No, the idea is that you’re coming from a place of unacknowledged privilege and you think your (white) opinions are more correct than those of black folks who actually live black lives without your privilege.
Be offended all you want. You can walk away and ignore black problems. They can’t. That’s part of why it is privilege.
http://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack
Yeah because if a middle class, college educated and professional black person walks into a small town in Missouri, he’ll be treated like all the other white folks in town, right? He won’t be treated differently because of his skin in 1,000 different ways (always to his detriment). Uh huh.
To frame the problem this way is to ignore many of the root causes. For example:
It took centuries to build up the systems of oppression that keep black people in poverty. You can’t reasonably expect them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in one or two generations, especially since so much of the racism that disadvantaged them in the first place is ongoing.
I have read one of his books, and many of his essays. I will not claim to have read all of his work.
And I do not think my opinions are more or less valid than anyone else’s by virtue of race. At my work, a pretty large percentage of my coworkers seem to have overcome those same racial obstacles, so it does not seem that their path to success was unobtainable. Was it harder than mine? Almost certainly.
I am one of those people who believes, pretty strongly so, that education can be a path to independence and success. Schools vary greatly in quality, but pretty much everyone in the US has access to free public education. People who do not take advantage of that education are putting themselves at a huge disadvantage, one that is very hard for anyone to overcome.
Not invalid, incomplete!
aka “Black people, just try harder.”
Don’t worry about the culture or societal conditions you find yourself in that make taking advantage of schooling almost impossible in many places. Those don’t matter because they’re invisible.
Ok. Thanks. Moving on now.
An anecdote…
I’m reminded of Coates discussing the ass whippings he took and the harsh attitude of his parents towards him because THAT was the only way they knew of to keep him motivated, in school, and off the streets. I think about all of the folks I’ve met over the years that had no active parents (especially no father) and maybe just a grandma keeping them fed.
My friend and across the street neighbor is a black man (a building contractor) and he and I discuss the shit he does (including yelling I don’t approve of at times) to keep his kids focused on school and not just fucking off. He explicitly cites the junkies that live in our neighborhood (who are our age and whom he’s known since they were all 20) to his kids, “You want to wind up like those fuckers!!! Listen to me!!!”
That’s what black parents often need to do in order to overcome even basic societal issues to get their kids to stay in school.
We’re not talking about an INDIVIDUAL. We can probably all agree that it’s possible for an individual (such as President Obama) to beat the odds under exceptional circumstances. We’re talking about the effect of centuries of oppression on African-Americans as a group.
White cop to Black man wandering into his town or neighborhood: “Can I help you?” (or, more often, “What are you doing here?”) That’s the mildest of shit black folks get to deal with just wandering the streets (or in a grocery store…).
And even at the top: Fox News dismissively refers to Obama’s highly accomplished Harvard-Law-graduate wife as his “Baby Mama” even though by all accounts the two have been happily married since 1992 and their children were both conceived and born in wedlock.
If there had even been a WHIFF of the kind of seedy sex scandals that Trump has been involved in for decades then Obama never would have had a chance at the nomination.
When we moved to the US, I attended schools where the students were mostly poor and Black. My kids attend public schools that are not much better. To combat the issue of hunger, every student is given free breakfast, and free lunch if they lack the means to pay.
It was my experience that many of the kids who did not do well in my school either did not show up, or if they did show up, they ignored the teacher and any assignments. After school, they hung around and got into fights. Of course there are some kids who have to work or deal with abusive parents. But there are a bunch of them, at least when I was in school, just did not care. This was not only about one race of kids. Then there were poor kids of whatever race who studied in the library before and after school when home was not conductive to school work, and at least paid attention and did what was asked of them in class, since they had to be there anyway.
I would love to hear some solutions to motivate people to act in their best interests. I understand that we are talking about groups of people, but those are comprised of individuals. And each of those individuals face a series of choices every day.
I guess it amounts to whether we believe that those barriers are insurmountable, and also what we believe we can each do to make them less so.
You’re acting out a pantomime of the perfect white privileged conversation right now.
Ask yourself why those kids behaved that way. Ask yourself if their are racial factors present in their lives and society that may have heavily contributed to this behavior. Coates actually discusses this specific area (schooling) in his last book in the context of his own life.
He’s only rich and straight until he wastes his money on gay hookers and blow.
FTFY
I recommend watching The Wire, especially Season 4, which focuses on why “just get them to work harder at school” isn’t as simple as it sounds.
It’s “Coates”, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Pssh; little things like accuracy and basic respect are only necessary when talking about certain types of people…
Taking that one step further, consider the basic wealth gap between white and black people.
A gap like that doesn’t just muck up the lives of the wage-earners themselves, it mucks up the lives of everyone in that family. But I’m sure if they just “try harder” it’ll all be fine.
(Source: Black incomes are up, but wealth isn’t, Pew Research)
Yes. That’s the name of the author of the essays he reads to Mr. Coats.
Please tell us more about how you feel black people are generally lazy and violent, Max.
I’m dying to hear more anecdotal opinions about bootstrapping in lieu of actual discussion of systemic racism.
Duh, obviously he shouldn’t have gotten into so many fights and done better in school.
Using these wonderful anecdotes to justify treatment of all persons is terrible.
