I look forward to it once you silly mericans get over your bad taste day.

Its okay to be offensive about white people, mericans, brits , the french etc. When it comes to the french its also true

We're not talking about harm to groups, we're talking about prejudice that hurts individuals. And I think any view that thinks it is okay to offend someone based on skin color has crossed the line to racism.

In my book it is not okay to believe that "green and poor" is a result of the system, but "purple and poor" just means you are a dumb, uneducated deplorable. And I think that such view is wrong regardless if it is held by a KKK member or a Huffington Post opinion writer.

That's right. We're talking about the propagation/reinforcement of the attitudes/beliefs that result in harmful acts of prejudice towards individual members of that group.

Most don't think it's racist to say offensive things about white people. It does not result in harmful prejudice towards that groups because they do not sufr from discrimintion

I agree. Being poor makes you part of a vulnerable group. Just as it's not okay to be offense about white LGBTQers. In neither case is it being about their pale white arses the problem.

Also causing offense is often not about belief. As I hope is obvious from my previous response to well named.

But you're literally saying it is okay to to do one thing to one group and not to another, based on skin color.

There isn't even a conflict with "vulnerable groups". A vulnerable group with skin color B doesn't become more vulnerable just because we admit that speaking in broad terms about group with skin color A is usually silly.

Skin color says says nothing about who you are as a person or what you can do. I see no value in using it as a basis for broad statements about people.

Yes I'm saying it's okay to say offensive things about white people - the pale arsed mother****ers. I appreciate some want to call that racist but then they're saying that some racism is harmless.

It's all about harm. Being offensive about 'white rich' people doesn't result* in discriminatory harm to individuals. Being offensive about 'white poor' people does. The later is a problem which we avoid by being PC even if we don't intend any harm and the former isn't so we are free to enjoy ourselves.

It has no meaning value but some people enjoy being offensive and if it's harmless then that's fine. It can also have some rhetorical value - if some pompous prick of a rich white person, let's say prince andy as an example, is offended by having a go at rich white people in general then good.

The problem is that the majority of the time it is a wealthy white person doing the moralizing, and normally they are punching down. And then when you ask for an example of white privilege, the example they always turn to is that poor white people aren't quite as poor as poor black people and get abused by police slightly less (the last time we had this conversation these were the go-to that Mat and Wookie brought up, which is pretty much the opposite of a shocking development).

Whatever it is supposed to be, the concept of "white privilege" as practiced in the world has been weaponized as a tool of the elites to deflect their own privilege onto people that don't have any.

Other than straight white men, who else is not in a vulnerable group?

My crystal ball says this conversation will end with me asking you questions to articulate your own position, you not answering them, and then claiming you did

Actually, in progressive circles there is serious discussion about whether straight, white women and white, gay men should be pushed down the oppression pyramid.

And of course If you are a non white conservative, no matter what your other identities, there is a special circle in purgatory for you to be tossed into.

I'm sure you will hate the answer as always but ...

This is not about finding individuals who are vulnerable or not. Most people are in a vulnerable group including a lot of straight white men. They may be old, uneducated, poor, ill, suffering from a disability etc etc

It's not about moralising at all. Nor is it about judging people. At least not in my view. Also much better to punch up than down.

I don't know if you're reflecting the points made accurately but the point in my view is that poor white people are disadvantaged by being poor, while poor black people are disadvantaged both by being poor and by suffering from discrimination.

White priviledge isn't something to blugeon people about, its something one should be conscious of. its not to make your race feel bad for being in a position of power. The problem comes when those who are higher on the playing field think they arent favored and look at disdain at other groups naturally trying to even things out for themselves.

Take race out of the equation and imagine a rich kid being upset he doesn't get food assistance like poor kids and thinks its unfair, He doesn't understand how good he has it relative to others. Why should they have a free lunch and not me? Im being victimized by not receiving those free lunches and am upset when they even have to ask for food. How dare they?! I don't ever ask for food, If I ever get the chance i'm gonna vote against this garbage because I think its unfair!

When you associate race to privilege, you generalize the privilege to an overly broad demographic, and therein lies the problem. It does not matter which race you use.

If I had a nickel for every time the privilege discussion came up and some white dude spent his time defending the plight of the white dudes instead of giving a **** about literally anyone else, I would have curtains and fountains of nickels...

Very Very true, there are many many variables that make up what we would consider privilege, race being one of the major contributing but not determining factor. Its really not something even worth discussing unless its a creative exercise exploring empathy. Trying to put yourself in someone elses shoes etc

I'm glad you brought up empathy. It's not hard to be empathetic to an individual/group that's faced injustice, or hardships. It's much harder to embrace a concept that suggest a person/group has received some sort of privilege due to the injustice others were subjected.


Speaking of empathy, think about what you would feel like if you were homeless, and people continually expressed their sympathy and empathy towards you, essentially pitying you. Generally, you are going to feel shame/inadequacies...and then you will either give up, and embrace the empathy and sympathy of others, becoming dependent on that, or you will take steps to not have to rely on that. That's not an indictment of helping people, becasue I think most people take steps to improve their situation, and that assistance makes it easier. You can draw this analogy to veterans, and many other circumstances.


Since I'm on a pediatric cancer kick, survivors guilt is a consequence of being a survivor. To draw the parallel, the people who survived the cancer are privileged, relative to those who did not. I'm sure most people would see that as a repulsive way to describe it, however that pathology of the idea, or conceptualization, is the same as white privilege. Even though they should not feel guilty, they do.

Surviving cancer is the same privilege as white privilege itt

Survivors guilt is the same as white guilt itt

The type of guilt I'm posting about is essentially feeling guilty/responsible for the hardships of others. It's maladaptive guilt/shame, and it's a real thing.

Survivors of cancer didn’t cause others to get cancer...

White males are a bunch of individuals, many (if not most) of whom have not inflicted/cause racial injustice on others. When someone tells them they are privileged because of the injustice others experienced, a percentage of them will experience maladaptive guilt/shame. Do you know where that maladaptive guilt/shame can lead?

Interestingly, this creates another analogy with cancer, and chemotherapy/radiation treatment. While the treatments can stop the cancer, it creates a whole host of other long-term issues, and it does not always work. With that said, the concept of white privilege does not stop racism/discrimination/prejudices, but it can cause a host of other issues. No one can tell me what white privilege does, that empathy does not.

I’d remark on your last post but WN will just keep deleting me out of existence while you post white privilege apologetics

So it's a complicated topic and you can approach it from a number of different angles. But I'm lazy today so I'm going to just pick one: I think you're being shortsighted in your evaluation of harm. In particular, you might be overlooking the possibility that the harm will actually -- in the aggregate and over time -- be done to minority groups, and not whites. To the extent that this behavior is unnecessarily reinforcing a framing of the issues which makes accomplishing anti-racist goals more difficult. In a way, it's sort of the flip side of arguments about whether racist speech is actually harmful, when any given isolated incident probably does put the "micro" in microaggression. The problem is in ignoring the the larger cultural dynamics in the aggregate.

The unrealistic assumption, which is necessary to conclude that harm is not being done, is that you can get everyone to understand and buy into a very nuanced historical understanding of the issues which might justify the strength of the distinction you're making between offensive speech being tolerable towards whites but not other groups. Without trying to review the entirety of social movements research since the civil rights era, I think that's highly unlikely, and the position your taking is unnecessarily counterproductive. I mentioned framing because I think the literature on social movement framing and counter movements is really valuable.

That said, your position is also based in some ideas that I think are completely valid. I've often said what matters is harm. I've often said that we have good reasons to care more about harm to traditionally marginalized groups than harm to whites. There are legitimate critiques about "abstract liberal" takes on racism and "color-blind racism" (and I highly recommend the book). I just think you're extrapolating from those valid points to a problematic conclusion.

The "abstract liberalism" that Bonilla-Silva describes deserves to be critiqued, and I think it's those critiques that lead to the kind of logic you're using. But that same "abstract liberalism" is also quite clearly an improvement on Jim Crow style racism, and I don't think we should be too quick to abandon some of the norms that the civil rights movement fought so hard to establish (the "I Have a Dream" speech being the paradigmatic example). Too much tolerance for over-generalized anti-white prejudice does jeopardize those norms, IMO, and also makes establishing useful social movement framings in support of anti-racist goals more difficult, and not less.

I deleted one post that contained zero content. I locked the last thread for a reason, and the only reason I let it go on as long as I did is because I think itshotinvegas' attacks on your original post were completely ridiculous.

But, I'm not interested in seeing the nonsense continue here. So far, this discussion has been reasonably substantive and didn't begin in a similarly obnoxious way. I'd like to keep it that way. So, you're welcome to disagree, and even to do so pointedly. But do so substantively.

That goes for itshot too. If you think some post fails to live up to this requirement, then please report it. I haven't really kept up today and I probably won't.

WN,

I will accept having to referee a Crossnerd-Itshotinvegas "discussion" in this thread as sufficient punishment for encouraging evolutionary biology discussion in the other thread.

:/

The drug you champion cures nothing, and has some serious side effects. And it's purpose is easily accomplished by teaching about and using empathy instead. It has nothing to do with apologetics. Unfortunately, the dogma you live by, forces you to see it as "apologetics", which prevents any more substantive discussion. My point has nothing to do with feeling sorry for white people. You should care about what those side effects will cause.