mayo is gross and i use it in my "white people" jokes a lot, along with egg salad and ice hockey
9 clueless things white people say when confronted with racism
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mayo is gross and i use it in my "white people" jokes a lot, along with egg salad and ice hockey
These types of conversations just don't do well on forums. People don't like feeling 'attacked' and told they are wrong. So of course, they have to take up a contrary position.
I had an analogy that had to do with a record spinning way too fast and slinging people into another dimension but I got lost.
These types of conversations just don't do well on forums.
I had an analogy that had to do with a record spinning way too fast and slinging people into another dimension but I got lost.
These types of conversations just don't do well on forums.
Fisticuffs
Member
I like mayo on my fried chicken.
4) You [person of color] clearly dont know what racism is. According to Websters Dictionary...
This one happens almost every time in a heated race thread on gaf.
The excuse is always, "they don't literally hate them, I wouldn't call it racism just being ignorant."
So basically you can't call someone racist who makes racist comments, because they literally aren't filled with hate or are prejudice.
Go look it up in the dictionary, it's there!
This one happens almost every time in a heated race thread on gaf.
The excuse is always, "they don't literally hate them, I wouldn't call it racism just being ignorant."
So basically you can't call someone racist who makes racist comments, because they literally aren't filled with hate or are prejudice.
Go look it up in the dictionary, it's there!
About a year ago, a black and white buddy of mine were smoking a joint on a side street when a white couple walking their dog passed by. The lady turned to my black buddy and said: "take that back to your area." It escalated to the point where he called her racist and she came back with the most hilarious thing ever:
"I'm not racist. I have lots of black artists on my iPod!"
Add that one to the list.
"I'm not racist. I have lots of black artists on my iPod!"
Add that one to the list.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
Bees. You get more honey with bees.
Aquavelvaman
Banned
The more I hear about these 'white people' the less I like them. Somebody should do something before they get out of hand.
Holy shit, that was amazing. The joke is great...and jesus he is dressed sharp too. I'm sorry I just had to point that out.
Yeah. This was pretty amazing, lol.
Yes, I completely agree with you that the concept of differing opportunities is important. I think it's very healthy for a person to sit down and count their blessings, to recognize the things they normally take for granted. It's important to have empathy for those who are disadvantaged.
But I think calling it "privilege" rather than the previous "disadvantaged"** (which are two sides of the same coin) is problematic for at least two reasons. (**or "hardship" or "plight" or "unfortunate circumstances", etc.)
1. First and foremost, as I said in my post, the concept of "privilege" is meant to help the disadvantaged... yet, the development of the term "privilege" has shifted the focus of a topic from the disadvantaged to the privileged. When privilege is brought up, the immediate focus is on the group the social cause isn't trying to help, i.e. white, male, straight, etc. Why? Because that's what privilege is referring to. It snatches the focus of the conversation from the groups that need help, and places it on the groups that don't need help.
Conversely, when disadvantage is brought up, the focus is on the disadvantaged groups you're trying to help. If you say, "Most people in the Philippines don't have flush toilets," there's an immediate sense of empathy. You just think about their flush-toilet-less state. If you instead say, "You have such privilege, look at how your toilet flushes. You know, most people in the Philippines don't have flush toilets?"--then the focus of the conversation is on how lucky and privileged you are. But that's unnecessary. You already know you have a toilet; it doesn't need pointing out.
2. The second problem with talking about "privilege" rather than disadvantages/hardships/etc. is that, unfortunately, people get defensive. Justified or not, it's a reality that people get defensive. That's why the focus should stay on the disadvantaged, and leave talk of privilege to the minimum; after all, you can't get defensive over Filipinos not having flush toilets. But people can get defensive about being dubbed spoiled or out-of-touch, which is the door that privilege-talk opens.
Every time "privilege" is used, the conversation turns to the merits of talking about privilege. People in this thread that support the notion of privilege are at the same time complaining about how the topic always turns to privilege. Why even use it? Why focus on the privileged instead of the disadvantaged, when such talk derails every effort to discuss helping the disadvantaged? White people have white fragility? You think they shouldn't? Okay, that's fine. But whether or not their offense is justified or unjustified in each instance is irrelevant, or it should be. Is getting people to adopt "privilege" talk rather than "disadvantaged talk" really more important than the social cause that keeps getting disrupted by it?
Even without the use of the word "privilege," it's still just so much more productive to focus on the group you're aiming to help and leave others out of it.
Let's look at your hypothetical conversation. Two out of three of your respondent's points used "your." That's where the focus is: you and your privilege. Yes, the first guy brought up his own anecdote to support his position. But consider the same response without all the "your" statements and note how the focus remains on the disadvantaged:
"Well, these people usually have tough situations that make moving up in the world difficult. They didn't necessarily have access to adequate education, or their parents may not have given them the attention they needed, or they may have had to deal with the very real biases in education and the workforce."
Is there any way to get defensive about that? I mean, sure, it's not a guaranteed home-run that will convince the other party, but it's got a much better chance to elicit empathy than your version (which wasn't that bad, mind you), and a much, much better chance than if you'd included the term "privilege" in your version.
TL;DR: Using "privilege" instead of "disadvantaged" (same concept, different focus) places the focus of the conversation on the wrong group, and it ends up being counterproductive, as it (justifiably or not) raises people's defenses, derailing conversations that could otherwise help the disadvantaged group, as the focus is mostly on the advantaged defending their (over-sensitive or not) hurt feelings. If people wish we could just stop talking about "privilege" and get to the substance of arguments, we already have a way to do that: focus on the disadvantaged that we're aiming to help.
^ I agree with all of you that it's unfortunate these discussions always turn to arguing "privilege" instead of how to help disadvantaged folks. Perhaps the fact that the word causes such a ruckus every time it's used is evidence that it perhaps shouldn't be used. Are people over-sensitive? Sure, you can believe that. But, as the article points out (talking about a different word) and as we've talked about in this very thread, if a whole bunch of people get offended by something, and you want to work with those people to further a noble goal, perhaps it's best to curb the need to stop their over-sensitivity and just sideline the word, since we've got better alternatives anyway (as I wrote above).
Oh, and btw, I don't know if you all were including me in your accusations of attempting to skirt the substantive issues (only Jado explicitly accused me of such), but for me personally, my first post in this thread explicitly addressed the substantive issues and attempted to ignore privilege talk. Then at the beginning of my second post, I lamented the fact that the conversation turned completely to privilege.
So while I can't speak for everyone in this thread, your accusations as applied to me are completely baseless.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Tangentially related: "I'm not sexist, I love my mother!".
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Pogi, really good post, but I think you give some people too much benefit of the doubt. If it's not the word "privileged," it'll be something else. I think many people have seen this so much we recognize it as a diversionary and discrediting tactic, whether that's intentional or not.
DigitalDevil
Member
Haven't said these exact words, but have definitely found myself in situations where other people were playing the "racist card" when the issue had nothing to do with race. Thankfully I've only encountered this phenomenon when firing someone. Suddenly I'm a racist when they are losing their job.
Wow
Anytime I see such threads i get worried about the underlying racial(social) tension you seem to have in the u.s.
Yeah there isn't such a thing as reverse racism because racism towards white/brown/green/orange/whatever is still racism.
I don't know the american context but sometimes 1 and 2-3-7 are not inherently bad.
I think a good step is to forget the us context and think about it in the universal way, you are making assumptions based on the current us context and using them to judge. Point 2 is what should be our ultimate goal: skin color and ethnic features should be pointless except form an aestethic or medical point of view.
The thread title itself is awful: I'm white but from another country, racist(not white) people here say different things when confronted with racism.
The video was awful too, slavery? It was something awful (done by almost all populations) but I can't take responsibility for something happened long before i was born. It's like blaming a young german for ww2 and mass genocides. It's a thing of the past he/she has nothing to do with, I don't feel any hate towards modern germany. Hate just leads to more racism.
I come from a country born around 150 years ago with very strong local cultures and huge diversity in languages and dialects. We have a south that is much poorer than the north with huge problems of criminality. We have had and we still have important internal migrations. There was a lot of racism towards migrants until 30 years ago and, even if it's still there it's a lot less; in only 150 years we bonded well together, more than other older nations.
How we did it? We have a very strong sense of cummunity and local culture. We like and we are proud to be different and the differences are one of our strenghts. We have rivalries, we mock each other a lot, we don't like so much politically correctness but we also have a common cultural layer(often mistreated), we tend to be very critical against our own culture even if we don't show it to foreigners and we don't take things too seriously if they aren't. These things are incredibly helpful.
You know that the other person is just like you but with a different background and you respect him, this is the point.
I used to think that the U.S. Were following a similar path: multicultural with a strong sense of nationality and with freedom of speech in mind. first there was the european immigrants integration, then afro americans and now immigrants from anywhere in the world, but recently it looks like you are going backwards, maybe I had a twisted vision of your situation, but I need to clarify that I didn't expect yet a good situation at all, these things take time and the lack of welfare is not speeding things up.
It's late night and I'm writing this from ioad, I hope this post is comprehensible, i'll see your replies tomorrow.
Anytime I see such threads i get worried about the underlying racial(social) tension you seem to have in the u.s.
Yeah there isn't such a thing as reverse racism because racism towards white/brown/green/orange/whatever is still racism.
I don't know the american context but sometimes 1 and 2-3-7 are not inherently bad.
I think a good step is to forget the us context and think about it in the universal way, you are making assumptions based on the current us context and using them to judge. Point 2 is what should be our ultimate goal: skin color and ethnic features should be pointless except form an aestethic or medical point of view.
The thread title itself is awful: I'm white but from another country, racist(not white) people here say different things when confronted with racism.
The video was awful too, slavery? It was something awful (done by almost all populations) but I can't take responsibility for something happened long before i was born. It's like blaming a young german for ww2 and mass genocides. It's a thing of the past he/she has nothing to do with, I don't feel any hate towards modern germany. Hate just leads to more racism.
I come from a country born around 150 years ago with very strong local cultures and huge diversity in languages and dialects. We have a south that is much poorer than the north with huge problems of criminality. We have had and we still have important internal migrations. There was a lot of racism towards migrants until 30 years ago and, even if it's still there it's a lot less; in only 150 years we bonded well together, more than other older nations.
How we did it? We have a very strong sense of cummunity and local culture. We like and we are proud to be different and the differences are one of our strenghts. We have rivalries, we mock each other a lot, we don't like so much politically correctness but we also have a common cultural layer(often mistreated), we tend to be very critical against our own culture even if we don't show it to foreigners and we don't take things too seriously if they aren't. These things are incredibly helpful.
You know that the other person is just like you but with a different background and you respect him, this is the point.
I used to think that the U.S. Were following a similar path: multicultural with a strong sense of nationality and with freedom of speech in mind. first there was the european immigrants integration, then afro americans and now immigrants from anywhere in the world, but recently it looks like you are going backwards, maybe I had a twisted vision of your situation, but I need to clarify that I didn't expect yet a good situation at all, these things take time and the lack of welfare is not speeding things up.
It's late night and I'm writing this from ioad, I hope this post is comprehensible, i'll see your replies tomorrow.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Slavery, segregation, etc. all have huge, huge influences on things that still happen all the time today. We all likely know at least one person who has a terrible segregation story they actually lived through.
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
I was with you at the racist and homophobic part, because, I honestly didn't know that about her since I've heard all of two songs from her (I tried to look at like one or two more to figure out if she was more than a mimic and ran into vevo ads so forget that), but you pretty much lost me after that.Here's what's wrong with Iggy Azelia:
She's racist, homophobic, and like many white people who've adopted elements of black culture before her, she's receiving praise for her mediocre performance at things black people are better at.
Of course they have but you can't blame people born after that for it, see the example of the nazi germany.
Another example: you know that there are many anti-americans out there who rightfully blame the us for their foreign policy post ww2. Well most of them extend their anti americanism to the u.s. population. This is ridicolous and dangerous way of thinking.
There has never been a wide consensus on what your governement has done, most of these things were hidden to the population. In addition to that what most americans today have to do with the vietnam war for instance? Nothing.
Do americans owe us something? No they don't, the us government maybe.
I'm not supposed to treat a person differently because someone with the same skin color/nationality or another useless characteristic did something to me in the past.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Who is treating individual white people differently because slavery happened?
I understand what you're trying to say, but I feel you're too far removed from this country's race problems to have an informed perspective on how fucked up we are. We're still in the early steps of a long program of recovery.
I understand what you're trying to say, but I feel you're too far removed from this country's race problems to have an informed perspective on how fucked up we are. We're still in the early steps of a long program of recovery.
Yeah, like I said, focusing on the disadvantaged group won't automatically fix all the discussion. Some people really do skirt the issues, some people do harbor veiled prejudices, etc. But despite the fact it won't fix everyone or everything, overall, there's a lot of advantages to focusing on the disadvantaged groups, and I see no advantage to focusing on the privileged groups.
Put another way, when trying to help a group of people, it's best to focus on their needs and how best to meet those needs, rather than focusing on people who don't have those needs.
Tangential to this, I'd add this "On Smarm" article, which I think is pretty great: http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977
soul creator
Member
I always think of that one line Kevin Hart says in 40 year old Virgin when I think about people getting easily offended by the mention of privilege
TheRagnCajun
Member
What better way to fight racism than with top 10 lists?
cyclonekruse
Member
article said:
I can see what the author was going for with this statement but it basically comes off as "Whites can't possibly comprehend the issue because they live in a comfortable little bubble. So we can safely dismiss anything they say as uninformed."
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
30 Rock did say the same thing about beautiful people, and I agree with that episode.
OJdaKiller
Member
I'd like a top 10 list of what enlightened white people say when confronted with racism.
IncandescentPrecept
Banned
Does that mean that all white men in the US are racist?
God Dayumm
Banned
Sorry if I came as a troll. I agree with you after not skimming the article (decrying the system and not the people) or within a context such as the convo Stumpokapow illustrated.
They are indeed very interesting. For a broader look at Habits White People* Have when it comes to discussing race, I strongly recommend reading this:
Bonilla-Silva argues that there's a dominant racial ideology in the United States today (colorblindness), and as a dominant ideology it frames the discussion or "sets paths for interpreting information." The examples in the OP are really just examples of people trying to maintain the fiction of colorblindness. In the book, he identifies four frames:
(The book actually has more content between each example further explaining, but I leave it to you to read it if you want to learn more!)
And on a personal note, I'd just like to say that this book is what got me to start reading more broadly about the subject; it's actually the first book about race that I read for my own interests. It has such a catching title - why is there racism if everyone seems to agree that racism is bad and racists are bad people? I think the book goes a long way towards explaining that, and it was funny reading discussions on GAF because I could suddenly see people engaging in these frames all the time.
The book also has some discussion about black peoples' usage of these frames (they, perhaps unsurprisingly, tend to be less likely to use them or use them in so straightforward a manner), as well as how white progressives approach these frames, if you're interested in that.
*
For the clueless pedants in the audience, this does not mean "all white people"
I don't think, "Whites can't possibly comprehend this issue" is what they were going for; I think "Whites usually don't comprehend this issue" is, and they are using that comfortable little bubble to explain why that is. I think it's probably true, myself. As Ta-Nehisi Coates put it recently, you just have no idea how much you don't know. I've actually read a lot of books based off of recommendations on his blog at The Atlantic (and he's had an excellent series of posts for further reading on his reparations article, with explanations!), and the more I read about any subject - but especially race in the United States - the more I find out how true that is.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
I'm so utterly confused on how I should react to things when they're directed towards me.
Vicetrailia
Banned
Some are just not interested in critical thinking. They couldn't be bothered.
No, "reverse racism" doesn't exist. Well it does exist, but only as a stupid phrase.
There is only racism.
cyclonekruse
Member
Oh, I agree that that's likely not what they were going for. But, like I said, it comes off to me that way. Especially paired with other statements in the article that reference whites' "inability" to see things a certain way.
I will grant that I almost undoubtedly have blind spots. And I will certainly admit that I cannot fully comprehend what it's like to grow up as a black person, or a woman, etc. But I would also think that the same holds true in reverse. A person of color cannot fully comprehend what it's like to grow up as I did. Sure, I've had a lot of "privileges" in my life. But mental illness doesn't care what race or gender you are.
Now, I'm not claiming that my anxiety disorder was/is as problematic as the barriers that many minorities go through. But getting so nervous to go to the grocery store (for fear that you'll be noticed and mocked for being different and weird) that you end up vomiting isn't a cakewalk either. And I feel I can relate, in my own way, to some of what minorities have to deal with. For instance, I think I understand not being comfortable being in a classroom full of white people (an example from the article). At my worst, I was uncomfortable being in a classroom with anyone.
Opinionatedfish
Member
The article feels a bit like someone made a bundle of straw and placed it in their yard to yell at it in hopes that people hear them yelling and say "that ain't me, I am such a good person."
Racism is treating someone worse because of their race. Treating someone better because of their race is just ass kissing. Both are the realm of weak minded people.
That book sounds interesting though. I'll check it out.
There are people who see racism and bigotry in every thing though. Generally, I find them to be awful people. So, I don't hang out with them.
Racism is treating someone worse because of their race. Treating someone better because of their race is just ass kissing. Both are the realm of weak minded people.
That book sounds interesting though. I'll check it out.
There are people who see racism and bigotry in every thing though. Generally, I find them to be awful people. So, I don't hang out with them.
MistakenMobius
Member
That stuff is so americano centric....
Well yea. It doesn't try and hide that fact.
Murder. She Wrote
Member
What country are you from? Funny that you didn't mention it. Whatever it is, there's racism, there are racists, and it has systematic racism. Your whole post roughly translates to "I don't get why America has so much race problems, my country barely has any race problems! Nothings wrong because we're a comunity! BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH."
I think it's completely appropriate to tell you to check your privilege.
Yep...I've seen variants of all of those statements far too many times.
I take it from your previous posts that you live in Italy?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/jul/30/italy-racism-cecile-kyenge-esterofilia
It seems it has its fair share of problems with racism and xenophobia still.
I take it from your previous posts that you live in Italy?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/jul/30/italy-racism-cecile-kyenge-esterofilia
It seems it has its fair share of problems with racism and xenophobia still.
GingerNathan
Member
Agreed, even if you do live in a cultural utopia you still should appreciate that the majority of people in the world aren't and how fortunate you are. Hell, being born in the UK (far from a racial utopia) regardless of race you are amongst the richest 10% of the globes population. Fortunate doesn't come close to covering it.
Devolution
Member
I often see "what's with America and it's race problems" from people who live in nations where banana throwing at black soccer players occurs.
way more
Member
I disagree, I'm from America and I've never seen these so called "race problems." If I don't think race problems exist why can't others? "The less you look, the better the view" as I've always said.
Mental Atrophy
Banned
When I hear the phrase "reverse racism" I imagine giving some lady a high five just because she is black or whatever. Like being racist in a bizarrely positive way, rather than just flipping the source/target of ordinary racism.
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