9 clueless things white people say when confronted with racism
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I believe you have to see people the same to treat them the same. As soon as you start categorizing, you stop treating them the same even if you believe you do.
Wiktor
Member
I doubt that will ever happen. people will have more and more in common, but will put more focus and care about what separates them too. Nobody likes to be a part of grey mass. People want individuality and local cultures are one of the easiest way to achieve that.
Wiktor
Member
Well..better hope Google glass will take off then and allow you to wipe out how other people look. Otherwise that's kind of impossible.
I don't think we'll lose it at all, a connected world is helping multiculturalism too, take a look at wikipedia and other website who offer easy to find info of local costumes and traditions.
Even if we are connected, we live locally and the internet is helping the communities a lot.
Oof, no, never said any of this shit.
I don't know, I think that ONE of the issues is that most of your upper middle class white people just live in situations where they're not really exposed to the whole story. Other "classes" too, of course, but that's just the easiest example. My wife and I live in a mostly black neighborhood (we're white), so I see and hear racist stuff all the time (against black people, not white people). Shit, my dad lives in a town that's mostly made up of whites, and he blew my mind the other month when he told me that he didn't think racial profiling by police exists. I was astounded. Basically I'm saying that a lot of people have a lack of perspective...and a compounding problem is that many of those would not want to gain the perspective if given the chance.
/ramble.
I don't know, I think that ONE of the issues is that most of your upper middle class white people just live in situations where they're not really exposed to the whole story. Other "classes" too, of course, but that's just the easiest example. My wife and I live in a mostly black neighborhood (we're white), so I see and hear racist stuff all the time (against black people, not white people). Shit, my dad lives in a town that's mostly made up of whites, and he blew my mind the other month when he told me that he didn't think racial profiling by police exists. I was astounded. Basically I'm saying that a lot of people have a lack of perspective...and a compounding problem is that many of those would not want to gain the perspective if given the chance.
/ramble.
Austriacus
Member
They will focus on what separates them as individuals, not as a subset of a smaller culture. People love individuality, true. But the also love being members of a huge mob. You can be part of a mass of people and retain individuality. We are talking about culture here, not life experiences. You are always different to other people even in your own culture because there are experiences in your life that are unique and dont have neccesarily anything to do with the culture you share with others. Or are you saying smaller cultures are just smaller grey masses?
PdotMichael
Banned
You're missing my point. And I'm not interesting in getting into a train of straw man arguments.
Austriacus
Member
We will have just agree to disagree then. This is not at all what i see in my day to day life. I only see my countrymen adopting american and european customs while throwing their own away at every oportunity they got. Especially people below 20 years old
Awful.
How frequent it is? how it happens?
I find particular interesting(in a bad way) that after decades of the "end" of racial segregation there are still black/white/spanish/etc neighborhood.
Due to slavery first, and segregation then, minorities have been disadvatanged they hade to recover but the process seems to be really slow.
I think it could be due to the lack of welfare in the U.S. , am I right?
The U.K. even though it has a recent immigration , seem to do far better than the US in this regard and it's the less socialist country in the EU.
@Austriacus: really? where are you from? Austria? It's the opposite here, We have lost something and adopted foreign cultures but the local one even if changed are still strong, probably wasy more than they were in the 80s.
Austriacus
Member
Peru, south america. I feel this is the way the majority of 3rd world countries are going. They seek to imitate the big boys.
I just can't bring myself to read a clickbait article, can someone tell me what is wrong with this:
?
I thought that it was scientifically proven that we are all Homo Sapiens Sapiens and the differences in our dnas, while clearly present, are not enough to justify the separation in more races.
(I actually skimmed through this wikipedia article before submitting the post, to be sure not to have missed the point completely and, while more complex that what i described, as I would have guessed, I think my thesis stand).
?
I thought that it was scientifically proven that we are all Homo Sapiens Sapiens and the differences in our dnas, while clearly present, are not enough to justify the separation in more races.
(I actually skimmed through this wikipedia article before submitting the post, to be sure not to have missed the point completely and, while more complex that what i described, as I would have guessed, I think my thesis stand).
Well that explains something.
It's a phase, once you will be fully developed and you'll have money to spend your country will ridiscover its roots (south american and european I guess).
It's happened to us after the ww2 even if there was no internet, it won't be too serious. Fun fact
Austriacus
Member
That is because both are powerfull countries with a history of dominance. They dont need to emulate so heavily. The poorer countries with bigger inequality which hold the majority of the worlds population will seek to copy the world powers to reach that sucess.
Austriacus
Member
The circumstances and the factors involved are completely different. I really doubt the results will be the same. Only time will tell.
Edit: aw crap double post, sorry
It explains it in the article. Oddly enough you are proving their point on that one.
You mean the stuff I see and hear? Well, "all the time" may be an exaggeration, but it happens enough. A lot of the time it's either white or asian shop owners/employees who see that I'm white, and maybe because I LOOK sort of like a typical cop (at least I've been told so), and I guess they feel comfortable commenting about black people because I must be a like-minded individual.
Also, random thought: I didn't see a thread for this, but I have GOT to wonder if this would have happened if the woman in question was white. I'm thinking it wouldn't have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsgjeggKvF8
And she's 51 years old, for christ's sake.
I'm sorry I was talking about racial profiling.
Your info still are interesting, you seem to live in a boiling pot of racial tensions. No sense of community whatsoever am I right?
I've heard about many bad things done by police in the us, so many that I will be scared from the customs when arriving.
We all know how important is to hire and train good police officers. Here most of the policeman/women tende to sympathize to the political right, therefore it's more common to have racist policemen.
We have had many increscious episodes of beating and omicides perpetrated by the legal forces but most of them where towards white italian people.
I think that, in the case of the police, racism is not the cause but a consequence of bad police management(hiring racists, bad training etc..)
Fixing that will probably solve many racial tensions, is that possible?
Flat out wrong. It doesn't come down to race but I know many white people who are discriminated in similar ways because of other factors, such as religion etc. Sure, it isn't an issue of race but they still face the same day to day problems as they have. So yes, they can certainly emphasise with that kind of feeling. I wouldn't be so quick as to say 'all white people will never experience this kind of thing' when there are so many other similar things in which they can be discriminated against.
Ok, I sadly gave them a click. I don't think it's not looking at the problem, I think the problem (for me) is "seeing race". The problem will be solved when everybody understand that, behind all the cultural differences we can have, we really are all Homines sapiens sapiens. Until this happens (which will probably be a while, sadly) is not that people that already understood that will shy away from the problem (for me, at least, that's why I'm here trying to understand what the problem is in the sentence), or that will not do everything to promote equality and speed up the destruction of those lingering elements of racism.
It's something new I'll have to think about, anyway. I'm sure I'm as far away from the solution to discrimination as possible, being a male of the cultural majority in my nation.
It isn't that simple. Institutionalized racism has become enshrined in our justice system. We have policies such as Stop and Frisk in New York, which clearly targets racial minorities. Blacks are much more likely to receive harsher sentences than whites for committing the same crimes. This most apparent with our drug laws. Whites and blacks use marijuana at very similar rates, but the arrest rates are nowhere near close.
I can see why Stop&Frisk is bad but does it clearly target racial minorities or racial minorities are targeted because the police is biased? I don't understand.
Awful.
Do they receive harsher sentences therefore they got arrested more often or do they get checked more often?
Do you think that criminality is mostly an effect of socio-economic issues and that it could be more common in some areas/minorities because they have been disadvantaged in the past or are still disadvantaged?
If so, how do that knowledge affect your opinion on the police bias(on checking people only of course)?
I don't know very well your situation so collecting opinions is important for me
Prime crotch
Banned
What do you mean Europe dropped the concept? We didn't, like at all lol.
Also we're not the same, we are different, culture makes us different in various similar ways and that's okay, heck it's great to be different let's celebrate it.
Now, let's not take that as a way to profile people negatively, that would be nice
UnblessedSoul
Member
Saying that those are the things only white people say, makes you even more of a racist, see what I did there
I will never know what it's like to be anything other than a white male.
I can empathize with people from other races, but at no point would it ever be correct for me to say "I know how they feel." I may know what it's like to be discriminated against for any number of things, but so what? Getting picked on at school for being short didn't somehow give me the experience of being a black female or an Indian male.
It boils down to acting like you've got an entire race figured out in your head. From there, it's not a far stretch to think you can then tell the members of this other race how they should feel about this or that, since you're such an expert on them. And then all the sudden you're Bill O'Reilly.
Lets ignore history, it's fun and easy.
what are you trying to say?please explain.
He is trying to say racism is a rich vs poor thing. Instead of one people going from slaves, to 3/5ths a person, to you can vote but if you try we will kill you, to a stop and frisk thing.
I don't want to put words in a posters mouth, but I think this post of PogiJones is very relevant.
JJDinomite
Banned
Have I been a racist this whole time because I'm white?
RebornYeti
Member
Why are things so clueless? My god..
Pogijones posts is well intended, well articulated, and a decent argument but I'm afraid it ignores reality to some degree. To draw an analogy, if someone wrongs you in any way you the smart thing to do is tell them what they did and why it don't sit well with you. You aren't suddenly the bad guy in the situation if you preface that explanation with "you're being a jerk/asshole". To focus on "check your privilege" being antagonizing is concern trolling and derails the discussion. You're effectively making it about you and your feelings and not the shit you said that was wrong. That's manipulative as fuck.
What? I was asking the question to you.
I completely agree with that post.
I've already received my dose of "check your privilege" even if the poster didn't know anything about me. I was just trying to say that hostility isn't helping.
BrokenEchelon
Banned
Yes. You were born into the privilege of having every problem on earth be your fault because of your skin color, but that's not racism, as the article points out.
And I answered
alexthekid
Member
It is the usage of "check your privilege" and not the focus on it being used, that makes it about the person instead about the what the person said.
We spent the last 450 years trying to have a productive conversation on our end...
I'm not following.
IncandescentPrecept
Banned
Yeah, there's way too much us vs. them in the US. The people saying that looking "past race" is a problem clearly didn't grow up in a multicultural environment. You do look past the race. You don't say things like "people of X race do this/say that". As long us vs. them is acceptable, there's no hope for the US.
It's an institutionalized bias that goes way beyond the police. American society as a whole is generally unwilling to give young black men the benefit of the doubt.
Take this video as an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuyMuLGXxTs
No one really pays attention to white guy breaking into a car, not even the police pay it mind. The black guy on the other hand is met with fear and disapproval, and the cops show up almost immediately.
Lovely Salsa
Banned
Wait, that guy is white? Maybe its different in america?
ab.aeterno
Member
I believe the argument is that it shifts focus. It's taking focus from the subject of discussion and instead putting it on the person saying the ignorant thing by focusing on their privilege.
In conversations about issues, I agree, it can easily be used to derail discussion. But I still think discussion of how we communicate about discrimination is important and worth having.
Are you arguing that the first time people hear the word privilege used in this context they'd be able to intuit its sociological definition over its more common one? That hasn't been my experience from personal experience at all.
Absolutely agree. The problem is its use without definition. So many articles and posts use it without defining it, which makes effective communication needlessly difficult. I'm not saying every post needs to be a Wikipedia page of links to definitions and citations, but when starting a dialogue with someone ignorant of issues in discrimination, it loses all value if the other person doesn't know what it means. This is especially problematic when privilege is usually used to refer to silver spoon economic advantage in everyday use (at last, that's its most frequent use in my experience.)
I know many people who got defensive when they were told they were privileged because no definition accompanied it. It immediately triggered defensiveness, and the response was always "I'm not privileged, I had to work for everything I have," because most people I know come from lower middle class backgrounds and struggled financially. I was like that initially too. It wasn't until having it explained that everything clicked. Suddenly conversations about these issues made sense, and it's changed so much about my outlook. But I didn't get that explanation at first, and that made it harder to learn than it would have otherwise. Explaining what privilege was to others usually caused the same reaction I had of realization.
My concern isn't with the word privilege, it's with using it from a place of familiarity with those who aren't without an explanation.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
I'm going to say what I've said to apologists of the Washington Redskins name and the eligibility of the word "Faggot" under the pretense that "It doesn't mean that tp me. Stop being upset".
: If it upsets people, stop using it. I think a mod said that in another topic about a similar topic. Words are a tool of communication, and it seems pretty clear reading all over the internet that people interpretative "check your privilege" in a condescending light.
If you want to be understood, you have to understand the people back you are trying to communicate back with. When you are making an article and calling people out with "check your privilege" you're asking to be understood and to have your tribulations and difficulties in life being understood. Therefore it's unreasonable not to try and do proper communication with the people you are addressing.
@ "check your privilege" is just as much as what it says, as what it doesn't say, and clearly it doesn't respond to the sufferings people endure in other areas of life, like it was some graded pissing content. You might feel the words mean something else, but all these threads here on GAF and all over the internet suggests that there is a big enough outcry that they need to reformulate this otherwise well-intended three words because it upsets people.
It's not manipulative to say you are upset. If you are shaming people from expressing themselves claiming that it ignores reality (which really is an oxymoron in itself. Reality is that people are emotional creatures who gets upset over the application of words and derives their own meanings of them over time) you are killing any examination of how it came to that point.
I'd like to think that a lot of folks get the meaning, just like a lot of gay people understand that people that many people use the word faggot not out of spite against gays. It still doesn't mean people don't have a right to be upset. Words are a tool, and the magic of words is the emotions it awakes in our brain, almost telepathically. You say "check your privilege", and the images that pop into my head is some gross curve that links all the sufferings of the world. It's obvious for any semi open-minded person that all people should be grateful and think of their advantages, but there will always be a backslash against people who act like they have been in other peoples shoes. That woman is completely right in saying that gay men don't understand her plight, but to tell them to check their privilege words itself as "calling them out" even if that is not the pretext. It's exhausting to go down this lame tirade, and it inhibits the discussion as many of these past threads have shown since these three words have appeared.
It's just as much about the words not being said, as the words being said. If you need to make an eassay just trying to defend this, it's a good sign that it's use as a tool for discussion have outlasted its welcome. We have a choice now. We can keep being stubborn and going back and forth over three words and argue if being angry over them or telling other people what they feel is wrong when they hear them.
Or we can take their meaning. Their well intended meaning which is "there is systematic racism against people of color in America, and this gives whites an advantage". That's the message that deserves to be conveyed and discussed. "check your privilege" is counterproductive to that discussion and as far as I can tell, it derives into semantics choke hold arguments that have no resolution because its embedded in strong words.
I'm not a native English speaker so you are free to tell me to go F myself with my lack of understanding of proper grammar, but I just feel like we are missing the point here, but it's missing even more the point if we look down on peoples ability to express annoyance or even anger over sentences and words.
Alligatorjandro
Banned
If "check your privilege" is the worse thing that can be says to you then you are privileged.
Vicetrailia
Banned
Just yesterday at work a Co-Worker and I were talking about women. He was basically hesitant to talk to someone at work and I was all like you should just do it, who cares about failure, etc, etc, that kinda shit that I think.
He interrupted me and then told me to check my privilege.
I paused, blank stare and all....and was like...."My bad, you're right."
Thinking critically about it; that guy isn't me, and I should try to actually connect to what he is feeling and saying. My response is to reflect and think critically about the situation, and I actually like the phrase now.
Just a story, and it sucks to see that twitter/tumblr has cast such a shadow over the phrase.
He interrupted me and then told me to check my privilege.
I paused, blank stare and all....and was like...."My bad, you're right."
Thinking critically about it; that guy isn't me, and I should try to actually connect to what he is feeling and saying. My response is to reflect and think critically about the situation, and I actually like the phrase now.
Just a story, and it sucks to see that twitter/tumblr has cast such a shadow over the phrase.
what if your coworker was a drug addict and you were trying to make him stop?
I don't understand, what was your privilege in that situation? weren't you already trying to connect to what he is feeling? You were giving an advice and caring about him what's wrong with that?
Frankenstrat
Member
Really struggling to see any kind of privilege here.
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