Privilege in the United States

POSTED BY: RiveR6213
UPDATED: Saturday, July 26, 2025 06:23
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RUE

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 3:12 AM

"all of the competing people who are fighting for scraps"

And that's another thing a lot of people don't get. This is where virtually all of us are. But some people think that being self-centered (because of being white, male ... whatever) means they're not in the same class. Talk about foolishly grinning over their meaningless tokens ...

RIVER6213

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 3:16 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
"all of the competing people who are fighting for scraps"

And that's another thing a lot of people don't get. This is where virtually all of us are. But some people think that being snobby (because of being white, males ... whatever) means they're not in the same class. Talk about foolishly grinning over their meaningless tokens ...

I agree but when they do grin they totally believe that it has meaning. I was like that once but it wasn't because I'm white, it's because I was an ass...okay, maybe I'm still an ass but not in that way.

Just got home from work. I love being busy, it takes my mind off of worrying about things that have nothing to do with me.

-River

SIGNYM

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 3:27 PM

There is within human nature (being soical animals) the identification of "us". Unfortunately, once "us" is identified, it's opposite also comes into existance: "them".

The challenge is to make "us" as broad a category as possible. It is possible to consider all human as "us", regardless of race, age, gender, or ability. "Them" simply becomes non-human.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

BLOKETU

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 6:28 PM

I'm Indigenous bi-racial, my partner Caucasion, and after 10 years together I can honestly say yes there is. When you use your check or debit card at the store for the first time they usually ask for your ID. My partner got asked once, but several times at the same store they continued asking for mine. Then at the same store, Safeway there was a black woman in front of me in line, then behind mestood a white couple, so when a new register opened up the clerk always asks for the next in line, but she went to the white couple. I went to the manager and said you just lost a $400 a month customer.

Shopping at JC Penny's I should have been the next one to get the attention of the clerk, I know she saw me there, but then a white couple walked upand shewent to them, but they told her I was next. I told her manager and told them they just lost a $500 transaction.

Things get better, but we have a long ways to go.

BTW I am new to the board, but not to Firefly/Serenity. I love the show/movie; oh why could it not survive many more seasons!!!

RUE

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 7:07 PM

I appreciate your perspective. Though I'm white and have had the benefit of white privilege I remember want ads that said HELP-WANTED FEMALE bookkeeper, HELP-WANTED MALE accountant. I remember being the only female standing 4 hours in line for apprenticeships for pipe-fitters and electricians (they wouldn't even hand me the application form once I got to the desk). And I was told that the university I went to didn't allow female med students because they didn't have facilities for women. And there is still a severe glass ceiling for non-white non-males in the highest ranks of business and government.

SOME things have improved, but as long as we have a society that limits opportunities privilege will exist.

SIGNYM

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 7:41 PM

Did you ever watch TV Nation? It was a little like Candid Camera, but with an edge. One of the skits was whether a black man could catch a cab in NY. So an Emmy-nominated black actor and a convicted white felon stand near each other on a sidewalk and see who can catch a cab faster in New York City. The black actor is well-dressed while the white felon looks scruffy at best. White felon beats the black actor every time, despite the fact that the show's producers add a spotlight and eventually a blinking sign to the black actor's spot of sidewalk. It's hysterically funny and deeply offensive at the same time.

BTW- I have a funny standing-in-line story. My SO and I were in the middle of a minor home renovation when we had to run out to Sears. So there we are in line, sweaty, dust-covered, and wearing holey clothes and this well-dressed lady in line in back of us is talking to her hubby in Hungarian. "Look at them, so dirty, can't they shower...? " etc. The reason why I know is bc my SO speaks Hungarian. As we passed her on our way out my SO said "Thank you" to her in Hungarian. heh heh heh

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

PIRATEJENNY

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 8:20 AM

I'm surprised nobody has posted this yet..here is an article on White Privlage

by Peggy McIntosh

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Daily effects of white privilege
Elusive and fugitive
Earned strength, unearned power
"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"

Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."

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Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 11:07 AM

So this is white privilege, huh? What a crock of bullshit. In some countries people are enslaved or killed because of the color of their skin or their religion, etc, but Peggy McIntosh is bitching because she thinks white people have an advantage with buying post-cards, whatever the hell that means. If there is one thing that demonstrates that racism is no longer an issue in this country, it’s this article.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

KANEMAN

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 2:19 PM

"getting loans and apartments etc. than whites. They tend to be turned down more often or are charged higher rates."

Yep, that section 8 housing is pretty darn expensive. As are the food stamps and free medical. Credit is based on a rating...If you mess it up, you pay the price. Nowhere on any of my cards did it ask the color of my skin. And the mortgage brokers that I know don't give a damn about the color of a persons skin, just that they sign on the dotted line................30yrs @ 5.6% = a happy broker.........

REAVERMAN

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 2:28 PM

Wow. I think Hell must be freezing over, 'cause I keep finding myself agreeing with Finn...

PJ, I live in Mexico, where ther is very REAL racism. Not the extreme kind like Finn was talking about, but much more noticeable and tangible than in the States.

Here, The descendants of the Spanish, and the descendants of the natives conquered and enslaved by the Spanish despise each-other. Those of pure Mayan descent are very obviously treated as second-class citizens. Those of african descent are treated even worse.

Americans are, depending on the area, despised to different degrees. In some of the poorer areas of Mexico City (where I live), Americans (especially white Americans) can't walk around outside, for fear of being kidnapped and held for ransom, and possibly murdered even if their captors are paid.

Traffic cops will quite obviously pull people over based on race. Mexicans are rarely pulled over, but obvious foreign nationals are ALWAYS pulled over. I have Korean friends here who take extra money with them to bribe the cops that inevitably stop them, and if you have a U.S. liscense plate, and you're white, unless you have diplomatic immunity because you work at the embassy, they will threaten to throw you in prison for no reason, unless you pay whatever they ask.

Now THAT is real racism.

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"I refuse to submit,
To the god you say is kind.
I know what's right, and it is time,
It's time to fight, and free our minds!

Our spirits were forged in snow and ice,
To bend like steel forged over fire.
We were not made to bend like reed,
Or to turn the other cheek!"

- from the song "Thousand Years of Opression" by Amon Amarth

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