Lol
1. what does your great great great great-grandfather have to do with white privilege?
2. It's no secret that poor neighborhoods exhibit high crime rates. Are poor people privileged? Your argument is stupid.

If this case doesn't demonstrate that race is a social construct, then I don't know what does. Again, when we I argued that point before, I stressed the phenomenon of "passing." This is a real life example

@ Thucy

"If this case doesn't demonstrate that race is a social construct, then I don't know what does."

Some whackjob running around in blackface pretending to be something she's not doesn't demonstrate anything except why deinstitutionalization was a bad thing.

@ Yoyo

"what does your great great great great-grandfather have to do with white privilege?"

"White privilege" is a disgusting, racist myth and it's one of my biggest pet peeves when people try and tell me that white people have some magical privilege that other races don't have, because that's simply not true.

"It's no secret that poor neighborhoods exhibit high crime rates."

Now you're on to something. Is it possible that maybe crime rate is a product of income, not race? Poverty rates for married black couples have been in single digits since the 1990s. It's not enough to look at income disparity between races; that's what I like to call "statistical cherry picking". You have to look at other factors such as family stability, drug/alcohol abuse rates, teen pregnancy, single moms, et cetera (NONE of which can be blamed on anyone else). I'd bet my laptop that stable black families are roughly on par with stable non-black families when it comes to socioeconomic status.

@Gunfighter

It's not that whites have privilege really, I hate the term as well. It's that almost every other race have unnecessary and, most of the time, discriminatory obstacles that whites don't have to deal with. How was your last interaction with the police, assumeing you've had any? I can guarantee you it was nothing like mine.

http://blackdemographics.com/households/african-american-income/

@yoyo Why is your experience unique?

@demon: To whom do you refer to using "them" in your follow-up?

"white privilege is a disgusting, racist myth" looooooooooooool dfkm, get out a bit webdip.

@Jeff I'm referring to the black culture/nation whatever you want to call it.

Because I'm black, of course. And cops somehow treat me differently because of it. But according to gunfighter, they're not racist at all.

Holy shit, "black privilege"... Gunfighter clearly does not understand how society functions. I don't know why anyone is even humouring him. This is just embarrassing to read. There is a system in place, and that system works to disenfranchise minorities (people of colour, women, etc) whether it be through income, opportunity, or education. Certain groups are less likely to get hired despite having qualifications, to earn a certain income and are more likely to incarcerated. People are not treated equally in society, and pretending that they are is a joke.

Take your "reverse racism" somewhere else.

@yoyo Of course they did. And of course your black. Being picked on by the mean cops. But seriously do you really think you're special in cops being assholes to you. Was it being caught with pot? A speeding ticket? Asking for directions? Did you act like an asshole back? But of course your skin color is the reason why they were assholes. Have you ever interacted with a cop while you had white skin, if not how would you know they are any better to white people. Just repeating what the media says and calling it a personal anecdote doesn't make it true.

@DO Do you have any proof more white people actually get away with more crimes? Could it be that people who happen to have black skin actually commit an abnormally large percentage of crimes relative to their percentage of population?
Do you have proof that a man and woman with the exact same credentials the man would be picked?
More woman go to college than men they just happen to tend towards psychology degrees over chemistry. A man and a woman working the same position for the same period of time get paid roughly the same. In fact in certain fields women actually get paid more. White men get the least help going to college while anyone who doesn't fall under that category gets help.
You throw out the generic claims repeated by the media, but do you ever have an actual study of what you claim.

There's a big difference between acknowledging that people are treated differently by how they are perceived by their skin color and being a racist.

My nephews are for the most part decent kids, but they've all been punks at various stages of their lives so far. They're still teenagers so there's a lot of immaturity, but that's just part of growing up.

As peer groups? No. They're just people.
As experiences? No. They're just people, and in this case family.
Yes they have darker skin. Your point?
Why does it matter? Because like it or not, people are treated differently based on their skin color.
Why did my kids care? Fuck you. No, they did not care, and I don't appreciate you even insinuating that they may have.

I'm pretty welcoming for someone "different" into my tribe, but they were the first non-whites into my family. Is that a bad thing? No. Is it a change? Yes. Does that mean some natural adjustment? Obviously.

Thirty years ago the internet was very, VERY white. It has nothing to do with ideas at all or what people were posting. Ever heard of the "digital divide"? It was that...in spades...on the early 'net. As computers and internet connections got cheaper, less affluent people could afford to get online. Like it or not, minorities are less affluent. Asian-Americans are the exception, but there are nearly 5 times more Asian-Americans in the US now than 30 years ago. A LOT HAS CHANGED.


I don't know what your skin color is. I would be curious to know if only to put your experiences in some kind of context. Go ahead. Say it. I think you want to.

I meet people from other countries all the time where I live. I love talking about their countries of birth because it is INTERESTING TO ME. Those details are important to put things in a cultural context. Some things run much deeper in a person's identity than "ideas" they try out on the forum of one of their games/hobbies.

If you just want to assume that the person typing behind the name is irrelevant, just look at their ideas, then that's not really attempting to understand the person on a meaningful level. That's just trusting their electronic avatar to be a true representation of self. I don't buy that one bit.

I'm giving a personal anecdote to let you guys know that I know what I am talking about. If you want the gist of what happened, here goes:

A few friends of mine driving down the road.
get pulled over
the cop thinks the driver isnt supposed to have teenaged passengers (in Chicago, once you get your license, you can only drive with one other non-family member until you've have your license for 1 year, or you turn 18., which was ok because my friend looked pretty young)
he questions everyone in the car.
there's 2 black guys, with one of them being me
he asks everyone else 2 simple questions, Where are you guys headed and how old is the driver.
he does a very aggressive interrogation of me and my black friend, pats both of us down and even asked me what was in my bag and if he could search it.

No I was not an asshole, I'm actually a very pleasant person, believe it or not.
No I have not interacted with cop while having hpwhite skin but I have witnessed time and time against of the interactions between the authorities and people of different races. But of course, I must be crazy.

That sucks, yoyo. You got a double whammy. Not only was it a more aggressive interaction, but you got to see how differently your non-black friends were treated and vice versa.

I'm not going to argue against your own experiences, but I'm going to doubt he explicitly went out of his way to treat you differently in front of white people. I would believe he'd pat down the driver no matter the race and search for drugs in what sounds like a carful of highschool/college students in Chicago.

I'm done for tonight. Night.

Lol you'd think so, right?

Who here is legitimately denying white privilege? I don't know about the rest of you, but a personal anecdote would never convince me. However, many million might. Systematic, eloquent, and even overt racism are really, really easy to spot. Those of you that deny it are kidding yourselves.

Oh wait, lol he was patted down. But he wasn't interrogated or anything like that and neither was the other guy in car. And nope, never asked the search the car, just my bag.

It is genuinely troubling that so many white people deny that they hold an advantageous position in society because of their race. It feels like holocaust denialist or something. It's like - no shit you fucking do; what do think has been happening since 1500

There are a number of reasons, mostly psychological ones, why any group would deny that they have an advantage over others. They range from the benign of not educated on the issues to confirmation bias to the law of small numbers to outright selfishness. Even for well meaning people, it's not always easy to see or understand how anecdotal evidence isn't what matters but what happens on average or in general that matters. Our brains aren't built to think thoroughly through every issue. The primary driver is the heuristic fast-answer-fast-response one. It probably is more useful to point out how white privilege exists than to assert that it exists or does not exist, the statistics at the state and federal level, and the correlational and sociological studies and experiments that suggest how white privilege exists historically and currently and why we *might* not see it through our individual lens.

How, as a white person, particularly a white male, does anyone think it is so unfair to be advantaged? What's so bad about that? It's not our individual faults, but come on, it's fucking obvious. The wage gap between men and women, white and black, white and Hispanic, white and largely anything else, including Asian, for the same work is flat out ridiculous, and we're benefiting from it. Same goes for incarceration rates and fines, same goes for treatment as a human being in general. Nobody wants to decrease your end of the advantage (if they do, they are racist/sexist/whatever), just help others who are disadvantaged. Is it that hard to acknowledge? You might not be born rich and get everything you ever wanted because of one physical trait but you sure as hell have a number of minute advantages that, when put together, are quite substantial. Simple as that. Accept it and feel fortunate that you have it.

The thing is, once you know what it is, it's not hard to find in the world as you go through your life. I guess a lot of people just live in segregated communities or somethint, I don't know

I agree with most of the points people are making on this thread. I am about to graduate High school, so I still have a lot to learn about the actually grit of the world. But my experiences with the police and with school, it's not about the colour of skin! It's always about behaviour. And, often times it's either Persians, or African Americans who are the ones who are acting, different. I was brought up by a Caucasian father with Caucasian cousins. So I don't know what it is like to be raised as a Persian child or African American. And in this case I'm assuming it was how they were raised. But then again, I also see a few Caucasian people in those positions, and I also see Persian and African American students who are friendly and polite and hard working students.

In conclusion I think that it really has no difference what raise you are to what privileges you get. Of course, the way many people view another person is by their race or colour. But, besides stereotypes, it really doesn't matter what colour you are! You can't be a African American type of person, or a Caucasian type of person. You are raised a certain way, and everyone as their own person become who they are through experience. So, all racist comments are false and wrong because it's just from stereotypes. There are no "white-privileges" any more. And you can't just be "black" as a race. So the girl in that video is completely bonkers.

Stereotypes come from things people see, not know. And in the past, it was almost impossible for an African-American to find a decent job, so it wasn't their choice they had to live in poverty. And when people see stuff like this, see what anyone in poverty would do, a African-american committing crimes to survive, they tend to think that's what African-American people would do. But it's what anyone would do in that situation.

So to finish this off, your race gender colour all of that doesn't matter. It's just who the person is. And this girl needs help understanding this.

I think Louis CK pretty much nailed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg48ZZ2wYfM

Thucy,

Race may or may not be a socially constructed phenomenon, but I don't think this case proves much either way. Sometimes people have pretended to be other people. They have pretended to be a different biological sex. Some have gotten away with it. That doesn't mean physical identity or biological sex is socially constructed. It means sometimes you can fool people as to the truth.

Again, I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, just your argument.

@Frost_Faze, we have not abolished 'Black' yet, as abhorrent as the whole idea is. Black still qualifies as a culture, and as a minority. As long as racism exists, and I doubt we'll ever get quite rid of it, racial differences will exist.

To me, it makes perfect sense that someone could identify with a 'racial' culture, through adoption or whatever. I'm not too sure about this specific case, given the whole lying thing. I don't think this lady went very well about this.

The main problem here is that race is both cultural and physical. Most people identify race through the use of physical features, while behavior and such are parts of the culture.

For the record, there is precedent, in the person of Effa Manley, for an entirely white woman to live and identify as black.

He's talking about psychological, semck. We aren't saying a physical or biological anything, only social and psychological.