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comment by goo
goo  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Explaining white privilege to a broke white person

This reminds me of a really nice analogy someone told me about why people get upset when someone "gets more rights."

Let's say everyone in the world gets a cookie. You, a middle class white man (for simplicity's sake), get a nice full chocolate chip cookie. Your neighbour, however, is black, and even though you two are otherwise identical in every way, he only gets half a cookie. This is pretty good, you think. Everyone has one cookie. Seems reasonably fair.

Until someone else comes along and says, hey, that it isn't equal at all. So, they give your black neighbour another half of a cookie. To you, your neighbour has two cookies, and you still only have one. That isn't fair at all! But what our protagonist has failed to realize here is that it's not about how many cookies you have, it's how much cookie you have in total.

I love that intersectionality is gaining traction. The size of your cookie is not your fault, but it is important we can recognize and acknowledge our privilege and help shoulder some responsibility for those who were given a smaller cookie.





elemental  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think this simple message will really help folks to get it: "It's not your fault, except if you pretend it isn't happening."

Isherwood  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I like the monopoly analogy. You, white guy, started a game of monopoly. Your friend, black guy, came into the game about 10 turns after you started. Yeah, you both are playing now, yeah there's still some property, yeah you both technically have a chance of winning, but those 10 turns are probably going to screw the black guy over.

fudog  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Except with monopoly he has an advantage over all the losing people because you get seed money to start out with.

tacocat  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's pretty good except most games of Monopoly end with boredom or anger rather than a winner.

I understand I'm being kind of an asshole.

Isherwood  ·  3421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    most games of Monopoly end with boredom or anger

Just like real life?

Assholes never bothered me so long as they're right or they're funny.