White privilege

[celticgrafix]

it kills me when they complain about history...they want to bitch about "black history month"...they seem to forget that all history classes taught are pretty much the "western civilization" type which are pretty much about caucasians with a smattering of egyptians and sumerians....i was listenin to Rush the other day(good to know what the enemy is listenin to) and he was claimin Mcsame was makin inroads into blue states makin them "purple"states now...but he claimed some states were still"black"states but could turn to red...i almost lost it...WTF!!!!!

who started the usa to what it is now, after the american indians, it was the whites right, fuckin dumbass

The reality is that everyone who lived in the US helped to make it is what is now. Blacks first helped create wealth by donating 80 plus of free labor. Then you still have Black doctors, scientist and inventors, who made great contributions. Chinese were brought here as labor to build the first trans continental railroad. This list is endless. But this is why every ethnic group needs to know about their own history, because often the dominant group forgets to include everyone in the picture. Everyone needs to be able to give pride of accomplishment to the next generation.

Racism like you displayed in you comment, should really be thought of as "erase-ism". The dominant culture erases the achievements of the people it seeks to exploit.

Then again if you want White people to take credit for all the good things, then you have to take credit for the bad things, like ethnic cleansing of the Native American population. Some even call it genocide. Then when somebody like Rev Wright brings this up, he is called racist, comepletly ignoring his point of the decline in numbers of the Native American population.

Futhermore: who started the usa to what it is now, after the american indians, it was the whites right, fuckin dumbass

This demonstrates what the original post was about. White priviledge is being able to deny the contributions of everyone but White people. We're all Americans, buddy.

well buddy, u single out the whites, and thats bullshit, cry to someone who cares

[edward almond]

The rich man still has you by the balls because you still believe that bullshit about whites getting all the gravy.Its about class.Not race.My son went to a so called black college and was the number one student in the school.Imagine that ,1 percent whites, and he was the smartest kid in the school.He said the black kids hated him and even shot him while going to class because he screwed up the curve.Now when he applies for a job the employers look confused because he is white and went to a black school.Then they tell him he is not what they are looking for.One even said he was not diverse enough.He had two patents for the school when he apprenticed there and a perfect record. I wonder what they are telling him. If a black man had his resume he would have been chased by every major corporation, so you are as wrong as you can be. Its about inititive and not race.One day my son will overcome this because he has balls and guts. Unlike your, hand me something for free attitude.Affirmative action is just racism on a different group of people.Affirmative action for equality is like fucking for virginity.

[SarahG]

it kills me when they complain about history...they want to bitch about "black history month"...they seem to forget that all history classes taught are pretty much the "western civilization" type which are pretty much about caucasians with a smattering of egyptians and sumerians....i was listenin to Rush the other day(good to know what the enemy is listenin to) and he was claimin Mcsame was makin inroads into blue states makin them "purple"states now...but he claimed some states were still"black"states but could turn to red...i almost lost it...WTF!!!!!

who started the usa to what it is now, after the american indians, it was the whites right, fuckin dumbass

The reality is that everyone who lived in the US helped to make it is what is now. Blacks first helped create wealth by donating 80 plus of free labor. Then you still have Black doctors, scientist and inventors, who made great contributions. Chinese were brought here as labor to build the first trans continental railroad. This list is endless. But this is why every ethnic group needs to know about their own history, because often the dominant group forgets to include everyone in the picture. Everyone needs to be able to give pride of accomplishment to the next generation.

Racism like you displayed in you comment, should really be thought of as "erase-ism". The dominant culture erases the achievements of the people it seeks to exploit.

Then again if you want White people to take credit for all the good things, then you have to take credit for the bad things, like ethnic cleansing of the Native American population. Some even call it genocide. Then when somebody like Rev Wright brings this up, he is called racist, comepletly ignoring his point of the decline in numbers of the Native American population.

Futhermore: who started the usa to what it is now, after the american indians, it was the whites right, fuckin dumbass

This demonstrates what the original post was about. White priviledge is being able to deny the contributions of everyone but White people. We're all Americans, buddy.

did WE do this, NO, so get over it

I am confused, who are you referring to when you say "we"? If you mean your family, sure I can agree with that argument to a point. Ethnicity? Not so much, there were Irish in America before the civil war, even some who owned slaves.

As to what that meant, varied from place to place during that century. I know the klan in some areas were more concerned about Italians than blacks, in other cases the Irish were targeted- it really depends on where you're talking about in a micro level.

On a macro level however, the institution had far more reaching ramifications nationally. People benefited in all types of ethnic backgrounds, locations, and classes from slavery in the United States. Many northern states were slave states at one point or another, New York was a slave state during the civil war if you fell into certain situations. Many of the northern states that were counted as free states allowed slavery provided the slave's age was below a limit, and when combined with the ban on the slave trade (which had come earlier), many northern families profited right to the end of slavery by operating "breeding" enterprises where slaves would be raised, used locally and- before they turned the age that would set them free, they would be boarded up and sent down south. This is where the phrase "sold down the river" comes from.

Then there were all the nonslave owning parties who benefited from exporting things such as cotton, having decades of access to goods (like cotton) that were being produced without any real labor cost. IMHO you'd be hard pressed to find any white American in pre-Civil War America that did not -somehow benefit from slavery, because of the way it impacted the whole country, from giving individuals the assets to start companies that then employed people, to giving people expendable income that could then be used for making purchases that would not otherwise have been made- the question becomes, how many families would have retained their assets from (even indirect) use of slavery after generations of going through history (there has been more than a few major economic crises since the 60s).

Yet even that argument is misleading because the difference in asset distribution translated into real differences in the quality of the education for each sequential generation. Even a former rich white family fallen into poverty in the 1893 panic would have had kids going to schools light years ahead of anything impoverished blacks (right out of slavery) would have had access to. And then those kids, with that better education would have had more earning potential even if the system was completely color blind in firing/hiring practices (and that surely was not the case). This difference in education and schooling acted as a feedback loop, keeping the poor poor, and the wealthy rich. Not only did this mean that some had higher earning potential, but some were (because of their education) less likely to be taken in scams, more apt to know how to use their money properly. The after effects of this are still being seen if inner city drop out rates are any accurate... and even with our current mortgage crisis we see that blacks from craptastically terrible inner city schools have been far more likely to get caught up by predatory lenders (you can google this one, I won't go into the specifics in this post).

One of my personal heroes is no longer really known in the world. During my great grandfather's time, there was a journalist who then became a muckraking author by the name of Gustavus Myers, and unknown person today- but he spent the better portion of his career researching, documenting, and writing about the history of wealth distribution in western society. Here he went back and, using government records and other such documents- would show how families got their wealth & power, and what happened to it generationally to-date (of his books). When he did this for Canada in the History of Canadian Wealth, he presents a picture of how colonialism pre-determined Canada's wealth distribution, how these noble families of tyrant-imposed monopolies exploited that portion of north america for generations, and how that money was then used. The book was so well documented, and so damning, that it was banned in Canada and had to be published across the boarder in Chicago... Canada didn't see a printing until the 1970s. He wrote about the United States as well, in fact he did so with far more frequency taking on everyone from Tammy Hall to the Puritans. These works were openly accepted and supported by academia then, and have held fairly well to today. But his last book, the one he spent more than twenty years on, he never truly finished (which when compared to his other books is fairly obvious), and when he realized he was towards the end, he took the rough version of it he had so far, went to his publisher- dumped it on their desk, and went home to die three months later. That was 1942 and the book was History of Bigotry in the United States [btw if you're Irish-Catholic, I suggest reading the piece]. This last book didn't get into the issue of economic distribution disparity caused by these practices, but if read with the rest that he had done to that time the reason for that is obvious- he had already proven those points. As to Myers himself, if it matters he was white.

To assume that these disparities no longer exist, that slavery's ramifications are no longer being felt, or that it is impossible for those arriving after the war to have benefited from this relationship, is at best questionable. But if one thing is clear, it is that affirmative action simply won't fix it, not any more or less than using a bandaid to repair a dam.

This isn't 1866, but if these problems do not exist, than one has a hard time explaining away the fact that 55 percent of African Americans, compared to 17 percent of whites, were steered to risky subprime mortgages when they were qualified for a traditional mortgage with a lower interest rate- an observation made by the Federal Reserve themselves. This isn't a debate about hand out reparations, but one about intentional, calculated maneuvers to exploit people for profit knowing the ramifications... and if the housing situation hadn't have turned into a crisis, no one would be talking about it, creating the false illusion of progress, tolerance and equality.

[yodajazz]

yodajazz, you make valid points and i will give them consideration.
I won't bore you with my perspective, i'm sure you are confident that you have a grasp of it already. I won't apologize for my perspective, but i will admit that at the very least i am guilty of allowing my opinion of individuals to expand to my opinion of groups of people - that, i suppose, is the essence of racism. It is not a revelation that makes me particularly proud.

I was raised in the deep south, so racism is part of my culture - that of course is no excuse. It is certainly not how i was raised. my father was a founding member of the unitarian church in atlanta, my stepmother was a peace corps volunteer in africa and spent her careerr working in a children's hospital, my sister is a hardcore liberal and a social worker and has been an active advocate for women's, families' and minorities' rights throughout her career, three of my uncles were noted atlanta attorneys and active in social issues and served on boards of a variety of activist groups - i am the lone republican in all of my extended family, and in many ways i suppose my attitudes are a disappointment to them.
One of my first childhood memories is a cold sunday standing in the rain for ten hours with my father and sister on the quad of atlanta university in a procession to view the body of a man who had been recently murdered, a man who had been a guest in our home on several occasions - that man was martin luther king jr. He has always been one of my heroes, and i am certain i would be a disappointment to him.

In my defense i would only say that in the clutch i think there is someone more humane inside, which is likely the case with a lot of people who let the pressure and vagaries of the real world mis-color their perspective. humor me while i bore you with a little story....

For nine years i was the plant manager in a small manufacturing plant in atlanta, about 30 people worked on my team, and over the years i have probably hired about that many people. On one occasion when we had an opening i had interviews with three people, two black and one white, each of whom was apparently adequate to our requirements and i was left to determine which to hire. After I had finished the interviews the receptionist paged me and told me that another young man had come in unannounced to inquire if we had any openings and i agreed to meet with him briefly. Timothy was a young black guy, not exceptionally bright, little education, no skills to speak of, a spotty employment history who was currently working a few hours a week as a temp laborer. 'T' was a nice kid, and he impressed me with his passion to find a permanent job where he could start to build opportunity for himself, his young wife (who worked part-time at Wendy's) and the child they hoped to bring into the world. I liked 'T' and i took him into the plant and showed him what we did and tried to impress on him the severe conditions in our operation, then i told him i would consider him and let him know something within a few days. He said he would be grateful for consideration, then he told me there was something else i should know about him - 'T' had epilepsy and his condition was so severe that he was a participant in radical experimental drug trials.

I thought about the situation for the remainder of the day and into the night. Hiring 'T' was in no way the easy path. The other three applicants were more 'qualified' for the position, but times were good and i knew the other three could easily find better jobs in short order. I called Timothy the next day and requested the name of his doctor and asked if he would consent to me discussing his potential employment with the doctor to which he readily agreed. I was able to arrange a meeting with his doctor the next day and we discussed the severe conditions in our plant, the presence of many machines and conveyors and boilers and other apparatus that might be a consideration, and his doctor and i were able to come to agreement on restrictions that would allow Timothy and his co-workers to be reasonably safe. I had one team of four that worked together that could absorb someone with minimal skills and i met with them and discussed the situation with them and they all agreed that Timothy could be added to their team without jeopardizing them or their performance and they all assured me that they would keep an eye on Timothy and guard over him in the event of a seizure. I hired 'T' and he worked with us for three years and his team did a great job of including him and utilizing him and watching over him on the occasions when he suffered seizures. Timothy's attendance was sometimes impaird by his illness, and there were times when he had to stop and rest when he felt a mild seizure setting in, but i never regretted hiring him....he was a wonderful kid, always enthusiastic, always a pleasure to see and to speak with, and everyone at the plant was fond of him. He stopped me so often to tell me how much he loved working at our plant that i almost found myself trying to avoid him, it was embarassing. Then one day, with a glow on his face that made him almost luminous, he told me that his wife was expecting their child. They had a son, and no man has ever been prouder to have a son than Timothy, and one day he confided to me that he was going to see to it that his son had every opportunity for a good life - and i never doubted it.

Shortly before Christmas in his third year with us a severe grand mal seizure took Timothy from us and even now, almost ten years later, thinking of it brings tears to my eyes. I loved Timothy, everyone loved Timothy. He wasn't given much, he never asked for much, but he held to his faith that he could overcome everything and take care of his wife and his son. I went to his wake and to his funeral and it was pretty clear that neither his nor his wife's family were in financial circumstances that would allow them to protect Timothy's dream of something better for his wife and his son. As was the custom at our plant, the employees collected some money for the family, and the $600 they collected was the most that was ever donated for a family before or since. I donated $10,000 which was a large part of my net worth at the time, but I wanted to do whatever I could to further Timothy's hopes for his family. Sadly, I know it was wholly inadequate and knowing how little help it would be in the situation that 'largesse' gave me little comfort.

I'm not sure why Timothy came to mind as I thought about your post, but he often does, and although there are demons within me that I suppose make me less than I should be, I take some comfort in knowing that Timothy and I were just two guys who crossed paths in a good way, and we weren't a black guy and a white guy, just two guys.

Well, thanks for sharing. It seems today that we are increasing getting our information from media, which advocates a specific ideology like liberal or conservative. Or we get news from media which claims to be objective, but in reality shows a biased world view like Fox news. We hear about senses crime, but not about the young person taking care of their siblings after their parents have passed away.

Most people do not have enough time to research this issues themselves, so they get misinformation from people with an agenda. I see the public as being lied to, and media not questioning them in many cases. Like when they tried to say that Iraq was threat to the US.

But as far as racism, most Blacks would say that in the South, it was more open, but still about as bad in the North, where people were more undercover about it. They say that it worse to have someone smile in your face, and then stab you in the back. By the way, the National Headquarters for the Klan was in Indiana, not in the south.

So I say that a lot of our differences are based on outright propaganda, or in advertising they call it product positioning, not reality. Reality is the party that claims to be for smaller government, created a whole new Federal Dept of Homeland Security. Or they eliminate some jobs, but then contract the same services out to private contractors and it does not save money.

Thanks again for sharing your history. I think that a lot of things could be worked just by people sharing information, and thus moving closer to a truth which has more of everyone's views.

P.S. I hope can see that this forum posts to not recognize paragraph indentions. You have to skip a line for people to see that it is a new parargraph. You can go back and edit it anytime you want to, however.
I took the liberty of putting paragraph breaks where it looked like you had intended to put.

[NYBURBS]

Well that was a bunch of non-sense and garbage. I must tell you I feel dumber for having read it.

Or maybe you should feel dumber for having said that...

No I really don't. I see your posts all the time, obviously you subscribe to some live feeds from the DNC. I can assure you that the party lines you hear from both parties are nothing but bullshit. If you still think that after 200 plus years of party rule that our political structure is anything but nonsense than I feel bad for you.

As I have said in previous posts, I plan on voting for Obama, but that does not mean I am going to drink the kool aid of either party. In reality we are given two choices, and neither is very different from the other.

I can understand why blacks are upset with whites; I also understand why many whites resent the racial politics. Obama made one of the greatest speeches I have ever heard on this subject, and that is a prime reason why I will vote for him. However, this thread (and the OP's original post) is nothing but divisive, ignorant, and misleading.

[yodajazz]

well buddy, u single out the whites, and thats bullshit, cry to someone who cares

It’s pretty obvious that you don’t care. But you were the one that singled out White people for making the US what it was today. Then, when I point out that it also includes negative things, as well as positive, you complain about being singled out.

I thinks that’s called hypocrisy.

[yodajazz]

The rich man still has you by the balls because you still believe that bullshit about whites getting all the gravy.Its about class.Not race.My son went to a so called black college and was the number one student in the school.Imagine that ,1 percent whites, and he was the smartest kid in the school.He said the black kids hated him and even shot him while going to class because he screwed up the curve.Now when he applies for a job the employers look confused because he is white and went to a black school.Then they tell him he is not what they are looking for.One even said he was not diverse enough.He had two patents for the school when he apprenticed there and a perfect record. I wonder what they are telling him. If a black man had his resume he would have been chased by every major corporation, so you are as wrong as you can be. Its about inititive and not race.One day my son will overcome this because he has balls and guts. Unlike your, hand me something for free attitude.Affirmative action is just racism on a different group of people.Affirmative action for equality is like fucking for virginity.

I agree with you that it is mostly about class. I listened to another video by the person who wrote the original post, Robert Wise. His thesis was that the power elites have always benefited from poor Whites being pitted against poor Blacks. And I agree with his thesis.

I empathize with the position of your son, however, I would also have to say historically the reverse is true a hundred times over. It’s like a race where Whites were given a head start. But then they change the rules and say they will no longer hold Blacks back, but the Whites already have a head start. So the race does not really become fair until some of the injustice from the past is corrected. So I say that affirmative action is just correcting for past injustice.

In my case, my mother was a good high school student. Some of her friends enrolled in college, and my mother wanted to go also. But at the time my grandmother, looked around and saw many Blacks with college degrees who, were not working college level type of jobs, and said that it wasn’t worth, going through all the effort and not be hired anyway. She obviously was wrong, but my point is that many Blacks were discouraged from even attempting to get more education. And even today there is a problem with Black youth, understanding the relevance of education, as they don’t see themselves or their community in the lessons of history.

But anyway, I have to believe that your son’s talent will ultimately lead to his success.

And I do agree with your first sentence that the rich have us by the balls. And get to make the rules whose real priority is to help them stay rich. They have us all waving American flags, made by cheap labor in China.

[beatmaker]

it kills me when they complain about history...they want to bitch about "black history month"...they seem to forget that all history classes taught are pretty much the "western civilization" type which are pretty much about caucasians with a smattering of egyptians and sumerians....i was listenin to Rush the other day(good to know what the enemy is listenin to) and he was claimin Mcsame was makin inroads into blue states makin them "purple"states now...but he claimed some states were still"black"states but could turn to red...i almost lost it...WTF!!!!!

who started the usa to what it is now, after the american indians, it was the whites right, fuckin dumbass

Do you honestly believe the United States would be the power it is today without the 200+ years of free slave labor provided by blacks, which basically was the underpining of the agricultural industry in this country, which by the way was the largest industry in the United States until the Industrial Revolution. Celticgrafix, has this simple minded view of Blacks, that all my black friends who went to college in the Boston area say is endemic amongst native Bostonians of Irish descent. Not all, but way too many! Native Americans contributed their land, but we helped build this shyt, especially the South.

White denial is a big problem!!! It's like the alcoholic who says he doesn't have a drinking problem. He never cures his addiction, because he refuses to face it. Some whites (too few unfortunately) like the writer featured in the initial post, have come to realize this. I think that's why many whites have this pathological need to call black people "racist", like it somehow equals the paying field. It just a B.S mind game many whites delude themselves with, to assuage their history of oppressing blacks globally. Some whites understand and embrace the truth and they make the world a better place for it, but most will continue to embrace racial animous and justify it by labeling blacks "complainers", "unpatriotic" or "reverse racist". Anyone who has really researched the topic of white supremacy and skin privilege will tell you this pathology is needed for that social construct to exist and thrive, along with co-conspirators of color who are complicit, due to their need for white validation or social/financial elevation in this society. The movie "The Matrix" is very analogous to the White Supremacy social construct and how so few are really living in the real truth. You go to Latin America, the blacks are treated like shyt, but they deny it there too. The only blacks you see on Latin television are athletes or musicians. However, I'm sure a white guy like Celticgrafix would say that's bullshyt. Most people who can't deconstruct anything they disagree intellectually, will just call it bullshyt or nonsense to save face with themselves.

[SarahG]

As there were free blacks who owned slaves, and many Irish who WERE slaves, so this isn't really the most valid point...

Certainly there were free blacks who owned slaves, but those cases were few and far between.

There is, beyond a doubt, plenty of blame to go around. Most of the slaves didn't become slaves until they were captured by competing black tribes in Africa, sent to the coasts, and sold to white or arab slavers (depending which coast we're talking about). The statistic that I remember from history class many years back was that 2/3 of the Africans that were sent into Slavery on the west coast were male going to agricultural work in the New World, whereas those leaving the East Coast were 2/3 female and destined for sex work in areas such as the middle east.

it's hilarious how people always equate slavery to "black"...5% of the transatlantic slave trade came into the U.S., the majority of it went to South and Central America, especially Brazil..

I think the reason for that is because the United States gained so much visually from it, financially, and were among the last of the powers to end the institution (formally anyway)

With south and central America, a lot of the wealth from the practice went straight back to Europe, which when combined with the stereotype of everything south of Texas being some big third-world dump, causes people to think that slavery SOB didn't create financial empires, and did not create wealth distribution differences because "everyone down there is equally poor"

My Brazil history knowledge is not flawless, but going by my poor understanding of that country's history, wasn't it under the rule of European royalty & nobility until the 1860s? Poxieto was the second president of Brazil I believe, and his disagreement with Admiral Mello weren't until the early to mid 1890s. If it matters, Mello was black... and it is fairly easy to use that to tell which side of that debate that the United States gunboats sided with. I hope our Brazilian posters can chime in on that chapter of Brazilian history, I know it isn't taught up here.

.there were huge numbers of Irish slaves in the U.S., the British basically tried to wipe them out (by killing and enslaving) in the 1600s...

Isn't that over simplifying things a bit?

Sure other groups were enslaved at various times by various countries. Spanish and Portuguese tried enslaving the natives initially (it didn't work well, which is why they started going to Africa for a slave labor force).

The colony of Georgia was started as a slave state using imprisoned debtors. In the history books they'll say these were free people who chose to go to the New World instead of rotting in British prisons but, it isn't much of a "freedom" if your choice is to rot in a British prison of the era or going to the New World to work. There are obvious differences between this practice and african slavery in what would be the United States however, and iirc when these debtors were the labor force, African slavery was frowned upon in that colony.

I am slightly confused as to what you're talking about in this area (what would be the United States) with the comment talking about the Irish in the 1600s. Could you elaborate?

[Paladin]

and the worst thing about it is all the whites who read this shit and do not comment, as usual, speak up for once

I'm white, I'm reading this and you are full of shit...