White Privilege

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I don't know. Is this just the view of a neo-nazi ... or is it somehow indicative of the way a larger number of white, "conservative" Americans feel?

Imo I'd say Conservative America is generally less focused on "helping" the white population, and much more focused on holding back/hurting minorities, non-Christian and/or poor people (including poor white people), particularly through denying legislature that could potentially help these groups of Americans (the weed bill that recently passed through the House comes to mind), and trying to control what grown adults can/cannot do with their own bodies, and which magical towel salesperson they should follow. A lot of these actions do tend to based on outdated, sexist, racist and/or xenophobic malarkey, though.

Imo, while there are undeniably a very healthy amount of people on the extreme side of the Conservative camp, I'd personally be hesitant to say that individuals such as that Quora user totally represent White America or Conservative America as a whole. For me, it is kinda like saying BLM The Orginization, including some of the more militant members, represents Black America as a whole, and this is coming from someone who has no nice feelings whatsoever towards either The GOP or BLM The Organization.

All that being said, and based on my own limited, anecdotal experience, the talking points that your Quora user used in their reply are typically the talking points used by hardcore white supremacists and Neo-nazis, in particular the describing of the decline of the (still dominant) white population in America as legitimate "Ethnic Cleansing," comparable to the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide (though they get a point for a lack of Holocaust-denial). Also, as a moderate history nerd (and at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law), the mentioning of white birth rates always hits a particular chord with me, since it was literally one of the main reasons Hitler and the NSDAP created the League of German Girls. At the risk of casting some broad strokes, it screams "idiot who thinks women are only around to make babies and/or that the socio-economic factors of children do not apply."

Rest assured, though, no matter where this individual is on the proverbial racism scale, they are 100% a dumbass.
 
(though they get a point for a lack of Holocaust-denial).

I noticed that. It furthers muddies the waters. I didn't bother to check any other posts by this individual - not very characteristic of posts on Quora. If he's not a neo-nazi the reasoning is even more absurd.
 
Ehhh, not really. They're just an idiot, full-stop.

I think calling it idiocy is besides the point. We seem to have reached a point where the "idiots are running the asylum" ... or at least a hairsbreadth from running the asylum. The stupid things lots of people choose to believe is affecting us all.
 
"a country that treats"... difficult to parse out what is meant by that.
I read it as her anger being directed towards people in authority rather than the innocent bystander on the street.
 
I read it as her anger being directed towards people in authority rather than the innocent bystander on the street.

Then it boils down to Trump and similarly-minded republicans. But the sentiment still strikes me as odd if that's the interpretation because the country just turned control of two branches of government away from those people in response to that exact behavior. So "the country" is not that anymore.

So then it's "I'm tired of living under the Trump admin". Me too.
 
Then it boils down to Trump and similarly-minded republicans. But the sentiment still strikes me as odd if that's the interpretation because the country just turned control of two branches of government away from those people in response to that exact behavior. So "the country" is not that anymore.

So then it's "I'm tired of living under the Trump admin". Me too.
The police weren't reelected and much of the WP talk in the last couple of days seems to be centred around the perceived difference in law enforcement reaction between the BLM marchers and the seditionists. Trump is certainly in the crosshairs though.

Don't worry, I don't think anyone takes it to mean "all the white folk", let alone "everyone in the country".
 
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"a country that treats"... difficult to parse out what is meant by that.

I think African Americans are beyond "parsing".

What I see from Trump supporters is indignation that the election - the country - is being stolen from them by people of colour. What you saw on Wednesday was that indignation, stoked by Trump turning into self-righteous rage & violence.
 
I think African Americans are beyond "parsing".

What I see from Trump supporters is indignation that the election - the country - is being stolen from them by people of colour. What you saw on Wednesday was that indignation, stoked by Trump turning into self-righteous rage & violence.

Trump's voting percentage went up with every ethnic group except white men. If anything, they cost him the election.
 
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Trump's voting percentage went up with every ethnic group except white men. If anything, they cost him the election.

True - because, obviously, not all white men are racists. But Trump's still had a much larger share of the white vote, especially white men, than Biden. Broadly speaking, in the 2020 election, Trump lost votes among more educated white voters, while holding ground, or improving his numbers among less educated white voters.
 
I'm not even sure we can blanketly say what happened at the Capitol is white privilege, it's more of a far-right white conservative privilege. Had those people been left-wing activists (or whatever you want to call them) I suspect the response would've been much, much different. We saw the same thing with the "protests" at the Michigan Capitol Building where there were people brandishing firearms towards uniformed police officers and nothing happened.

This isn't to discount what's happened with BLM protests though. It's clear that minorities are treated much worse, white protestors who aren't right-wing nutjobs are treated about how you'd expect, and right-wing nutjobs somehow get a free pass.

Honestly, anyone who broke into the Capitol like that should be dead. There shouldn't even been any question in the minds of law enforcement there, as soon as those people breached the door, they were now in a highly secured area where firepower is and has been used before.
 
I'm not even sure we can blanketly say what happened at the Capitol is white privilege, it's more of a far-right white conservative privilege. Had those people been left-wing activists (or whatever you want to call them) I suspect the response would've been much, much different. We saw the same thing with the "protests" at the Michigan Capitol Building where there were people brandishing firearms towards uniformed police officers and nothing happened.

Authority likes authoritarians.
 
I'm not even sure we can blanketly say what happened at the Capitol is white privilege, it's more of a far-right white conservative privilege. Had those people been left-wing activists (or whatever you want to call them) I suspect the response would've been much, much different. We saw the same thing with the "protests" at the Michigan Capitol Building where there were people brandishing firearms towards uniformed police officers and nothing happened.

This isn't to discount what's happened with BLM protests though. It's clear that minorities are treated much worse, white protestors who aren't right-wing nutjobs are treated about how you'd expect, and right-wing nutjobs somehow get a free pass.

Honestly, anyone who broke into the Capitol like that should be dead. There shouldn't even been any question in the minds of law enforcement there, as soon as those people breached the door, they were now in a highly secured area where firepower is and has been used before.

On the other hand ... it's a good thing the rightwing nut jobs weren't shot en masse - that would not have helped the situation. The actual outcome will be what probably - hopefully - drives the final nail in the Trumpsters' coffin..
 
On the other hand ... it's a good thing the rightwing nut jobs weren't shot en masse - that would not have helped the situation. The actual outcome will be what probably - hopefully - drives the final nail in the Trumpsters' coffin..

I think it's not so much that people want every protester treated like the BLM protesters, with gunfire, chemicals and random street abductions. It's that most protesters should probably be treated more like this, with serious force only used as an absolute last resort.

Honestly, anyone who broke into the Capitol like that should be dead. There shouldn't even been any question in the minds of law enforcement there, as soon as those people breached the door, they were now in a highly secured area where firepower is and has been used before.

I can't disagree with this. If "protesters" are storming government buildings looking to hang members of the government then defending them with lethal force seems reasonable. I assume the reason that they largely didn't is that there wasn't enough security available to do anything but turn it into a massacre.

In retrospect this was entirely predictable, and there probably should have been a ring of National Guard three deep standing shoulder to shoulder around the place. Bring in the military if you have to, say that you fear foreign interference or terrorist attacks if it's required to deploy on US soil, but make sure that there's enough force there that 🤬 like storming the building is a non-starter. Protecting the functioning of the country and by extension it's government is the reason the military exists.
 
Reading the comments secition, and looking at the likes to dislikes ratio, tells you everything you need to know... :lol:

 
There are so many reaction videos doing the rounds on this trailer, this one stood out to me...

🤬 NSFW! Language Warning! 🤬

 
VBR
Reading the comments secition, and looking at the likes to dislikes ratio, tells you everything you need to know... :lol:


It's funny because the topic you try to parade is even touched on in the OP.

The internet is predominantly white guys. Course they get insecure when their morals are questioned.
 
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To white people who who still think white privilege does not exist, imagine this scenario: You are taken to a city in the middle of Africa and told to live there for 10 years. You are the only white person in the entire city. Do you honestly, sincerely believe you will be treated as an equal to the other black people there? That the majority black community will treat you completely fairly and equal while never favoring their own over you? When looking for a job, and its between you and 9 other black people, can you say with 100% certainty the black supervisor is going to see you as an equal and the color of your skin will not affect his decision? How will you feel when you go to the store to get a book for your child and they are all filled with images of black children? Maybe you are single. At work you see a nice looking black woman, you seem to mesh well, but she seems hesitant to be seen around you in front of her black family and friends. This is the land of black privilege, and you do not have it. Sucks doesnt it? To not really know just how much your being screwed over just because of the color of your skin.
With this, you kinda shot yourself in the foot. If that example is similar to white privilege in mainly white countries, then it's considered black privilege in mainly black countries, right? The same for asian countries and so on, right? So this means racial privilege is everywhere, but we only speak of white privilege as a problem, the rest being fine?

I have plenty of personal experiences. I'll start with an example of me being racist to a black man I had met recently. We spoke for a few minutes and he was articulate, so I complemented him on it. I only just realized, some months later, that if he were a white man I would have never complemented him for being well spoken, and I feel gutted. That is just a small example of white privilege. People are not amazed when you do well for yourself when you are white. You are never spoken of as a 'credit for your race'.
Can't that be a disadvantage? If someone does good, but doesn't get credit because he or she is white, doesn't that undermine their "value"? I speak for myself but, regardless of race, I don't mind getting a compliment. Even if you consider your comment unnecessary, it would be much worse if you had offended that person.
I look Middle Eastern more then anything, due to my father being a mixture of races and my mother being Greek. When I go into clothing stores its not uncommon for me to get followed, or shadowed, despite the fact I am usually well groomed and well dressed. Everytime Im not chosen after an interview I cant help but wonder if the way I look had anything to do with the decision. A local temp agency was busted recently for writing B for black and M for Mexican next to the names of applicants. White privilege in full force.
That can be a problem, and good example. One of the cases where you can see white privilege. But, the same will apply in non-mainly-white countries, where the native "race" will have preference to hire their own, before hiring someone seen as an outsider. When getting a job, there's other types of discrimination. A "pretty" girl/woman is more likely to get the job than an "ugly" one. There's age privilege as well.
But, back to the race thing, it's slowly getting solved. But also a problem is raising: right now there's a sense in the air that there's a need to meet quotas. Once you start to add this up, of people being hired not based on their skill and experience, but to meet a certain required quota of X race and Y gender, it will create massive problems. And this is not the way to go, fighting discrimination with more discrimination.

When I want to find a date, 90%+ of the girls do not look like me. If I were white, 90%+ of the girls would look like me, and likely be more attracted to me.
Don't worry, when it comes to dating, the vast majority of men is in the mud. :lol: Women don't want the ordinary guy, regardless of race. Sure, race may take a part on preference, but it goes both ways, and in any race. Black women tend to prefer black men for example, and it's fine to have preferences, and no one complains about that (except when a white person has a preference to date other white people, but that's another topic: double standard).

If I were white, people wouldnt assume I supported Barrack Obama. If I were white, people wouldnt compliment me on how well I speak English. If I were white, I wouldnt be asked to play the role of the slave in 6th grade History. If I were white, I wouldnt be given the undesirable job at the end of the assembly line where the majority of colored employees worked. If I were white, I wouldnt learn little to nothing about my ancestors in school. If I were white, I wouldnt be asked if I liked the only other colored girl in class. If I were white, I wouldnt be considered a foreigner or african-american or native-american or latino, but an American.
I feel you, and that certainly has to leave a mark on you, and it really sucks. But blaming it entirely on "white privilege", is sort of short sighted, as if you went to Japan for example, you would get similar treatment for being "different" from everyone else. Maybe in the US it's deeper, but it still happens everywhere.

And in school? Oh boy, people get judged for everything, and being white won't save you.

Now, the problem people have with the idea of white privilege, is the use of the word "privilege". Privilege usually means an advantage, their life being made easier. This kind of undermines their feats, because for many, it sounds like "you're successful only because you're white". People still have to work hard (well, most of them) to get where they want to be. Maybe more than there being "white privilege", there are minorities disadvantages. And in different countries, different kinds of people get advantages over the rest.
Another problem, is the use of "white". Society is reaching a point where being born white, is a sin, and you are automaticaly a bad person, because you're white. And when you are white and male, it gets even worse! And when you make white people enemy number one, you end up being as wrong as whenever white people make you some sort of enemy.

Being born a man gives you the privilege of playing games online without being sexually harassed.
This is true, but men still get harassed online, it's just a different type of harassment, which ends up being way less "valued" compared to sexual harassment to women. And men get sexually harassed too, not to the same extent, but sometimes in much more damaging ways. For example, a woman dates a man, ditches him, and then she will embarrass him with her friends, degrading his image. And things can get pretty serious, when things go from harassment to serious allegations.
If you ask men, would they rather be sexually harassed by women, or be harassed because they are short or ugly, I'm pretty sure most would choose the first option. Not saying sexual harassment is fine though (I personally think it's dumb lol).

As a conclusion, I can't say white privilege doesn't exist, but I can say the term seems exaggerated. And there are people using the term to claim white men have it easy, and this is wrong.
 
Moved from here. I thought that thread was about slavery reparations.

@Scaff and I recently found ourselves in opposing factual views. His assertion was "it's a fact that the wealth the country was grown on came from slavery". While I claimed "Slavery held the US back. The country would have grown faster and more prosperous, and would have greater wealth, if we had never allowed slavery from the beginning, as some at the time wanted us to do. It was a cost" .

GTPlanet faithful will probably wonder why I didn't play the burden of proof position, and the answer is that I know damned well that Scaff can drum up articles to support his statement. I've also put forward citations to support mine. I've posted on this subject quite a bit.

I wanted to offer Scaff what he was apparently looking for, which was hard numbers to support the notion that slavery was a hindrance to the US economy rather than a critical element. And in doing so, I've opened up a can of worms. Because the numbers have all kinds of problems with them, as I'll explain.

Perhaps one question to ask yourself if you're going to read some of this is one I posted before: "Would the US have been better off if we had held on to slavery another 10 years? Another 20? Until present day?"

Let's start with the most basic theory about slavery. Someone works to produce value, and you don't have to compensate them (much) because they are a slave. Therefore, free goods and services, economic boon! The problem with this is that it's mistaking economic distribution for economic growth. What happens when a plantation owner forces a slave to work for his benefit is that the plantation owner is stealing the value created by the slave. The plantation owner then has the value created by his slaves, and can turn around and sell those goods to others or consume those goods himself. The measure of an economy is the value created by all of its participants. In this case, the value created by the slaves is a measure of economic output, and it doesn't matter, from a macroeconomic standpoint, whether the slaves are paid or the plantation owner is paid (or neither). The economic output is the total value created. If those people are free people and get paid for their services, the plantation owner's cut drops, but the total output is the same (all other things being equal). What this means is that the fact that slaves work for "free" is immaterial (at least to first order) to the economic story.

Immediately, though, we run into the problem with doing this kind of analysis, because now we have to invent an alternative history to explain what "might have" happened. If the slaves are freed, we now postulate as to what would occur. I've seen some literature that suggests that slaves can be worked harder than free people, and produce more than those people (at least for a short period). They argue that some farms in the south had higher "efficiency" (this is potentially loaded, because what efficiency means is very important and wasn't explained) than the northern counterparts in free states. The conclusion (and I don't know if this was truly supported) was that a free person will work less (though perhaps more efficiently while working) for themselves than a slave can be forced to work for a master. The free person values leisure, rest, and other qualities of life that a slave can be deprived of. As a result, for example, you might get 2 hours of slave work to every 1 hour of free work (I just made that up to illustrate the point). So even if the slave is less efficient while working (and yea, if they're working longer, they will probably be), they can still produce more. And there is research that claims this is the conclusion. Slavery offered higher output per person as compared to the same job from a free person.

Ok so back to our alternative history. This means if we free slaves, they'll work less. And that is also borne out a bit in the south after the civil war, with stories of former masters having trouble paying former slaves to do the same work. So our first alternative history argument might be that slavery was important because if those people were freed, economic output would go down. That might seem pretty basic.

This conclusion falls into the basic trap that many people of the south fell into. First, they assumed that they would proceed with business as usual. In fact, if you look at the output of the north, you see that the north was investing more in alternatives to manual labor (citation). The south was not doing this because they didn't have to, the economic signals were distorted. Also, it assumes plantation owners themselves would not counteract by working instead of sitting on their porch swing sipping iced tea. The entire southern aristocracy was enabled by slavery. Those people might have started doing more productive things with their lives if push came to shove. Also, it assumes that the same number of people are available to labor. But slavery required actively murdering a portion of the population to keep it in check (citation, this citation is only for sanctioned execution, not, as best I can tell, for legal killing by the owner). Freeing those people increases the pool of available workers because you don't have to kill a portion of them to keep them working. In a sense, slavery has to make up for not just the parallel free output, but also the output of dead people that would otherwise be free.

Finally, the biggest mistake (in my personal opinion) is to assume that free slaves would continue to produce value at a pace similar to the pace they were producing while they were enslaved. What I mean by that is, there are lots of jobs that are worth more than manual labor, and freed people can begin to do those jobs and produce far more.

Slavery was a system that stifled education intentionally. And education is linked directly with economic improvement. If slaves become freed, since we're not racist and know that slaves are capable of self-improvement and learning, they will over time become educated, and their offspring can become more educated. And they can therefore produce more value by leveraging the well known economic benefits of that education. To assume that slaves will produce less if freed is to assume that slaves are capable of no more than they were being used for. We know for certain that this is not true, as the genetic potential of former slaves has manifest across history. What this means is that some freed slaves (probably not all) can effectively put down their plow and pick up a pencil and create more value intellectually in the form of construction, carpentry, engineering, invention, science, leadership, art, medicine, etc.

Another problem with alternative history is to try to figure out when certain changes will occur in history and what might have happened if those changes occurred at that time. It could be argued that if slavery were discontinued at the founding of the US that the slave trade would have ceased, and so none of those workers would even be present in the US. The productivity of that population is then removed entirely from the US, right? Some have even argued that freeing slaves prior to the start of the US would have resulted in the US losing the revolutionary war. Should we argue then that slavery is integral to the existence of the US because we can assume the US would never have formed without it?

I don't think so. This is actually not an argument that slavery was integral and instead is an argument the forced immigration was beneficial. If slaves might have produced more value when freed, we could argue that it would have been beneficial to capture them, bring them forcibly to the US, and set them free. Or even more efficiently, we could actually entice people to come to the US with favorable immigration policy. What state populations might have looked like in the absence of slavery is difficult to trace through alternative history. It's not a simple as just removing the population. The fact that immigration (even in the form of slavery) was beneficial to the US does not mean that slavery was necessary or integral to the formation of the US simply because it shares characteristics with immigraiton. That would argue that immigration was necessary or integral to the formation of the US.

Even if you don't agree with what I wrote above, and you think slavery produced more than freed person work across the same population - or somehow you think that immigration was impossible without slavery - or for whatever reason you still think slavery offered a net gain to the US - there is still the ultimate price of slavery to contend with, which is the civil war. The civil war killed approximately as many people as were transported to the US throughout the slave trade (citation). That's not to say the civil war killed as many people as there were slaves, there were 4 million slaves by the time the civil war was fought. But it puts a heavy point on the cost of the civil war. Southern cities were razed, infrastructure was destroyed. The cost of rebuilding after the civil war was staggering. And I don't think that there is any argument in support of still having to pay the price of the civil war in some alternative history where slavery was never permitted. It was uniquely a cost of slavery.

Ok, so enough of the theory, let's talk practice. As I mentioned, there are so many problems with the numbers surrounding this analysis. This article discusses one of the problems with assessing something like capital or labor across the civil war, as the charts it picks on include slaves as capital pre-war, and then as labor post-war, making capital and labor look extremely misleading across the civil war. Another problem that was noted was the discussion of average wealth or average income across the south. Quoting something like that prior to the civil war gives a very different impression than after the civil war because the population of slaves is not always included in pre-civil war averages (since they weren't considered people at the time). Average wealth or income is spread across non-slaves in the south prior to the civil war, and then everyone after the civil war. Very deceptive.

Another problem with the numbers often quoted is what is referred to as the "profitability" of slaves. I guess there are some who argued that slaves might not even be profitable to slave owners when compared to running a plantation by paying free people. This is quite a stretch, because in the slave case, the plantation owner is allowed a great deal of criminal behavior to extract additional profit. One would expect this to be profitable to the thief. Turns out based on research that it is profitable. Nobody should be shocked. But the fact that owning slaves profits the slave owner only explains why slavery persisted. It doesn't speak to whether the nation as a whole profited from slavery. And in fact, as I've argued above, the nation as a whole can lose out and still have slavery persist because some individuals (individuals allowed to vote) profit personally.

In terms of raw numbers, which Scaff asked me for and which I will say upfront I have struggled to find. However, I do have this to offer (mostly taken from this collection):

"In fact, those states that abolished slavery outright or gradually after the Revolution experienced faster and greater economic growth than did slave states in the decades before the Civil War" - Jim Piecuch Kennesaw State University Associate Professor.


"The Middle Colonies were the most prosperous, and these were place where slavery was limited. These colonies gradually abolished slavery following independence and were not adversely impacted by abolition. Even in the southern colonies, with the exception of South Carolina and Chesapeake Tidewater areas, prosperity was not tied to slavery until the rise of “King Cotton” in the 1800s. Therefore, it is probably fair to say that in most of the thirteen colonies, slavery was not crucial to prosperity. Coastal South Carolina and the Tidewater were the exceptions." - Michael Adelberg, Author and Healthcare Consultant (and guy who does lots of seemingly unrelated high profile stuff).


"The fledgling Unites States would have thrived, but likely would not have grown and prospered as fast. Slavery made large scale plantation crops viable and generated capital not only benefitting slave holders directly but indirectly by industry, trade and tax revenues intertwined with the slave economy. Agrarian and industrial expansion in free states demonstrates that both sectors could rise robustly without the need for a foundation of enslaved labor." - Samuel A. Forman, Harvard University Historian


"The only unassailable answer is “Not so far as we know.” But the parts of the early U.S. of A. that ended slavery or depended on it least had the most productive industrialization, trade, and population growth in the early republic. Many of those enterprises were economically intertwined with regions of the country that contained many slaves, of course. But they also developed other industries and trade routes. Even as the slave-labor plantation system spread west, it didn’t develop. That rigid economy lagged further and further behind what was happening in other portions of the U.S." - J. L. Bell, Author and Historian


"Gavin Wright (1978) called attention as well to the difference between the short run and the long run. He noted that slaves accounted for a very large proportion of most masters’ portfolios of assets. Although slavery might have seemed an efficient means of production at a point in time, it tied masters to a certain system of labor which might not have adapted quickly to changed economic circumstances. This argument has some merit. Although the South’s growth rate compared favorably with that of the North in the antebellum period, a considerable portion of wealth was held in the hands of planters. Consequently, commercial and service industries lagged in the South. The region also had far less rail transportation than the North. Yet many plantations used the most advanced technologies of the day, and certain innovative commercial and insurance practices appeared first in transactions involving slaves. What is more, although the South fell behind the North and Great Britain in its level of manufacturing, it compared favorably to other advanced countries of the time. In sum, no clear consensus emerges as to whether the antebellum South created a standard of living comparable to that of the North or, if it did, whether it could have sustained it." citation


"Even in the agricultural sector, Northern farmers were out-producing their southern counterparts in several important areas, as Southern agriculture remained labor intensive while northern agriculture became increasingly mechanized. By 1860, the free states had nearly twice the value of farm machinery per acre and per farm worker as did the slave states, leading to increased productivity. As a result, in 1860, the Northern states produced half of the nation's corn, four-fifths of its wheat, and seven-eighths of its oats." citation

My conclusion is therefore that slavery held the US back when compared to at least some possible alternative histories. Which might have played out in the absence of slavery is hard to say, but our potential was far greater than our early history actually achieved.

Economics explained guy just made one of the same arguments I did about slavery holding back the US, but about slavery holding back the roman empire, and for the same reason - lack of investment in machinery and technology because of an abundance of free labor.

 
Since we've never bothered to truly take care of any abused people groups in the US, we should probably start in order with Native Americans. Give them land, give them authority, give them free education, give them various tools to actually utilize that. What we did instead basically doomed most of them to poverty, just like what we did with black Americans. Arguably, black Americans have recovered much better than Native Americans, likely because they were concentrated in cities rather than rural areas.
 
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