Quote: Original post by LessBread
deep stuff

Quote: The very nation that committed the Holocaust has effectively self-castrated itself as an act of contrition.

Self-castrated? Care to elaborate?

Quote: Original post by LessBread
It's a short cut...

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I just can't write like this guy can. Man... I agree with some of his points; where he makes the statement about familarity between peoples needs to be in order before discrimination of any scale can occur. The phrase from Aesop's Fables, The Fox and the Lion, springs to mind: "Familiarity breeds contempt". What's truer than that.

He's also right about his first point. You see that kind of global behaviour in alot of peoples. His example about Native Americans sums it pretty nicely, but so to does the Jewish Holocaust (Remember there were two main ones: Jewish and Japanese), in the sense that Hittler and elite echlons of his Nazi party used propaganda and subvert tactics to undermine and persecute the Jewish people. Hopefully I wrote that right.

Good on ya LessBread!

P.S. I still stand by my Everybody is born an asshole statment. Just look at Dick Cheney, Axl Rose and Mickey Rourke (Damm "The Wrestler" ba$%^$%£). What were you like when you were a kid? Many, if not most, are just little buggers. It's what makes us all the more "interesting" when we grow up.

Quote: Original post by Dex Jackson
One word sums up how far this discussion has come: EPIC

You still haven't told me why you think African Americans like fried chicken though.

Half the work is trzy's

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Original post by LessBread
It's also possible to acquire and defend resources through cooperation. Indeed, before there can be tribalism and discrimination, there must be cooperation.

Here you're assuming there is someone to defend against.

Isn't that the assumption behind your position that discrimination flows from resource competition between different tribal groups and that evolution has cemented this into our genes?

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Biology drives humans together, it does not drive us to discriminate. That comes about through the contingencies of history and the accumulation of practice that we call culture.

This completely arbitrary and impossible to say with certainty. Disentangling culture, nurture, and nature is very tricky, especially considering that culture is essentially derived from human behavior, which in turn is influenced strongly by genetics. You're asking me to swallow a whole lot by saying that we have to biological faculty for discrimination. I don't believe there is a "racial discrimination" gene, but humans discriminate about all sorts of things, and I think that's an inherent part of our nature.

Young children playing don't discriminate between each other based on race. They have to be taught to do that.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
As I wrote above, cooperation precedes discrimination. If discrimination flowed from familial bonds, there would be too many feuds for ethnicity to ever form.

This is a strawman argument. Just because discrimination is biological in origin, and that we form families, does not mean do not possess a simultaneous inclination to co-operate with those who are familiar to us and who are not perceived as threats.

Racial discrimination isn't biological. Familiarity assumes cooperation. A stranger who did not want to become familiar would not cooperate in the process of becoming familiar. A group of families living in close proximity to each other would not become a tribe if they did not cooperate in securing their collective survival. Cooperation precedes discrimination.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: The world Hemingway knew no longer exists. The pace may be slow but the progress is certain. For a more detailed elaboration of the notion, check out The ultimate power play: Did black sporting heroes pave the way for Barack Obama.

Hemingway's world is gone but surely even you'll concede that racism is not.

I haven't suggested that it was gone, only that it was leaving.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
What you deem stagnant, others deem sustainable.

And what others deem sustainable, I deem miserable. Primitive societies are extremely violent. In some hunter-gatherer societies, even in recent times, more than half of deaths were caused by violence. Hardly a lifestyle worth sustaining.

Our current way of life is by all means sustainable: population is increasing, not decreasing, hence it is sustainable. We have obviously not hit the planet's carrying capacity yet. When we begin to approach this, resource scarcity will put pressure on people to conserve and reproduce accordingly.

Misery is subjective. The fact remains, however, that those stagnant "miserable" societies sustained themselves for tens of thousands of years, as that link attests. Our current way of life is not sustainable: "As it is, the people living in developed countries are consuming so much that the other approximate 75 percent of the population is left with barely what they need to get by." (What's the Earth's Carrying Capacity?)

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
And just because a history is written down does not mean that it is immune from mythology. The notion that "history is written by the victors" betrays that reality.

Of course not, but advanced civilizations with written and archaeological histories at least provide something to analyze.

Oral histories can be analyzed too.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Romans and Africans weren't from substantially different racial backgrounds?

They were. But Romans did not have extensive contact with sub-Saharan African societies. Phenotype variations throughout the Roman Empire on the whole were probably not nearly as great as in modern Western countries. Even so, we can't say with certainty that the Romans, and other peoples of the Empire, were not racist or discriminatory. I've seen Roman art exhibitions first hand and I'll tell you something, all those busts of famous emperors and generals look remarkably similar. The Romans were aware of the physical differences between themselves and Germanic invaders. A mural I once saw depicting a Roman soldier fighting a barbarian depicted both figures in a very stereotypical fashion. The description of the painting at the museum pointed out that this was quite common in Roman artwork.

I think we can say with certainty that the Romans believed they were superior but not because of the features of their bodies but because of the accomplishments of the Roman state.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
The failure to adequately assimilate the conquered was only one of many factors leading to the downfall of Rome. Elite corruption, the collapse of the Republic and Christianity contributed as well, just to name a few.

I didn't say it was the only one, but it was a major one. The contribution of Christianity is an old theory but a biased and controversial one. If I'm not mistaken, it dates back a century or two, about the same time that the myth of an Islamic Golden Age began to take hold (put forth by anti-clerical scholars initially, and later bolstered by Nazi historians.)

It seems to me that the notion can be found in the writings of Augustine.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
There is slavery in the Bible. There was slavery in ancient Greece. Above you wrote that the Romans enslaved nearly a third of their people, so why turn around and point to the Arabs and Africans?

Slavery was not a widespread institution (thanks to Christianity) in 15th century Europe. It is true that the Europeans introduced a particularly brutal form of multigenerational chattel slavery, which is not what the African slave traders practiced. But the notion that pre-colonial Africa was an idyllic, picturesque safari is false. Violence among some societies on the continent was appalling. Given that there is no real history of Africa, other than what can be pieced together by scarce archaeological evidence and a few written accounts by North African and Mediterranean observers, defaulting to an anti-European/anti-colonialist "noble savage" mythology is unfair.

I haven't said anything about precolonial Africa. Who's arguing the strawman eh?

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
Morally neutral? The wholesale destruction of the preexisting culture,

Supplanting culture is not necessarily a bad thing. Depends on the culture. I'm glad I wasn't born in Rome, for instance.

It's not morally neutral.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
the displacement of local populations and the extraction of natural resources for export, those things aren't morally neutral.

The extraction of wealth? Sounds like the process of creating wealth to me. We now have a robust international system of trade that has enriched everyone, even the former colonials, in ways unimaginable only a couple centuries ago. This is really just the process of globalization: the wealthy come to impoverished, but resource-rich, areas of the world and build wealth there.

Extraction of natural resources, not wealth. It sounds like theft to me. I think it's interesting that you draw the connection between colonialism and present day globalization. The wealth was not built where the resources were, otherwise, Africa (etc) would be a vastly different place.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: That we see things more clearly today is no excuse to avoid acknowledging the past or shirk our responsibilities to make amends for the resulting imbalances from it that persist to this day.

There was already an imbalance to begin with. Should we amend for that as well? The world cannot remain static and societies cannot be expected to remain entirely self-sufficient. Communists have tried to build self-sufficiency in the modern world with disastrous results (see North Korea.) It's simply unnatural. It seems incredibly wrong to suggest that an ascendant Europe ca. 1500 should have simply sat on its collective ass, letting modernity and the dream of a better future escape.

Prior conditions are no excuse for irresponsibility. Self-sufficiency was the rallying cry of American enterprise for 150 years, beginning with Alexander Hamilton [1], [2], [3]. No amount of red baiting will change that.

Quote: Original post by trzy
Were morally outrageous transgressions committed as a result of colonialism? Obviously! But like I said, hindsight is 20/20. We must obviously learn from past mistakes so as not to repeat them but what I don't agree with is portraying globalization as an inherently unworthy, unnecessary, or evil endeavor. Makings amends for the past -- in other words, helping lagging societies and groups catch up -- is most certainly desirable, but it should be done within the context of further globalization (which will provide true economic justice) rather than self-loathing, reparations, or ethnocentrism.

The failure to act on the clarity gained in hindsight amounts to willful blindness. The further globalization you call for adds up to continued exploitation. If anything, making amends will drive away the self-loathing and the nihilistic greed corrupting capitalism.

Quote: Original post by trzy
It's the choice between China and Singapore on the one hand, and Zimbabwe and (possibly soon) South Africa on the other hand. I've touched upon the notion that human rights come about as the practical result of development. Primitive societies don't have the notion of human rights, for example, while the most advanced ones do. The notion of human rights was perhaps conceived prior to 1500 but not born before the 18th century. Economic development was the midwife and, later, nanny that saw it through to the 20th century.

That's a false choice (see below). Human rights came about through the Enlightenment.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: There are plenty of reasons to believe that Europeans acted worse than others in their position would have. I've listed a few already: chattel slavery, religious intolerance, genocide.

Slavery was rampant in the Islamic world. Genocide has occurred countless times outside of Europe throughout human history. In fact, Islam can be viewed as a sort of parallel society to Europe, also rooted in near-eastern civilization, but founded on very different principles. Like European civilization, it spread far and wide as well -- by the sword. The result? Widespread destruction and stagnation. Barbaric customs like honor killing and slavery were readily absorbed into Muslim cultures, rather than rooted out. Today, for example, honor killings are a major problem in Pakistan, as is wage slavery, a form of multigenerational slavery somewhat comparable to serfdom.

Islam's rejection of Greek philosophy and of rationalism ultimately limited its destructive power.

Chattel slavery was not rampant. What countless genocides? What widespread destruction? Stagnation? Only when you start the clock around 1850. Islam did not reject rationalism.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
They use all that as code for minorities. Check out the dog whistle link above. More recent examples can be found in the efforts to blame the subprime loan debacle on Fannie Mae, the Community Reinvestment Act and ACORN.

Subprime loans are an enormous problems, how can you deny this? Most subprime borrowers were white. The industry got greedy and relaxed lending standards and offered ridiculous terms to too many people who lacked creditworthiness.

Another strawman eh? I didn't say that subprime loans were not a problem. I said that demagogues used the subprime loan scandal as a platform for their dog whistle politics.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: The discussion is still appropriate today. The Wealth Gap Gets Wider The gap between the wealth of white Americans and African Americans has grown. According to the Fed, for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family, the African American family has only one dime. In 2004, it had 12 cents. Was that because of a conspiracy? Conspiracy accusations seem to me a way to dismiss complaints and continue denying the reality, but there might be something to it. Consider: Subprime in Black and White (2007) Evidence is mounting that during the housing boom, black and Hispanic borrowers were far more likely to be steered into high-cost subprime loans than other borrowers, even after controlling for factors such as income, loan size and property location. See also: Foreclosures in Black and White (2007).

"White privilege" is not an appropriate discussion to be having. I agree that the wealth gap is getting larger. But like I said, this is not the case for Asians and Indians. It's not just the wealth gap that is increasing between blacks and the rest, it seems like there is a virtual genocide on young black males occurring as the result of violent street culture.

It's an absolutely appropriate discussion to be having. It's not the case for Asians and Indians? Show me. Violent street culture is a response to decades of violent economics.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Nope. Doubly Divided: The Racial Wealth Gap Today, Asians are the group that as a whole has moved closest to economic parity with whites. ... Asians are still defined by race and branded as perpetual foreigners.

Your link-fu is usually very strong, but this is just downright feeble. The little blurb about Asian Americans at the end is laughable and, if anything, unwittingly reinforces the point that lingering racial prejudices (which will take time to erase if they are subconscious -- like I said, the major breakthroughs have already been made) are not the major barrier to success:

You missed something: "Nor is much information collected about Asian Americans. What we do know is that their poverty rate is 13%, and that 60% of Asian Americans own their own homes, compared to 77% of whites." According to that article, the poverty rate for whites is 8%.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
Today, Asians are the group that as a whole has moved closest to economic parity with whites. (There are major variations in status between different Asian nationalities, however, and grouping them masks serious problems facing some groups.) While Asian immigrants have high poverty rates, American-born Asians have moved into professional positions, and the median income of Asians is now higher than that of whites. However, glass ceilings still persist, and as Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese-American nuclear scientist who was falsely accused of espionage in 2002, found out, Asians are still defined by race and branded as perpetual foreigners.

I highlighted two sentences. The first lends credibility to my idea that culture is more important than race in determining how barriers are erected and overcome. I don't know for sure, but I'll bet the less successful Asian groups are southeast Asians -- Vietnamese, Laotians, Thais, Indonesians, Malaysians, and Filipinos. These cultures are substantially different from each other and from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Austronesian people are linguistically, ethnically, and culturally different from their northern neighbors. I'm not surprised there are differences in achievement, but nevertheless, I believe many (most?) of these groups will be far more successful in the near-term, racial barriers or not, than blacks and Hispanics. Most of this article's discussion of Asian Americans focused on the incredibly poor treatment they received as immigrants, which I've often cited as evidence of their ability to overcome and succeed. The Chinese are especially good at this wherever they go (they are the most successful ethnic group in southeast Asia, which breeds resentment among locals, and has erupted in violence) -- they're basically the Jews of Asia.

How can culture be more important than race while at the same time racial discrimination be grounded in biology? If culture dictates, then how can there be a choice between China and Zimbabwe?

Quote: Original post by trzy
The second sentence concedes that Asians are now wealthier than white. Hence, Caucasian-Asian privilege. After this, the article mentions "glass ceilings" but is remarkably vague and anecdotal. Wen Ho Lee? Please.

Yet they have higher poverty rates and lower rates of home ownership. But white privilege isn't just about wealth. It's an attitude. For example, Sarah Palin bounced around through several different colleges before finally graduating but that didn't preclude her from getting the VP nomination. She wore that as a badge of honor, as evidence of her work ethic (really). Her lack of intellectual acumen didn't become an issue until later on in the campaign. She coasted on her white privilege and still does.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
At this point poor education is becoming more and more a function of underfunded schools and a recalcitrant majority population that would rather point fingers than roll up their sleeves and do something about it. For details see: Schools are still crumbling in 'corridor of shame' haunted by the old South, Teen Sues SC on Stimulus Standoff. It's so much easier to perpetuate stereotypes than it is to get to work fixing things.

The school system sucks. Whites are suffering from this as well. Less sensitivity training, federally-mandated curricula, and teacher's unions, and more education, please. I used to be for federally-funded education but at this point, I'm not so sure.

The school system sucks for a reason. It's been neglected. Sure, it gets plenty of lip service, but the losers in the desegregation battles of the 60's and 70's turned their focus to destroying the entire system and have been chipping away at it ever since.

Quote: Original post by trzy
In fact, I'm starting to think that many children would be just as well off with half as much school as now. Given the kind of jobs US high school graduates are qualified for, they may as well go to work straight out of elementary school. Maybe we haven't hit rock bottom yet, but we will soon. No amount of increased funding is going to help.

And that's exactly the attitude that those who would destroy the public school system want you to have.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Who exactly does that labeling? With Obama it was white pundits. First he wasn't black enough, then when Rev. Wright made his splash he was too black.

Reverend Wright was a fruitcake, that's for sure. It wasn't that Obama was accused of being "too black" (Wright may have been), it's that he was exposed as a political opportunist.

That wasn't the accusation made against Obama. Do you remember the controversial New Yorker cover?

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: For a more recent example of white privilege contrast the reaction to what Wanda Sykes said last night at the White House Correspondents Dinner to the reaction to the remarks by Limbaugh, Hannity and Cheney that she criticized.

Sykes has not generated nearly as much buzz. Give me a break. Everything I've seen on TV has focused on the venue at which this took place. Even so, most of the panelists I see being interviewed on CNN are not up in arms about this.

They were upset in their immediate response, callers to CSPAN yesterday were upset. I imagine that Limbaugh, Hannity etc will issue their outrage today and propel the story for a few more cycles. No doubt they'll pick up on Cheney's denunciation of Colin Powell and weave the two stories together.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Given that white achievements are celebrated as national achievements while the achievements of other ethnic groups are celebrated as ethnic
achievements is itself an indicator of white privilege.

A lot of white people want to abolish Black History Month for this reason, but then they're branded as racists. It seems to be the out-of-touch black leadership and self-loathing liberals who push this ethnocentric crap. I think most Americans are ready to move on.

White people who want to abolish Black History Month aren't calling for it to be replaced with more black history education throughout the year. They aren't standing up to claim black history as their history. They aren't claiming that Malcolm X belongs to them too. They want to abolish Black History Month because they want to forget all that. They want to abolish black history month because they don't want to be reminded, they want to be proud of their enormous achievements, they want positive reassurance that their conscious effort to re-evaluate racially discriminative attitudes, they don't want to hear the slightest suggestion that their success is mostly due to a subconscious effort to shut out people of color, they don't want to be confronted with the possibility that they might have to prove to themselves that they aren't racists, or that they might be branded as such. They don't want to confront the uncomfortable possibility that they might be criticized, that their impressionable minds might be converted to self-loathing types open to the possibility of reparations.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:
Consider Employers' Replies to Racial Names and 'Black' Names A Resume Burden?

This is indeed interesting and I'll have to take a closer look at it. Personally, I know a successful black female lawyer with an extremely "black" name.

Extremely black? Would that be blacker than black? [grin]

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Yes, European dominance was a historical contingency, but that's still no excuse. It seems to me that Europe stands out for criticism because it's long history of warfare culminated in the Holocaust, which exposed the hypocrisy of it's vaunted sense of cultural and religious superiority.

At least Europe did something about it. The very nation that committed the Holocaust has effectively self-castrated itself as an act of contrition. You won't see this from the Turks or genocidal maniacs in Africa. What you will see, however, is a lot of laughably hypocritical Euro- and Jew-bashing by the world's peanut gallery of thuggocracies and failed civilizations.

Germany is the one country that took "never again" to heart and rightfully so. It's what a pariah state should do to gain re-admittance into the family of nations.

At any rate, I've got other things to do this week, so I'm going to have to leave this overly lengthy discussion there.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
You just haven't noticed the privilege. I'm white. I used to not notice it too.

When people put out lists of this privilege, and I decide to go through the list critically, I generally find that for a majority of the items, I either honestly don't benefit from the privilege (e.g., bandages do not resemble the skin tone of any white person I've ever known, so arguing that they're not made in colours more suitable for darker complexions seems specious to me), don't see how the item *could be construed as an advantage* (e.g. children, who most often have to wear said band-aids, often prefer that they stand out and have pretty designs on them), or simply am unconvinced that the situation is different for whites vs. non-whites in the manner described (based on personal observation of the world around me).

Of course, on the latter point, I can certainly accept that things are different in the US vs. Canada, and different in Toronto vs. the rest of Canada. Although, while I personally witness a tiny sampling of the goings-on in Toronto, I would like to believe they are representative.

Quote: It has nothing to do with your background and everything to do with the background and subsequent perceptions of those with the capacity to block your advances.

That sounds like a roundabout way of accusing those with power of racism, in general, without any supporting evidence.

Quote: Ever seen a cop harass someone because of their skin color? I have.

How do you know it was because of the person's skin colour? Did the cop say something about it?

Quote: Ever seen a cop not harass someone because of their skin color? I have. Two sides of the same coin.

How can you know it was because of the person's skin colour? Did the cop say something about it? Even though the cop was not harassing the person?

Quote: Original post by phantom

Quote: Original post by Dex Jackson
Everyone is born an asshole.

Utter rubbish.

You are born with no pre-conceptions at all; you pick up how to act from those around you.

If you are born into a family where the predominate view is 'all black people can go die in a fire' then you are likely to grow up believing that view point. This can be changed via interactions with others around you and as such challenging your own beliefs/views because of this.

even utterer rubbish.

people are born loaded with instincts. (we are borh with 28% of our adult mass.. well around 30% in blacks, 26% in whites on average. the less meaning less instinct, less preconception, more eventual intelligence and learned behavior) domination and a dislike of those different from you are among them.

this type of nurture totally dominates over nature argument is short-sighted at best.

in reality it's a combination of both.

people are indeed born assholes to an extent, it is the TASK of those who raise them to mullify or exaggerate these tendencies by the time they've reached an age where their views are more solidified (resistant to change or objectivity)

no one in my family is racist, but i wasn't raised with the specific intent of tolerance in mind.

i found, through observation and research that black people are less intelligent than white people. that observation and reluctance to blindly deny it (a mentality similar to the far left political correctness or far right religious blind faith) didn't make me racist.

what made me racist was observing the behavior that resulted from said lower intelligence.

nowadays, people are even more 'sheeple' than they used to be. i'm considered a bigot by some of the dumbest people i've ever met, and funny, brilliant, and correct by the smartest.

how do i determine who's the smartest and dumbest? not by how willingly they see my point of view. that would be biased. it's based on the same objective material upon which my conclusion that blacks were less intelligent than whites is based: cranial volume and scores on standardized tests (like IQ tests that are normed in a range that comfortably includes their average score, SAT, etc.)

blind tolerance is as fundamentally flawed and stupid as blind faith. the assumption that a racist is racist due to ignorance is not just blind, it's ignorant.

Let me first clarify my basic position:

1) Inequalities of course exist. I suspect they are often overstated.
2) Talking about "white privilege" in the way that we currently do is a poor way to convince people of the existence of these inequalities.
3) "Affirmative action" is a poor way to address these inequalities.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
The discussion is still appropriate today. The Wealth Gap Gets Wider The gap between the wealth of white Americans and African Americans has grown. According to the Fed, for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family, the African American family has only one dime. In 2004, it had 12 cents.

How do the figures look if you exclude the much-whiter-on-average upper classes? It seems to me that a growth in this gap is just a side effect of the ridiculous rise in CEO pay:employee pay ratio.

Quote:

Quote: White privilege frames the issue in a way that is critical of whites and lays none of the blame on blacks. In other words, it's biased and racist, and breeds resentment among whites. You don't win favor among people by insulting them.

White privilege exposes the denialism at work in the dominant society.

How, pray tell, is a person who genuinely doesn't believe s/he is denying something supposed to take an exposition of purported "denialism" as anything but an insult?

Quote: The irony is that the two loudest voices addressing the subject belong to two white men, Tim Wise and Robert Jensen. In effect, that it takes a white male to address the subject marks an instance of white privilege.

No; it marks that people who don't believe, a priori, that a group of people is being oppressed are not going to believe it any more when the oppressed people themselves make the case - which is self-evident.

Quote: Pointing out white privilege does not breed an already breeding white resentment.

No, but it does breed resentment among those in whom it was not already breeding. People who spontaneously try to tell me "look how bad things are for XYZ people", when their claims seem out of proportion to what I actually witness, annoy me. Especially when they go on to make arguments like yours. I am often left feeling that they are trying to tell me that they know what I really think better than I do myself.

Quote: I think it's very telling that these messengers teach their listeners that self-respecting people are people who stubbornly refuse to face the truth, who are too weak minded to even deal with the possibility that the truth might make them uncomfortable.

This sounds like a debate cop-out for those who lack evidence for their claims.

Quote: that white achievements are celebrated as national achievements while the achievements of other ethnic groups are celebrated as ethnic achievements is itself an indicator of white privilege.

But the whole reason this is done is to ensure that the acheivements of other ethnic groups are recognized at a rate that satisfies the activists!

Quote: That notion betrays an ongoing sense of "us and them" that in itself indicates a sense of white privilege...

That isn't even logical; white people have no more access to the notion of "us and them" than non-white people.

Quote: What can't be demonstrated is the subconscious lowering of barriers and standards for people of color.

What are you talking about? You guys have a conscious, systematized, de facto lowering of barriers and standards for people of colour, called "affirmative action". That is: if those applicants met the same standard on average, there would be no need to set a quota for hiring them; there would only be a need to mandate against explicit discrimination against them. Now, it can certainly be argued that it is not their fault that they don't meet the standard (due to the education system, not being able to get proper support from poorer parents, etc.), but the program is still in place.

In Canadian politics, the idea of "affirmative action" is pretty much off the radar. Even for the NDP. (Except, according to a quick Googling, when it comes to selecting their own candidates.) And last I checked, we're not rectifying inqeualities noticably slower than you guys. In fact, we're kind of ahead of y'all on the whole homosexual marriage thing. ;)

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: You just haven't noticed the privilege.

It has never been a significant factor in my life. I can assure you nobody has been passed over for a job offer or academic admission in favor of me because I was white and they weren't.

How do you know that?

The same way you know the opposite. ;)

Quote: And why do you offer yourself as the example when that demonstrates nothing other than your sense that you're not part of the problem?

Oh, FFS. In what other way could he possibly attempt to make the argument?

LessBread: White people do experience privilege, you too; you just haven't noticed.
trzy: No, I haven't. Not at least in XYZ regard.
LessBread: Your experience only indicates that you believe that it doesn't apply to you specifically. I continue to assert that it applies to white people in general.
(trzy: Why should I believe you any more than you believe me, or I believe myself? And how am I supposed to speak for what has or hasn't happened to white people in general?)

Quote: Consider Employers' Replies to Racial Names and 'Black' Names A Resume Burden?

From the article:

Quote: This would suggest either employer prejudice or employer perception that race signals lower productivity.

I would argue that it suggests employer perception that non-English names correlate with lower likelihood of strong English communication skills.

Quote: From a policy standpoint, this aspect of the findings suggests that training programs alone may not be enough to alleviate the barriers raised by discrimination, the authors write.

Isn't that what the law is for? Don't you guys have something like a Human Rights Commission down there?

Quote: Federal contractors, sometimes regarded as more severely constrained by affirmative action laws, do not discriminate less.

So affirmative action isn't working, then. Even though you'd think they'd have to discriminate less. Presumably they'd rather keep around their existing "quota-fillers" than go through the process again. :/

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

">"All these years I though I liked chicken because it was delicious. Turns out I'm genetically predisposed to liking chicken!" - Dave Chappelle.

I am white, and I like chicken too. Because it is delicious. My apologies to anyone who has ever been slighted by the presumption of a "genetic predisposition" to liking chicken. Although the notion has, for its sheer ludicrousness, made for some great humour. :) I was only asking about it because I honestly didn't know (and there's still only been a vague suggestion ITT) where the stereotype comes from. Actually, it seems strange that something like this could turn into a stereotype: I mean, lots of white people like the stuff too. Myself included.

(I do commonly eat "fried" chicken, but not in the sense that is usually meant. It is pan-fried - not greased up, breaded and deep-fried KFC style. I like the latter, too, but it doesn't like me. Chicken fingers are another story, as they generally contain quite little actual chicken.)

Quote: Original post by AlphaCoder
no one in my family is racist

I think you might be surprised.

I've heard my grandfather say some disturbingly racist things. I was too shocked to say anything about it. Or rather, I had no idea what I could say that would accomplish anything. And I've always generally been the conflict-avoiding type (although you probably wouldn't know it from my GDNet presence).

Quote: i found, through observation and research that black people are less intelligent than white people.

Through reseach possibly performed by racists, and observation dependent upon your own ideas of what "intelligence" means.

Quote: it's based on the same objective material upon which my conclusion that blacks were less intelligent than whites is based: cranial volume

Don't make me laugh.

Quote: and scores on standardized [IQ] tests

I said, don't make me laugh.

I don't have enough time to reply in full to your longer post, but you've asked about my observations so only I can answer that.

Quote: Original post by Zahlman

Quote: Original post by LessBread
You just haven't noticed the privilege. I'm white. I used to not notice it too.

When people put out lists of this privilege, and I decide to go through the list critically, I generally find that for a majority of the items, I either honestly don't benefit from the privilege (e.g., bandages do not resemble the skin tone of any white person I've ever known, so arguing that they're not made in colours more suitable for darker complexions seems specious to me), don't see how the item *could be construed as an advantage* (e.g. children, who most often have to wear said band-aids, often prefer that they stand out and have pretty designs on them), or simply am unconvinced that the situation is different for whites vs. non-whites in the manner described (based on personal observation of the world around me).

Of course, on the latter point, I can certainly accept that things are different in the US vs. Canada, and different in Toronto vs. the rest of Canada. Although, while I personally witness a tiny sampling of the goings-on in Toronto, I would like to believe they are representative.

If you want an itemization of white privilege, you might be able to find one among the results of this google search: "white privilege" "tim wise" "robert jensen"

And as I suspected, Wanda Sykes is coming under fire for her joke describing Rush Limbaugh as the 20th 9/11 hijacker who missed his plane because he was too strung out on oxycontin. Mind you, Limbaugh has a long history of smearing people as terrorists, except when he does it, it's acceptable.

Quote: Original post by Zahlman

Quote: It has nothing to do with your background and everything to do with the background and subsequent perceptions of those with the capacity to block your advances.

That sounds like a roundabout way of accusing those with power of racism, in general, without any supporting evidence.

Quote: Ever seen a cop harass someone because of their skin color? I have.

How do you know it was because of the person's skin colour? Did the cop say something about it?

Quote: Ever seen a cop not harass someone because of their skin color? I have. Two sides of the same coin.

How can you know it was because of the person's skin colour? Did the cop say something about it? Even though the cop was not harassing the person?

I witnessed a cop harass two friends of mine, both on skateboards, one black, one white. The cop came down hard on my black friend, accusing him of being high on crack, while the white friend stood there in shock. The racism was obvious and disgusting.