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comment by mrsamsa
mrsamsa  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Explaining white privilege to a broke white person

Generalisations made about minorities are usually considered bigoted because they're untrue, insulting and harmful, not simply because they're generalisations. If I say that veterinarians tend to like animals, that's a generalisation but not bigoted in any way. If I generalised a negative trait, like athletes tend to smell like sweat when they're working out, it's still not bigoted.

When people say "white people have white privilege", it's mostly a claim about a societal norm and not always specifically about an individual person. But even if we want to analyse it on an individual level, we still have a claim that's difficult to argue against. For example, saying white people have white privilege is to say that white people usually don't get pulled over for "driving while black". It's a generalisation, sure, but it's hard to imagine a situation where a white person has regularly been pulled over because he looks black. Similarly, I don't see it being a common occurrence for white people to be systematically filtered out of job prospects on the basis of having black-sounding names, because generally they don't have black-sounding names.

When you remember that "privilege" is a very large set of these attributes, even if you think of outlandish and rare cases where a white person might fall victim to them (maybe in the dark a white guy looked black in his car and a cop pulled him over, or maybe the guy was named after his mother's favourite literary character which sounds like a stereotypically black name and it affects his job prospects), the fact is that these freak chance events are exceptions to the general rule of their life. And that's why it's essentially impossible for a white person to not have white privilege (especially in societies where this discussion tends to take place and often even in other societies).





user-inactivated  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Holy... you assume all white people have "white sounding names"? Damn, I thought hubski was supposed to contain thoughtful and introspective discussion. Disappointing. Seems more like another authoritarian left hangout. You're making all kinds of baseless broad assumptions here. Are you completely blind to that?

Quatrarius  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's a little fresh to make all these claims after a single comment.

tla  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I don't see it being a common occurrence for white people to be systematically filtered out of job prospects on the basis of having black-sounding names

I can break out the dictionary if you're having difficulty with the meaning of what was said, but I suspect you're smart enough to figure out phrases like "common occurrence".

mrsamsa  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Exactly. Seems like there are a whole lot of defensive white people in this discussion who just want to misrepresent others so that they can cling to their own personal victim narrative.

mrsamsa  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Holy... you assume all white people have "white sounding names"?

You'll have to expand on this. How does "it's not very common" translate to "all white people"? And did you read my final paragraph where I explain that exceptions in some aspects of privilege doesn't affect the large set of privileges as a whole? What was your argument against that?

    You're making all kinds of baseless broad assumptions here. Are you completely blind to that?

Well they can't be baseless as I backed them all up. But Hubski is supposed to be a place for discussion, not baseless accusations like the ones you're presenting. If you're making a claim then back it up. It could be that you've misunderstood something I've said, like the black-sounding names bit, and I could correct you like I've done just above.

catonrthrndarkness  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It doesn't appear to me that mrsamsa assumed that all white people have white-sounding names. mrsamsa implied that they are perceived not to have Black-sounding names.