• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

News Why It's So Hard To Talk To White People About Racism

Status
Not open for further replies.
You can be oppressed as a poor person alone. You can be oppressed as a black person. Or you can be both poor and black, get oppressed as either, or both.
You can be oppressed as a Jew, or a Lesbian, or both at the same time. Or as a woman alone.
You can be oppressed as a woman, or as a First Nations/Native American person, or as a poor person, or all three together...You could be a poor black paraplegic transwoman and hit the oppression jackpot...
All of the above doesn't mean those of us not in whatever social oppression categories we do not happen to be in had it easy.

I didn't choose to be Caucasian, or choose ***what that skin tone means in our society.***

Quoting for truth.

Just need to say it again: race privilege is an idea stating that the race in power in any given society has an advantage over the races not in power.

Power can be defined in political terms, economic terms, even by population alone.

Advantage should be understood as an absence of racial oppression as it pertains to the minority group.

It's an idea. It is a way of understanding dynamics in a society.

You can say that it is no longer pertinent, but I don't think there can be any defensible argument that it has never existed. Go back 400 years in any society and you will see race privilege.

So: saying 'I disagree with the idea of white privilege' really has to mean, 'I believe the notion of white privilege is no longer applicable to today's society'

The idea that would back that argument would be to say that we have so many disparate groups mixed together now, with so many experiences, that there is, in fact, no majority group.

Personally, I believe that in the U.S. we still have white privilege.

It's hard to argue that affirmative action, etc, really worked great - it was a necessary idea that created new problems alongside solving some old ones. I've gotten opportunities because I'm a woman, and that's sometimes a minority group. I've lost jobs because I'm not the black candidate. Hell, I've lost jobs because I was American, not Canadian.

But I know that I'm never going to be scrutinized as closely in a downtown Chicago store as a young black man would be.

Is it because I'm a woman, white, in my 40s, conventional-seeming...could be any, could be all.

But because I get that LACK of scrutiny, I consider myself to be in
some privileged majority. And my theory - my belief - is that it has to do primarily with my whiteness - not my age or gender.

I'm happy to acknowledge I may be wrong.

But at minimum: it is a possibility. And as long as it's a possibility, then race privilege is possible.
 
All lives matter.

No one is contradicting that. These slogans don't say 'other lives don't matter'. They say 'I'm tired of mine not mattering, and it needs to change'. It doesn't say 'and the world, go burn now'. That's a misinterpretation of what these mottos say. They don't call for hate; they call for cooperation & solidarity. For reconsidering where one stands with others, and why.
 
I'm tired of non-white people being treated as disposable.
I'm angry that we treat ANY living humans as disposable things.

It's not right.
 
They don't call for hate; they call for cooperation & solidarity.

It depends on the group whether they promote hate. It depends on how they wish to promote change. It can be non-violent civil disobedience or the promotion of violence.

Just because they have a nice touchy feely name don't assume.

I'm tired of non-white people being treated as disposable.

How about not treating humans as disposable.
 
It depends on the group whether they promote hate. It depends on how they wish to promote change....
Sure, but this errs on the side of victim blaming.

A movement has a few bad apples / doesn't go as expected / is twist-and-turned in time passage by people joining in that don't familiarize themselves with the original intent & methods and use it for a promotion of their very unrelated ideas? Is not a movement's as a whole fault, and is not enough to claim it's pretenses for violence to begin with.

How about not treating humans as disposable.
That, in a discussion about racism where effects of racism on lives are being discussed, is a derailing tactic. The very point of a thread is dehumanization of people because of their race, or perceived race. Not because they just happen to be people.
 
That, in a discussion about racism where effects of racism on lives are being discussed, is a derailing tactic. The very point of a thread is dehumanization of people because of their race, or perceived race. Not because they just happen to be people.

The thread is about "Why it's so hard to talk to white people about Racism" not about how racism affects lives. I don't think anyone (at least in their right mind) would relate that racism is a good thing.

victim blaming

How am I victim blaming to relate a group "Black Lives Matter" or at least some of the leadership have gone off the rails in promoting violence.

If that is your point it illuminates why it's hard for white people to talk about racism. Am I not allowed to discuss a group if it's a black group?
 
The thread is about "Why it's so hard to talk to white people about Racism"

True, yet the part of difficulty is this switching of topics whenever things get labeled as -ist. Suddenly the discussion is about everything but race, so we're leaving out how race effects people's lives? That is quite a disconnect. One can't talk about a topic while leaving people that are subject of that topic, out of the discussion, if wishing to be non-domineering and wishing for a honest dialog that's been lacking.

and I was reacting to
Just because they have a nice touchy feely name don't assume.

where it appears the very name itself (and misconstrued interpretation of what it stands for) is something that's purposefully deceptive.

I'm tired of criminalization of my race across the board. I'm tired of assumption a black person = always a criminal, in everything they do.
 
I'm tired of people assuming I'm racist because I'm white.
Nobody has accused you, in specific, of being a racist on this board.

Considering you are ex-PD, I really hope you were and are NOT racist, and were able to protect the public in an impartial, evenhanded fashion.

...As I said in post #232, a number of fellow Caucasians have demonstrated to me that they are racist by flapping their bigoted lips about it.

Oh yeah, the KKK recruitment flyer in the driveway in 2010 was special, too...and there's a guy a few miles up the road who had a sign up in his yard about how n****** and Mexican trespassers would be shot and so forth...

I have no reason to doubt systemic racism is alive and well.

I've been accused of being racist, and it feels cruddy, because I'm not, or at least I try not to be.

Shit happens.
 
I'm racist. I have plenty prejudices concerning other & mine own race.

See where I'm driving at? We all are; saying one is racist isn't an attack on character; it's acknowledging there's a system of education prioritizing some people's humanity based on artificial attributes one's grown up in and perpetuates.
 
Last edited:
It's a matter of catching the bigoted programmed thoughts, and kind of looking at them and thinking " Uh, waitaminute.Do I really WANT to think like that?"

...but this thread wasn't about racism, it was about skin privilege.
Basically, does my white skin offer protection and advantages?
I think it does. I think that's not fair. I did not ask for that crap, it just is.

Conversely, nonwhite skin is socially disadvantaged. They didn't ask for that crap either.

...Why do people get furiously angry and defensive about it?
None of us CHOSE this!
This has been happening since...what, the freaking Roman Empire?!

No... it's...not...natural.

Humans have usually been happy to interbreed with each other, our DNA gets around.

In fact, outbreeding produces something called " hybrid vigor," meaning that having a child by a handsome wandering stranger from far away would be likely to produce a healthier baby.

Race is SOCIALLY constructed and has no real genetic legitimacy.
Let me reiterate.
Race is something we made up, a social construct, that has no real legitimacy on a genetic level.

Skin color has the SOCIAL meaning we ascribe to it. The rest is just a minor adaptation to more or less sunlight intensity. That's all.

Genetically we're damned homogenous.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top