to stare our bloody, violent, genocidal, and racist past in the face, accept how it built the present, and understand that the past is right here and now, we’ll continue to relive it. We can’t move forward until we accept and recognize what has happened in the past.
White privilege, not just privilege, white privilege, it has its own meaning not contingent (though related) on the traditional usage of privilege otherwise that word would have sufficed.
Just like white guilt is used to describe the sublimation of guilt transformed into ineffectual action, white privilege is used to describe the phenomenon where people who are white are seen as being inherently better than people who are not white. (That’s where the privilege comes in, you’ll notice the ironic connotations inherent in the phrase, I would call that snark)
If you have a better way to describe it, having a term that is easy for white people to accept would be good. But the concept remains the same, and its not an easy concept to accept, if it were, we might not be where we are right now, people complaining about the use of the word privilege and in doing so, avoid addressing the pressing concern of oppressed people.
I hate to be a cynic, but I think the video is so compelling and its obvious that the cop used lethal force when he clearly didn’t need to, that they had no choice but to fire him and arrest him for murder. The growing attention to the issue of black men being brutalized by the cops in the past year or so helps. But we’ll see if they convict him and what kind of sentence he gets. I hate to say it, but I’m skeptical on him getting hard time for this.
Remember there were other videos too, Eric Garner, Darrien Hunt (the kid dressed up as Mugen in SLC), the guy who was in a Wal-Mart in Ohio… video of all of these and I’m sure many more. What may seem like iron clad proof might not hold in the courtroom. And you’re right, that none of these guys were fired… what’s different here?
First off, privilege certainly exists. I had a driver in Sao Paulo named Carlos. Good guy. Once bought a rabbit off a street vendor for next to nothing and spent hundreds trying to keep it alive when it got sick. He had to work extra hours outside of being a driver for an American family. And as a result he was driving a truck one night when he drove through an ongoing gun fight between police and others. He was hit 3 times.
He ended up fighting for his life in a hospital. In the US he would have lived. But because he was a black poorer class Brazilian the first doctor he saw only showed up because a bunch of white Americans showed up asking about him.
Privilege is very real. Classism doubly so.
That being said… let me address this cartoon from my perspective as a 3rd generation Irish American.
First Panel : How my grand parents got into this country.
Basically there was this war in the 1920s called the Easter Rebellion. A great grand uncle of sorts apparently shot an officer in that war. And when the Irish failed to procure their independence the whole family decided now would be a good time to flee.
They arrived in the US, and were basically treated like all Irish immigrants. Like shit. Which is why they went out of their way to ensure their children didn’t speak gaelic or with an accent.
Prior to this most Irish immigrants to the US were used primarily to fight in wars. Leading to grand moments like the Irish brigades in the mexican american war, and the draft riots in the civil war ( in which the irish killed a lot of people… especially blacks and rich people.)
So… this is kind of a load of abject bullshit.
Panel 2:
My grand parents bought a home for cash in a largely irish neighborhood. Several families living together in that home. In fact our house ( a single family now ) was classified as a 3 family home. This was typical of tenement style living.
Panel 3:
How my dad began his career… His grandfather saved every day to send him to college. First guy ever. He worked his ass off. Got a structural engineering degree from NYU. And then started as a building engineer lowest guy on the totem poll. Worked his entire life and brought himself up the ranks. Not saying racism wasn’t a factor… but this denigrates the truth into some sort of harlequin visage of reality.
Panel 4:
How my dad became a homeowner. He rented a very cheap apt. Worked his ass off doing lots of over time. Ate canned spaghetti. And skipped meals for years. Then he ended up getting a job in Houston. Where he bought his first home. Moving his family across the country to a new and growing city. This was very difficult on him and his family.
Panel 5:
My teens… yep I never did drugs. Never shot anyone. Had one run in with a cop but he was basically robbing me. So… maybe atypical but that’s the shakes. Certainly the darker skinned folks tend to get treated like shit by police.
Panel 6:
I’ve probably never benefited from racism. No one ever does. But racism has certainly been a detriment to many. Carlos is dead because of it. I’ve got to put up with bullshit cartoons like this because of it. And everyone who happens to be on the ass end of racism this generation has it worse than anyone.
Sucks.
But yeah.
Fuck this cartoon. It’s a load of bullshit.
who are white are seen as being inherently better than people who are not white
That’s called racism, not privilege. I really have no idea why the insistence on the dumb new word for concepts and problems that have been around for a long, long time and are already fairly well understood.
Uhhhh…If Jews were “over-represented” in places like Hollywood, it’s likely because when the film industry was getting its feet under it, it was people who were cultural outsiders who sought to make it their career… Same with the music industry.
Also, Emilio Estevez seems to have had no problems using his father’s name, just FYI.
And when did your family come over? Interwar period? Postwar period? Yeah, those were indeed high points of anti-German sentiment. Italians and Central/Eastern Europeans were also targeted by 19-teens and 20s immigration laws… but we got over it.
And the Klan lynched Jews, too, btw.
So, instead of getting your talking points from stormfront, why not read a book or two not written by a nazi sympathizer.
Edited to add:
