No it's stated goal is to make people aware of privilege. That they then feel bad is, well, a human having empathy.
After I first heard Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) speak about incarceration and verified everything she was saying with my own independent research, I physically felt a sinking feeling in my gut. I already knew most of what she talks about, but prior to that I didn't really know the breadth or depth of it, or connected the dots quite as succinctly as she does.
I'm not responsible for it, but it is still my country doing it, it affects people I personally know, it erodes the communities I'm part of. I don't feel guilty, but I do feel awful about it.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
+1
Options
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Right right wing politicians setting actual regressive policy is totes equivalent to a black writer who doesn't sugar coat his harsh truths for the audience of privileged people not listening to him. Totes.
I was referring to their rhetoric, not their policy. And Coates has some good things to say but he's bonkers on others. That quote of his ragging on Memorial Day and tree houses, of all things, is not a "harsh truth" and instead reads more like an insane rant from the TimeCube guy. "Infants, raised to be white"? Really? It's like he's Elijah Muhammad or something.
edit- what would involve "raising children to be white", Preacher? Because then you get into "white values" and "white attitudes" as if they're somehow different than those of other races and you're just fueling the racists at that point.
When were minorities openly prevented from having a voice recently in government? That's pure, white-man mustache twirling hyperbole. Black people certainly do vote and have a voice in government, like any citizen.
Technically correct, in practice we don't. Minorities of all stripes are still playing catch up to whites in government. We elected our first black president in 2008. Pakistan is ahead of us in electing female head of state's, they had theirs in 1988.
This isn't the same as saying minorities have no voice or representation in government, and I wish people would stop saying it.
Did you know that more than half of the voters who put elected officials in office are women?
And yet half of the representatives in government are not even women. We've never even had a female president yet, but that doesn't mean women have no voice in government. Same with minorities.
Yeah because reading recent headlines about women's health from colleges no longer offering health coverage to deny women from getting birth control to the the bullshit planned parenthood stings to shut down low income women's health coverage women sure have that voice being heard loud and clear in american politics!
I mean who can forget that great moment for our country when Sandra Fluke stood up for birth control coverage and was called a slut and tarred and feathered by a major voice on the right!
Well to be fair not all women are feminists. For example, I saw on Facebook that Donald Trump had made and later deleted a tweet saying "How can we expect Hillary to please America when she can't even please her husband." When I told my dad and step-mom this (intending to follow it up with "what an asshole, right?") my step-mother (who is pretty conservative) busted out laughing. Similarly, I overheard several of my female co-workers state that they didn't believe Bill Cosby was a rapist and that his accusers were lying.
It could be that the majority of women's voices are being heard, but they aren't saying what feminists would like them to.
Nah. It's more that women can be sexist too and prop up sexist policies and institutions and social structures. This is, in fact, ridiculously common to the point where we don't even blink at it.
This is actually a big thing in feminist history - women are the enforcers of patriarchal values. The prime example is with genital mutilation. Its the elder women in the society who make sure women have their vaginas mutilated, and its the same women who make sure anyone who doesn't want to is shunned. Anyone who has ever lived in a conservative small town knows the score - it's the churchy women who are obsessed with slut shaming.
Basically, the surest way to have power in an oppressive system is to be a useful tool for the oppressors. Think Samuel L. Jackson's character in Django Unchained.
So 24k to make up by 5.5 people.
4.3k per person per year.
That's the wrong way to go about it.
So, let's take just one example. Lead poisoning is a serious problem in children, and while the known harmful dose is 10 µg per deciliter of blood, evidence suggests there may be no substantial safe dosage. Dr. Richard Canfield et al suggested that even below the known harmful dose, IQ declined by 7.4 points as lifetime average blood lead concentrations increased from 1 to 10 µg per deciliter. Blacks are disproportionately exposed to lead contamination compared to whites. Additionally, there's some pretty strong evidence that lead may be associated with criminal behavior, which is consistent with it being a powerful neurotoxin. And while it is a majority black problem, whites do suffer from it as well.
Will it cost money to cleanup some of this lead? Yeah. Will both increases IQ by 7.4 points and ameliorating serious crime end up paying for itself over time? Also, yes.
I think non-need tested direct cash payments that aren't part of a basic income scheme are really bad policy, but there are a lot of measures we can take that we should have taken decades ago, but just didn't, that will both increase the standard of living for black Americans and simultaneously pay for themselves.
Also, for example, the share of all income earned by the top 1% has increased from its low of a little over 10% to around 20% (2011), and even within that category, the top 0.1% earn far more than the rest of the top 1%. Consistent with some current policy proposals, we can simply ask billionaires to pay their fair share and have a lot of money to work with. There is a huge range of area where we can make society more equal without putting a major burden on the middle class, while even still allowing for some people to own four homes and ten cars and the like.
It's also worth noting, as we're on the topic, that OECD suggests that the GDP growth of OECD countries is being demolished by income inequality. The United States missed out on 6-7% of growth between 1990-2010 because there isn't enough opportunity on the bottom end, and it's getting worse, so we'll lose even more from 2010-2030 without substantial changes (we also lose out on growth on growth). Most of that benefit would go to the people it helps, but don't fool yourself, it costs you money for other people to be poor, and I don't think that's a good use of my cash. I'd rather spend it myself, and I'm sure you would too.
In mmo terms people aren't calling for white people's racial to be nerfed, we are calling for every other classes racial to be buffed.
Yes, but the way these arguments often go makes it seem more like people believe that white people are somehow cheating, or getting something they shouldn't get. 'Privilege' is usually the most useless and counterproductive argument brought to these sort of discussions. By framing it as 'How can you make sure others are being treated as you have been treated' instead of 'Think of all the unfair ways you have gotten ahead of people due to your privilege and feel bad about that' it makes the entire argument more useful and functional as a tool to persuade people to behave differently.
The thing is that the latter framing is the more honest of the two. It's not just about how I've been treated in a more beneficial manner, but that, in many, many real ways I've been given breaks that came at the expense of others. And yes, it's not a comfortable thing to talk about. But it has to be discussed. Trying to sugar coat it doesn't make the argument more useful - it just delays the ripping of the band-aid.
I am not certain about this. While discussion certainly needs to be framed differently than "try to make other people get treated as well as you do," it's very clear that striking the wrong tone when attempting to discuss privilege makes comes off as confrontational, and as soon as people see it as an attack they are more likely to double down rather than listen. And yes, some of the people who double down couldn't ever be reached, but it is very possible to drive away people who would be receptive if it was framed as less of an attack on them, especially people who grew up poor-but-white or in another situation where they can't immediately see any benefits of being privileged.
Like, a lot of times I see very well written posts that evoke strong emotions and convey how terrible it can be to lack privilege while still explaining it properly, and those posts are wonderful reads for people who already agree. But they're also so clearly hostile that they have no or even negative value for making somebody understand privilege better, though it may drive them out of the thread.
E: I'm not trying to say that an honest explanation of privilege is bad, but that dividing it into this sort of binary where you're either sugarcoating privilege too much to be useful or trying to evoke negative emotions to make people understand their privilege is silly. There has to be a middle ground.
It's not about evoking negative emotions, but about being honest. It's what Coates was talking about here:
But at the end of the segment, the host flashed a widely shared picture of a 12-year-old black boy tearfully hugging a white police officer. Then she asked me about “hope.” And I knew then that I had failed. And I remembered that I had expected to fail. And I wondered again at the indistinct sadness welling up in me. Why exactly was I sad? I came out of the studio and walked for a while. It was a calm late-November day. Families, believing themselves white, were out on the streets. Infants, raised to be white, were bundled in strollers. And I was sad for these people, much as I was sad for the host and sad for all the people out there watching and reveling in a specious hope. I realized then why I was sad. When the journalist asked me about my body, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most gorgeous dream. I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is tree houses and the Cub Scouts. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option, because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists by warring with the known world, I was sad for the host, I was sad for all those families, I was sad for my country, but above all, in that moment, I was sad for you.
There's really no "nice" way to have this conversation, not without leaving critical parts on the cutting room floor.
I didn't use the word "nice," and you directly agreed with the approach of "think about the unfair ways you have gotten ahead... and feel bad."
That is literally an approach with the stated goal of making people feel bad for being privileged. I understand honesty, but there are plenty of times when people (Coates included, holy shit) antagonize privileged listeners far beyond what is necessary to explain to them why their privilege results in worse outcomes for others. That is the approach I disagree with; you can make people feel for others without trying to make them feel bad or attacked for who they are.
No it's stated goal is to make people aware of privilege. That they then feel bad is, well, a human having empathy.
The quote he agreed with, in full:
'Think of all the unfair ways you have gotten ahead of people due to your privilege and feel bad about that'
You would need a very charitable and very biased view to read the goal of that as anything but "feel bad for having privilege."
No, you would just need to know english.
You should look at your privilege. And then you should feel bad about that because it's obviously bad if you have any empathy for other human beings.
E: I agree with you that people should be aware of privilege! I just disagree with the idea, which seems to be accepted in a lot of circles, that the best way to do that is to go about it in a way focused on battering or guilt-tripping somebody into accepting privilege. What you are saying (make them aware of privilege, and have them feel bad for somebody else) is exactly the approach I want to be used. But the approach stated, which is to make them feel bad about themselves because of their privilege, is going to drive otherwise receptive people off.
There is no difference. It can't not be a "guilt-trip" because it's a horrible thing that you are making people aware of. It's like accusing someone of "guilt-tripping" for pointing out the differing rates of incarceration by race.
Think about it this way. You are morally obligated to consider this, feel bad about it for awhile and maybe vote/talk/act on this knowledge every now and then. Minorities have to spend their lives dealing with this shit on a daily basis.
No matter how bad it makes you feel, you are still coming out way ahead.
+8
Options
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
In mmo terms people aren't calling for white people's racial to be nerfed, we are calling for every other classes racial to be buffed.
Yes, but the way these arguments often go makes it seem more like people believe that white people are somehow cheating, or getting something they shouldn't get. 'Privilege' is usually the most useless and counterproductive argument brought to these sort of discussions. By framing it as 'How can you make sure others are being treated as you have been treated' instead of 'Think of all the unfair ways you have gotten ahead of people due to your privilege and feel bad about that' it makes the entire argument more useful and functional as a tool to persuade people to behave differently.
The thing is that the latter framing is the more honest of the two. It's not just about how I've been treated in a more beneficial manner, but that, in many, many real ways I've been given breaks that came at the expense of others. And yes, it's not a comfortable thing to talk about. But it has to be discussed. Trying to sugar coat it doesn't make the argument more useful - it just delays the ripping of the band-aid.
I am not certain about this. While discussion certainly needs to be framed differently than "try to make other people get treated as well as you do," it's very clear that striking the wrong tone when attempting to discuss privilege makes comes off as confrontational, and as soon as people see it as an attack they are more likely to double down rather than listen. And yes, some of the people who double down couldn't ever be reached, but it is very possible to drive away people who would be receptive if it was framed as less of an attack on them, especially people who grew up poor-but-white or in another situation where they can't immediately see any benefits of being privileged.
Like, a lot of times I see very well written posts that evoke strong emotions and convey how terrible it can be to lack privilege while still explaining it properly, and those posts are wonderful reads for people who already agree. But they're also so clearly hostile that they have no or even negative value for making somebody understand privilege better, though it may drive them out of the thread.
E: I'm not trying to say that an honest explanation of privilege is bad, but that dividing it into this sort of binary where you're either sugarcoating privilege too much to be useful or trying to evoke negative emotions to make people understand their privilege is silly. There has to be a middle ground.
It's not about evoking negative emotions, but about being honest. It's what Coates was talking about here:
But at the end of the segment, the host flashed a widely shared picture of a 12-year-old black boy tearfully hugging a white police officer. Then she asked me about “hope.” And I knew then that I had failed. And I remembered that I had expected to fail. And I wondered again at the indistinct sadness welling up in me. Why exactly was I sad? I came out of the studio and walked for a while. It was a calm late-November day. Families, believing themselves white, were out on the streets. Infants, raised to be white, were bundled in strollers. And I was sad for these people, much as I was sad for the host and sad for all the people out there watching and reveling in a specious hope. I realized then why I was sad. When the journalist asked me about my body, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most gorgeous dream. I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is tree houses and the Cub Scouts. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option, because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists by warring with the known world, I was sad for the host, I was sad for all those families, I was sad for my country, but above all, in that moment, I was sad for you.
There's really no "nice" way to have this conversation, not without leaving critical parts on the cutting room floor.
I didn't use the word "nice," and you directly agreed with the approach of "think about the unfair ways you have gotten ahead... and feel bad."
That is literally an approach with the stated goal of making people feel bad for being privileged. I understand honesty, but there are plenty of times when people (Coates included, holy shit) antagonize privileged listeners far beyond what is necessary to explain to them why their privilege results in worse outcomes for others. That is the approach I disagree with; you can make people feel for others without trying to make them feel bad or attacked for who they are.
No it's stated goal is to make people aware of privilege. That they then feel bad is, well, a human having empathy.
The quote he agreed with, in full:
'Think of all the unfair ways you have gotten ahead of people due to your privilege and feel bad about that'
You would need a very charitable and very biased view to read the goal of that as anything but "feel bad for having privilege."
No, you would just need to know english.
You should look at your privilege. And then you should feel bad about that because it's obviously bad if you have any empathy for other human beings.
E: I agree with you that people should be aware of privilege! I just disagree with the idea, which seems to be accepted in a lot of circles, that the best way to do that is to go about it in a way focused on battering or guilt-tripping somebody into accepting privilege. What you are saying (make them aware of privilege, and have them feel bad for somebody else) is exactly the approach I want to be used. But the approach stated, which is to make them feel bad about themselves because of their privilege, is going to drive otherwise receptive people off.
There is no difference. It can't not be a "guilt-trip" because it's a horrible thing that you are making people aware of. It's like accusing someone of "guilt-tripping" for pointing out the differing rates of incarceration by race.
Think about it this way. You are morally obligated to consider this, feel bad about it for awhile and maybe vote/talk/act on this knowledge every now and then. Minorities have to spend their lives dealing with this shit on a daily basis.
No matter how bad it makes you feel, you are still coming out way ahead.
In my experience, most people reject the principle that coming out way ahead yields any obligation whatsoever to introspect, feel guilt, or dedicate time to pursuing more egalitarian outcomes; or, at least, I've found that to be so in discussing global poverty. Whenever I have suggested that guilt might be an appropriate response to the lives one could've saved i.e. through charity, the pushback I've gotten has been ferocious (although, of course, all from people who, even were they to feel guilty, would still be coming out way ahead of the typical beneficiary of doctors without borders or the like).
[e: I say this as someone who does not disagree per se with your actual suggestion]
MrMister on
+2
Options
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Marcus I get the feeling you read Coates but you don't understand him at all.
I want to like the guy, and I agree with a lot of the stuff he says- reparations not being a check but a way of helping our fellow countrymen being one of the big ones. But then he ruins it with "infants, raised to be white" etc.
Marcus I get the feeling you read Coates but you don't understand him at all.
I want to like the guy, and I agree with a lot of the stuff he says- reparations not being a check but a way of helping our fellow countrymen being one of the big ones. But then he ruins it with "infants, raised to be white" etc.
Marcus I get the feeling you read Coates but you don't understand him at all.
I want to like the guy, and I agree with a lot of the stuff he says- reparations not being a check but a way of helping our fellow countrymen being one of the big ones. But then he ruins it with "infants, raised to be white" etc.
I'm not a big fan of Coates' writing style, which runs a little too grand for my taste, however I took that bit to be relatively unobjectionable: it's an unusual turn of phrase calling attention to the way in which we are cultured into playing out racial roles (rather than race being e.g. innate biological expression). Babies do get raised to be white, given that white is a culturally contingent social category with culturally contingent social meaning.
e: Feral says quite the right thing to expand on this below
But then he ruins it with "infants, raised to be white" etc.
Did you see Kana's post above about "English and other whites?" The concept of a white race is something that slowly emerged during the 1600s-1900s, and it was closely intertwined with the African slave trade. Prior to the slave trade, people were more likely to categorize themselves by nationality. During the slave trade, the definition of "white" shifted over time - sometimes it included Jews, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it included Irish, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it included Italians, sometimes it didn't.
Our notion of what constitutes "white" and what constitutes "black" is a product of social context. It is utterly impossible to look at the delineation of a "Southern race" and not see the Civil War, the creation of an "Irish race" and not think of Cromwell's ethnic cleansing, the creation of a "Jewish race" and not see anti-Semitism. There is no fixed sense of "whiteness" or "blackness," not even today. It is quite common for whites to point out that Barack Obama isn't really "black" but "half-white." One wonders if they would say this if Barack Obama were a notorious drug-lord.
When the liberal says "race is a social construct," he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the "Irish race" for intelligence or the "Southern race" for "hot-headedness." These reasons are social. It is no more legitimate to ask "Is the black race dumber than then white race?" than it is to ask "Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?"
Usually the counterargument to this is something based in biology. There are clearly some genetic differences between blacks and whites, some of which are visible. We've prioritized some of those - skin color, nose shape, eyelid shape - over others - hair color, finger length. Outside the occasional dumb blonde or soulless ginger joke, we don't categorize people based on hair color. Skin color and facial features are only loosely associated with ancestry, anyway. A black person who descended from slaves is likely to have a significant amount of admixture - genetic lineages from both European and different African ancestries. An American slave descendant may share more in common genetically with a white American from the same region than he does with, say, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.
We've decided that these arbitrary messy genetic correlates define race and not those arbitrary messy genetic correlates.
I personally think that "infants, raised to be white" is an eloquent way of reminding us of these facts.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
So 24k to make up by 5.5 people.
4.3k per person per year.
You are not doing the math incorrectly but these numbers are pointless because they assume that total income is a zero sum game and all white people would pay equally into some kind of reparation fund. This sort of math is only useful to create a soundbyte that convinces a white family making 40k a year that they're about to lose 25% of their total income.
I'm just saying that (as far as I can see) the absolute highest that the average person could gain from racism is around 4 grand.
So any talk of personal gain from racism seems like a stretch.
So 24k to make up by 5.5 people.
4.3k per person per year.
You are not doing the math incorrectly but these numbers are pointless because they assume that total income is a zero sum game and all white people would pay equally into some kind of reparation fund. This sort of math is only useful to create a soundbyte that convinces a white family making 40k a year that they're about to lose 25% of their total income.
I'm just saying that (as far as I can see) the absolute highest that the average person could gain from racism is around 4 grand.
So any talk of personal gain from racism seems like a stretch.
By definition. Racism is not a winning economic strategy since it means you are undervaluing valuable social capital. Low income black people are unemployed at much higher rates than low income white people. A Marxist could argue they are less exploited (shout out to all the Marxists). In reality this is due to effective segregation. I don't know if racism will ever end, but I 'm pretty sure the most effective way to move forward is to end segregation. Not sure how to do it though so
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Right right wing politicians setting actual regressive policy is totes equivalent to a black writer who doesn't sugar coat his harsh truths for the audience of privileged people not listening to him. Totes.
The difference in tone between pages 1-3 and page 5 is pretty stark.
spool32 on
+2
Options
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
we are cultured into playing out racial roles (rather than race being e.g. innate biological expression). Babies do get raised to be white, given that white is a culturally contingent social category with culturally contingent social meaning.
I don't follow. What would a racial "role" be? Bank president? Lawyer?
Usually the counterargument to this is something based in biology. There are clearly some genetic differences between blacks and whites, some of which are visible. We've prioritized some of those - skin color, nose shape, eyelid shape - over others - hair color, finger length. Outside the occasional dumb blonde or soulless ginger joke, we don't categorize people based on hair color. Skin color and facial features are only loosely associated with ancestry, anyway. A black person who descended from slaves is likely to have a significant amount of admixture - genetic lineages from both European and different African ancestries. An American slave descendant may share more in common genetically with a white American from the same region than he does with, say, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.
We've decided that these arbitrary messy genetic correlates define race and not those arbitrary messy genetic correlates.
I personally think that "infants, raised to be white" is an eloquent way of reminding us of these facts.
You're entirely wrong on this part. There are a whole host of diseases that are based on racial genetics (cystic fibrosis anyone?), and even blood is different- African-Americans have a 68% chance and Africans have an 88% chance to be a (-) b (-) for the Duffy antigen, which is a phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of Caucasians.
Again, not sure what "facts" you're referring to. How is an infant "raised to be white"? What values are they taught? What behaviors do they learn? Because if you say anything, anything other than "normal values" then you'd be called a racist and I'd agree. And don't hide behind "oh, police brutality" because that's hogwash; Coates is clearly referring to something else when he's denigrating middle-class activities like the Cub Scouts and friggin' Memorial Day, he's being a frickin' racist.
Seriously, would a blonde-haired blue-eyed Fox News host sniffing at all the "infants, raised to be black" be anything less than crazy talk? So how is it that Coates gets a pass on this lunacy?
So 24k to make up by 5.5 people.
4.3k per person per year.
You are not doing the math incorrectly but these numbers are pointless because they assume that total income is a zero sum game and all white people would pay equally into some kind of reparation fund. This sort of math is only useful to create a soundbyte that convinces a white family making 40k a year that they're about to lose 25% of their total income.
I'm just saying that (as far as I can see) the absolute highest that the average persons could gain from racism is around 4 grand.
So any talk of personal gain from racism seems like a stretch.
I kinda agree.
I think that social and economic justice is both prudent policy and an outright moral duty, but I do have two criticisms with the privilege argument:
1. When applied by people who lack empirical backgrounds, they tend to apply it evenly to white people, which isn't the best way of thinking about it. The average white person has it better than the average black person by a lot, but that doesn't necessarily map to any individual.
2. I object to the framing a bit. White people don't have privilege, black people are getting abused. Everyone has the right to grow up without being poisoned, to seek employment, to work towards owning a home, to be treated with respect by civil servants, etc, etc. I think this framing would help social acceptability slightly (my dad and siblings grew up on a subsistence farm. Yes, they absolutely had it far easier than black Americans would in the same circumstance, but deriving almost all of your economic value from farm produced goods consumed on said farm is best described by a word other than "privilege"), and I'd argue it correctly frames it in terms of legal and moral duties. No one is owed a privilege, people are owed rights.
It's a bit of a "potato, potato" thing, but I personally find that framing both more accurate and more convincing, myself.
And, as I noted in my other post, I don't think it is accurate to say that the average white person is better off because of racism. I'd say it harms almost everyone (a handful of people are able to profit off racism very handsomely, however, and they should / do know what they are doing and are monsters), just not equally. I take proper moral living very seriously, so it's a goal in and of itself, but the thing is, failing to maximize the value of your human capital simply isn't smart. Over short enough timeframes, and with deplorably and naked enough theft, you might be able to come out ahead, but I'd go so far as to say that enlightened self-interest skews perhaps surprisingly strongly towards charity, equality, harmony, etc. in most cases.
we are cultured into playing out racial roles (rather than race being e.g. innate biological expression). Babies do get raised to be white, given that white is a culturally contingent social category with culturally contingent social meaning.
I don't follow. What would a racial "role" be? Bank president? Lawyer?
Usually the counterargument to this is something based in biology. There are clearly some genetic differences between blacks and whites, some of which are visible. We've prioritized some of those - skin color, nose shape, eyelid shape - over others - hair color, finger length. Outside the occasional dumb blonde or soulless ginger joke, we don't categorize people based on hair color. Skin color and facial features are only loosely associated with ancestry, anyway. A black person who descended from slaves is likely to have a significant amount of admixture - genetic lineages from both European and different African ancestries. An American slave descendant may share more in common genetically with a white American from the same region than he does with, say, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.
We've decided that these arbitrary messy genetic correlates define race and not those arbitrary messy genetic correlates.
I personally think that "infants, raised to be white" is an eloquent way of reminding us of these facts.
You're entirely wrong on this part. There are a whole host of diseases that are based on racial genetics (cystic fibrosis anyone?), and even blood is different- African-Americans have a 68% chance and Africans have an 88% chance to be a (-) b (-) for the Duffy antigen, which is a phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of Caucasians.
I'll keep that in mind the next time I hear about a discrimination case.
"Did they do a blood test for the Duffy antigen before denying that guy a job? No? Oh, well, then it must not be discrimination."
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Right right wing politicians setting actual regressive policy is totes equivalent to a black writer who doesn't sugar coat his harsh truths for the audience of privileged people not listening to him. Totes.
The difference in tone between pages 1-3 and page 5 is pretty stark.
Sorry, were we not supposed to talk about racist and classist policy in a thread about race and class?
+3
Options
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
So 24k to make up by 5.5 people.
4.3k per person per year.
You are not doing the math incorrectly but these numbers are pointless because they assume that total income is a zero sum game and all white people would pay equally into some kind of reparation fund. This sort of math is only useful to create a soundbyte that convinces a white family making 40k a year that they're about to lose 25% of their total income.
I'm just saying that (as far as I can see) the absolute highest that the average person could gain from racism is around 4 grand.
So any talk of personal gain from racism seems like a stretch.
I am, in general, a fan of forward-looking rationales for racial equality and integration (which seem to me inseparable). That is to say: work to promote racial equality and integration can be justified on the basis of its positive effects going forward. By contrast, I'm not so hot on backward-looking rationales, i.e. rationales which hinge on a program of restitution or the correction of a historical wrong. And, I take questions of how much individual white Americans have profited to be very much within the bailiwick of this latter sort of program: the idea there being that by quantifying the benefit, we may learn how much is owed back.
Part of the reason I'm skeptical is just because I accept a moral theory that is essentially forward-looking (aka, I'm a Utilitarian). So I reject the logic of guilt. But another reason is that even within the logic of guilt it's unclear to me that there's a good case for racial compensation. So, for instance one principle that seems to be in currency here is: if you profit from an injustice (even as a 3rd party) you owe restitution from those profits to the victims of that injustice. But is this really so? Consider the case of someone who, after September 11th, took pictures of ground zero and sold them for a handsome profit. That person profited from an injustice; without September 11th he would never have been in a position to make his money. But could the victims of September 11th, and their families, press a valid claim against him to recover his profits for themselves? (In the law of torts, which we might take to be an extended development of the logic of guilt: definitely not). This is even allowing that which is itself dubious: that the logic of guilt allows for the assay and enforcement of collective repayment even across some unknown minority of parties which we believe were uninvolved, which would be practically necessary to any such effort.
In any case, it's pretty moot because both A) direct compensation is politically dead in the water for programs that might be viable, we don't need the guilt-based logic anyway. We have every reason to think that racial integration improves development of human capital, reduces crime and social instability, promotes economic equality, and generally contributes to utopian living, and that's more than enough reason to pursue it for the sake of the public good.
You're entirely wrong on this part. There are a whole host of diseases that are based on racial genetics (cystic fibrosis anyone?), and even blood is different- African-Americans have a 68% chance and Africans have an 88% chance to be a (-) b (-) for the Duffy antigen, which is a phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of Caucasians.
Again, not sure what "facts" you're referring to. How is an infant "raised to be white"? What values are they taught? What behaviors do they learn? Because if you say anything, anything other than "normal values" then you'd be called a racist and I'd agree. And don't hide behind "oh, police brutality" because that's hogwash; Coates is clearly referring to something else when he's denigrating middle-class activities like the Cub Scouts and friggin' Memorial Day, he's being a frickin' racist.
Seriously, would a blonde-haired blue-eyed Fox News host sniffing at all the "infants, raised to be black" be anything less than crazy talk? So how is it that Coates gets a pass on this lunacy?
In saying race is socially constructed--or nodding along that people are raised to be white--I don't mean to say that there are no biological categorizations of people into races that are both roughly natural qua biology and roughly track common racial distinctions. I recently read a paper in the philosophy of race arguing that there are, and it all seemed plausible enough to me (though that paper represented itself as swimming against the tide in making that claim). These biological categorizations, though, are generally uninteresting when it comes to explaining our social experience of race, both in terms of the extension of commonly recognized racial groups--even if they track them roughly, we want explanations for why the exceptions to that rough tracking go the way they do--and also in terms of what we take those group memberships to mean--allowing that there may be biological clades that roughly correspond to a broad cut along racial lines doesn't really help us decipher why this particular biological distinction also happens to be very strongly predictive of party membership, occupation, life expectancy, etc etc etc.
MrMister on
+1
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
we are cultured into playing out racial roles (rather than race being e.g. innate biological expression). Babies do get raised to be white, given that white is a culturally contingent social category with culturally contingent social meaning.
I don't follow. What would a racial "role" be? Bank president? Lawyer?
Usually the counterargument to this is something based in biology. There are clearly some genetic differences between blacks and whites, some of which are visible. We've prioritized some of those - skin color, nose shape, eyelid shape - over others - hair color, finger length. Outside the occasional dumb blonde or soulless ginger joke, we don't categorize people based on hair color. Skin color and facial features are only loosely associated with ancestry, anyway. A black person who descended from slaves is likely to have a significant amount of admixture - genetic lineages from both European and different African ancestries. An American slave descendant may share more in common genetically with a white American from the same region than he does with, say, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.
We've decided that these arbitrary messy genetic correlates define race and not those arbitrary messy genetic correlates.
I personally think that "infants, raised to be white" is an eloquent way of reminding us of these facts.
You're entirely wrong on this part. There are a whole host of diseases that are based on racial genetics (cystic fibrosis anyone?), and even blood is different- African-Americans have a 68% chance and Africans have an 88% chance to be a (-) b (-) for the Duffy antigen, which is a phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of Caucasians.
Again, not sure what "facts" you're referring to. How is an infant "raised to be white"? What values are they taught? What behaviors do they learn? Because if you say anything, anything other than "normal values" then you'd be called a racist and I'd agree. And don't hide behind "oh, police brutality" because that's hogwash; Coates is clearly referring to something else when he's denigrating middle-class activities like the Cub Scouts and friggin' Memorial Day, he's being a frickin' racist.
Seriously, would a blonde-haired blue-eyed Fox News host sniffing at all the "infants, raised to be black" be anything less than crazy talk? So how is it that Coates gets a pass on this lunacy?
"What values are they taught?" That "white" is an aspect of their identity that holds any intrinsic meaning beyond the absence of the Duffy antigen.
Coates' specific turn of phrase here is meant to remind of us race as a social construct; but in context, being raised white means being part of the "Dream"--the unpunctured bubble within which everything is both hunky and dory and people don't have to think about all the things Coates spends his time thinking about (when he's not thinking about le francais). To be raised white is to be raised with the specific privilege of not having to be aware of one's privilege. Coates is not saying white babies are different because their parents teach them to walk like this and black parents teach their kids to walk like this; he's saying white babies are different because they get to live without knowing that they're different.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
Continual self analysis, self awareness of those around you, research and stopping any bad behavior once you've found what is wrong. This can't be done unless you let go of your ego, and let your humility guide your actions.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
As they say, the first step is admitting there's a problem. Then, you have to actively counter the balance.
This, this right here, is the essential pathology of well-meaning people - usually white - discussing race. What you are doing right now is turning from the actual problems of racism - the concrete, bloody, individual problems that end lives on a daily basis in the US - and to a voyage of personal growth. Chicago's South Side resembles 2006 Iraq and the response is to reflect on your privilege? Are you freaking kidding me? Privilege is not the problem! Cops being polite to white people is not what gets black kids killed! This entire framework is designed to move from real change to academic discussions so we can all nod our heads soberly as we reflect on our sins. It's Confession for liberals. It will never change anything, and it is cowardly. I have zero respect for a discussion of racism that treats it like just another station of the cross for white people, or for liberalism that thinks personal purity is the answer to injustice.
In mmo terms people aren't calling for white people's racial to be nerfed, we are calling for every other classes racial to be buffed.
Yes, but the way these arguments often go makes it seem more like people believe that white people are somehow cheating, or getting something they shouldn't get. 'Privilege' is usually the most useless and counterproductive argument brought to these sort of discussions. By framing it as 'How can you make sure others are being treated as you have been treated' instead of 'Think of all the unfair ways you have gotten ahead of people due to your privilege and feel bad about that' it makes the entire argument more useful and functional as a tool to persuade people to behave differently.
The thing is that the latter framing is the more honest of the two. It's not just about how I've been treated in a more beneficial manner, but that, in many, many real ways I've been given breaks that came at the expense of others. And yes, it's not a comfortable thing to talk about. But it has to be discussed. Trying to sugar coat it doesn't make the argument more useful - it just delays the ripping of the band-aid.
I am not certain about this. While discussion certainly needs to be framed differently than "try to make other people get treated as well as you do," it's very clear that striking the wrong tone when attempting to discuss privilege makes comes off as confrontational, and as soon as people see it as an attack they are more likely to double down rather than listen. And yes, some of the people who double down couldn't ever be reached, but it is very possible to drive away people who would be receptive if it was framed as less of an attack on them, especially people who grew up poor-but-white or in another situation where they can't immediately see any benefits of being privileged.
Like, a lot of times I see very well written posts that evoke strong emotions and convey how terrible it can be to lack privilege while still explaining it properly, and those posts are wonderful reads for people who already agree. But they're also so clearly hostile that they have no or even negative value for making somebody understand privilege better, though it may drive them out of the thread.
E: I'm not trying to say that an honest explanation of privilege is bad, but that dividing it into this sort of binary where you're either sugarcoating privilege too much to be useful or trying to evoke negative emotions to make people understand their privilege is silly. There has to be a middle ground.
It's not about evoking negative emotions, but about being honest. It's what Coates was talking about here:
But at the end of the segment, the host flashed a widely shared picture of a 12-year-old black boy tearfully hugging a white police officer. Then she asked me about “hope.” And I knew then that I had failed. And I remembered that I had expected to fail. And I wondered again at the indistinct sadness welling up in me. Why exactly was I sad? I came out of the studio and walked for a while. It was a calm late-November day. Families, believing themselves white, were out on the streets. Infants, raised to be white, were bundled in strollers. And I was sad for these people, much as I was sad for the host and sad for all the people out there watching and reveling in a specious hope. I realized then why I was sad. When the journalist asked me about my body, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most gorgeous dream. I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is tree houses and the Cub Scouts. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option, because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists by warring with the known world, I was sad for the host, I was sad for all those families, I was sad for my country, but above all, in that moment, I was sad for you.
There's really no "nice" way to have this conversation, not without leaving critical parts on the cutting room floor.
I didn't use the word "nice," and you directly agreed with the approach of "think about the unfair ways you have gotten ahead... and feel bad."
That is literally an approach with the stated goal of making people feel bad for being privileged. I understand honesty, but there are plenty of times when people (Coates included, holy shit) antagonize privileged listeners far beyond what is necessary to explain to them why their privilege results in worse outcomes for others. That is the approach I disagree with; you can make people feel for others without trying to make them feel bad or attacked for who they are.
No it's stated goal is to make people aware of privilege. That they then feel bad is, well, a human having empathy.
The quote he agreed with, in full:
'Think of all the unfair ways you have gotten ahead of people due to your privilege and feel bad about that'
You would need a very charitable and very biased view to read the goal of that as anything but "feel bad for having privilege."
No, you would just need to know english.
You should look at your privilege. And then you should feel bad about that because it's obviously bad if you have any empathy for other human beings.
E: I agree with you that people should be aware of privilege! I just disagree with the idea, which seems to be accepted in a lot of circles, that the best way to do that is to go about it in a way focused on battering or guilt-tripping somebody into accepting privilege. What you are saying (make them aware of privilege, and have them feel bad for somebody else) is exactly the approach I want to be used. But the approach stated, which is to make them feel bad about themselves because of their privilege, is going to drive otherwise receptive people off.
There is no difference. It can't not be a "guilt-trip" because it's a horrible thing that you are making people aware of. It's like accusing someone of "guilt-tripping" for pointing out the differing rates of incarceration by race.
Think about it this way. You are morally obligated to consider this, feel bad about it for awhile and maybe vote/talk/act on this knowledge every now and then. Minorities have to spend their lives dealing with this shit on a daily basis.
No matter how bad it makes you feel, you are still coming out way ahead.
In my experience, most people reject the principle that coming out way ahead yields any obligation whatsoever to introspect, feel guilt, or dedicate time to pursuing more egalitarian outcomes; or, at least, I've found that to be so in discussing global poverty. Whenever I have suggested that guilt might be an appropriate response to the lives one could've saved i.e. through charity, the pushback I've gotten has been ferocious (although, of course, all from people who, even were they to feel guilty, would still be coming out way ahead of the typical beneficiary of doctors without borders or the like).
[e: I say this as someone who does not disagree per se with your actual suggestion]
I don't know how a utilitarian could ever see guilt as an appropriate emotion, given the psychological literature on guilt as a motivator, but I assume you intend that guilt to lead to a simple and concrete action in the case of global poverty: giving more money to good charities. In the case of racism, the useful action is abandoned in favor of simply advocating for the guilt. I submit this is bass ackwards.
we are cultured into playing out racial roles (rather than race being e.g. innate biological expression). Babies do get raised to be white, given that white is a culturally contingent social category with culturally contingent social meaning.
I don't follow. What would a racial "role" be? Bank president? Lawyer?
Usually the counterargument to this is something based in biology. There are clearly some genetic differences between blacks and whites, some of which are visible. We've prioritized some of those - skin color, nose shape, eyelid shape - over others - hair color, finger length. Outside the occasional dumb blonde or soulless ginger joke, we don't categorize people based on hair color. Skin color and facial features are only loosely associated with ancestry, anyway. A black person who descended from slaves is likely to have a significant amount of admixture - genetic lineages from both European and different African ancestries. An American slave descendant may share more in common genetically with a white American from the same region than he does with, say, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.
We've decided that these arbitrary messy genetic correlates define race and not those arbitrary messy genetic correlates.
I personally think that "infants, raised to be white" is an eloquent way of reminding us of these facts.
You're entirely wrong on this part. There are a whole host of diseases that are based on racial genetics (cystic fibrosis anyone?), and even blood is different- African-Americans have a 68% chance and Africans have an 88% chance to be a (-) b (-) for the Duffy antigen, which is a phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of Caucasians.
Again, not sure what "facts" you're referring to. How is an infant "raised to be white"? What values are they taught? What behaviors do they learn? Because if you say anything, anything other than "normal values" then you'd be called a racist and I'd agree. And don't hide behind "oh, police brutality" because that's hogwash; Coates is clearly referring to something else when he's denigrating middle-class activities like the Cub Scouts and friggin' Memorial Day, he's being a frickin' racist.
Seriously, would a blonde-haired blue-eyed Fox News host sniffing at all the "infants, raised to be black" be anything less than crazy talk? So how is it that Coates gets a pass on this lunacy?
"What values are they taught?" That "white" is an aspect of their identity that holds any intrinsic meaning beyond the absence of the Duffy antigen.
Coates' specific turn of phrase here is meant to remind of us race as a social construct; but in context, being raised white means being part of the "Dream"--the unpunctured bubble within which everything is both hunky and dory and people don't have to think about all the things Coates spends his time thinking about (when he's not thinking about le francais). To be raised white is to be raised with the specific privilege of not having to be aware of one's privilege. Coates is not saying white babies are different because their parents teach them to walk like this and black parents teach their kids to walk like this; he's saying white babies are different because they get to live without knowing that they're different.
Also, to further hammer the point that race, from a sociology standpoint, is a construct, there were people who had the physical characteristics of being "white" but were treated as "black" in the last century. It wasn't until the Loving ruling in 1967 that the 20th century One-drop rules were finally unconstitutional in the US.
While there are physiologic characteristics that are hallmarks of particular ethnic groups (inherited genetic disorders, hair/skin color types, etc.), these aren't what people are talking about when they are defining conflicts about "race" and "racism". After all, a Pakistani, an Indian, a Persian, and a Palestinian would all say that they are different races (and indeed, physiologically they are from different ethnic groups, too, in terms of genetic inheritance), but the same racism against "Muslim-looking Arabs" affects them all in the US (regardless of their religion or birthplace or parents). It's arbitrary, silly, but also deadly and causes harm throughout society.
Right right wing politicians setting actual regressive policy is totes equivalent to a black writer who doesn't sugar coat his harsh truths for the audience of privileged people not listening to him. Totes.
The difference in tone between pages 1-3 and page 5 is pretty stark.
Sorry, were we not supposed to talk about racist and classist policy in a thread about race and class?
No, you were supposed to talk about it. totes.
0
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
Continual self analysis, self awareness of those around you, research and stopping any bad behavior once you've found what is wrong. This can't be done unless you let go of your ego, and let your humility guide your actions.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
As they say, the first step is admitting there's a problem. Then, you have to actively counter the balance.
This, this right here, is the essential pathology of well-meaning people - usually white - discussing race. What you are doing right now is turning from the actual problems of racism - the concrete, bloody, individual problems that end lives on a daily basis in the US - and to a voyage of personal growth. Chicago's South Side resembles 2006 Iraq and the response is to reflect on your privilege? Are you freaking kidding me? Privilege is not the problem! Cops being polite to white people is not what gets black kids killed! This entire framework is designed to move from real change to academic discussions so we can all nod our heads soberly as we reflect on our sins. It's Confession for liberals. It will never change anything, and it is cowardly. I have zero respect for a discussion of racism that treats it like just another station of the cross for white people, or for liberalism that thinks personal purity is the answer to injustice.
Why does injustice exist? Is it because we have yet to determine a pragmatic solution? I think most liberals would argue that racism is prevalent because of both institutional racial policy that needs to be changed and unconsciously or ignorantly racist individuals who also need to be changed (or outlived); and that either way the solution is or requires people to be aware and caring and active about the issue. It's not hard a lot of the time to identify bad policy and come up with solutions; what's hard is getting the public to demand those solutions. What's hard is getting the public to recognize its own ingrained biases so that individuals can work in their own lives to counteract those biases.
To use the cops example specifically, we may need to change our policy to make sure cops who needlessly kill black people are brought to justice, but drumming up support for body cams and the like requires people to care about the victims, and for many people that means getting them past the idea that blacks are criminals and poor and are criminals and poor through their own faults rather than the kind of systemic racism that enshrines white privilege. Or we might need to directly convince the cops of the same thing. Either way, policy is demanded, enacted, and enforced by people, by individuals, and so convincing individuals to see the world in a different way is an important means to policy.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
Continual self analysis, self awareness of those around you, research and stopping any bad behavior once you've found what is wrong. This can't be done unless you let go of your ego, and let your humility guide your actions.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
As they say, the first step is admitting there's a problem. Then, you have to actively counter the balance.
This, this right here, is the essential pathology of well-meaning people - usually white - discussing race. What you are doing right now is turning from the actual problems of racism - the concrete, bloody, individual problems that end lives on a daily basis in the US - and to a voyage of personal growth. Chicago's South Side resembles 2006 Iraq and the response is to reflect on your privilege? Are you freaking kidding me? Privilege is not the problem! Cops being polite to white people is not what gets black kids killed! This entire framework is designed to move from real change to academic discussions so we can all nod our heads soberly as we reflect on our sins. It's Confession for liberals. It will never change anything, and it is cowardly. I have zero respect for a discussion of racism that treats it like just another station of the cross for white people, or for liberalism that thinks personal purity is the answer to injustice.
Why does injustice exist? Is it because we have yet to determine a pragmatic solution? I think most liberals would argue that racism is prevalent because of both institutional racial policy that needs to be changed and unconsciously or ignorantly racist individuals who also need to be changed (or outlived); and that either way the solution is or requires people to be aware and caring and active about the issue. It's not hard a lot of the time to identify bad policy and come up with solutions; what's hard is getting the public to demand those solutions. What's hard is getting the public to recognize its own ingrained biases so that individuals can work in their own lives to counteract those biases.
To use the cops example specifically, we may need to change our policy to make sure cops who needlessly kill black people are brought to justice, but drumming up support for body cams and the like requires people to care about the victims, and for many people that means getting them past the idea that blacks are criminals and poor and are criminals and poor through their own faults rather than the kind of systemic racism that enshrines white privilege. Or we might need to directly convince the cops of the same thing. Either way, policy is demanded, enacted, and enforced by people, by individuals, and so convincing individuals to see the world in a different way is an important means to policy.
In your cop example though, there's no need to even talk about racism. The cops do heinous shit to white people all the time as well! In fact, most of the structural racism issues seem to mostly apply to poor whites as well... I think we're back to substituting poverty for race in order to make the argument work.
spool32 on
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The first time Inread Coates it was exciting and illuminating and depressing all at once. By the 5th time I read him, I felt sick of the hyperbole and felt like her really only had a few arguments that he repackaged endlessly. Now he has spiraled off the Earth and might as well live on Jupiter his rhetoric has gotten so out there. His framing has gotten so bad that I can't imagine taking him seriously anymore, despite him talking about important issues. It's a shame, really.
The first time Inread Coates it was exciting and illuminating and depressing all at once. By the 5th time I read him, I felt sick of the hyperbole and felt like her really only had a few arguments that he repackaged endlessly. Now he has spiraled off the Earth and might as well live on Jupiter his rhetoric has gotten so out there. His framing has gotten so bad that I can't imagine taking him seriously anymore, despite him talking about important issues. It's a shame, really.
I can see your point, and in some ways, I agree.
Or, possibly, his position may have remained the same, and it is you who have moved further away from him. *shrugs* Or both of you moved away from each other. One of the hallmarks of cognitive dissonance is the doubling down on your deeply held beliefs, rather than swaying toward the opinions of an outside influence. It is possible that in order for you to make sense of what you've read, you've retreated into your own personal core beliefs rather than opening up to a new one. This is not an accusation... it's something that everyone does, when they are challenged in any way. You fall back on what you know, because it grounds you.
It's hard for me to process Coates, because I'm part of a privileged race that is non-white. When I speed and get pulled over, the cops let me off with a warning, because from my appearance and my accessories (I once was literally pulled over while I had several college textbooks in my passenger seat!), I'm one of those "hardworking Asian types". I think part of what helps is that my parents had some deeply held casually racist beliefs ("Don't play with the black kids down the street", "But some of my friends are black!", that sort of thing), and that goads me into being more sympathetic.
0
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
Continual self analysis, self awareness of those around you, research and stopping any bad behavior once you've found what is wrong. This can't be done unless you let go of your ego, and let your humility guide your actions.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
As they say, the first step is admitting there's a problem. Then, you have to actively counter the balance.
This, this right here, is the essential pathology of well-meaning people - usually white - discussing race. What you are doing right now is turning from the actual problems of racism - the concrete, bloody, individual problems that end lives on a daily basis in the US - and to a voyage of personal growth. Chicago's South Side resembles 2006 Iraq and the response is to reflect on your privilege? Are you freaking kidding me? Privilege is not the problem! Cops being polite to white people is not what gets black kids killed! This entire framework is designed to move from real change to academic discussions so we can all nod our heads soberly as we reflect on our sins. It's Confession for liberals. It will never change anything, and it is cowardly. I have zero respect for a discussion of racism that treats it like just another station of the cross for white people, or for liberalism that thinks personal purity is the answer to injustice.
Why does injustice exist? Is it because we have yet to determine a pragmatic solution? I think most liberals would argue that racism is prevalent because of both institutional racial policy that needs to be changed and unconsciously or ignorantly racist individuals who also need to be changed (or outlived); and that either way the solution is or requires people to be aware and caring and active about the issue. It's not hard a lot of the time to identify bad policy and come up with solutions; what's hard is getting the public to demand those solutions. What's hard is getting the public to recognize its own ingrained biases so that individuals can work in their own lives to counteract those biases.
To use the cops example specifically, we may need to change our policy to make sure cops who needlessly kill black people are brought to justice, but drumming up support for body cams and the like requires people to care about the victims, and for many people that means getting them past the idea that blacks are criminals and poor and are criminals and poor through their own faults rather than the kind of systemic racism that enshrines white privilege. Or we might need to directly convince the cops of the same thing. Either way, policy is demanded, enacted, and enforced by people, by individuals, and so convincing individuals to see the world in a different way is an important means to policy.
In your cop example though, there's no need to even talk about racism. The cops do heinous shit to white people all the time as well! In fact, most of the structural racism issues seem to mostly apply to poor whites as well... I think we're back to substituting poverty for race in order to make the argument work.
I'm not sure what the answer is as far the police go. But I don't think focusing on poverty alone in general is a good solution, because you can't disentangle poverty from racism. First because anti-poverty measures are opposed partly on the basis of racism, and second because anti-poverty measures tend to be built, enforced, or accessed in an unequal fashion, such that it becomes harder for poor blacks to get the same benefits as poor whites. You need racially targeted solutions or you won't solve the problem.
we are cultured into playing out racial roles (rather than race being e.g. innate biological expression). Babies do get raised to be white, given that white is a culturally contingent social category with culturally contingent social meaning.
I don't follow. What would a racial "role" be? Bank president? Lawyer?
Usually the counterargument to this is something based in biology. There are clearly some genetic differences between blacks and whites, some of which are visible. We've prioritized some of those - skin color, nose shape, eyelid shape - over others - hair color, finger length. Outside the occasional dumb blonde or soulless ginger joke, we don't categorize people based on hair color. Skin color and facial features are only loosely associated with ancestry, anyway. A black person who descended from slaves is likely to have a significant amount of admixture - genetic lineages from both European and different African ancestries. An American slave descendant may share more in common genetically with a white American from the same region than he does with, say, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.
We've decided that these arbitrary messy genetic correlates define race and not those arbitrary messy genetic correlates.
I personally think that "infants, raised to be white" is an eloquent way of reminding us of these facts.
You're entirely wrong on this part. There are a whole host of diseases that are based on racial genetics (cystic fibrosis anyone?), and even blood is different- African-Americans have a 68% chance and Africans have an 88% chance to be a (-) b (-) for the Duffy antigen, which is a phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of Caucasians.
Again, not sure what "facts" you're referring to. How is an infant "raised to be white"? What values are they taught? What behaviors do they learn? Because if you say anything, anything other than "normal values" then you'd be called a racist and I'd agree. And don't hide behind "oh, police brutality" because that's hogwash; Coates is clearly referring to something else when he's denigrating middle-class activities like the Cub Scouts and friggin' Memorial Day, he's being a frickin' racist.
Seriously, would a blonde-haired blue-eyed Fox News host sniffing at all the "infants, raised to be black" be anything less than crazy talk? So how is it that Coates gets a pass on this lunacy?
They're not hiding behind police brutality, that's a symptom of a greater cause minorities face then whites don't.
When white kids get "the talk" it is not the same as what black kids are told. To be black in America is an experience you'll never know, though minority groups probably have similar responses to society's oppression and they have counter-measures to protect themselves and warn each other what to do in a bad situation that white men wouldn't be in due to their ethnicity or gender. White people don't have to do this because they have a deep rooted fear based on reality that their skin color is going to get them killed by police.
Every ethnicity in America have their own sub-culture, Coates was addressing the black culture - which has its own values and differing opinions to white culture. There is a specific insult over various ethnic sub-cultures that is about a person from their culture "acting white" (which has different connotations). This is one of them:
Apple (Indian)
Used to refer to a North American Indian who thinks like or supports white people ( red on the outside, white on the inside). The equivalent of one black calling another an "Oreo"
"Johnny Two Bears - is such an Apple Indian. He hasn't shown up at our blockade of the housing development for at least 2 weeks.
It is a very real thing in these communities that is backlash from oppression of whites over the generations.
African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of African Americans to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in the historical experience of the African-American people, including the Middle Passage. The culture is both distinct from and enormously influential to American culture as a whole.
African-American culture is rooted in West and Central Africa. Understanding its identity within the culture of the United States it is, in the anthropological sense, conscious of its origins as largely a blend of West and Central African cultures. Although slavery greatly restricted the ability of African-Americans to practice their original cultural traditions, many practices, values and beliefs survived, and over time have modified and/or blended with European cultures and other cultures such as that of Native Americans. African-American identity was established during the slavery period, producing a dynamic culture that has had and continues to have a profound impact on American culture as a whole, as well as that of the broader world.[1]
Elaborate rituals and ceremonies were a significant part of African Americans' ancestral culture. Many West African societies traditionally believed that spirits dwelled in their surrounding nature. From this disposition, they treated their environment with mindful care. They also generally believed that a spiritual life source existed after death, and that ancestors in this spiritual realm could then mediate between the supreme creator and the living. Honor and prayer was displayed to these "ancient ones," the spirit of those past. West Africans also believed in spiritual possession.[2]
In the beginning of the eighteenth century Christianity began to spread across North Africa; this shift in religion began displacing traditional African spiritual practices. The enslaved Africans brought this complex religious dynamic within their culture to America. This fusion of traditional African beliefs with Christianity provided a common place for those practicing religion in Africa and America.[2]
After emancipation, unique African-American traditions continued to flourish, as distinctive traditions or radical innovations in music, art, literature, religion, cuisine, and other fields. 20th-century sociologists, such as Gunnar Myrdal, believed that African Americans had lost most cultural ties with Africa.[3] But, anthropological field research by Melville Herskovits and others demonstrated that there has been a continuum of African traditions among Africans of the Diaspora.[4] The greatest influence of African cultural practices on European culture is found below the Mason-Dixon line in the American South.[5][6]
For many years African-American culture developed separately from European-American culture, both because of slavery and the persistence of racial discrimination in America, as well as African-American slave descendants' desire to create and maintain their own traditions. Today, African-American culture has become a significant part of American culture and yet, at the same time, remains a distinct cultural body.[7]
The Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Native Americans etc have their own cultures in America, just like the Irish, Italian, German, Scottish.
In your cop example though, there's no need to even talk about racism. The cops do heinous shit to white people all the time as well! In fact, most of the structural racism issues seem to mostly apply to poor whites as well... I think we're back to substituting poverty for race in order to make the argument work.
You can't talk about police brutality without tackling racism. Yes, they do awful shit to everyone - that's not the issue. There isn't a deeply entrenched pattern of cops in America killing and exploiting white people in the justice system over their skin color. It's possible for them to hurt everyone while doing racist activities to minorities.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
Continual self analysis, self awareness of those around you, research and stopping any bad behavior once you've found what is wrong. This can't be done unless you let go of your ego, and let your humility guide your actions.
But who should bear the cost of correcting for institutional racism?
And, boom! This is where all my white peers shut off when talking race issues. Assuming an individual grasps the issue of implicit bias (racism in this case) they are then confronted with a big problem for anyone of any race to deal with: letting go of a privilege for oneself and one's offspring. The ego hates aknowledging a privilege because it undermines one's accomplishments. Self-preservation, greed, and even protectivness of family then kick in and reject giving up said privilege and the drop in social/material status.
And how exactly does one turn off "white privilege" so other races can get a shot?
As they say, the first step is admitting there's a problem. Then, you have to actively counter the balance.
This, this right here, is the essential pathology of well-meaning people - usually white - discussing race. What you are doing right now is turning from the actual problems of racism - the concrete, bloody, individual problems that end lives on a daily basis in the US - and to a voyage of personal growth. Chicago's South Side resembles 2006 Iraq and the response is to reflect on your privilege? Are you freaking kidding me? Privilege is not the problem! Cops being polite to white people is not what gets black kids killed! This entire framework is designed to move from real change to academic discussions so we can all nod our heads soberly as we reflect on our sins. It's Confession for liberals. It will never change anything, and it is cowardly. I have zero respect for a discussion of racism that treats it like just another station of the cross for white people, or for liberalism that thinks personal purity is the answer to injustice.
Why does injustice exist? Is it because we have yet to determine a pragmatic solution? I think most liberals would argue that racism is prevalent because of both institutional racial policy that needs to be changed and unconsciously or ignorantly racist individuals who also need to be changed (or outlived); and that either way the solution is or requires people to be aware and caring and active about the issue. It's not hard a lot of the time to identify bad policy and come up with solutions; what's hard is getting the public to demand those solutions. What's hard is getting the public to recognize its own ingrained biases so that individuals can work in their own lives to counteract those biases.
To use the cops example specifically, we may need to change our policy to make sure cops who needlessly kill black people are brought to justice, but drumming up support for body cams and the like requires people to care about the victims, and for many people that means getting them past the idea that blacks are criminals and poor and are criminals and poor through their own faults rather than the kind of systemic racism that enshrines white privilege. Or we might need to directly convince the cops of the same thing. Either way, policy is demanded, enacted, and enforced by people, by individuals, and so convincing individuals to see the world in a different way is an important means to policy.
In your cop example though, there's no need to even talk about racism. The cops do heinous shit to white people all the time as well! In fact, most of the structural racism issues seem to mostly apply to poor whites as well... I think we're back to substituting poverty for race in order to make the argument work.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
+5
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
But does that control for poverty? I think Spool's argument is that, while black people may be disproportionately targeted or brutalized by cops, black people are also disproportionately impoverished, and disproportionately live in high-crime, low-income areas. I couldn't immediately find evidence to refute him on that, and in fact found several studies suggesting that Spool is correct.
+2
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
A study in Cincinnati found that black drivers had longer stops and higher search rates than white drivers. However, when the researchers matched stops involving black drivers with similarly situated white drivers, those stopped at the same time, place, and context (reason for the stop, validity of the driver's license, etc.), they found no differences. Their conclusion was that differences in the time, place, and context of the stops were the cause of the longer stops and higher search rates. [11]
Of note in this research literature is a 2003 paper, “Neighborhood Context and Police Use of Force,” that suggests police are more likely to employ force in higher-crime neighborhoods generally, complicating any easy interpretation of race as the decisive factor in explaining police forcefulness. The researchers, William Terrill of Northeastern University and Michael D. Reisig of Michigan State University, found that “officers are significantly more likely to use higher levels of force when encountering criminal suspects in high crime areas and neighborhoods with high levels of concentrated disadvantage independent of suspect behavior and other statistical controls.” Terrill and Reisig explore several hypothetical explanations and ultimately conclude:
Embedded within each of these potential explanations is the influence of key sociodemographic variables such as race, class, gender, and age. As the results show, when these factors are considered at the encounter level, they are significant. However, the race (i.e., minority) effect is mediated by neighborhood context. Perhaps officers do not simply label minority suspects according to what Skolnick (1994) termed “symbolic assailants,” as much as they label distressed socioeconomic neighborhoods as potential sources of conflict.
In studying the Seattle and Miami police departments, the authors of the 2010 National Institute of Justice report also conclude that “non-white suspects were less likely to be injured than white suspects … where suspect race was available as a variable for analysis. Although we cannot speculate as to the cause of this finding, or whether it is merely spurious, it is encouraging that minority suspects were not more likely to be injured than whites.”
I want to stress that I don't think this is hugely significant in the wider debate, because even if people treat blacks poorly because they're impoverished, blacks are disproportionately impoverished because of racism; the root cause is the same, and the solutions still require racial-mindedness. But it does speak to the question of whether cops are themselves acting primarily out of a racial animus or if they are instead judging people based more on issues of class and environment.
This, this right here, is the essential pathology of well-meaning people - usually white - discussing race. What you are doing right now is turning from the actual problems of racism - the concrete, bloody, individual problems that end lives on a daily basis in the US - and to a voyage of personal growth. Chicago's South Side resembles 2006 Iraq and the response is to reflect on your privilege? Are you freaking kidding me? Privilege is not the problem! Cops being polite to white people is not what gets black kids killed! This entire framework is designed to move from real change to academic discussions so we can all nod our heads soberly as we reflect on our sins. It's Confession for liberals. It will never change anything, and it is cowardly. I have zero respect for a discussion of racism that treats it like just another station of the cross for white people, or for liberalism that thinks personal purity is the answer to injustice.
Those are completely different conversations about the subject of race in America. Those responses weren't for solving large scale racial issues, they're for what individual people can do to make the world a better place with what little power they have right now. It's a small difference but it is a difference. Fixing what happened in Chicago and Ferguson and federal racial barriers would involve a larger discussion about state/federal governance. If you want those answers I'll give you a thread with them about it:
Posts
After I first heard Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) speak about incarceration and verified everything she was saying with my own independent research, I physically felt a sinking feeling in my gut. I already knew most of what she talks about, but prior to that I didn't really know the breadth or depth of it, or connected the dots quite as succinctly as she does.
I'm not responsible for it, but it is still my country doing it, it affects people I personally know, it erodes the communities I'm part of. I don't feel guilty, but I do feel awful about it.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
edit- what would involve "raising children to be white", Preacher? Because then you get into "white values" and "white attitudes" as if they're somehow different than those of other races and you're just fueling the racists at that point.
pleasepaypreacher.net
This is actually a big thing in feminist history - women are the enforcers of patriarchal values. The prime example is with genital mutilation. Its the elder women in the society who make sure women have their vaginas mutilated, and its the same women who make sure anyone who doesn't want to is shunned. Anyone who has ever lived in a conservative small town knows the score - it's the churchy women who are obsessed with slut shaming.
Basically, the surest way to have power in an oppressive system is to be a useful tool for the oppressors. Think Samuel L. Jackson's character in Django Unchained.
That's the wrong way to go about it.
So, let's take just one example. Lead poisoning is a serious problem in children, and while the known harmful dose is 10 µg per deciliter of blood, evidence suggests there may be no substantial safe dosage. Dr. Richard Canfield et al suggested that even below the known harmful dose, IQ declined by 7.4 points as lifetime average blood lead concentrations increased from 1 to 10 µg per deciliter. Blacks are disproportionately exposed to lead contamination compared to whites. Additionally, there's some pretty strong evidence that lead may be associated with criminal behavior, which is consistent with it being a powerful neurotoxin. And while it is a majority black problem, whites do suffer from it as well.
Will it cost money to cleanup some of this lead? Yeah. Will both increases IQ by 7.4 points and ameliorating serious crime end up paying for itself over time? Also, yes.
I think non-need tested direct cash payments that aren't part of a basic income scheme are really bad policy, but there are a lot of measures we can take that we should have taken decades ago, but just didn't, that will both increase the standard of living for black Americans and simultaneously pay for themselves.
Also, for example, the share of all income earned by the top 1% has increased from its low of a little over 10% to around 20% (2011), and even within that category, the top 0.1% earn far more than the rest of the top 1%. Consistent with some current policy proposals, we can simply ask billionaires to pay their fair share and have a lot of money to work with. There is a huge range of area where we can make society more equal without putting a major burden on the middle class, while even still allowing for some people to own four homes and ten cars and the like.
It's also worth noting, as we're on the topic, that OECD suggests that the GDP growth of OECD countries is being demolished by income inequality. The United States missed out on 6-7% of growth between 1990-2010 because there isn't enough opportunity on the bottom end, and it's getting worse, so we'll lose even more from 2010-2030 without substantial changes (we also lose out on growth on growth). Most of that benefit would go to the people it helps, but don't fool yourself, it costs you money for other people to be poor, and I don't think that's a good use of my cash. I'd rather spend it myself, and I'm sure you would too.
Worth reading, very short:
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/Focus-Inequality-and-Growth-2014.pdf
Think about it this way. You are morally obligated to consider this, feel bad about it for awhile and maybe vote/talk/act on this knowledge every now and then. Minorities have to spend their lives dealing with this shit on a daily basis.
No matter how bad it makes you feel, you are still coming out way ahead.
In my experience, most people reject the principle that coming out way ahead yields any obligation whatsoever to introspect, feel guilt, or dedicate time to pursuing more egalitarian outcomes; or, at least, I've found that to be so in discussing global poverty. Whenever I have suggested that guilt might be an appropriate response to the lives one could've saved i.e. through charity, the pushback I've gotten has been ferocious (although, of course, all from people who, even were they to feel guilty, would still be coming out way ahead of the typical beneficiary of doctors without borders or the like).
[e: I say this as someone who does not disagree per se with your actual suggestion]
So, how is he "ruining" things?
I'm not a big fan of Coates' writing style, which runs a little too grand for my taste, however I took that bit to be relatively unobjectionable: it's an unusual turn of phrase calling attention to the way in which we are cultured into playing out racial roles (rather than race being e.g. innate biological expression). Babies do get raised to be white, given that white is a culturally contingent social category with culturally contingent social meaning.
e: Feral says quite the right thing to expand on this below
Did you see Kana's post above about "English and other whites?" The concept of a white race is something that slowly emerged during the 1600s-1900s, and it was closely intertwined with the African slave trade. Prior to the slave trade, people were more likely to categorize themselves by nationality. During the slave trade, the definition of "white" shifted over time - sometimes it included Jews, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it included Irish, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it included Italians, sometimes it didn't.
Or, as Coates put it in What We Mean When We Say 'Race Is a Social Construct'
Usually the counterargument to this is something based in biology. There are clearly some genetic differences between blacks and whites, some of which are visible. We've prioritized some of those - skin color, nose shape, eyelid shape - over others - hair color, finger length. Outside the occasional dumb blonde or soulless ginger joke, we don't categorize people based on hair color. Skin color and facial features are only loosely associated with ancestry, anyway. A black person who descended from slaves is likely to have a significant amount of admixture - genetic lineages from both European and different African ancestries. An American slave descendant may share more in common genetically with a white American from the same region than he does with, say, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.
We've decided that these arbitrary messy genetic correlates define race and not those arbitrary messy genetic correlates.
I personally think that "infants, raised to be white" is an eloquent way of reminding us of these facts.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/33107374/#Comment_33107374
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm just saying that (as far as I can see) the absolute highest that the average person could gain from racism is around 4 grand.
So any talk of personal gain from racism seems like a stretch.
By definition. Racism is not a winning economic strategy since it means you are undervaluing valuable social capital. Low income black people are unemployed at much higher rates than low income white people. A Marxist could argue they are less exploited (shout out to all the Marxists). In reality this is due to effective segregation. I don't know if racism will ever end, but I 'm pretty sure the most effective way to move forward is to end segregation. Not sure how to do it though so
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
The difference in tone between pages 1-3 and page 5 is pretty stark.
You're entirely wrong on this part. There are a whole host of diseases that are based on racial genetics (cystic fibrosis anyone?), and even blood is different- African-Americans have a 68% chance and Africans have an 88% chance to be a (-) b (-) for the Duffy antigen, which is a phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of Caucasians.
Again, not sure what "facts" you're referring to. How is an infant "raised to be white"? What values are they taught? What behaviors do they learn? Because if you say anything, anything other than "normal values" then you'd be called a racist and I'd agree. And don't hide behind "oh, police brutality" because that's hogwash; Coates is clearly referring to something else when he's denigrating middle-class activities like the Cub Scouts and friggin' Memorial Day, he's being a frickin' racist.
Seriously, would a blonde-haired blue-eyed Fox News host sniffing at all the "infants, raised to be black" be anything less than crazy talk? So how is it that Coates gets a pass on this lunacy?
I kinda agree.
I think that social and economic justice is both prudent policy and an outright moral duty, but I do have two criticisms with the privilege argument:
1. When applied by people who lack empirical backgrounds, they tend to apply it evenly to white people, which isn't the best way of thinking about it. The average white person has it better than the average black person by a lot, but that doesn't necessarily map to any individual.
2. I object to the framing a bit. White people don't have privilege, black people are getting abused. Everyone has the right to grow up without being poisoned, to seek employment, to work towards owning a home, to be treated with respect by civil servants, etc, etc. I think this framing would help social acceptability slightly (my dad and siblings grew up on a subsistence farm. Yes, they absolutely had it far easier than black Americans would in the same circumstance, but deriving almost all of your economic value from farm produced goods consumed on said farm is best described by a word other than "privilege"), and I'd argue it correctly frames it in terms of legal and moral duties. No one is owed a privilege, people are owed rights.
It's a bit of a "potato, potato" thing, but I personally find that framing both more accurate and more convincing, myself.
And, as I noted in my other post, I don't think it is accurate to say that the average white person is better off because of racism. I'd say it harms almost everyone (a handful of people are able to profit off racism very handsomely, however, and they should / do know what they are doing and are monsters), just not equally. I take proper moral living very seriously, so it's a goal in and of itself, but the thing is, failing to maximize the value of your human capital simply isn't smart. Over short enough timeframes, and with deplorably and naked enough theft, you might be able to come out ahead, but I'd go so far as to say that enlightened self-interest skews perhaps surprisingly strongly towards charity, equality, harmony, etc. in most cases.
I'll keep that in mind the next time I hear about a discrimination case.
"Did they do a blood test for the Duffy antigen before denying that guy a job? No? Oh, well, then it must not be discrimination."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Sorry, were we not supposed to talk about racist and classist policy in a thread about race and class?
I am, in general, a fan of forward-looking rationales for racial equality and integration (which seem to me inseparable). That is to say: work to promote racial equality and integration can be justified on the basis of its positive effects going forward. By contrast, I'm not so hot on backward-looking rationales, i.e. rationales which hinge on a program of restitution or the correction of a historical wrong. And, I take questions of how much individual white Americans have profited to be very much within the bailiwick of this latter sort of program: the idea there being that by quantifying the benefit, we may learn how much is owed back.
Part of the reason I'm skeptical is just because I accept a moral theory that is essentially forward-looking (aka, I'm a Utilitarian). So I reject the logic of guilt. But another reason is that even within the logic of guilt it's unclear to me that there's a good case for racial compensation. So, for instance one principle that seems to be in currency here is: if you profit from an injustice (even as a 3rd party) you owe restitution from those profits to the victims of that injustice. But is this really so? Consider the case of someone who, after September 11th, took pictures of ground zero and sold them for a handsome profit. That person profited from an injustice; without September 11th he would never have been in a position to make his money. But could the victims of September 11th, and their families, press a valid claim against him to recover his profits for themselves? (In the law of torts, which we might take to be an extended development of the logic of guilt: definitely not). This is even allowing that which is itself dubious: that the logic of guilt allows for the assay and enforcement of collective repayment even across some unknown minority of parties which we believe were uninvolved, which would be practically necessary to any such effort.
In any case, it's pretty moot because both A) direct compensation is politically dead in the water
(For Settler I'd have to be Christian)
In saying race is socially constructed--or nodding along that people are raised to be white--I don't mean to say that there are no biological categorizations of people into races that are both roughly natural qua biology and roughly track common racial distinctions. I recently read a paper in the philosophy of race arguing that there are, and it all seemed plausible enough to me (though that paper represented itself as swimming against the tide in making that claim). These biological categorizations, though, are generally uninteresting when it comes to explaining our social experience of race, both in terms of the extension of commonly recognized racial groups--even if they track them roughly, we want explanations for why the exceptions to that rough tracking go the way they do--and also in terms of what we take those group memberships to mean--allowing that there may be biological clades that roughly correspond to a broad cut along racial lines doesn't really help us decipher why this particular biological distinction also happens to be very strongly predictive of party membership, occupation, life expectancy, etc etc etc.
"What values are they taught?" That "white" is an aspect of their identity that holds any intrinsic meaning beyond the absence of the Duffy antigen.
Coates' specific turn of phrase here is meant to remind of us race as a social construct; but in context, being raised white means being part of the "Dream"--the unpunctured bubble within which everything is both hunky and dory and people don't have to think about all the things Coates spends his time thinking about (when he's not thinking about le francais). To be raised white is to be raised with the specific privilege of not having to be aware of one's privilege. Coates is not saying white babies are different because their parents teach them to walk like this and black parents teach their kids to walk like this; he's saying white babies are different because they get to live without knowing that they're different.
This, this right here, is the essential pathology of well-meaning people - usually white - discussing race. What you are doing right now is turning from the actual problems of racism - the concrete, bloody, individual problems that end lives on a daily basis in the US - and to a voyage of personal growth. Chicago's South Side resembles 2006 Iraq and the response is to reflect on your privilege? Are you freaking kidding me? Privilege is not the problem! Cops being polite to white people is not what gets black kids killed! This entire framework is designed to move from real change to academic discussions so we can all nod our heads soberly as we reflect on our sins. It's Confession for liberals. It will never change anything, and it is cowardly. I have zero respect for a discussion of racism that treats it like just another station of the cross for white people, or for liberalism that thinks personal purity is the answer to injustice.
I don't know how a utilitarian could ever see guilt as an appropriate emotion, given the psychological literature on guilt as a motivator, but I assume you intend that guilt to lead to a simple and concrete action in the case of global poverty: giving more money to good charities. In the case of racism, the useful action is abandoned in favor of simply advocating for the guilt. I submit this is bass ackwards.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
While there are physiologic characteristics that are hallmarks of particular ethnic groups (inherited genetic disorders, hair/skin color types, etc.), these aren't what people are talking about when they are defining conflicts about "race" and "racism". After all, a Pakistani, an Indian, a Persian, and a Palestinian would all say that they are different races (and indeed, physiologically they are from different ethnic groups, too, in terms of genetic inheritance), but the same racism against "Muslim-looking Arabs" affects them all in the US (regardless of their religion or birthplace or parents). It's arbitrary, silly, but also deadly and causes harm throughout society.
No, you were supposed to talk about it. totes.
Why does injustice exist? Is it because we have yet to determine a pragmatic solution? I think most liberals would argue that racism is prevalent because of both institutional racial policy that needs to be changed and unconsciously or ignorantly racist individuals who also need to be changed (or outlived); and that either way the solution is or requires people to be aware and caring and active about the issue. It's not hard a lot of the time to identify bad policy and come up with solutions; what's hard is getting the public to demand those solutions. What's hard is getting the public to recognize its own ingrained biases so that individuals can work in their own lives to counteract those biases.
To use the cops example specifically, we may need to change our policy to make sure cops who needlessly kill black people are brought to justice, but drumming up support for body cams and the like requires people to care about the victims, and for many people that means getting them past the idea that blacks are criminals and poor and are criminals and poor through their own faults rather than the kind of systemic racism that enshrines white privilege. Or we might need to directly convince the cops of the same thing. Either way, policy is demanded, enacted, and enforced by people, by individuals, and so convincing individuals to see the world in a different way is an important means to policy.
In your cop example though, there's no need to even talk about racism. The cops do heinous shit to white people all the time as well! In fact, most of the structural racism issues seem to mostly apply to poor whites as well... I think we're back to substituting poverty for race in order to make the argument work.
Or, possibly, his position may have remained the same, and it is you who have moved further away from him. *shrugs* Or both of you moved away from each other. One of the hallmarks of cognitive dissonance is the doubling down on your deeply held beliefs, rather than swaying toward the opinions of an outside influence. It is possible that in order for you to make sense of what you've read, you've retreated into your own personal core beliefs rather than opening up to a new one. This is not an accusation... it's something that everyone does, when they are challenged in any way. You fall back on what you know, because it grounds you.
It's hard for me to process Coates, because I'm part of a privileged race that is non-white. When I speed and get pulled over, the cops let me off with a warning, because from my appearance and my accessories (I once was literally pulled over while I had several college textbooks in my passenger seat!), I'm one of those "hardworking Asian types". I think part of what helps is that my parents had some deeply held casually racist beliefs ("Don't play with the black kids down the street", "But some of my friends are black!", that sort of thing), and that goads me into being more sympathetic.
I'm not sure what the answer is as far the police go. But I don't think focusing on poverty alone in general is a good solution, because you can't disentangle poverty from racism. First because anti-poverty measures are opposed partly on the basis of racism, and second because anti-poverty measures tend to be built, enforced, or accessed in an unequal fashion, such that it becomes harder for poor blacks to get the same benefits as poor whites. You need racially targeted solutions or you won't solve the problem.
They're not hiding behind police brutality, that's a symptom of a greater cause minorities face then whites don't.
When white kids get "the talk" it is not the same as what black kids are told. To be black in America is an experience you'll never know, though minority groups probably have similar responses to society's oppression and they have counter-measures to protect themselves and warn each other what to do in a bad situation that white men wouldn't be in due to their ethnicity or gender. White people don't have to do this because they have a deep rooted fear based on reality that their skin color is going to get them killed by police.
Every ethnicity in America have their own sub-culture, Coates was addressing the black culture - which has its own values and differing opinions to white culture. There is a specific insult over various ethnic sub-cultures that is about a person from their culture "acting white" (which has different connotations). This is one of them:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Apple+Indian
It is a very real thing in these communities that is backlash from oppression of whites over the generations.
The Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Native Americans etc have their own cultures in America, just like the Irish, Italian, German, Scottish.
You can't talk about police brutality without tackling racism. Yes, they do awful shit to everyone - that's not the issue. There isn't a deeply entrenched pattern of cops in America killing and exploiting white people in the justice system over their skin color. It's possible for them to hurt everyone while doing racist activities to minorities.
Not at the same rates.
(From http://www.vox.com/2015/4/10/8382457/police-shootings-racism)
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
and
I want to stress that I don't think this is hugely significant in the wider debate, because even if people treat blacks poorly because they're impoverished, blacks are disproportionately impoverished because of racism; the root cause is the same, and the solutions still require racial-mindedness. But it does speak to the question of whether cops are themselves acting primarily out of a racial animus or if they are instead judging people based more on issues of class and environment.
Those are completely different conversations about the subject of race in America. Those responses weren't for solving large scale racial issues, they're for what individual people can do to make the world a better place with what little power they have right now. It's a small difference but it is a difference. Fixing what happened in Chicago and Ferguson and federal racial barriers would involve a larger discussion about state/federal governance. If you want those answers I'll give you a thread with them about it:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/194701/ferguson-thread/p1