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

[Spekx]

White privilege isn't about what your advantages are - it's a theory that states that, no matter where you fall in the socio-economic strata, there is inherently a bias that works to the advantage of a white person and the disadvantage of a person of color.

Would you mind explaining where my advantage kicks in for me specifically? I already explained how I get fewer opportunities then those people who are classified as "minority's". Do you think it matters to me in the slightest that there are many successful straight white males? Do you think it matters to me in the slightest what wrongs are happening to others, when my societal oppression is largely ignored? I temporarily worked in the financial aid department of a local community college and helped others find scholarships that were completely unavailable to me including people in the LGBT community and racial minorities.

What is my truth is that the so-called "privilege" is not worth the inherent lack of opportunities for a poor, underprivileged, straight, white male.

 

[Ronin]

Look @Spekx, you're complaining about having a lack of options in one area of life because of who you are (poor, and in one specific area geographically).

That may very well not apply to multitude of other situations and other areas.

Wherein facing forms of discrimination because of who people are for others of us is something that's a constant no matter how the situation changes, the area changes, and the best people can do with it is keep themselves safe and do the best for self care as possible.

You can unbecome poor with the situation changing, is all I'm saying.

But people can't unbecome gay. Or Brown. Or Black. It's just not physically doable.

You're complaining about LGBT+ & folk of color scholarships that were unavailable to you, while completely ignoring people of color & sexual minority people get tossed out of schools, jobs, and killed without society as much as batting an eyelash daily, on a much larger scope.

All this privilege talk isn't saying you've got it easy because you're of the privileged group.

It's saying you've got it easier in this / that regard just because you're not that other group.

That doesn't mean your life's cherries and sunshine. But it means there's not gonna be raining cats and dogs on you just because you happen to be the wrong color and love the wrong guy. It's going to be for other reasons.

 

[Ronin]

Everyone can be racist no matter what the colour of their skin.

Prejudiced, yes. Racist, not quite. ((Just like as an employee I can indeed be a nasty person to my fellow employees but can't fire them, just like I can't fire my boss, unlike them with me. Substitute a boss with a white person.))

 

[garden]

@Cashew, I'm not following what you're saying...could you explain a bit further?

 

[Friday]

@Lewa... Not intending to speak for @Cashew... But in certain parts of the world racism is described as any prejudice where race is the factor, and in other parts it's described top-down only; only the race in power (majority OR minority) can be considered racist. It's a way to demarcate who is in power and who is not. It's just a cultural definition thing. All directions tends to be in nations with many races & ethnic groups (like USA), top-down tends to be in nations with either only 2 races OR in nations that are in the middle of a civil rights movement OR in nations where the minority are in power (think South Africa Apartheid). Tends to, being the key word. It's one of the things that's on my short list of things to define when I'm traveling. Knowing local prejudice, very key in avoiding trouble!

@Ms Spock ... I'm curious... I've heard modern day Australia described as the USA in the 60s & 70s as far as equal rights goes; the laws may be on the books, but absolutely not the common practice. I'm wondering if that's where some of the friction on this thread is coming from / if you know enough about our history to judge if that's an accurate representation? @RussH's qualifications of living in the Deep South during our own Equal Rights movement reminded me of having heard Australia characterized that way.

 

[garden]

@FridayJones thanks for the clarification.

This topic is a difficult one to talk about because it makes some people feel attacked. Some people find the very idea of white privilege offensive. Some people take this sort of discussion as an attack aimed at placing specific blame on one group over another. I feel like we are talking about perceptions that we hold about each other and how those perceptions shape our behaviors towards one another, and how that has played out over time.

Personally I've been the target of racist bigots throughout my whole life, at school, in my neighborhood...even within my family as being mixed makes you a minority in your own family. In my experience, it's always been a mixture of ignorance and fear of the unknown, as well as a blind acceptance of stereotypes as fact that has lead people to treat me badly. None of them actually knew me. Also, we all go through our Rolodex and categorize people for our own comfort and understanding, and sadly many of us have a rather ill informed Rolodex...which can lead to distorted and incorrect assumptions.

I've been listening to the clips that @Simply Simon shared, and the one about vocal frag (not sure if that's correct) and how people perceive this phenomenon or the one about the woman who was bullied online shortly after her fathers death; these radio clips really convey the way our biases and personal issues creep into our perceptions... Whether we are talking about women's voices, people's weight, or peoples color....we humans are relentlessly biased.

 

[Ronin]

@Lewa, my first thoughts on this were slightly different from @FridayJones' rather useful explanation (grin), though tangential.

I was coming from a perspective of racism = institutional prejudice, prejudice = personal/collective think on the matter of race, and from the same view technically white people (worldwide) can't be racist against, and people of color can't be racist toward one another as collectively not having the institutional power, can be prejudiced with other reasons (antiBlackness, xeno-racism & xenophobia against foreigners, etc).

In reality, as Friday said? Complicated mess, definitely not easily defined just along the power lines. ((Also because who is culturally a person of color? So much differs regionally, even when one doesn't consider criteria of hate groups for these things.))

 

[Kintsugi]

Not trying to hijack but...

@Lewa if you want to see one specifically about weight bias: https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_attia_what_if_we_re_wrong_about_diabetes?language=en

Careful, it may make you cry.

ETA: @Cashew & @FridayJones ... so right about regional variations, but I think "white" is still a gold standard across cultures (for historically and culturally complicated reasons).

For instance. I have a friend who is half Indian. Her mother is Indian and her father is a very white (probably Scotch-Irish) redneck. Both parents, both cultures, think being black is essentially a sin, but apparently being Indian is okay. However, in India or Malaysia or the other countries where her mother has family, it's still better to be white than Indian/Malaysian/etc. My friend (who is also racist, and it's so complicated and hard for me to understand) is revered in these countries as being a "white Indian." She looks, at the darkest, like she has a lot of Cherokee in her. It is a bizarre perspective to observe.

 

[garden]

@Simply Simon the shades of lightness thing blows my mind. It's present in East Indian as well as Chinese cultures (I'm Indian, Chinese, indigenous Fijian) many times I've heard my Indian family openly talk about a person and they will mention the lightness of skin as an attribute that is not only desirable, but that it somehow indicates an inherent "goodness". And they do the same for the opposite, being darker seems to indicate an inherent potential for being bad, or evil. It's puzzling. My skin is lighter than some of my Indian relatives and I've been perceived as good for that reason, and I've witnessed some of my relatives who perceive me as a freak of some sort because I'm only "half caste" and that somehow I'm inferior, and my genes have been tainted. The crappy part is when they treat you according to their bias... They don't even know they're doing it. Discussing this kind of thing openly can draw attention to our biases

 

[joeylittle]

This is why language is an awesome tool and we should use it.

Many people confuse the meaning of racism with the meaning of bigotry.

Bigotry is to be intolerant of, or dislike, any group based on ideas, race, religion, politics, etc.

Racism is pretty well defined, above - making a judgement against (whether actively or passively) someone based on race. And in a modern world, the definition is now clarifying itself to specifically be the privileged position of the race in majority and/or power.

Prejudice is a bias against - a 'pre-judging' - based on anything.

Xenophobia is intense and emotional dislike of people from other countries (though can be extended to immigrant populations and even can be seen within caste systems)

In the US, especially in the southern border states, there is a great deal of this to be seen between whites and Mexican hispanics.

• Xenophobe: "Mexicans are taking over this country, they should all be deported"
• Prejudiced: "Most of them are illegals and don't even speak English"
• Racist: "I don't like to hire Mexicans, they take away jobs from real Americans"
• Bigoted: "I just don't like Mexicans, they make me uncomfortable."

I find that most Americans, when they get angry about the white privilege concept (which could be called the black privilege concept or the asian privilege concept, or any number of other things if white people did not still hold the majority authority in the US) - they are upset because they think they are being told that they are bigots, or racists. Having white privilege does not make you a racist. You can exist as a white person and absolutely have no racism, no bigotry, no prejudice, and no xenophobia. You can be awesome.

But you cannot deny the fact that your skin color matches the skin color of the majority of the top of the power structure - the government, industry, banks, law enforcement. Now, just because your skin color matches, does that mean your life matches those statistics? No, of course not. You are in the minority of the majority. And yeah, you get overlooked too.

But not as overlooked as the majority of the minority population.

That's white privilege.

If that causes you to resent the minority population, that is either bigotry, prejudice, or racism, depending on how you talk about it and what your actions are in regard to it.

This article is from 2014, but the stats are good, if you are curious to take a look (US figures).
Dead Link Removed

 

[Eleanor]

I'm a white chick who grew up mostly in Asia and PacRim Islands.

You are a third culture kid, too! That makes sense...

I grew up in Saudi...and as one of the two non-jewish kids in my elementary school in the states. So I have a strange perspective as well. On those implicit bias tests? I come out slightly biased in a positive way to people with darker skin.

Just getting to this thread...

 

[Eleanor]

This is a nice (short) crystal clear example of how the dynamic can work to advantage some, and disadvantage others (gender figures in here too...) And it doesn't need sound.:)

The insidious thing with all these degrees of bias (super set of distinctions @joeylittle) is that they skew our interpretations of other people and their actions and intentions. If my best friend steps on my foot... I might get annoyed, but I don't immediately go to anger because my bias is that she is not trying to hurt me, it must be an accident. (She is my best friend, after all) If someone who I don't like and who isn't particularly fond of me does the exact same thing.. I react totally differently. If someone I don't know at all does the exact same thing... my reaction will be determined by my biases. Everyone has biases. Mostly they are unconscious and unintentional. They just are. Once you notice what they are you can retrain them (to greater and lesser degrees depending on what they are and how you got them.)

The thing about "white privilege" that makes it a "privilege" is that "white" is coded "safe" and "black" is coded "dangerous" for a whole culture (folks in the U.S. have been a bit reluctant to admit they have a culture in the past... culture is something other people have and we mess around with at holidays and on special occasions) share this bias and act on it - particularly in things that have a huge impact on people's lives and opportunities. It is not to say that every white person is better off than every black person (or hispanic, or... any other category that we have biases about about - male, disabled, people with southern accents...) The equation that sets how people see you is largely invisible and it makes a huge difference.

I totally second the recommendation of "Is this working?" In This American Life. Really really really interesting stories about how biases can get instilled, even in the people they are against. When the mom says, "maybe I wasn't actually a bad kid..." We learn these categories and are taught them. How much of the struggle of people here (and everywhere) who were abused as children consists not of just the trauma (bad enough) but of trying to unlearn the categories and biases they were taught as children about themselves?

The discussion around crime has gotten a lot of play in recent days. The danger of/safety of looking one way or another cannot be overstated. When we deal with strangers they act on their biases toward us - they have to act on SOMETHING after all, and Sherlock Holmes most of us ain't.

That said, it is clearer what Jesse Jackson et.al. mean when they say black people can't be racist. If they are NOT in positions of power - and most are not - then they can be xenophobic, prejudiced and bigoted, but not racist. To be racist you have to have power. I'm not sure if that power has to be part of a power structure that supports a positive bias toward you. Can Oprah be a racist? Not is she? But can she be? I am not sure. This way of analyzing things is most helpful at a level of analysis beyond the purely personal. So a person can be an a***ole without being any of these things. Context doesn't matter much to a***ole-dom. Sure, being a bigot or a xenophobe are ways to be an a***hole, and they are not the ONLY ways. (Most a***oles of my acquaintance are pretty versatile in this respect. The interesting ones are the ones that aren't really committed to any of these approaches - they pick and choose as it serves their own ends.) Prejudice, bigotry, xenophobia, racism, these come into play when we are looking at whole groups of people and the systems they are a part of and then recreate.