Privilege

[Younigue]

If a cop is holding the starting gun, then I know I don't want to be anything other than white when they go to fire it.

Exactly.

 

[Linux23]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqj9FiflNQc

White privilege

/thread

 

[mect]

But the stuff you are referring to are largely not unique between the groups. It's just rhetoric. Do you feel the same way about males vs. females, since that's another case where people assert males have it so much better? I also find that baffling because there are many women I would rather be than many men if I had a choice.



What's weird is that the IQ gap is the same anywhere here. So it doesn't necessarily matter if it's Jim Crow South. Here's a graph from Flynn/Dickens on projected IQs of blacks in 1972 and 2002. Notice how it declines with age? That's the so-called Wilson effect where genetics start overpowering shared environment factors. You'll notice from education interventions that IQ gains in early life simply fade out and aren't permanent. Even in the 2002 cohort, they have a double digit deficit compared to whites by adulthood, which undoubtedly trashes their life outcomes. This is generally what people are complaining about and blaming on society, but how come it's still stagnant over decades of improvement?

http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/dickens2006a.pdf

Can you demonstrate that it's from discrimination and legacy? The same can be said about crime rates of blacks in other developed countries. Even if someone assumes 100% environment, why isn't it about poverty or something that has less to do with institutionalized discrimination? The cops sure didn't lower their IQ points by pulling them over.



What's up with the stupid hyperbole? The majority shot weren't unarmed, and even if they were, it wasn't for a lack of trying. We're talking about not many individuals. More people get struck by lightning in a year.

A study from Harvard suggests no bias for shootings, but somewhat significant in others, though still nowhere near the exaggerations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/...police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

I'm really quite concerned. You do seem to be arguing that blacks are genetically more inclined to commit crimes and that blacks are inherently less intelligent than whites. I hope I'm mistaken, but that seems to be the case.

First of all, you are incorrect that IQs have been stagnant for blacks. Based on the data you posted, they improved by about 5 points. Further, if you read the body of the study, they indicate that while there has been variations among different studies in terms of the time line, all are in agreement that significant progress has been made in closing the IQ gap between whites and blacks. The study you cite concludes that this is evidence that the discrepancy is not genetic in nature, but an outcome of our society. Why do you think the IQ gap widens with age? Could it possibly be due to the fact that societal resources like education are better deployed to white individuals, and the longer that effect is applied, the wider the achievement gap becomes? If these issues were only about poverty, we would expect to see equal distributions of poverty for all races. The fact that one race experience poverty at a much higher rate than another indicates that either a) that race is genetically inferior or b) that race has historical and/or present biases holding it back. The data indicates its b). That is why experts agree that white males experience privilege.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqj9FiflNQc

White privilege

/thread

A-fvcking-mazing , not privilege, just stupidity in action.

 

[Younigue]

just stupidity in action.

Holy Shit Taj! Putting it out there for all to see your own very apt description of yourself. *High Five*!

 

[bradly1101]

Seeing differences and potential, perceived threats is as old as eyes (550M yrs.). When at least most humans evolve beyond comparison and perceiving differences as possible threats (it all can be if you ask me regardless of race), and starts living with humility, empathy, compassion, and kindness (heck) this will be a great place. I see the potential weekly.

More people, limited money, housing, and everything else leads to desperation in all. Race doesn't matter, shouldn't be a word, statistics shouldn't be taken. People use those numbers quite incorrectly but to further the 'moral' agenda. All in my opinion of course.

I'm hopeful, and it all seems hopeless.

 

[Jhhnn]

That’s an inaccurate analogy

You have a select few people who have the luxury of just showing up to run the race.

You have many more people who have to run just to get to the starting line. For the white person who has to run 2.75 miles to the starting line instead of 3 miles, it’s ridiculous to assert that they have a position of privilege. The black person who runs 3 miles and the white person who runs 2.75 miles have a lot in common.

The problem with our society is you have two political parties that play the disadvantaged against one another while the guy waiting at the starting line is erecting a steeple chase in front of the starting line.

The problem is that due to identity politics, we assume and lump all the white competitor into a bucket of privilege. Some do have privilege. Many more do not.

Trump tapped into the frustration born of this oversight.

Please. Their privilege remains intact. It just has less meaning in the lands that the Job Creators forgot.

 

[Starbuck1975]

Please. Their privilege remains intact. It just has less meaning in the lands that the Job Creators forgot.

Keep thinking that

 

[mikeymikec]

The problem with our society is you have two political parties that play the disadvantaged against one another while the guy waiting at the starting line is erecting a steeple chase in front of the starting line.

The problem is that due to identity politics, we assume and lump all the white competitor into a bucket of privilege. Some do have privilege. Many more do not.

Trump tapped into the frustration born of this oversight.

What? Trump did exactly what you claimed that the two political parties have done all along: Play the disadvantaged against each other. He pitted the poor, the easily duped and the outright racists against Mexicans and "not Muslims".

 

[Starbuck1975]

What? Trump did exactly what you claimed that the two political parties have done all along: Play the disadvantaged against each other. He pitted the poor, the easily duped and the outright racists against Mexicans and "not Muslims".

I know and I agree with you, which is why I originally wrote what you bolded.

Trump pitted the poor against migrant workers. The left pits its coalition against those working class flyover state “unproductive” parts of the country.

 

[justoh]

geez. This Atreus guy is apparently a bonafide racist. Actually all those people who bring up "black criminality" must necessarily be, because of the unavoidable predisposition implication. If you accept that there's no genetic basis for differentiating us on skin color then you look for alternative explanations for these phenomena, but christians always go for racial (or "cultural" if they're cowards) inferiority. Obviously not saying all christians are racists, but most racists are christians. We could really do without them, to be honest. Maybe those 2nd amendment folks could do something about it, and all shoot themselves. i'm totally jking. I don't really want anyone to shoot themselves, or anyone. This isn't hate speech.

 

[interchange]

I don't disagree with anything that you have just said. What I am confused about is what you think you did not have that prevented you before. You said you were not taught how to recognize your feelings, and how to express them in language that allowed you to own how you felt. The specifics of racism are unique, but, from what you said it would seem that you were having trouble at a general level understanding your feelings. What I do not get is why you would have trouble understanding your feelings about race, but not your feelings about other things.

OK. I think I understand what you are having difficulty with. I'll use an analogy.

What if I said I was bad at math*? You probably wouldn't think that I was dumb overall based on our interactions here. But definitely someone who is bad at one subject (e.g. math) is plenty likely to be bad at all subjects (dumb). But it isn't necessarily the case. It's pretty frequent that very smart people overall have areas involving intellect that they are not proficient at.

So then you ask why am I good at language, creative thought...whatever but not good at math? Well, you could take the low road and just say that someone's intelligence is comprised of multiple things and thus genetically some people may have a proclivity to math and some people may not. This is, of course, true, but it's an incomplete story. The children of Chinese immigrants are very frequently good at math. Is this because Chinese people have a genetic advantage over Americans overall? Possibly, but I find that unlikely or at least nowhere near significant enough to explain the disparity. More likely math and studies overall were valued differently in a person's family and cultural heritage, and their math performance was given more attention and value early on in life. Probably many people also didn't have such strong family/cultural pushes but ended up better at math because the societal expectation is for a Chinese-American kid to be a math nerd, and that expected cultural identity was comfortable for a person to assume for themselves and so they more easily built confidence in their math ability and more confidence tolerating the anxiety of holding power over their peers in this way.

So why is race (or at least was) a more difficult area for me to engage in and even place my own feelings and put them into words? It's because my family of origin and culture didn't expose me to race much. And when it did, it was taboo to talk about race. The discussions I had were either hearing my dad go on borderline racists rants about customers he served or my mom proposing a very idealized version of racial justice. But I didn't directly observe either of those interactions, really. I observed my parents avoiding putting these feelings disclosed in the safety of the home aside when race-influenced interactions came up. And so I had a tension within me related to testing my own feelings and exploring those conferred upon me, and there was no model for how to dissolve that tension other than suppress it. Any words I came up with became imbued with that anxiety. This is a common experience.


*I'm actually good at math

I would further assume that you are talking about things you unconsciously perceive, because, if you were conscious of them then it would be easy. So if you are talking about unconscious perception that then manifests an emotional reaction, then what were you missing that you would not be able to get elsewhere in terms of digging into that to see the cause? What about race makes that unique, or am I missing your point?

Obviously if I can observe myself experiencing something than it is not unconscious. I would describe it as in part pre-symbolic, meaning that it is something I recognize but don't have words or symbols to describe. For example, an ace pitcher might struggle to tell you how to throw a fastball, but they know damn well how to do it. Part of it is that some of my identified feelings and thoughts are dissociated as a result of the anxiety from my early race-based experiences and lack of a model of how to organize those thoughts and feelings. So I can be conscious of some feelings and thoughts but struggle how to connect them to each other or context. And part of it is that I have thoughts and feelings that I don't have trouble recognizing or putting into words internally but are connected to anxiety about possible conflicts with others and with my own view of self so I keep them suppressed.

Race isn't unique in this way. Lots of people have all kinds of conflicts like this. For instance, someone struggling with gender or sexuality may well know that they have a specific identity that varies from the norm but struggle mightily to come to terms with how to integrate that with their own view of themselves or express their identity or use their identity in interactions with others.

It is important to highlight race because it is extremely common for these challenges to be present in our society. And recognizing that could be really powerful because it can diffuse some of that anxiety. If someone does not feel alone and witnesses another person confronting a conflict they share, it can empower them to do the same. We really desperately need that for progress to be made.

 

[realibrad]

OK. I think I understand what you are having difficulty with. I'll use an analogy.

What if I said I was bad at math*? You probably wouldn't think that I was dumb overall based on our interactions here. But definitely someone who is bad at one subject (e.g. math) is plenty likely to be bad at all subjects (dumb). But it isn't necessarily the case. It's pretty frequent that very smart people overall have areas involving intellect that they are not proficient at.

So then you ask why am I good at language, creative thought...whatever but not good at math? Well, you could take the low road and just say that someone's intelligence is comprised of multiple things and thus genetically some people may have a proclivity to math and some people may not. This is, of course, true, but it's an incomplete story. The children of Chinese immigrants are very frequently good at math. Is this because Chinese people have a genetic advantage over Americans overall? Possibly, but I find that unlikely or at least nowhere near significant enough to explain the disparity. More likely math and studies overall were valued differently in a person's family and cultural heritage, and their math performance was given more attention and value early on in life. Probably many people also didn't have such strong family/cultural pushes but ended up better at math because the societal expectation is for a Chinese-American kid to be a math nerd, and that expected cultural identity was comfortable for a person to assume for themselves and so they more easily built confidence in their math ability and more confidence tolerating the anxiety of holding power over their peers in this way.

So why is race (or at least was) a more difficult area for me to engage in and even place my own feelings and put them into words? It's because my family of origin and culture didn't expose me to race much. And when it did, it was taboo to talk about race. The discussions I had were either hearing my dad go on borderline racists rants about customers he served or my mom proposing a very idealized version of racial justice. But I didn't directly observe either of those interactions, really. I observed my parents avoiding putting these feelings disclosed in the safety of the home aside when race-influenced interactions came up. And so I had a tension within me related to testing my own feelings and exploring those conferred upon me, and there was no model for how to dissolve that tension other than suppress it. Any words I came up with became imbued with that anxiety. This is a common experience.


*I'm actually good at math



Obviously if I can observe myself experiencing something than it is not unconscious. I would describe it as in part pre-symbolic, meaning that it is something I recognize but don't have words or symbols to describe. For example, an ace pitcher might struggle to tell you how to throw a fastball, but they know damn well how to do it. Part of it is that some of my identified feelings and thoughts are dissociated as a result of the anxiety from my early race-based experiences and lack of a model of how to organize those thoughts and feelings. So I can be conscious of some feelings and thoughts but struggle how to connect them to each other or context. And part of it is that I have thoughts and feelings that I don't have trouble recognizing or putting into words internally but are connected to anxiety about possible conflicts with others and with my own view of self so I keep them suppressed.

Race isn't unique in this way. Lots of people have all kinds of conflicts like this. For instance, someone struggling with gender or sexuality may well know that they have a specific identity that varies from the norm but struggle mightily to come to terms with how to integrate that with their own view of themselves or express their identity or use their identity in interactions with others.

It is important to highlight race because it is extremely common for these challenges to be present in our society. And recognizing that could be really powerful because it can diffuse some of that anxiety. If someone does not feel alone and witnesses another person confronting a conflict they share, it can empower them to do the same. We really desperately need that for progress to be made.

I think I understand your analogy, but I get hung up on a different part. Now, I grew up around many different races, so I might not be able to fully understand your position on this. You said you had trouble with understanding your feelings and how to express those feelings in terms of race. The 2nd part I think I get which is that if you had feelings you would find it hard to put into words, likely because you never really had to.

Its the first part that I think hangs me up. Where I grew up, my "race" was often the minority. There were 3 main groups, or 4 of you want to split SE Asian vs India Asian. That may have given me the tools that you felt you lacked. That said, I have never really felt it hard to give words to my feelings. So when you say you had trouble recognizing your feelings, its hard for me to understand because I can't think of a feeling that I feel that I cannot explain. I wont dive into if my explanation is wrong or right as I am biased, but I think that is what I got stuck on.

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

 

[brandonbull]

When you behave badly, you might get arrested. When black people behave badly they get the shit kicked out of them, then they get arrested, if they are lucky. If they aren't lucky they get shot.

When white people behave badly around cops, they have a higher chance of deadly force being used against them.

 

[interchange]

I think I understand your analogy, but I get hung up on a different part. Now, I grew up around many different races, so I might not be able to fully understand your position on this. You said you had trouble with understanding your feelings and how to express those feelings in terms of race. The 2nd part I think I get which is that if you had feelings you would find it hard to put into words, likely because you never really had to.

Its the first part that I think hangs me up. Where I grew up, my "race" was often the minority. There were 3 main groups, or 4 of you want to split SE Asian vs India Asian. That may have given me the tools that you felt you lacked. That said, I have never really felt it hard to give words to my feelings. So when you say you had trouble recognizing your feelings, its hard for me to understand because I can't think of a feeling that I feel that I cannot explain. I wont dive into if my explanation is wrong or right as I am biased, but I think that is what I got stuck on.

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Not everyone has the same experience and there are a whole lot of different mental makeups. I would hope that your experience with more exposure to racial diversity and lack of difficulty expressing your feelings in any arena you can name indicates you had more help understanding your early life experience than I did. Another possibility is that you have repressed some of these difficulties so you can't consciously perceive them. I don't think that's (largely) the case because you seem to be pretty nuanced, capable, and interested in exploring challenging topics. But certainly you've seen people who absolutely refuse to acknowledge an obvious bias or bigotry. It's possible they see it within themselves but refuse to share it, but I think most of the time they have simply developed in such a way as to be blind to their own imperfections even when they are in obvious view of others.

 

[Jhhnn]

I know and I agree with you, which is why I originally wrote what you bolded.

Trump pitted the poor against migrant workers. The left pits its coalition against those working class flyover state “unproductive” parts of the country.

Poor people didn't vote for Trump. Bitter white people who let themselves be conned by the trickle down jerb creators voted for Trump.

 

[realibrad]

Not everyone has the same experience and there are a whole lot of different mental makeups. I would hope that your experience with more exposure to racial diversity and lack of difficulty expressing your feelings in any arena you can name indicates you had more help understanding your early life experience than I did. Another possibility is that you have repressed some of these difficulties so you can't consciously perceive them. I don't think that's (largely) the case because you seem to be pretty nuanced, capable, and interested in exploring challenging topics. But certainly you've seen people who absolutely refuse to acknowledge an obvious bias or bigotry. It's possible they see it within themselves but refuse to share it, but I think most of the time they have simply developed in such a way as to be blind to their own imperfections even when they are in obvious view of others.

I have seen many in my own family that I would not say were at the level of being called a racist, but, have expressed racist beliefs. My dad is probably the perfect example. I have never seen him shy away from any group of people, and, have never once seen him say or do anything disrespectful to someone based on their race. That said, him and I were talking and he said that he does not like that culturally immigrants are shifting the identity of the US. He wants to limit immigrants coming to the US not for jobs, but because they are changing the culture he grew up with the culture they have. At first I thought he was speaking imperfectly and what he really wanted to say was that he feared the negative parts of other cultures becoming part of the US culture, so I pressed him on it. I was incorrect, and he truly believes that changing US culture, even if it means only taking the good parts, is bad.

Where it became racist was that he believed that we should limit people based on race as race and culture are so linked.

As for repressed feelings and or ideas, I'm sure I have them. I would hope that there are not many left as I examine myself quite a bit so the things I find are infrequent, but there are some big life changes coming up so that may shake some things loose.

 

[realibrad]

Poor people didn't vote for Trump. Bitter white people who let themselves be conned by the trickle down jerb creators voted for Trump.

Are you saying that what motivated them was not their poverty, but their hope of a better economy? Or are you saying he did not get many poor votes?

 

[Jhhnn]

Are you saying that what motivated them was not their poverty, but their hope of a better economy? Or are you saying he did not get many poor votes?

I'm saying he didn't win on the votes of poor people-

 

[realibrad]

I'm saying he didn't win on the votes of poor people-

No, you said poor people did not vote for him. Even taking your response in a reasonable way, 41% of poor people voting for him is vastly different from nobody.

 

[Jhhnn]

No, you said poor people did not vote for him. Even taking your response in a reasonable way, 41% of poor people voting for him is vastly different from nobody.

Please. You said Trump pitted the poor against migrants. He pitted the white middle class against migrants & "coastal elite limousine liberals".

If my characterization was overly broad then yours was absolutely false.

 

[interchange]

I'm saying he didn't win on the votes of poor people-

No, you said poor people did not vote for him. Even taking your response in a reasonable way, 41% of poor people voting for him is vastly different from nobody.

Please. You said Trump pitted the poor against migrants. He pitted the white middle class against migrants & "coastal elite limousine liberals".

If my characterization was overly broad then yours was absolutely false.

The metric in that graph is turnout, not votes. Perhaps 53% of poor Hillary supporters showed up to the poll compared to 41% of poor Trump supporters, but that tells little of the story. It could be possible that 80% of poor people support Trump, so even with a lower turnout that would mean he would get an overwhelming majority of the votes.

But that 80% is just offered for sake of argument. I don't actually know what percentage of the poor supported which candidate.

 

[bshole]

geez. This Atreus guy is apparently a bonafide racist. Actually all those people who bring up "black criminality" must necessarily be, because of the unavoidable predisposition implication. If you accept that there's no genetic basis for differentiating us on skin color then you look for alternative explanations for these phenomena, but christians always go for racial (or "cultural" if they're cowards) inferiority. Obviously not saying all christians are racists, but most racists are christians. We could really do without them, to be honest. Maybe those 2nd amendment folks could do something about it, and all shoot themselves. i'm totally jking. I don't really want anyone to shoot themselves, or anyone. This isn't hate speech.

That is an extremely interesting observation. From a global perspective, white Christianity is in a death spiral. Paradoxically non-white Christianity is on a rapid rise. Fundamentalist Christians were able to infect the African continent with their disease thus ensuring decades of suffering and knee-capping any chances of civilization advance there. By 2060, Pew estimates that more than 40% of all Christians will be in Africa. The brand of Christianity rising in Africa is the anti-gay/anti-science/anti-safe sex/terroristic variety guaranteed to harm society. If White America has anything to apologize for, it is this.

Anti-balaka groups destroyed almost all mosques in the Central African Republic unrest.[22][23] In 2014, Amnesty International reported several massacres committed by the Anti-balaka against Muslim civilians, forcing thousands of Muslims to flee the country.[24][25] Other sources report incidents of Muslims being cannibalized.[26][27]

While anti-balaka groups have been frequently described as Christian militias in the media, this has been denied by Church leaders. Bishop Juan José Aguirre said: "But in no sense can it be said that the anti-balaka is a Christian group. The anti-balaka are made up of people of all kinds, terribly enraged, and including many people whom we call the 'dispossessed' – bandits, ex-prisoners, delinquents, criminals – who have got involved in these groups and are now extending, like a plague of locusts, across the whole of the CAR, murdering Muslims".[28] The Tony Blair Faith Foundation has also pointed out the presence of animists in anti-balaka groups.[29] However, there have been reports that many members of Anti-balaka groups have forcibly converted Muslims and animists to Christianity.[30][31][32][33]

On 20 January 2014, Catherine Samba-Panza, the mayor of Bangui, was elected as the interim president in the second round voting.[34] The election of Samba-Panza was welcomed by Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General.[35] Samba-Panza was viewed as having been neutral and away from clan clashes. Her arrival to the presidency was generally accepted by the anti-balaka. Following the election, Samba-Panza made a speech in the parliament appealing to the anti-balaka to put down their weapons.[36]

The next day anti-Muslim violence continued in Bangui,[37] just days after the Muslim former Health Minister Dr. Joseph Kalite was lynched outside the Central Mosque[38] and at least nine other people were killed when attacked when a mob, some of who were from Christian self-defence groups, looted shops in the Muslim-majority Miskine neighbourhood of Bangui.[39] As of 20 January, the ICRC reported that it had buried about 50 bodies within 48 hours.[40] It also came after a mob killed two people whom they accused of being Muslim, then dragged the bodies through the streets and burnt them.[41] Within the previous month, about 1,000 people had died.[42] On 4 February 2014, a local priest said 75 people were killed in the town of Boda, in Lobayeprefecture.[43] In the southwest, anti-balaka militants attacked Guen in early February resulting in the deaths of 60 people, according to Father Rigobert Dolongo, who also said that he had helped bury the bodies of the dead, at least 27 of whom died on the first day of the attack and 43 others the next day. As a result, hundreds of Muslim refugees sought shelter at a church in Carnot.[44]

In May 2014, it was reported that around 600,000 people in CAR were internally displaced with 160,000 of these in the capital Bangui. The Muslim population of Bangui had dropped from 138,000 to 900. The national health system had collapsed and over half of the total population of 4.6 million were said to be in need of immediate aid. Also from December 2013 to May 2014, 100,000 people had fled to neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo bringing the number of CAR refugees in these countries to about 350,000.[45] Amnesty International blamed the anti-balaka militia of causing a "Muslim exodus of historic proportions.[46] Some Muslims of the country were also weary of the French presence in MISCA, with the French accused of not doing enough to stop attacks by Anti-balaka militias. One of the cited reasons for the difficulty in stopping attacks by anti-balaka militias was the mob nature of these attacks.[47]

 

[realibrad]

Please. You said Trump pitted the poor against migrants. He pitted the white middle class against migrants & "coastal elite limousine liberals".

If my characterization was overly broad then yours was absolutely false.

I said no such thing. I think you are thinking of Star. I just disagreed that the poor did not vote for trump.

 

[realibrad]

The metric in that graph is turnout, not votes. Perhaps 53% of poor Hillary supporters showed up to the poll compared to 41% of poor Trump supporters, but that tells little of the story. It could be possible that 80% of poor people support Trump, so even with a lower turnout that would mean he would get an overwhelming majority of the votes.

But that 80% is just offered for sake of argument. I don't actually know what percentage of the poor supported which candidate.

The % matches the Edison/Mitofsky exit poll so its close enough.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html

Still faulty to say that the poor did not vote for Trump, when something like 40% did.