Required Reading

[girlgeek]

This is your Nation on White Privilege

What's that? You read that and now you want to make angry comments saying the Privilege doesn't exist? Read the article linked at the bottom as a followup. Linked below for your convenience.And if we don't understand what the term means, and what those who use it mean as they deploy it, our misunderstandings

Comments

[envisionjustice]

Wow.
Yeah, the difference between guilt and responsibility is crucial, otherwise we'll accomplish nothing.

[girlgeek]

and It's a hard thing to sort through too. Guilt is not constructive. At all. There's got to be a something more.

[envisionjustice]

Yeah.. I think guilt is constructive only insofar as it tells us when something isn't quite right so that we can do something about it. Once we're working on doing something about it, we're on the right track and guilt isn't needed anymore, and can get in the way of actually doing something constructive.

[whatsinaname]

thanks for that, i read both articles and enjoyed both of them

the most important point to be made in defining white privilege, to me, is that prejudice/racism is the flip side of privilege. he made this point well. one cannot exist without the other, and well many white people will easily admit that racism exists, what a challenge it is for them/us to see that we personally and as a group benefit from it.

[girlgeek]

I always feel like I have sort of *lightbulb* moments where for a brief second the whole tangled web of intersectionality and imperialism and colonism and exactly how systemic the whole thing is just pops into focus. It's only just a second and then it leaves again and then I start doing more reading.

[commander_keen]

As much as I hate to agree with you, the whole thing with intersectionality and imperialism and colonism is true. Britain did it when we had a Pax Britanica, and America is doing it now in their Pax Americana. Unfortunately, change to these things is extremely slow, but we have seen it happen. It took 60 years but there is a black man as leader of the free world. That change is extrodinary in terms of where civil rights were in the 1950's.

I think the best example in fiction is DS9's episodes where it's set in the past and Sisko is a story writer from teh sci-fi magazines, and the publisher won't publish his stories about a black captain of a spacestation because his readers won't believe it. Change is slow, and to suggest that things like this can happen overnight is irresponsible. But there is hope. Which I think is the best.

[nigiro]

that first one totally blew me away.

[commander_keen]

The first one doesn't make sense to me. As there was way more coverage of Palin not being qualified for the role once it was announced as she would be the VP pick for the Republicans. Obama had just as much coverage. But where Obama actually had some experience Palin was just a political move to grab the Hilary-vote, which ultimately failed because of how much of an air-head Palin was.