Running racism in America thread

I didn't say a lot of that, but thanks?

 

Pilot did a great job explaining and contextualizing white privilege and it just sailed right over your head. Perhaps that was a choice. Perhaps you ducked. But either way, your post shows you are not getting the point.

 

Last year I was out on a drive. I picked up my phone while I was stopped at a light and I kept it in my hand after the light turned green. Suddenly cop lights go off. Dammit, I’m getting a ticket, that’s my fault.

Trooper pulls up and says, “hey, did you know your taillights are out?” He lets me go.

That’s white privilege — or at the very least, middle class privilege.

 

your good life has been built as the byproduct of racism and a racist country. A racism that has infected every Avenue of life in the country. Including your children who are product of racism, you are able to have a family and children because others are suffering from racism and providing you with a treasure trove of unearned benefits and opportunities.
Since you are aware that your life was built on the backs of slaves and their descendants, what are you going to do to make amends? Give it all away. Give your house to a family in public housing. Give your cars to jobless victims of racism so they can get better jobs. Give you retirement and life savings to old people who have been victims of a racist country their whole lives. Give them a decent retirement.

How can you go out to dinner knowing that you are paying for that meal with blood money

 

Vitriol side, every single white American has in some way benefited from systemic racism. Now there are other factors at work, specifically education or lack thereof and poverty that carries its own stigmas and other systemic issues that makes some white people more equal than others. In a lot of ways we have a class system in this country and always have. But the little story about getting pulled over with the beer is 100% accurate. A black teen who had tried that had a better than average chance of either being arrested or killed. I know that as a middle-aged middle-class white woman, if I act a little stressed or overwhelmed or ditzy when I get pulled over speeding, I will not get a ticket. Is that only because I'm white? Maybe, maybe not, but it is certainly a factor.

 

Yet again, not what I'm saying. There's a lot of strawman going on up in here.

It hasn't hurt my life, since I've really started considering these topics, to be aware of where I may have gotten lucky, or had a leg up. It does make me try to aware going forward, to try to ensure I don't act out of my own biases and stereotypes. I hire a lot of freelancers, mostly photographers, for instance, and I've made a point to try to use a more diverse set of people than we have previously.

I'm sure I could do more, donate more, volunteer more, etc. I'm sure what I am doing doesn't make one iota of difference in the grand scheme of racism, not a ripple on the ocean. But it's something easy I can do, and it's not something I'd have thought much about before really thinking about privilege.

It doesn't hurt anyone to at least think about this stuff. I'm not threatened by the topic.

 

White privilege doesn’t mean getting this secret jackpot of extra benefits. It means I get the common courtesies and benefits of the doubt that ought to be available to everyone but aren’t. Shitty marketing doesn’t make the greater point any less true.

 

And that’s the ultimate privilege isn’t it?
You can chose to be burdened by your conscience or not. Or just accept all your benefits, acknowledging you were handed to many chances and opportunities that had nothing to do with the quality of person you are, and live your best life.

 

That’s correct. But that’s not how the term is currently being used, IMO. It’s being used to state outright that you personally have received countless benefits as a result of and because of racism. Privilege means you are the beneficiary of racism. Accepting a privilege is an act of racism. And therefore, if you are privileged, you are racist.

 

A white guy driving a shabby car through an upper income neighborhood is unlikely to be stopped if there are no other factors. A Black man in the same situation has a significantly higher chance of being stopped, and if he gets stopped he also has a higher chance of the encounter with police escalating. Hell, a Black man driving a very nice car in the same neighborhood has a not insignificant chance of being stopped to be sure that it is his car. White guy in that same car drives past with no drama.

Call it what you want, where I live that's been true all my life. Maybe it's a little better now than it was thirty years ago, but it remains true. "Stopped for driving while Black" has been a truism for many years.

 

I agree that the language of these conversations can leave those on the "it exists and is a factor" side of things open to attack.

I think a cop very often offers a warning instead of a ticket for a busted taillight for a black guy the same as a white guy. But not always. Not 100% of the time.

I think a cop is more likely to be on alert and tenser when approaching the car for the "beer in the backseat" situation, and less likely to be doing favors.

The vast, vast majority of the time, a black student in that situation doesn't end up dead.

But, if there's a .001% a black student ends up dead in that situation, and a .00000001% chance a white kid does, well, that adds up over time and is still bullshit.

A black guy doesn't get a ticket or arrested every time I skate, but if he does run into legal trouble even a seemingly insignificant 10% more often than I do while doing the exact same things, that adds up over millions of interactions and millions of people, and it can ripple through generations. If 10% of the time, the cop demands to know where beer came from, searches the car, finds my super illegal fake ID — a real, gov't issued ID w/ my photo because I took my buddy's birth certificate to the DMV — that's 10% of people in that spot who have to report a felony when applying for a job. (Is falsifying a gov't ID a felony? I don't actually know, I guess.) It's 10% more who maybe have to drop out to deal with the ramifications, who can't apply for that internship or that scholarship.

"Privilege" to me is lots and lots of small little things that end up closing doors that didn't get closed for me, average white doof.