Running racism in America thread

OscarMadison · Mar 17, 2021

Pilot said: ↑

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.
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You might be surprised. one act of kindness can cause a ripple effect.

Neutral Corner said: ↑

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.
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There are parts of Nashville and environs where you can get pulled over for driving while poor. I'd get calls about this in a former (work) life and was part of a study where Metro's finest lived down to the Ph.D. candidate's expectations. Having said that, I agree with your post overall.

dixiehack · Mar 17, 2021

OscarMadison said: ↑

You might be surprised. one act of kindness can cause a ripple effect.

There are parts of Nashville and environs where you can get pulled over for driving while poor. I'd get calls about this in a former (work) life and was part of a study where Metro's finest lived down to the Ph.D. candidate's expectations. Having said that, I agree with your post overall.
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Yeah I’d hate to cruise through Belle Meade in some of the beaters I’ve driven over the years. OTOH, a couple of years ago when I was reduced to doing Uber Eats in a rapidly disintegrating Cavalier, I often crossed through Mountain Brook (the Birmingham version of super-rich suburbia) and never caught a second glance from the cops.

outofplace · Mar 17, 2021

heyabbott said: ↑

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.
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Either you don't understand the phrase or you've been listening to people who don't understand it.

heyabbott · Mar 17, 2021

outofplace said: ↑

Either you don't understand the phrase or you've been listening to people who don't understand it.
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It’s a pejorative and an accusation.
It’s like the phrase DeFund the Police. It was coined as a literal demand. It morphed into something else because Biden and many Democrats can’t run on the literal. Privilege may have started out as a descriptive a definition. Now it’s used colloquially as an accusation

2muchcoffeeman · Mar 17, 2021

This …

… could explain this:

OscarMadison · Mar 17, 2021

Jay Baker, kiss mah tuchis, you manroot with ears.

The Big Ragu · Mar 17, 2021

dixiehack said: ↑

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.
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The shitty marketing actually detracts from that point. I recently listened to someone who was working from home sit through a mandatory Zoom sensitivity training thing for work that strayed farther and farther way from the point you are making. The person leading it went to each of the people who had identified themselves as white and put them on the spot. They were expected to give an example about how they have been "privileged" relative to a racial minority and how it has benefited them. It was uncomfortable listening to people put on the spot that way feeling pressured to flog themselves -- which is what most of them did to avoid making waves.

That is the reality of what the shitty marketing creates -- the practical effect of it. It not only doesn't do a thing to address the unfairness of anyone who has been mistreated because of their race (where the focus should be), it is creating these perverse environments in which you can't acknowledge legitimate discrimination without a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) stigmatization of someone else (which does nothing productive).

qtlaw · Mar 17, 2021

The Big Ragu said: ↑

Not being harrased by cops isn't a privilege. If you are a white construction worker, chances are you don't feel all that privileged in life. You likely struggle to find steady work, you likely struggle to make ends meet and you certainly don't have a silver spoon in your mouth.

Maybe we should look at incidences where cops harrass minorities and focus on those inequities. Where we are going wrong increasingly is in this expectation that all white people need to beat themselves. ... for being white (and their supposed privilege). That's nonsensical to me.

The reality is that not all white people are privileged by virtue of their skin color. Someone mired in Appalachian poverty doesn't feel all that privileged. Just as not all minorities have been left unprivileged by their experiences. Even if many have.

Regardless of that, the idea that anyone is somehow going to address inequalities by insisting a racial group with disparate people has to call itself privileged (and by extension, trying to put them down), smacks of trying to stigmatize or put down a broad group of people because another group of people has gotten shit on a lot.
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The rhetoric (not necessarily what is being felt) that has escalated into "white privilege" is primarily because America has failed to fulfill the promise of the Civil Rights movement to be a "colorblind" society. Demands (and laws) have been asking for colorblind treatment and those promises and demands have been unfulfilled. What would you suggest minorities do, accept the status quo? Keep asking for the same thing? Or maybe raise the stakes to motivate people to finally fulfill those past promises?

qtlaw · Mar 17, 2021

heyabbott said: ↑

Rehabilitation is also bullshit. The motivation for most crime is money. The belief that they can get more for less effort in drugs or robberies. And in the short term most are right. You can’t rehab someone who doesn’t want to.
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You know, its easy to say everything is BS, criticize all you want but what's the solution or the idea to solve the problem?

wicked · Mar 17, 2021

The Big Ragu said: ↑

The shitty marketing actually detracts from that point. I recently listened to someone who was working from home sit through a mandatory Zoom sensitivity training thing for work that strayed farther and farther way from the point you are making. The person leading it went to each of the people who had identified themselves as white and put them on the spot. They were expected to give an example about how they have been "privileged" relative to a racial minority and how it has benefited them. It was uncomfortable listening to people put on the spot that way feeling pressured to flog themselves -- which is what most of them did to avoid making waves.

That is the reality of what the shitty marketing creates -- the practical effect of it. It not only doesn't do a thing to address the unfairness of anyone who has been mistreated because of their race (where the focus should be), it is creating these perverse environments in which you can't acknowledge legitimate discrimination without a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) stigmatization of someone else (which does nothing productive).
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I know this isn’t exactly what you mean... but I really don’t give a shit about how social justice progress is “marketed.”

How about we try to not be assholes, and if someone says we are apologize?

TheSportsPredictor · Mar 17, 2021

The darker it gets, the lighter the person pulled over by police. Just a coincidence!

A ‘veil of darkness’ reduces racial bias in traffic stops | Stanford News

dixiehack · Mar 17, 2021

wicked said: ↑

I know this isn’t exactly what you mean... but I really don’t give a shit about how social justice progress is “marketed.”

How about we try to not be assholes, and if someone says we are apologize?
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In fairness to him, he was repeating the term I originally used.

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Running racism in America thread

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Running racism in America thread

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