the ongoing anti- racism, anti- oppression thread

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

It's pretty telling that the most activity this thread has seen in months is because of some edgelord making bad twitter jokes about white people.

What does it tell you?

[Ashasx]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

It's pretty telling that the most activity this thread has seen in months is because of some edgelord making bad twitter jokes about white people.

Probably because in most cases where we see racist comments online, we watch the consequences that follow soon after - as they should.

In this case, we see the individual rewarded and defended by the same group that condemn other acts of racism.

Seems like a worthy discussion to me.

[Ashasx]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

It feels like certain people are anxious to say racism isn’t an issue, move on, stop dwelling on it until there is some perceived anti white comment made and then hoo boy they can’t wait to really dig into the meat of it! So weird.

Just wondering who is saying racism isn't an issue?

[GirlySports]

I don't now where to start with this. We could get into a huge debate about what it like to be Asian in Canada/US.

I'm pretty sure if my twitter was like her's I wouldn't be hired into a leadership position by any big Calgary firm. I think this says more about the NYT then about Jeong.

The left simply doubles down on this stuff. The VOX article above and this one from HuffPost

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/...b0de86f4a16ae2

[Red Ice Player]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Huh. So every day when you walk out the door, you feel it's easy to be you because you're white. When you're driving to work, when you grab a coffee at Tim's, when you sit down at your cubicle, when you buy your groceries at Co-op, when you talk the people at Shaw on the phone - you feel it's all easier because you're part of the favoured class.

And you think every white person should feel the same? The out-of-work drywaller who's struggling to make rent. The alcoholic with maxed out credit cards. The woman going through a bitter divorce. The 50 year old trying to retrain after his knees are shot from laying carpet for 30 years. The senior struggling with depression. All should recognize that they wear a cloak of privilege, and have no right to question the prejudice and anger of anyone who isn't white?

What an astonishingly simplistic lens through which you regard the world.

You might want to give this interview a listen:

Beyond the Politics of Race

You know nothing about me. Only that I claim not to be offended by someone speaking out against my "race." And I don't think about white privilege at all as I go about my day to day life, which has plenty of tragedy and challenges nevertheless. That's the whole thing about white privilege. All it is is the lack of discrimination based on skin colour, and the built in advantage that comes from it.

[nik-]

I will say that it's pretty crazy how much someone insulting white people doesn't bother me. But I do understand the annoyance at the hypocrisy that can exist.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Red Ice Player

You know nothing about me. Only that I claim not to be offended by someone speaking out against my "race." And I don't think about white privilege at all as I go about my day to day life, which has plenty of tragedy and challenges nevertheless. That's the whole thing about white privilege. All it is is the lack of discrimination based on skin colour, and the built in advantage that comes from it.

The concept of white privilege is pretty subjective and not logically sound. What perceptions you are "seeing" would be the privilege of the majority - less subjective and more logically sound, simple because it is something that exists not only throughout all countries but nature.... But some people continue to classify everyone by race..how very nazi/white supremacy of you. Same game different players. It's wrong period.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by nik-

I will say that it's pretty crazy how much someone insulting white people doesn't bother me. But I do understand the annoyance at the hypocrisy that can exist.

Doesn't bother me either but it is a very dangerous game to play. If you can point to person X for the rise of bad thing Y. Then tweets like this evoke the same opposite and equal reaction. It's game that no one will win at. It's stupid, it's a sign of bitterness, resentment and if its not then its bad logic and speaks to the level of intelligence one holds.

[GirlySports]

Also wanted to add that looking at Jeong's twitter account and scrolling down to around January, for someone that is a tech writer there isn't very much tech information in her tweets. She definitely has interest in politics.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Also wanted to add that looking at Jeong's twitter account and scrolling down to around January, for someone that is a tech writer there isn't very much tech information in her tweets. She definitely has interest in politics.

A lawyer writing about technology...mmmmm I mean shouldn't it be a technologist writing about technology?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

The concept of white privilege is pretty subjective and not logically sound. What perceptions you are "seeing" would be the privilege of the majority - less subjective and more logically sound, simple because it is something that exists not only throughout all countries but nature.... But some people continue to classify everyone by race..how very nazi/white supremacy of you. Same game different players. It's wrong period.

Isn’t it kind of insane to compare someone to a nazi because they say they don’t ever feel discriminated on because of their race?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

A lawyer writing about technology...mmmmm I mean shouldn't it be a technologist writing about technology?

I think I would prefer a writer and journalist writing about a topic they have educated themselves about. That’s a pretty odd complaint.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Well i mean there is no scientific basis for race - so it's fine to think that but where your logic breaks down is if you think black people are a race...or brown for that matter. It's all or nothing - i believe in nothing but that isn't a popular thought amongst most people. The amount of natural sun screen you have doesn't make you any different.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/m...cience-africa/

Interesting article. So colour is controlled by four letters. Couldn't those four letters still correlate to other letters, that control other things? The very idea that we can determine people's ethnicities genetically points to groups having identifying traits, and since one of those is colour, it is implied that those correlations do indeed exist.

[GirlySports]

The problem here isn't the definition of race or skin color. It's that progressives have added the element of power to that definition.

Cant be racist against whites because they hold power. Therefore they should also conclude that if a white person lived in China, they should be free to utter Sino-centric slurs.

[CliffFletcher]

The foundation of our liberal democracy is universal principles applied to individuals without bias. When X is done by Y to Z, it's bad regardless of who Y and Z are. It has been imperfectly applied in the past, but that's the ideal. That's the shared touchstone at the heart of our legal, democratic, and civil institutions. And it's an ideal that has fostered the most liberal and tolerant society the world has seen.

It's astonishing that so many people - and so many people who claim to value liberalism and tolerance - are so enthusiastically undermining that ideal. Trying to build a world where it's bad for X to by done by Y to Z, but perfectly okay, or even admirable, for X to be done by Z to Y. If we discard universalism, all that's left is unrelenting tribal warfare.

Thinking in terms of principles rather than identities is difficult. It doesn't come naturally. But isn't that one of the core purposes of our liberal education system - to teach people to overcome our primitive natural impulses and to think in terms of principles? It's mystifying that people can get through 17 years of modern education and not understand this stuff.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Huh. So every day when you walk out the door, you feel it's easy to be you because you're white. When you're driving to work, when you grab a coffee at Tim's, when you sit down at your cubicle, when you buy your groceries at Co-op, when you talk the people at Shaw on the phone - you feel it's all easier because you're part of the favoured class.

And you think every white person should feel the same? The out-of-work drywaller who's struggling to make rent. The alcoholic with maxed out credit cards. The woman going through a bitter divorce. The 50 year old trying to retrain after his knees are shot from laying carpet for 30 years. The senior struggling with depression. All should recognize that they wear a cloak of privilege, and have no right to question the prejudice and anger of anyone who isn't white?

That is quite the strawman you constructed there Cliff. Well done. A very disingenuous diatribe worthy of deconstruction.

"So every day when you walk out the door, you feel it's easy to be you because you're white. When you're driving to work, when you grab a coffee at Tim's, when you sit down at your cubicle, when you buy your groceries at Co-op, when you talk the people at Shaw on the phone - you feel it's all easier because you're part of the favoured class."

You're damned right its easier. Even in the very "traditionally Canadian" way you attempt to frame your comparison. As a white person you aren't profiled all day long by the majority. As a white person you are not going to get pulled over in your car for being white - you actually have to do something suspicious/illegal to be pulled over. As a white person you are not going to be scrutinized for standing around a place of business, customer or not. Visible minorities, especially black and brown people, are viewed as threats and monitored more closely than their white people. As you sit in your cubical at work it is much more likely you have the job in question over a visible minority because you had obvious advantages that the other people did not. As a white person you have things much easier because the system has been setup to benefit you.

The system was established by white people, and the laws and rules have been set up to maintain that systemic advantage. It may not be as overt in Canada as it is in the United States, but the same systemic advantage exists for the white majority.

"And you think every white person should feel the same? The out-of-work drywaller who's struggling to make rent. The alcoholic with maxed out credit cards. The woman going through a bitter divorce. The 50 year old trying to retrain after his knees are shot from laying carpet for 30 years. The senior struggling with depression. All should recognize that they wear a cloak of privilege, and have no right to question the prejudice and anger of anyone who isn't white?"

And here is where the strawman has been constructed. No one is saying that everyone white person should feel the same, because every white person's situation is NOT the same. There are massive advantages for some white people over others. Those with money and position naturally have more power and access than those without. That is obvious, and holds regardless of culture. But as soon as you add in the color of one's skin, the game changes.

So who do you think has the advantage and better access? Who do you think stands a better chance of finding a leg up and bettering their situation? The WHITE out-of-work drywaller who's struggling to make rent, or the BLACK out-of-work drywaller who's struggling to make rent? The WHITE woman going through a bitter divorce or the BLACK woman going through a bitter divorce? The WHITE 50 year old trying to retrain after his knees are shot from laying carpet for 30 years or the BLACK 50 year old trying to retrain after his knees are shot from laying carpet for 30 years? We could go on and on.

The system has been setup to protect a certain type of people. It has been obvious for as long as we've established the systems to rule the land. Whites setup the rules to protect their privilege. But now that the white majority is being threatened, and minorities are demanding equality and fair access those very systems white people have taken advantage of for decades, now there is a problem. When you're accustomed to privilege, the very attempt to offer equality feels like oppression.

[2Stonedbirds]

The ongoing white privilege, social justice extravaganza thread

[Lanny_McDonald]

“The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor.”
― A.R. Bernard

[GGG]

The problem with the Privilege position is that economic Privilege is a very significant type of Privilege. So if you have an educated, well paid Women or Person of Colour arguing that a poor rural religious person in Mississippi needs to check their privilege it breaks down.

In alike socio-economic groups white and male privilege certainly makes it easier to succeed and advance upward. However if a person is asking “white people” in general to check their privilege they also need to ask themselves if they have checked their socio-economic privilege.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

The problem here isn't the definition of race or skin color. It's that progressives have added the element of power to that definition.

Cant be racist against whites because they hold power. Therefore they should also conclude that if a white person lived in China, they should be free to utter Sino-centric slurs.

I suddenly feel so liberated. Free to be both a progressive and a bigot at the same time.