Privilege, then and now

[bumpercars]

As in any fantasy life, "or thought experiment," I have to follow the rules of the experiment.

If you want this fantasy life to be better, it will be better. If you want it to be worse, it would be worse. The same, the same.

The rules of the experiment are literally just "imagine this scenario and compare it to reality." I can't rig the outcome of something that you are imagining in your brain.

 

[MrHereWriting]

The rules of the experiment are literally just "imagine this scenario and compare it to reality." I can't rig the outcome of something that you are imagining in your brain.

What's the scenario? (And by giving me a scenario, you are rigging the outcome.)

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

That's what I meant: I can't have a high opinion of you because I don't remember you. Based on our latest interactions, I can't say it would ever be high, since you approached me in an unpleasant manner that you appear to enjoy.

If you leave me alone, you'll have no reason to interact with me.

I hope your day is pleasant as well.

If you spend anytime in the Authors' Hangout you've seen her post. Maybe you didn't read them, but she post literally everyday, baring travel, illness, or her mother or father in need of attention. She got like 3000 + post in here.

 

[NoTalentHack]

The rules of the experiment are literally just "imagine this scenario and compare it to reality." I can't rig the outcome of something that you are imagining in your brain.

Man, I'd just let it go. There's not some magic combination of words that's going to make a troll go "oh, I get it now." He's wasting your time intentionally, either because he wants to waste the time of someone he disagrees with, because he can't admit he's wrong when he so clearly is, or because he's denser than a dwarf star. Maybe all three.

 

[MrHereWriting]

If you spend anytime in the Authors' Hangout you've seen her post. Maybe you didn't read them, but she post literally everyday, baring travel, illness, or her mother or father in need of attention. She got like 3000 + post in here.

And I'm supposed to remember them? I know of and have talked to Reject Reality, but I can't remember which posts of his I've liked. I've probably pressed the like button for Lovecraft the most, but ask me to remember one of his posts and I can't.

Forums are fleeting, and so is my memory of them.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

And I'm supposed to remember them? I know of and have talked to Reject Reality, but I can't remember which posts of his I've liked. I've probably pressed the like button for Lovecraft the most, but ask me to remember one of his posts and I can't.

Forums are fleeting, and so is my memory of them.

Your fucking with someone that doesn't deserve the abuse. I may be overprotective of her, since we are friends in real life, and lord knows, she doesn't need my protection. I just think you've misjudged her.

ikh hab a sheynem tag. shlum.

 

[MrHereWriting]

Your fucking with someone that doesn't deserve the abuse. I may be overprotective of her, since we are friends in real life, and lord knows, she doesn't need my protection. I just think you've misjudged her.

ikh hab a sheynem tag. shlum.

As I've said, I reply in kind.

The end.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

As I've said, I reply in kind.

The end.

So, your the kind who must have the last word!

 

[R. Richard]

I grew up white, poor and able see what was around me. I lived in a Negro area, as Whi' Boy. In school, I analyzed a novel, as assigned. One of the other students thought that I missed the point and he came to give me a hug. I hit him three times, fatal strikes. I was too young to have the strength to kill hugs boy, but I did cripple him. Society was unwilling to punish hugs boy, because he was societies child. I saw
privilege used against me. Later, the Negro boys thought that they had privilege because of their numerical advantage. Then the OGs realized that 'Whi' Boy kill you.' I then had to live in the dark, because of police privilege. Yes, I know about privilege.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I grew up white, poor and able see what was around me. I lived in a Negro area, as Whi' Boy. In school, I analyzed a novel, as assigned. One of the other students thought that I missed the point and he came to give me a hug. I hit him three times, fatal strikes. I was too young to have the strength to kill hugs boy, but I did cripple him. Society was unwilling to punish hugs boy, because he was societies child. I saw
privilege used against me. Later, the Negro boys thought that they had privilege because of their numerical advantage. Then the OGs realized that 'Whi' Boy kill you.' I then had to live in the dark, because of police privilege. Yes, I know about privilege.

Either this is more metaphorical than I am able to follow or you just confessed to crippling one boy and then killing his friends.

Which I guess is a pretty stark illustration of the racial dynamics in question but maybe not in the way you intended?

 

[R. Richard]

I self defended me against a sexual assault. The police didn't care about the victim, just about the criminal attacker. In South Central Los Angeles of the time, the Negro kids didn't like white kids. In fact the OGs didn't like most other Negro kids. Purely as a matter of self defense, I carried utensils. I did sometimes enlist in the affairs of a Negro gang who called themselves Zulus. The leader of the Zulus was called Shaka. (The original Shaka was the most famous King of the real Zulus.) Shaka and I got along. The rest of the bigot Negroes hated me and Waldo. (Waldo was my .357 magnum.) The Negro pimps also hated me, after I got hired to discipline a pimp that they called Tank. Actually, I was forced, by the LAPD, to discipline a pimp that they called Gorilla. Unarmed, I supposedly put a .38 police special round into Gorilla.
It was a confusing time.

 

[Comshaw]

I had to get back to this because of a couple of things I needed to say, but it took a while because I needed to think on some things. So let me get into it.

This is a common feeling - people look at the hardship they went through and wonder, if I have privilege, why were things so rough?

Here are a couple of questions that sometimes make it more visible. How many moments in your life would have been easier if you'd been Black? And how many would have been harder?

Like, it sounds like you grew up pretty poor in the 50s and 60s, which probably wasn't easy. If you'd been Black, though, you would have had all of the same hardships, plus a lot of widespread and legally enforced racism. Privilege doesn't mean things weren't hard for you; it means your ethnicity didn't make those things harder.

This is the thing, everyone ASSUMES that "white privilege" is global (as far as the U.S., is concerned) and encompasses ALL communities. It just ain't so. I freely admit in some locals it is pervasive and part of the social fabric. Since my family came from Oklahoma I heard about it from my uncles and father. But I never had firsthand experience with it until I visited Oklahoma when I was 17. I was astounded by the palatable hate shown by some whites for blacks AND the other way around. Yeah, yeah I know "blacks only hate whites cause whites hate blacks" which is bullshit. People hate because they are stupid, no other excuse. It doesn't matter the reason, I just didn't (and still don't) understand hating someone because of the way they look.

So to answer this question, yes my life IF I lived in a place like that would have been worse. But I didn't. The community I grew up in had one black family in the entire county. Me and my brother and the kids of that family were friends. We went to the same high school (because there was only one) and I never heard any member of that family talk about anyone showing prejudice or being singled out because they were black. And I spent a lot of time with the family. I didn't know them as a "black" family. I knew them as, Wile, Mike, Joe and Mr. And Mrs. *****. They were actually better off financially than my family was. And that was the thing in my community, not discrimination by color, but by economic standing. Down south it would be called "white trash". Here it wasn't called anything, we were just looked down on as the bottom of the barrel and the ones most likely to be criminals.

As I've said in an earlier post while in the military it was different. Because of regulations and the scattering of black soldiers into the upper ranks, prejudicial treatment because of race was discouraged and treated harshly. Prejudice in the military wasn't race-based, it was rank-based. To sum up, yes, had I lived in another place and been black my life would have been worse. But I didn't, so no my life would not have been worse if I had been black.

What happens when you run this thought experiment - if you imagine how your life would have been different if you had always been a different ethnicity? Do you think nothing would change, or do you think racism would have made your life harder?

Thought experiments by their nature can't provide objective evidence, but they can still help us understand things.

To me that "thought experiment" is useless. Why? Well, I can't just imagine myself as a black man because I can't just snap my fingers and I'm black. I need to construct a family history. Where did I come from? Was my ancestors' slaves or free? Did they emigrate from another country after the Civil War? What was my family's economic background? There are way too many variables for me to imagine, without a humongous amount of thought, myself in that place. And yes it would make a huge difference to a black person, because as I've tried to point out "white privilege" IS NOT a universal constant.

That said, if I could, would life have been harder for me? That answer is contained in my first reply above.

If he'd been Black, he would have experienced racism that he didn't experience as a white person. That racism would have made his life harder, even if all other things about his life were kept the same.

And here we have the base of the problem, "because it exists, it encompasses EVERYONE and EVERY PLACE" an all-or-nothing mindset. There are few absolutes in life, few of anything that is 100% one way or the other. "Because racism exists, ALL black people have it worse off than ALL white people". A false and rather ignorant and myopic view of life.

'Nuff said.

Comshaw

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I think prejudice, setting aside for now, your life is what you make of it. Everyone should make the best life they can with the tools, resources, and assistance they can find. A person cannot change skin color, race origination (well, a few have tried), or station to which you were born. You can rise or fall by your own efforts. I had privilege from being born into an upper-middle-income family. I had some struggles because I was a Jew. Yes, I've been called bad names and insulted because of my religion or what people believe to be true of Jews.

I know my grandparents had it hard going up. The French on one side of my family, under German occupation, and them being Jewish didn't help. The German grandparents because the Nazis took everything from them and put them where no one wants to be.

No matter where we're from or who we are, we should be able to get along on this forum if we just make a little effort.

(I had a more detailed and personal response, but my laptop had a memory fart) I won't try to rewrite what I'd written at this time.

 

[Comshaw]

I think prejudice, setting aside for now, your life is what you make of it. Everyone should make the best life they can with the tools, resources, and assistance they can find. A person cannot change skin color, race origination (well, a few have tried), or station to which you were born. You can rise or fall by your own efforts. I had privilege from being born into an upper-middle-income family. I had some struggles because I was a Jew. Yes, I've been called bad names and insulted because of my religion or what people believe to be true of Jews.

I know my grandparents had it hard going up. The French on one side of my family, under German occupation, and them being Jewish didn't help. The German grandparents because the Nazis took everything from them and put them where no one wants to be.

No matter where we're from or who we are, we should be able to get along on this forum if we just make a little effort.

(I had a more detailed and personal response, but my laptop had a memory fart) I won't try to rewrite what I'd written at this time.

Don'tcha' just love that? Being a sausage-fingered, dyslexic typist it's slow and wearing for me to type out anything, so when the computer takes a dump and swallows an hour-long hard-written reply to a post, I get a little, angry and early go back to do it again.

Comshaw