What's new

Got into a pretty heated debate with my wife last night about race.

Beer

Well-Known Member
Some context. We are both white, were raised upper middle class, in a very predominantly white area.

She was telling me about some podcast where the guest, a black woman, went to some Ivy league school and how weird it was when she got there that everyone there grew up with a washing machine and dryer and how her white roommates were so ungrateful for everything they had growing up. Being the sadist I am I decide to interject, that she's acting like being poor is strictly a black phenomenon. That there are no poor asians, mexicans, jews, whites, etc ..... What about the white coal miner in rural Kentucky doing back breaking work for $15 an hour for 12 hours a day, getting lung cancer because the company doesn't give a **** about them. What do you say to them about white privilege? Now I absolutely do believe white privilege exists, but I also think that economics and area where you are born play just as big a role as race into someones opportunities in life.

So she says a few insane things ....

1. EVERY WHITE PERSON HAS MORE OPPORTUNITIES THAN EVERY BLACK PERSON. No, absolutely not even kind of true. An outright lie.
2. THAT THE ONLY REASON MY GRANDPA BECAME A MILLIONAIRE WAS BECAUSE HE WAS WHITE. In reality he leased land from the state in his 20's, built out a very large fruit farm over 50 years, sold all his land in his late 70's and made a **** ton of money. But not until he had been doing back breaking manual labor for 50 years. Her Grandpa has almost the exact same story. So, not sure where his whiteness caused this.
3. SHE FEELS GUILTY FOR BEING WHITE. This is idiocy, I almost lost my god damned mind when she said this. I told her I 100% I do not feel 1 ounce of guilt. I am grateful as I do understand that I was born into a much easier situation than a vast majority minorities, and so I was extremely lucky to be born to the family I have and in the area we live, I do not feel guilt. I would recognize I am lucky and would do what I can to help raise up those that have been born into much harder situations.
4. She gets deeply offended whenever I ask her what the answers are. What needs to be done to fix the wrongs these people have most certainly experienced? I'm not interested in talking about slavery anymore, It was awful and caused generations of pain and suffering. 99.999% of the country recognizes this. So what do we do now to fix it? What can we do to help? What can we do to lift up black youth? That needs to be the focal point of these discussions. Not focusing on everything that happened 100, 80, 50, years ago. Most everyone recognizes and agrees that black society was wronged for a long long time. What can we do now to try and help?

My main point was sure, blacks have had it rough, very very rough. And a ton of things have held them down for a long long time. But my point was I think someones economic situation is also very very relevant to one's opportunities. Not just one's race. That being born into poverty and into an area with very few economic opportunities is not just a black issue.
 
While I agree that economics plays a huge role in a person's life experiences and opportunities, this issue of race is not a two or three factor problem. It isn't as though a person is a character in an RPG and their characteristics are set and they move through the world based on that profile. Every situation is fluid. The way a person is perceived can change situationally and based on who's doing the perceiving.

For instance, I'm sure when you walk into a restaurant they are happy to see you and treat you as a valued guest. Well, most of the time. A person with exactly your economic status who happens to be black might frequently walk into those same restaurants and be treated with suspicion and coldness. In that instance you enjoy the "privilege" of others assuming you are a valuable customer and will likely leave a decent tip on a large-ish check. Your dinner experience will likely be just that little bit better.

Two people, one white and one black, who have followed the same educational path and achieved the same degree from the same respected university. They both submit resumes online to highly desired employers in their field. It has been shown that applications/resumes with identical information except that one has a "black sounding" name at the top result in the black person often being filtered out of the process at the very beginning. I'd be happy to hunt for a link, but I want to keep my train of thought at the moment.

Police officers have the ability to selectively enforce the laws, unfortunately. As a youth I was in vehicles that had been stopped by police and they found marijuana in the car. In mostly white Sandy, Utah in a car full of caucasian kids, the marijuana was dumped in the gutter and we were sent on our way. I grew up (2 years old to 10 years old) in a much poorer and more diverse part of the valley, Glendale. I have many friends strill from the old neighborhood. Many people i knew growing up from that neighborhood had criminal records associated with marijuana possession. And once you have any sort of record each successive interaction with police is more scrutinizing, more hostile and much more likely to result in additional charges. Policing is more aggressive in poor areas in general and then add to that the bias against people with any sort of record and it becomes absolutely adversarial to the people in those neighborhoods.

So many of our day to day interactions with strangers are based on almost instant assessments of them by us and us by them. Our manner and expectations are largely determined by that instant impression, and skin color is absolutely a factor in how those impressions are formed. How many of these encounters are positive vs negative? How many of them result in opportunity vs adversity? Those stats look different for the majority of white people vs the majority of black people.

So not every white person has more overall opportunity than any given black person, but even that black person who has a great amount of opportunity faces adversity and or a limiting of that opportunity in specific instances on a relatively frequent basis.

Privilege is not a yes or no thing. It is not a guarantee of positive outcomes. Privilege can express itself in very small ways at times, and very large ways at other times. You can experience privilege one time in one situation and then in an almost identical situation not experience it. We all have certain "privilege triggers" (just made that up) and we all have certain "disadvantage triggers." Some are activated at certain times and some are not. But for those that are lacking in "privilege triggers" and have an overabundance of "disadvantage triggers" are going to experience many of the same things privileged people do in different ways and their outcomes will be affected, large or small.
 
Last edited:
I think what needs to happen is that she needs to register an account with JFC and needs to come post in GD, as well as this thread.

If I were a mod, I might not suggesting setting up accounts in JFC to do Divorce Wars. Sure, you're an idealist, you thought this might help. lol.
 
":White Privilege" is a political construct, much like the Eugenic notions that have gained some political utility in some places during some times, when the media gave it a lot of air.
Most of our politics is stuff made up without actual reason, for usefulness in winning some exercise to gain power politically.

Any kind of difference between people, in generalities, can be exploited. Using crap to create contention, divide people in all kinds of groups, and create legends of abuse or injustice, really is outta place in our institutions.

American ideals like equal protection under the law did not begin even in America, but in England, where they were reaised because of English royalty abusing the lower classes, even because of the King abusing the noble class. The idea of people having innate rights is also present in the Old Testament and the Christian tradition. But of course, it's the exceptions that prove our rules...... hard to say really if something was just an exception or is a more deeply entrenched problem with human natjure.

Blacks have done their own inhumanities on their own tribes, not to mention other tribes..... which across all of human experience has been absolutely prevailing custom, to kill, destroy, obliterate people who are "different".... all the wars in history are about this.

As a political tool, exploiting racial or other differences, is as old as the hills, as universal as air, and as effective as molotov cocktails.

I have the notion that all people are pretty much alike, and the differences in categorical thought are just silly or irrelevant. As a confessing upper classman of the English tribe, I've been done in nevertheless by my own family, and persecuted as much as anyone alive. For betraying the family political norms, religious devotions, and generally being a scalawag from the nether side of skid row.

But hey, I love it. That's why I come here to JFC//////

Anyone who wants to believe in "White Privilege" needs to reconsider the Pharaohs. Some of the most awesome men of power in history, with possibly more slaves than everyone else combined.
 
Some context. We are both white, were raised upper middle class, in a very predominantly white area.

She was telling me about some podcast where the guest, a black woman, went to some Ivy league school and how weird it was when she got there that everyone there grew up with a washing machine and dryer and how her white roommates were so ungrateful for everything they had growing up. Being the sadist I am I decide to interject, that she's acting like being poor is strictly a black phenomenon. That there are no poor asians, mexicans, jews, whites, etc ..... What about the white coal miner in rural Kentucky doing back breaking work for $15 an hour for 12 hours a day, getting lung cancer because the company doesn't give a **** about them. What do you say to them about white privilege? Now I absolutely do believe white privilege exists, but I also think that economics and area where you are born play just as big a role as race into someones opportunities in life.

So she says a few insane things ....

1. EVERY WHITE PERSON HAS MORE OPPORTUNITIES THAN EVERY BLACK PERSON. No, absolutely not even kind of true. An outright lie.
2. THAT THE ONLY REASON MY GRANDPA BECAME A MILLIONAIRE WAS BECAUSE HE WAS WHITE. In reality he leased land from the state in his 20's, built out a very large fruit farm over 50 years, sold all his land in his late 70's and made a **** ton of money. But not until he had been doing back breaking manual labor for 50 years. Her Grandpa has almost the exact same story. So, not sure where his whiteness caused this.
3. SHE FEELS GUILTY FOR BEING WHITE. This is idiocy, I almost lost my god damned mind when she said this. I told her I 100% I do not feel 1 ounce of guilt. I am grateful as I do understand that I was born into a much easier situation than a vast majority minorities, and so I was extremely lucky to be born to the family I have and in the area we live, I do not feel guilt. I would recognize I am lucky and would do what I can to help raise up those that have been born into much harder situations.
4. She gets deeply offended whenever I ask her what the answers are. What needs to be done to fix the wrongs these people have most certainly experienced? I'm not interested in talking about slavery anymore, It was awful and caused generations of pain and suffering. 99.999% of the country recognizes this. So what do we do now to fix it? What can we do to help? What can we do to lift up black youth? That needs to be the focal point of these discussions. Not focusing on everything that happened 100, 80, 50, years ago. Most everyone recognizes and agrees that black society was wronged for a long long time. What can we do now to try and help?

My main point was sure, blacks have had it rough, very very rough. And a ton of things have held them down for a long long time. But my point was I think someones economic situation is also very very relevant to one's opportunities. Not just one's race. That being born into poverty and into an area with very few economic opportunities is not just a black issue.
Yes x
my kids are Hispanic and have white Privilege from their family and Socioeconomic privilege, and they deal with racism.

Their opportunities far exceed the poor white people in the area.

so it is complicated.
 
Yes x
my kids are Hispanic and have white Privilege from their family and Socioeconomic privilege, and they deal with racism.

Their opportunities far exceed the poor white people in the area.

so it is complicated.

That was my point. It's nuanced. A white kid born into poverty into a 95% black community is going to have it rough. Same with a black kid. She was just trying to speak in absolutes, it was so obnoxious.
 
Some context. We are both white, were raised upper middle class, in a very predominantly white area.

She was telling me about some podcast where the guest, a black woman, went to some Ivy league school and how weird it was when she got there that everyone there grew up with a washing machine and dryer and how her white roommates were so ungrateful for everything they had growing up. Being the sadist I am I decide to interject, that she's acting like being poor is strictly a black phenomenon. That there are no poor asians, mexicans, jews, whites, etc ..... What about the white coal miner in rural Kentucky doing back breaking work for $15 an hour for 12 hours a day, getting lung cancer because the company doesn't give a **** about them. What do you say to them about white privilege? Now I absolutely do believe white privilege exists, but I also think that economics and area where you are born play just as big a role as race into someones opportunities in life.

So she says a few insane things ....

1. EVERY WHITE PERSON HAS MORE OPPORTUNITIES THAN EVERY BLACK PERSON. No, absolutely not even kind of true. An outright lie.
2. THAT THE ONLY REASON MY GRANDPA BECAME A MILLIONAIRE WAS BECAUSE HE WAS WHITE. In reality he leased land from the state in his 20's, built out a very large fruit farm over 50 years, sold all his land in his late 70's and made a **** ton of money. But not until he had been doing back breaking manual labor for 50 years. Her Grandpa has almost the exact same story. So, not sure where his whiteness caused this.
3. SHE FEELS GUILTY FOR BEING WHITE. This is idiocy, I almost lost my god damned mind when she said this. I told her I 100% I do not feel 1 ounce of guilt. I am grateful as I do understand that I was born into a much easier situation than a vast majority minorities, and so I was extremely lucky to be born to the family I have and in the area we live, I do not feel guilt. I would recognize I am lucky and would do what I can to help raise up those that have been born into much harder situations.
4. She gets deeply offended whenever I ask her what the answers are. What needs to be done to fix the wrongs these people have most certainly experienced? I'm not interested in talking about slavery anymore, It was awful and caused generations of pain and suffering. 99.999% of the country recognizes this. So what do we do now to fix it? What can we do to help? What can we do to lift up black youth? That needs to be the focal point of these discussions. Not focusing on everything that happened 100, 80, 50, years ago. Most everyone recognizes and agrees that black society was wronged for a long long time. What can we do now to try and help?

My main point was sure, blacks have had it rough, very very rough. And a ton of things have held them down for a long long time. But my point was I think someones economic situation is also very very relevant to one's opportunities. Not just one's race. That being born into poverty and into an area with very few economic opportunities is not just a black issue.

I guess the question becomes, if you grandfather was black would he have been given the same opportunities to lease land that your grandfather was afforded? Would people support his business? There are documented undercover cases of bank officers discriminating against blacks for loans, both in acceptance and terms. Even with opportunities to expand to claim farmland with the Homestead Act, blacks were either pushed away, or didn't have enough money to make the journey west. While the Homestead Act allowed blacks an opportunity, the actual practice largely restricted them from participating. Over 46 million people in the U.S. are descended from people that were given land under the Act. A small minority are black.

Nearly 28,000 individuals had been awarded land under the Act. Combined with the claimants of the original Homestead Act, then, more than 1.6 million white families – both native-born and immigrant – succeeded in becoming landowners during the next several decades. Conversely, only 4,000 to 5,500 African-American claimants ever received final land patents from the SHA.

We have a history in this country of oppressing blacks. And yes, we all have to work for what we get, but blacks have often been excluded from the opportunities that whites receive. We have history everywhere with examples of blacks being oppressed. There is no question of that. When your ancestors are continually oppressed, you are more likely to be put in a position where you are less likely to have opportunities.

So yes, there are many multi-generational white families that are also oppressed, but those families in general are not a product of long-standing, systematic governmental oppression.
 
Which has as much to do with 21st century America as about anything else you type.

Nobody today is as racist, or as race-mongering as a group, as the Dems who don't care what facts are, or what people are, because of a total obsession with their own designs on power and who will lie any way deemed helpful to exploit whatever issues there are that can produce results.

you would be an idiot not to consider how people by their nature generally do harm to others when they wish to serve themselves.

Some debate who the Pharaohs were, whether black or white. It doesn't matter. Probably they were white, according to some genetic correlations with other sections of the fertile crescent. But it didn't matter to them what people they could use for slaves, black or white. They would therefore make a good comparison to todays power elites.

So indeed, these kinds of considerations would be essential to anyone who isn't just a political hack doing his assignment in the webz for the great cause of eliminating the last little band of free people.
 
I had a little hope when Obama was elected that maybe we'd get past the old attitudes and truly be a country with equal rights and opportunities, but then I forgot that Obama was ideologically a Marxist, and politically an agitator. He did everything he could to re-ignite race issues, every time anything happened that could be used to that effect.

I don't blame black folk for anything. I don't even think most of them are happy to be abused by politicians.
 
That was my point. It's nuanced. A white kid born into poverty into a 95% black community is going to have it rough. Same with a black kid. She was just trying to speak in absolutes, it was so obnoxious.
I appreciate your sincerity and some of the points you are trying to make. Gameface had a great post. Sure, being white doesn't shield you from poverty. However, if all variables are equal, just being white give you an advantage in life. It gives you access to more opportunities. And obviously, on how you are being treated by others. Maybe that's the point your wife was trying to make.

Regarding your grandpa, he probably wouldn't been able to purchase the land if he were black. Someone already mentioned the Homestead Act. There were many racist laws in US in the last century. For instance, check redlining and the Housing Act which was repelled in the late 60s. The black community was excluded from the big boom in housing the impact can still be seen today.

On the other hand, out of curiosity, what do you mean by "poor Asians, Mexicans Jews,...". You place Mexicans in the same category as race or religious group. Please clarify.
 
I had a little hope when Obama was elected that maybe we'd get past the old attitudes and truly be a country with equal rights and opportunities, but then I forgot that Obama was ideologically a Marxist, and politically an agitator. He did everything he could to re-ignite race issues, every time anything happened that could be used to that effect.

I don't blame black folk for anything. I don't even think most of them are happy to be abused by politicians.

I agree Obama was horrendous in healing race relations. I put him in the same camp as Bush the younger though, pure at heart but just a failure.
 
I appreciate your sincerity and some of the points you are trying to make. Gameface had a great post. Sure, being white doesn't shield you from poverty. However, if all variables are equal, just being white give you an advantage in life. It gives you access to more opportunities. And obviously, on how you are being treated by others. Maybe that's the point your wife was trying to make.

Regarding your grandpa, he probably wouldn't been able to purchase the land if he were black. Someone already mentioned the Homestead Act. There were many racist laws in US in the last century. For instance, check redlining and the Housing Act which was repelled in the late 60s. The black community was excluded from the big boom in housing the impact can still be seen today.

On the other hand, out of curiosity, what do you mean by "poor Asians, Mexicans Jews,...". You place Mexicans in the same category as race or religious group. Please clarify.

I agree, I just cannot stand the words "always" and "every" you lose me 100% of the time in a debate when you bring those words into the equation. It's not even worth wasting another word on.
 
I agree, I just cannot stand the words "always" and "every" you lose me 100% of the time in a debate when you bring those words into the equation. It's not even worth wasting another word on.
So every time they lose you in a debate when they say every? That's always an issue for you?
 
Top