Thursday, September 18, 2008
'This is Your Nation on White Privilege"
By Tim Wise
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
Read all of this GREAT article (but keep the "redneck" references in perspective [they refer to totally unreconstructed rednecks, not to semi-civilized rednecks such as myself]) at Red Room.
In fact, I'll just say that there is nothin' at all to apologize for for liking to " 'shoot shit' for fun," so I disagree with Wise on that gratuitous anti-gun point.
--ER
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
Read all of this GREAT article (but keep the "redneck" references in perspective [they refer to totally unreconstructed rednecks, not to semi-civilized rednecks such as myself]) at Red Room.
In fact, I'll just say that there is nothin' at all to apologize for for liking to " 'shoot shit' for fun," so I disagree with Wise on that gratuitous anti-gun point.
--ER
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Well and why wouldn't there be white privilege? It's the logical consequence to a context that is very very white.
It starts when your a baby, and Mommy and Daddy take you to their favorite toy store, and everything is white (even if there are a few AA or ethnic looking dolls, they just look like nobody cared and just took a white doll form and poured in some brown color).
Then you go to the bookstore and choose your first picture books. The characters in the stories are all cute white kids, unless they happen to be animals, or bugs.
Then there's white Uncle So-and-so, who si very old. He loves your curly black hair, and wants to touch it all the time, because traditionally, in Europe, where he's from, it's good luck to touch the hair of a person of African heritage. He also thinks that ever time you laugh, it's because "they have such a good sense of humor", and "you'll see: she'll have a great sense of rythm".
Needless to say you don't see much of him and Mommy says she's not too sad that that generation's days are numbered.
It starts when your a baby, and Mommy and Daddy take you to their favorite toy store, and everything is white (even if there are a few AA or ethnic looking dolls, they just look like nobody cared and just took a white doll form and poured in some brown color).
Then you go to the bookstore and choose your first picture books. The characters in the stories are all cute white kids, unless they happen to be animals, or bugs.
Then there's white Uncle So-and-so, who si very old. He loves your curly black hair, and wants to touch it all the time, because traditionally, in Europe, where he's from, it's good luck to touch the hair of a person of African heritage. He also thinks that ever time you laugh, it's because "they have such a good sense of humor", and "you'll see: she'll have a great sense of rythm".
Needless to say you don't see much of him and Mommy says she's not too sad that that generation's days are numbered.
# posted by 
: 5:58 PM
: 5:58 PM
Hallelujah, some people act to keep their white privilege, others profit by it daily and insist it doesn't exist...it is their hard work alone that got them where they are. I drool with anger when I think about this. Man, I think I will go shoot some stuff....maybe doves on Saturday....to make myself feel better.
I don't "quite" agree with the example unless you suggest that we should be criticizing the Palin family as irresponsible. That's not white privilege, as much as it's just racism on the part of those who are stereotyping those minorities. The "privilege" is that the white person (Palin) is not getting equally racist attacks, which is kind of implicit in the definition.
White privilege seems more to me along the nudge and wink benefits given to whites (Country clubs, Exxon executives, etc.) over those of non-white status. But, by ALL means, it exists.
Funny you mention dove hunting. You know, I have been outside on some afternoon walks, and that smell of fall has just come in this past week. It keeps me remembering back to my teenage years, of getting back from school and practice, to go hit one of the local cornfields with my dad and my 20-gauge Ithaca. (He had a gold-trigger, modified-choke, Belgium Browning) Sometimes we'd have dove breasts to cook, sometimes not. I was never much of a hunter, but I swear a couple of times this week, I'd have given almost anything to be in that cornfield.
White privilege seems more to me along the nudge and wink benefits given to whites (Country clubs, Exxon executives, etc.) over those of non-white status. But, by ALL means, it exists.
Funny you mention dove hunting. You know, I have been outside on some afternoon walks, and that smell of fall has just come in this past week. It keeps me remembering back to my teenage years, of getting back from school and practice, to go hit one of the local cornfields with my dad and my 20-gauge Ithaca. (He had a gold-trigger, modified-choke, Belgium Browning) Sometimes we'd have dove breasts to cook, sometimes not. I was never much of a hunter, but I swear a couple of times this week, I'd have given almost anything to be in that cornfield.
White Privilege? That's more of a class thing, than race. Note I said more of, not all of. White Privilege is altogether different subject from what's happening.
The racial bigotry is so thinly veiled in this election that it is sickening. Obama can't point it out. If he did he would be playing the race card. If Obama were white he would be beating McCain by 20 points at this time in the election. No he is going to have to overcome the bigot vote as well as the true Republicans. Not all the bigots are registered Republicans, and certainly not all republicans are bigots.
Lets wait until the election is over and then look at the data. It will show the bigotry precinct by precinct across the States. The Pundits are going to be incredulous about what it shows, but it will be there.
It is not "White Privilege", that is code wording for a whole nother agenda. An agenda that is trying to twist real bigotry to its own purposes. No it is basic plain old bigotry.
Class privilege will never go away.
Demographics will assure that in a few decades that privilege will not be all "white" but it will still be there.
The racial bigotry is so thinly veiled in this election that it is sickening. Obama can't point it out. If he did he would be playing the race card. If Obama were white he would be beating McCain by 20 points at this time in the election. No he is going to have to overcome the bigot vote as well as the true Republicans. Not all the bigots are registered Republicans, and certainly not all republicans are bigots.
Lets wait until the election is over and then look at the data. It will show the bigotry precinct by precinct across the States. The Pundits are going to be incredulous about what it shows, but it will be there.
It is not "White Privilege", that is code wording for a whole nother agenda. An agenda that is trying to twist real bigotry to its own purposes. No it is basic plain old bigotry.
Class privilege will never go away.
Demographics will assure that in a few decades that privilege will not be all "white" but it will still be there.
By the way the last time you posted something by Tim Wise I got in a knock down and drag out with several of your regulars. They simply didn't understand what I was saying. So I think I'll just let this one go on without me.
This is a scream. It totally captures the hypocrisy going on on the right over this whole matter. Check out what O'Reilly says about teen pregnancies and parents.
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# posted by : 1:14 PM
: 1:14 PM << Home
