Given the events of the past few months, it has probably been explained to you at least once that all people who are “white” and “white-adjacent” are allegedly complicit in “systemic racism.” This may have come as a surprise to you, operating under the assumption that you, like most people, don’t think too highly of racism, can’t recall having supported it, and don’t feel at all as though you are complicit in something you’re not only not participating in but are also completely against. Something about this whole “systemic” thing may seem off to you, and you deserve a chance to understand it before you’re forced to accept it and take up a “lifelong commitment” to social activism on its behalf.
Your confusion is warranted. Because you’re not racist—or, if you are, because you take real and concrete steps not to let it influence the people you interact with in society—it can be off-putting to be accused of complicity in a “system” you didn’t even know exists and certainly wouldn’t support if you did. Whether you felt like any soul-searching should possibly precede genuine skepticism or not, you’d be right to ask what this “system” is, how exactly you’re “complicit” in it, and where these ideas came from in the first place.
The last two of these questions are easy to answer. These ideas came from a branch of Critical Identity Theory called “whiteness studies.” You are “complicit” in a “system” of racism, according to scholars of whiteness studies because you enjoy the benefits of “whiteness” inherent in the system—even if you’re not white, so long as you still support it, hence “white-adjacent” complicity. If you are white, or “white-passing,” you enjoy these benefits automatically, whether you want them or not, no matter your social or economic standing, as a result of your whiteness or willingness to accept “white” culture. This is called “white privilege.” Enjoying access to the benefits of whiteness and white privilege allegedly leads all such people to tacitly conspire to keep these benefits, which critical whiteness scholars call “white complicity.” These ideas came from a relatively small but highly influential group of activist-scholars who genuinely think this way about the world and the people in it.
This “white complicity” is the relevant concept we need to comprehend to understand the present moment. This idea was developed in considerable depth in a moderately densely philosophical book from 2010, Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy, by Barbara Applebaum. In this book-length, defining treatment of the concept, Applebaum expands the usual definition of complicity from intentional participation in a crime to include everyone who benefits from any “oppressive system.” This passive “support,” defined as everything short of actively attempting to dismantle the oppressive system, is what Applebaum identifies by the term “white supremacy.” Her goal is to expand the concept of “white moral responsibility” far enough to induce all white and white-adjacent people to take up activism to unmake this system.
This dangerous idea is presently in the process of remaking the world, and probably not in a good way. To give you some idea of how ludicrous is Applebaum’s expansion of complicity, and thus moral responsibility, to impugn all white people (plus adjacencies, etc.), I’d like to offer an analogy that roughly follows her construction.
Imagine that you are walking beside a friend on the sidewalk along a road. You’re on the side farther away from the road, and you and your friend are having an animated conversation, so you’re not paying as much attention to your feet or your path as you could be. As it happens, you step on the back end of a broken bottle on the sidewalk, turn your ankle, trip, and fall—right into your friend. Your shoulder hits your friend hard, knocking her off her balance and into the street just as a car, which is going five miles per hour above the posted speed limit, is passing. It hits your friend and kills her on the spot.
To get at the weakness of Applebaum’s seemingly penetrating analysis, the surprisingly hard question we need to ask is this: Who is at fault? Who bears moral responsibility for your friend’s death?
Immediately, you’ll realize it was an accident. It was nobody’s fault, though you might blame yourself. Moreover, there are a ton of causes that someone who is looking for someone to blame might land upon, not least in their grief. You should have been paying more attention. So should your friend, so she wouldn’t have been knocked over when you tripped. She could have been walking on your opposite side, in fact, and she was the one who chose not to. Of course, you both could have decided to go for a walk at a different time, if only your boss didn’t make you come in at weird hours, making late morning the only convenient time for you and your friend to have met.
Besides, that stupid kid (as it turns out) shouldn’t have thrown the liquor bottle out of the car window last night and broken it in that fateful spot. In fact, he was only 17; he shouldn’t have been in possession of a liquor bottle at all. How’d he get hold of it anyway? The driver shouldn’t have been speeding, and the school nurse who had called her before she left her house didn’t need to scare her so much that she felt like she needed to be in a rush to pick up her sick child from the school. It was just an upset stomach, and she wouldn’t have been at the scene of the accident at the crucial time had the nurse been just a little more calm.
This may all sound ridiculous, but it’s exactly the kind of reasoning that someone desperately searching to place blame might go through after something bad happens. It’s a desperate search for moral responsibility in a case where, in all likelihood, a judge would assign the ruling of it being a “no fault” accident. Sometimes they happen. For someone who is particularly aggrieved or tortured by the outcome, however, this kind of reasonable ruling might not be satisfying. Barbara Applebaum is one such person. Fault must lie somewhere. Indeed, it must lie everywhere.
If copied her, Applebaum’s reasoning on complicity and moral responsibility would begin by immediately asking about the implications all of the people involved, as listed above. A fair reading of Applebaum would suggest, however, that none of the people, listed above, is necessarily directly complicit in the death. Even if they are, however, this isn’t a satisfactory way to conceive of white moral responsibility because seemingly none of the people in this story benefited from the tragedy. Perhaps there’s still a moral lesson for them, but this is always true when tragedy or the potential for tragedy exists. That lesson is covered under a different moral rubric in the relevant Critical Social Justice ideology: “impact instead of intent.” Under such an analysis, every person mentioned above and many others are guilty contributors to the tragedy.
This isn’t Applebaum’s point, however. She wants to analyze the broader system that causes the problem, even if no individual person within that system has committed any identifiable wrongdoing. That is, her ambition is to outline systemic moral responsibility and to place culpability on the beneficiaries of the offending system. Thus, her quest for assigning moral responsibility within a systemic problem takes a different direction: asking who benefits from the circumstances that cause the problem, or that even allow it to occur. In this case, Applebaum’s analysis would ask who benefits from the various systems that led to your friend’s untimely and tragic death and would seek to assign moral responsibility—and to prescribe radical social activism against the system—to all such people.
So, who benefits here? One might be tempted to say that no one does. Your friend is dead. You’re grieving, along with her friends and family. The driver of the car is distraught, and her friends and family bear the brunt of it. Anyone else caught up in the story who caught wind of what happened might also feel guilt. Of course, some of them might deny it. Being able to deny complicity in a systemic harm is, for Applebaum, a culpable feature of privilege. On the other hand, some will never hear about the harm they contributed to, like the drunk kid who broke the bottle or the cafeteria workers who over-fried the okra that gave the driver’s kid a stomachache. That’s a privilege too, one that cannot be afforded to anyone directly impacted by the tragedy. Following Applebaum, these people may bear some moral responsibility for benefiting, in the sense of not having to suffer when a tragedy has occurred.
That still isn’t Applebaum’s point, though. Indeed, this would barely cover the first chapter of her analysis, wherein she establishes that no such analysis is adequate to the task of outlining “white complicity.” She would observe that there are actually many people who benefit directly from the system that led to—that created—this tragedy. They have systemic complicity in the “manslaughter,” or “murder” (if we’re following the same kind of hyperbole that names science and rationality a vestige of “white supremacy”).
To get to it, that kid couldn’t have broken that bottle if there wasn’t an entire society that supports the sale and consumption of alcohol, or that enables teenage recklessness, or that fails to police behavior or clean up streets with perfect responsiveness. People profited off of many aspects of that imperfect system, not least whoever sold the liquor, which means they benefited systemically from the circumstances that contributed to your friend’s death. In fact, everyone who purchased liquor within such a society is similarly complicit.
The manufacturer of the car the woman was driving would surely have profited from her buying it, and, in fact, the entire culture that supports and relies upon automobiles for transportation is implicated. They benefit from the freedom of movement and a more active economy, after all. The shoe manufacturers that made your walking shoes also profited, and everyone who contributed to that industry, the fitness industry, and just everyday people who felt like they benefited from having new shoes did so as well. Also complicit are the people who built the roads and the taxpayers who paid for them.
This “analysis,” which mirrors Applebaum’s regarding white people, could go ever on and on until complicity is identified in everyone who ever benefited, currently benefits, or ever stands to benefit from some imaginary “liquor culture,” “car culture,” police and “police culture,” “fitness culture,” “taxpayer culture,” Western civilization, capitalism, and on and on and on. In other words, everyone in the entire society is complicit. All of these and everyone are complicit in your friend’s death. That’s the systemic understanding of how your friend died, and the only remedy for this moral wrong is to take up (mostly symbolic) activism to try to tear down all of these systems and the society that allows them at the most fundamental level.
Under this modification of Applebaum’s analysis—one in which racial group identity has been removed to enable moral clarity—everyone is complicit in your friend’s death. In fact, this is necessarily the case in every death. The only available “solution” is for everyone to constantly recognize their complicity in everything bad that happens, acknowledge that whole system creates and is the problem, and thus that everybody who benefits from it, even by living within it, bears moral responsibility for it. Because no system can be perfect, our only option is to constantly “acknowledge” our complicity and constantly try to “do better,” unless all harmful systems themselves can be unmade and replaced with something completely different and, ideally, perfect.
Following Applebaum, who, along with other critical scholars of whiteness, names the complicit as “racists” and “white supremacists,” every person who participates in, benefits from, and “supports” any culture that enables a tragedy like the one described above is therefore a murderer, or at least manslaughterer. We are all the killers of your friend and of countless other people who die in traffic accidents, as a result of consuming alcohol, and literally every other bad thing you can imagine.
That genuinely sounds insane (because it is), but to make the case that this is what Applebaum means by “white complicity,” all you have to do is put the race back into the picture and trace her analysis directly. Once you do, every white, white-adjacent, etc., person who benefits from “whiteness” and who isn’t constantly and actively working to dismantle the system that creates and enables it is a white supremacist (someone who isn’t working to dismantle the system in which whiteness has “dominance”) and a racist (someone who benefits from the existence of racial discrimination, prejudice, etc., of any kind). That’s Applebaum’s central thesis in a nutshell, and it is upon precisely this bizarre foundation that Robin DiAngelo’s concept of “white fragility” is built.
Though it seems like the point of this discussion is to discredit Applebaum’s concept of “white complicity,” and by extension much of the “whiteness studies” that relies upon it (including “white fragility”), it is not. It is achieved, of course, but there’s a bigger point lurking here. That more general observation is that systemic thinking is itself the problem.
As we see here, systemic thinking, in the way that critical activist-scholars think of it not only does not but cannot clarify the problems it hopes to solve. In fact, it hopelessly muddles them, making them impossible to understand and impossible to do anything about except through symbolic contrition, feeling bad for one’s participation, however distant, for a “system” that sometimes produces bad results. This is true for systemic car culture, systemic liquor culture, and systemic racism.
Put straight, the concept of “systemic racism” is, generally speaking, a bad one. It does not add clarity; it obscures it. It does not foster healthy relationships or conversations about race; it produces the opposite. It does not encourage personal growth or “doing better”; it induces unnecessary guilt, shame, and moral confusion. It does not encourage genuine responsibility; it displaces it.
While there is much space to have meaningful conversations and debates around individual racism, racist attitudes, discrimination, ham-fisted policy that results in discrimination (what’s left of institutional racism), and even “cultural racism” and “epistemic injustice,” none of this is served by introducing “systemic racism” as a concept. It only muddies the waters and invites us to confusion and unjustified overreactions.
There are far better ways to assign moral responsibility for problems that arise in our world than by blowing them out to vague, pervasive, ubiquitous systems that can barely be defined and that hide genuine contributions to our problems in systemic fog. These better approaches aren’t actually new, even if they’ve mostly been forgotten and could still stand to see some improvements. Treating people as individuals, weighing intentions and the scope of knowledge of consequences that could potentially occur as a reasonable person would see them, recognizing that sometimes the judgment is no fault, and accepting responsibility for the sometimes complicated and difficult circumstances of life on a personal level are all reasonable alternatives to “systemic” thinking.
So, take heart: you’re hardly more of a racist because of accusations of “white complicity” in “systemic racism” than you are a murderer or manslaughterer because car accidents sometimes happen and you live in a society where people drive cars. Figuring out moral responsibility is sometimes hard, but there’s no need to make it unnecessarily harder by falling prey to bad Theory.
104 comments
It is a Sham! and can only have been deliberately designed to be so complex to disguise the fact.
All who live in a society, culture use the same facilities to some extent – breathe walk use the roads shopping malls accomodation etc. so ALL are guilty!
Society is a blend of many ethnicities. Singling out one group over the rest, as this Theory does, based on skin colour, is just the equivalent of placing them on a Pedestal like the Statues they so love to tear down!
Critical race theory is truly a silly concept. When my dad was young, many of the immigrants were discriminated against (and were mostly east Europeans at that time) and many went through hell trying to get here in the first place, including crawling through fields at night so as not to be shot while escaping. Where was their privilege? And in history, many of those were severely discriminated against while discriminating against ‘lower’ groups. For instance, Italians were certainly looked down on for being ‘darker’ (for example, in New Orleans) but they also looked down on blacks. The same could be said of the Irish. My French relatives (from a few generations ago) certainly looked down on my Irish grandmother who they felt had ‘trapped’ my younger French grandfather in a relationship. The French certainly looked down on the poor Irish underclasses while the English looked down on the French. Not to even mention the rampant snobbery of upper classes to lower classes of the same color and ethnic background. So where does the privilege start and stop? Sounds idiotic to me.
Applebaum is Jewish? Can we talk about high IQ Jewish privilege?
Some of the problem of fixing blame for accidents can be seen in auto accidents, where one party must be considered at fault to assess financial liability. Some accidents happen when no one did anything wrong, yet blame is assessed regardless. Someone must be to blame! This is the issue behind reparations and many other things these days. Even if no one living today has either been a slave or a slave owner, people are considered victims or perpetrators based on skin color alone.
The is a “non-fault” ruling in auto accidents where the investigation rules that no one is at fault.
I’m not a fan of Critical Race Theory.
I also feel that while systemic racism does exist (redlining, a justice system designed to produce felony plea bargains, ect), the “racism” belongs to the system itself. Not those who benefit from it unwittingly.
So we agree that far.
I’d like to offer a counter example, however, in favor of collective responsibility. A duty to fix the system once you are aware it is broken.
This is a story a fellow disabled veteran told me about how he was injured. I myself am a “leg” (not airborne) so I really can’t verify it. Sometimes these stories are tall tales – but whether it s true or not it illustrates a point. The narration on command response is my own:
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One fine morning before dawn an Airborne Army unit was doing a full brigade heavy drop. This is the equivalent of tossing an entire small town -vehicles, motor homes, and all – out of several perfectly good airplanes.
The aircraft in question belonged to the Air Force. Or at least the cargo dropping aircraft did. The personnel being ejected from said aircraft were Army.
The soldier in question landed hard and twisted his ankle. It would not bear weight, so he followed his training and lit a red flare. A red flare meant “Medical Attention Needed Here”. He then lay back and waited for the medic to arrive.
Unfortunately a red flare meant something quite different to the Air Force. It meant “This would be a great spot to drop a vehicle palate. Aim here!”
…and so that immobile soldier watched in horror as he was struck by a truck (?) from the unexpected vector of *above*.
Squish.
The soldier ends up in a vegetative state. His survival is uncertain. (Obviously he did pull through to tell me the story.)
—-
The next day the Brigade Commander is pissed off. He actually cried the night before – he’s never lost a soldier under his command. And this was AVOIDABLE.
At the After Action Report (AAR) the questions seeking a responsible party begin.
1. Did the soldier act properly? SQUAD LEADER FRONT! Did he need to fire the flare? Yes. Was he carrying unauthorized weight? No.
2. Was the soldier qualified to jump? TRAINING OFFICER FRONT! Has he completed all of his annual required training jumps? Yes. Was he on a physical profile? No. Were his PT scores up to snuff? Yes.
3. What the fuck, Airforce? LIAISON FRONT! Yes. We’ll wait until you get your coffee. What does a red flare mean to you? Yeah. That’s what I thought. Did you discuss flare colors with our liaison officer? No? It’s not on the official checklist? Please add it. Great. You have a college class downtown to get to? Fine. You’re dismissed.
4. ARMY LIAISON OFFICER FRONT! You didn’t catch that either? You were in Officer Candidate School four months ago and were just assigned here as your first duty station? You followed the Standard Operating Procedures manual left by the previous LO? Great. Not your fault this time. Fix it.
5. EXECUTIVE OFFICER FRONT! You performed the initial investigation. I see here that the Specialist’s boots tread was worn down to an unsafe level. Do we check for that, Operations Officer? No? OK. Let’s inspect for boot tread before every jump. Squad leaders responsibility.
OK folks. This is no one persons fault. It is a systemic issue. No one will be punished or reprimanded. I’m the commander. It’s on me.
Don’t get too comfortable. Formations will be 1 hour earlier for the next week while we retrain. Squad leaders will arrive 2 hours early on Monday to be trained on boot tread inspection. Liaison officers will meet with me Tuesday at the same time to go over their “checklist”….
—–
The point of this story is that just because no one person is directly responsible, when the system breaks it ought be fixed. Even if that breakdown only hurts one soldier.
Going forward, heavy drops were safer for that brigade. They addressed the problem head on.
In terms of racial justice, black people are generally much poorer and less healthy than white people. Police are more violent toward them. The system needs fixin’.
Our President/Governors are our commander here. Our legislators are our Command Staff. This is a problem that can be fixed. It’s just that someone who didn’t cause the problem has to take responsibility for it. Otherwise no one has an incentive to do fix it.
Except here in the US, we are not the soldiers and airmen in the brigade watching it happen passively. Our President answers to The People. We are Division Command. We need to ask questions. We need to put pressure on/inspect the progress of our commanders in theater.
The buck stops with the individual Citizen.
Thus we end up back at collective responsibility. All of us have a duty. All of us have neglected it.
No one needs to be *blamed* at this stage. We are working off the Standard Operating Procedure we were handed by our parents. We are responsible but not culpable.
If we don’t fix it, we become culpable. When the next Specialist is squished, or the next black man choked to death by a cop, it stops being a training issue and becomes dereliction of duty.
So let’s fix it guys. C’mon.
These ivory tower types discussing it academically recognize something obvious; That black people who don’t need to be killed are being killed. So they are coming up with these wacky theories BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO US WHY WE HAVE WHAT OUGHT BE AN EMPIRICAL MORAL DUTY WE ARE NEGLECTING.
Trying to prove an empirical fact with words alone can be difficult. This is why the Declaration of Independence handwaves the whole idea by saying “We hold these truths to be self evident…” So the academic theories sound ridiculous.
Black people shouldn’t have to explain our moral duty to us. They certainly shouldn’t have to get Ph. D’s and write books speak authoritatively so we listen. All of this should have ended with “I can’t breathe.”
You have made some mistakes in your writing here. Police are not ‘more violent’ to black people. As to why black people are ‘generally much poorer and less healthy to white people’; well, good luck solving that extremely complicated mystery as to why one person has better health than another and someone lives better (not as poor?) as another. So many factors and variables. Also, you say ‘The system needs fixin’; what system are you talking about exactly? Life itself? Seems like you are looking for someone to blame and that someone is white people. If a minority race is not doing as well (however we define that) in a multiracial society as the majority race is, that does not automatically mean that the majority race is doing something unjust. It’s complicated. Maybe it’s inevitable. I am a European Caucasian racially speaking; I would not expect myself to excel in Chinese society; and I would not blame Chinese people for that.
I am all for fixing a system that is broken. But as stated by the author, no system is perfect.
When there are tangible issues with the system, those seem to largely be addressed and do get fixed with time, you cited a couple of examples that indeed did get fixed such as red-lining.
Oddly enough we now live in a time where the only systems that legally are allowed to discriminate based upon race are systems that benefit predominantly the black American such as college admissions differences based on race, the recent farmers grant “based largely on race”, and affirmative action laws. You yourself said no one today is to blame for simply living in this system, but tell that to the person who has equal qualifications but not the “correct” skin tone.
You said multiple times, let’s fix it. But what exactly is the “it” here? If there are actual tangible things you can list that are not currently illegal, I’m all ears.
Also as we know, unintended consistencies are a real thing and so a fix needs to ultimately do more good than harm.
Thanks! Excellent as always.
You know, before two days ago, I had not even heard of James Lindsay (sorry, James!). I picked up an interview he did with Brian Rose. Reading the comments and the interaction, and the sincerity of all the view points gives me hope. I believe this is what we should truly be doing. Build on progress made by constructively identifying shortcomings and where better to expand opportunity for all. You cannot legislate beliefs, morality, or for that matter, conduct; however, you can lay the groundwork that levies out stiff consequences/penalties when basic human rights are neglected or purloined from any representative group. To “dismantle” or “deconstruct”, essentially declaring a “do-over”, is an insult to the courage, sacrifice, and bloodshed of the 19th century abolitionists, and 20th century civil rights leaders, many of whom gave the ultimate sacrifice for what they believed, preached, supported, and lived: Freedom & Equality. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors out there, folks. There are a lot of hidden agendas. Let’s find a clear path forward that focuses on promoting the very best in human nature. LET’S KEEP TALKING!
The biggest issue of these concepts is the circular manner of the logic that underlies these new hustlers arguments.
By definition Applebaum is one of the greatest benefactors of her own charge, for who has benefited more from her accusations than her herself.
Grammatically perhaps that should have been “she, herself”.
@Luke, I can argue that you do, in fact, benefit from child pornography.
It’s based on how you benefit from the internet.
The early adopters and developers of nearly every content-delivery system ever made — from Polaroids to digital cameras to VCRs to DVDs to paid subscription streaming sites — have been pornographers. Secure online shopping wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for pornographers. (source)
Including child pornographers.
You benefit from the World Wide Web, and that makes you complicit in pedophilia and child pornography. Because just about every porn site intentionally mimics child pornography, if it doesn’t actually contain it.
And of course, so too does everyone else using the internet.
Accidents do happen. Life is a chaotic system (see “chaos theory”, or the description of “the butterfly effect” by Jeff Goldblum’s character in “Jurassic Park” as they’re flying out to the island), therefore many things are completely unpredictable.
People are possessed of intelligence, creativity, and free will, perhaps generally predictable, but there’s always a surprise lurking.
It is more productive to point out the differences in how races are treated with real empirical data than to use pop sociology terms like “white-adjacent.” It’s the actual scientific studies on systemic racism that will move the conversation along.
Noel, I think that one of the endless problems that are being caused by these tangled critical theories is that they (deliberately) use terms that have a common meaning, but then load the terms with their own elaborate baggage. People really are struggling to understand each other, and most people are also really wanting to make things better. Critical theory terms such as “white privilege” are very pejorative and also completely confusing and are making things worse.
The common understanding of privilege, I think, starts with a requirement that the privilege be specifically identified–not this vague but absolute verdict that literally every act done by a white person carries privilege. The privilege has to be of an affirmative benefit to the “privileged,” and in speaking of white privilege I think the sense of guilt conveyed has to depend on that privilege coming directly from the implied assertion that the privilege is denied to non-whites. A zero-sum game in other words.
To take your example of home ownership, that’s not currently a zero-sum game. We can and do build more houses and the fact that I own a house doesn’t make it harder for a black person to own a house. If I were to put my house up for sale and move to an apartment, it would not benefit black people. If I were too poor to own a house, that doesn’t benefit anyone.
On the other hand, I have thought of at least one way in which white privilege can operate, and that is with obtaining jobs, because although employment is not exactly a zero-sum game, it’s close enough on a micro level. It’s possible that the few low-level jobs that I had back in the seventies and eighties, when I was a student, may have gone to me as opposed to a black candidate because the white employers preferred to hire white people. That would be a white privilege for sure. But I then had two jobs in my career as a prosecutor and I know for a fact in those cases that a black candidate with my qualifications would have had at least as good of a chance as I had of being hired.
I don’t think the previous examples are actually analogous to systemic racism. The broken bottle/car accident analogy in the original post is profoundly different because, in said example, the sale of cars and alcohol were not originally intended to kill innocent pedestrians. On the other hand, systems of whiteness were established to marginalize people of color. The “adult privilege” example also doesn’t work. I am not a target of pedophiles but that’s not the same as benefiting from them.
Readers need to understand that, for practitioners of critical race theory, “racism” is not the same as bigotry or hatred. Instead, racism is defined as prejudice plus power. This is why black people and other marginalized groups cannot, by definition, be racist, because they don’t have power within institutions. This may seem like a silly amendment to the dictionary, but it serves a purpose which I’ll get to later.
I could easily digress into a long academic treatise on critical race theory, but I’m going to let an example suffice. The first thing readers need to do is stop thinking about people and start thinking about places and institutions. Imagine there’s a neighborhood: Happytown. During Reconstruction following the Civil War, black families start to move to Happytown. This disturbs the then-actually-bigoted white residents. So, they pass laws that segregate Happytown as whites-only. These laws are challenged in the courts and Happytown loses. So, its residents go to the banks with their case. Banks deem all of the neighborhoods surrounding Happytown as “high risk” and refuse to give mortgages to their residents. Consequently, no black people can get the loans they need to buy a house in Happytown.
Happytown’s school is funded by property taxes. Because there are no black people living there, Happytown’s houses go up in value and so does the tax revenue. Its school gets more funding. Additionally, since white people are getting more credit from the banks and higher incomes, they pour extra money into their school. They build a swimming pool and the latest technology. Schools in surrounding neighborhoods have low property tax revenue and no additional philanthropic spending.
Students at Happytown High are getting a great education thanks to all of this funding and it develops a reputation as one of the best schools in the country, benefiting students when they apply to college. These students graduate college and move back to Happytown, where they use all of their knowledge to build its technology. Meanwhile, black kids in the surrounding areas find themselves unable to get into college and living in communities that are resource-deprived. In fact, businesses start to leave these neighborhoods and relocate to Happytown. They know that Happytown residents will spend more money with them. A few kids are so talented that they get into good colleges, but when they graduate they move to Happytown.
Decades later, policymakers decide that all of this is pretty terrible. They make “redlining” illegal so everyone has “equal” access to mortgages. They institute affirmative action to try to help black kids get into good colleges. Scholarship opportunities pop up to try and help those kids as well. Black schools are deemed Title I and get extra funding. A few black families even manage to move to Happytown, where they find that residents – although very different from them culturally – are not prejudiced and are extremely accepting. Some people even want to bus low-income kids to Happytown High.
Some Happytown residents are angry though. They worry that their housing values will go down as black people move in. They worry that their schools will become more violent and less successful. They think black people will brings drugs into Happytown. They don’t want to share all of the great things about their neighborhood – they worked hard for them! Their businesses don’t want to lower prices just because people outside of Happytown can’t afford to shop there.
Happytown residents come up with ways to protect their “privileges” that aren’t racial. They grade schools on an A to F scale so that families can make choices about their kids’ educations. Families that are able to then move schools. Houses near A-schools see their property values go up. Happytown High remains majority white because black families can no longer afford to move near it, if they ever could. Happytowners create admissions tests like the SAT to equally evaluate students for college. Meanwhile, neighorhoods outside of Happytown are beginning to experience health problems. Nutritious grocery stores left a long time ago to set up in Happytown instead. Buildings that used asbestos and lead paint remain standing; there’s no tax revenue to fund their improvement. Some are torn down but that just exposes the poisons to the environment. People with enough money move to Happytown and as a result these other neighborhoods lose even more tax revenue. They can’t afford to build parks or community centers, good places for their children to hang out. More children start to get exposed to drugs instead.
The government is alarmed by the growing drug problem. They militarize the police and give funding to departments based on how much crime they infiltrate. There are drugs in Happytown but they’re used secretly in wealthy homes. It’s too hard to catch those kids. So, police set up bigger departments in black neighborhoods where they can catch kids in the streets. These police departments have low tax bases so they need to make money in other ways. They do it by arresting large numbers of people and getting federal grants and pulling over more people so they can write tickets.
Black neighborhoods start to look chaotic because of all the arrests. Even people living there are worried. So the government passes three-strikes laws and other no-tolerance policies; it begins to monitor neighborhoods more closely. More and more black people are arrested and have criminal records. They can’t find jobs after being released from jail or prison. They did commit crimes, but their children didn’t, and the children lose parents and family income and have even less money for college or healthy food or nice clothes or transportation to after school jobs or clubs.
So, are Happytown’s residents privileged? Of course! They live in a great neighborhood, have great schools, good food options, safe streets. They’re even a little bit diverse, with a few black and Latino families. Their houses are valued highly and if they ever want to move they know they can sell. They know that most of their neighbors are white and most surrounding neighborhoods are majority black, but that’s how people like to live – with people similar to them.
Are Happytown’s residents bigots? No! They love all people. They don’t even think about skin color.
So, if they aren’t bigoted, what do we call this system that has for centuries benefited Happytown at the expense of other neighborhoods? We call it systemic racism. It was designed, at different stages, in different ways, to systematically benefit white Happytown residents. Are Happytowners ethically obligated to somehow share these benefits with people who live elsewhere? We can debate that question, but phrasing the question this way is important. If you live in Happytown you may not be “racist” according to your definition, but unless you are trying to integrate schools, improve environmental cleanup, reform policing, expand college access, redistribute income and other means of reversing centuries of racist policy, you are benefiting from the status quo.
Of course, reality is even more complex than my example. And there are white neighborhoods very different from Happytown. There are white areas of the country that face their own systemic problems, but their existence does not negate the crisis of racism.
“Black neighborhoods start to look chaotic because of all the arrests.”
Dishonest characterizations, the favored tool of CRT proponents.
Black neighborhoods look chaotic because they ARE chaotic. The violent crime rates of PoC on PoC crime are what they are.
You can attribute the violent crime rate to whatever you’d like ( I think i can guess exactly what you would attribute them to considering your surrounding statements ), but the facts do not change.
The stories we tell ourselves.
The problem is you start with the narrative. Then you (maybe not you specifically) build theory around that narrative. It is then no surprise that you have theory that is self-consistent with the stories that you believe.
The problem is that neither the narrative nor the theory need have any relation to reality. It may be a fiction. ‘Reality’ becomes meaningless and we live our lives according to our fictions. This is the problem with reified post-modernism.
Some parts of your happy town narrative probably are true, but others are likely false. Does school funding level really matter, or is school funding simply correlated to what really matters…say parent involvement? Do laws appealed sixty years ago really still have an effect today? Is crime due to poverty or family breakdown? Is poverty itself due to family breakdown? Are there biological differences in different populations that influence societal outcomes? What is the role of the individual, self-confidence and belief system? Etc…
These are all questions based on falsifiable assertions. They are confirmed/falsified with data and careful analysis. We can’t call any of these assertions racist or, worse yet bigoted, until we evaluate their truthhood dispassionately; regardless how scary the questions may be. We can’t disallow certain findings and incentivize others. We can’t change the epistemology in order to disallow some questions/answers. The narrative we put together based on evidenced assertions is our best approximation of True Theory, which could do a lot of good. True Theory can’t proceed in this climate.
We only hurt each other when we tell ourselves the story we want to hear. White people who may be complicit in racism as you define it, need to realize that (as CRT is so ready to tell them), but supporters of SJ will need to let some of their most cherished castles fall as well. We should all base our courage to face the truth in the enlightenment value that every life is precious and worth helping regardless of the answers we find.
Unfalsifiable narratives, like as built up around white privilege, get us no closer to bettering our world. In fact, they take us back to the dark ages.
I’m sincerely confused about the claim that blacks aren’t being treated equally “systemically”. Affirmation Action means that blacks have been given a leg up. It is easier to get into college. It is easier to get a small business loan. Freedom of speech is granted more liberally. What more do we need to do to make it more “equal”.
I did not get a head start in life. There was no family wealth for me. I worked my way through college and became successful. The idea that I should accept that I was successful because of my white skin does cause resentment. What more do you want from me?
The leg up that I did get is that, despite growing up in poverty, I was raised to believe I could succeed. To say that I should feel guilt for this encouragement is also cause for resentment.
“Yes. No one wants to feel like their successes, their achievements, their trials and tribulations can be trivialized or explained away by the color of their skin.
But the term ‘white privilege’ has nothing to do with what you went through to get to where you are. It’s what you didn’t have to go through.”
Had to put that in quotes as I’m paraphrasing from a video I saw during the rise of the last BLM movement. Can’t remember her name, but she spoke beautifully and her words stuck with me.
It may be helpful to read Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social. His Actor-Network Theory targets what he calls critical social science and its propensity for explaining phenomena in terms of systemic abstractions.
Latour says that abstractions like “capitalism” cannot explain anything because they are not actors in the world. Social systems are material phenomena made up of human and (key to his theory) non-human actors.
Saying there is a system of “white supremacy” does not explain anything about the experience of black people. To do that, you need to “follow the actors.”
How can white supremacy even exist when white people go to bed at night? In a world not composed of spirits or gods, where is it? Latour’s answer is that non-human actors are key players in the network. That includes statutes, technology, physical objects. For example, Robert Moses built overpasses deliberately low to so that buses carrying poor people, especially black people, could not use a road to access beaches. This is no abstract system of “white supremacy”: it is a concrete network of bridges, roads, and buses that had discriminatory impacts, and it persists even when racist (or non-racist) white people are absent.
I read Latour for its relevance to technology, but looking back I wonder whether his real target was the activist pretensions of much of social constructivism. If you really want to talk about racist systems, you need to identify the actors, follow their interactions, and only then can you describe and understand a system with racist effects. It sounds as though critcal race theory has not done that, effectively blaming evil spirits and black hearts.
Thank you for sharing.
I think it is clear that Systemic Racism is an idea. It is not a reality. It is an idea that is imposed on reality. And what is challenging is that people belief in these ideas are believers and has used it as a belief system to perceive the reality. And with that mentality, it becomes very challenging to converse with those who are already deep ingrain in it. And in their perspective, it is a system of moral. And if a system of moral is being criticise or challenge, then with the simple logic they engaged, that criticism and challenges are evil.
Yes, it’s like a religion.
Check this out.
Great piece about orthodox privilege (that is, those that have cultural power actually have the real privilege, so they don’t understand others who complain about being cancelled for saying things that are true, but not allowed. People with cultural privilege right now – extreme leftists – don’t understand when people decry their errors in thinking, because they believe with all their hearts that they’re totally right and nobody with half a mind would disagree. They’re essentially cult members. Disassociated from reality.)
If the argument gets more people onboard with toppling the existing power structure, then The Theory has done its work.
I agree with the initial statement that by definition a single person cannot be systematically racist. A social system can be set up in a way that is biased toward certain groups, though, and that is systemic racism. If we live in any sort of democracy, we are all responsible for the society in which we live, so we do all take some blame for anything that is wrong in the society (yes, even in the case where there are particularly high rates of car accidents). Systemic racism is a problem in the US and goes hand in hand with poverty and unequal opportunity and access.
For example, since education is funded locally, poor school districts have less money available for educating students. The level of education is therefore poorer, and students in that area have less chance to get into better universities, if they even have the opportunity to finish school and can afford universities at all. They therefore do not have access or opportunity to get into higher-paying jobs. These people are more likely to be part-time or hourly work laborers. They might not have the opportunity to get health insurance and therefore cannot afford to see doctors. They are sick more often and at risk of more serious disease. They are therefore less productive at work and have difficulty keeping jobs. This leads to desperation and crime to pay bills. Some get caught and jailed or killed, leaving behind more broken families. The community continues to get poorer. The people are stuck in a poverty trap. If this goes on long enough, any person associated with that community or race is discriminated against because employers and others associate them with poor knowledge, productivity, and risk of crime. However, any individual growing up in those conditions had very few, if any, opportunities or possibilities to get themselves out of that situation, so the system reinforces itself. This is the case with black populations in the US. Until quite recently, they did not even have the same rights as whites and certainly not the same benefits. That set them on course similar to the poverty trap I describe. Other countries have found ways to break these break these poverty traps, providing all with more equal opportunity by guaranteeing health care, education, unemployment support which includes and requires re-education to get people quickly back to productive work. These countries have reaped the benefits through less policing requirements, fewer prisons and associated costs, and an educated and productive work force.
The article above does some injustice by referring to only one recent source of ‘whiteness studies’ as the origin of system racism thinking. In reality, understanding of systemic racism and closely linked problems of social mobility go back hundreds and thousands of years. Sir Thomas Moore is one relevant example:
“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”
― Sir Thomas More, Utopia
>>Sorry it became such an essay, hope it at least shows that “systemic” analysis can’t just be dismissed<<
Not really, you’re argument didn’t prove anything about systemic analysis. It just highlighted a series of specific policy proposals – some of which may work in some situations and some of which may not.
Also I’m a liberal. I know it’s hard not to think in black and white terms but we’d all be better off if more of us could. I support efforts to reduce racial profiling and demilitarize the police. Positive discrimination not so much. Requiring police live in their district? Sure.
>> Not really, you’re argument didn’t prove anything about systemic analysis. It just highlighted a series of specific policy proposals – some of which may work in some situations and some of which may not. <<
The point isn't whether they "work" or not (according to what measure?).
To me, Lindsay seems to argue, that the concept of "systemic racism" is so self-contradictory and unfair, that, no policy can be based on it, at least none that is not horribly and arbitrarily unfair, or is compatible with liberal values (and, if I misunderstand Lindsay and it's not his argument, then, what is it?).
But this is not true and that's why I brought two examples (one counterexample is enough to disprove a generic claim) both of which can be consistently argued for based on liberal values while also taking into account ways the "system" disadvantages blacks.
BKE said: “The point isn’t whether they “work” or not (according to what measure?).
To me, Lindsay seems to argue, that the concept of “systemic racism” is so self-contradictory and unfair, that, no policy can be based on it, at least none that is not horribly and arbitrarily unfair, or is compatible with liberal values (and, if I misunderstand Lindsay and it’s not his argument, then, what is it?).”
I doubt that Lindsay denies systemic racism exists; I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard him say in several ways that of course there are current terrible effects and structures that reflect the hundreds of years of past oppression along with some current residual (actual) racism suffered by Blacks. To me, the disaster of current discourse based on critical theories is that their intent is the opposite of working to bring about real and practical change; their intent is to bring about a collapse of everything. That’s not hyperbole, They specifically deny that it’s possible to work within the current system at all, and their theories are designed to justify this horrific vision by asserting that absolutely everything is wrong, is tied to racism and white domination, is hopelessly entrenched, and is mostly invisible unless one plunges into endless theorizing in line with their scholarship. Elimination of all current societal structures and customs, and instituting something like communism, is where they begin their wish list.
To take on one small piece of the enormous topic of white privilege, it seems to me that many issues should be described as “minority disadvantages” instead of as “white privilege.” Some instances where normal, fair behavior is denied to a minority can be better framed as a minority disadvantage than as a strict zero-sum game where every minority disadvantage is an automatic plus/advantage/privilege for white people. For instance, every shopper should be treated with basic courtesy unless and until they show themselves to be untrustworthy. It’s a minority disadvantage that they experience more instances where they are treated with suspicion than white customers do; it’s not a positive privilege for me as a white person not to be frequently followed around the store. Every encounter between a police officer and a civilian should be as safe and fair as possible; it’s a minority disadvantage when that does not happen; not a perk for me as a white person when I am treated fairly. Another category identified as white privilege includes circumstances such as a white person being more likely to find cosmetics and toiletries appropriate for their skin and hair in stores. That’s a morally neutral fact that is for the most part dependent on the local market–for example, I grew up in a city neighborhood and the stores within walking distance offered way more products aimed at black clientele than white. Given that much of what is being defined as white privilege is better and more usefully defined as minority disadvantage, it’s purpose seems to be to attack white people rather than to FIX the unfairness and inequality that definitely still exist.
Interesting point. It ties in with my thought about asking “what would I have to give up for POC to get equal treatment?” The answer to this give a good indication of what my actual Privileges are. I go into it more in a comment above which I won’t repeat here.
You guys are took stuck on “giving something up.” You don’t have to give anything up. Unless it’s ignorance.
What Priviledge do you hold? The number one, most important one, is home ownership.
Sounds like the Motte position.
Noel Taylor:
“What Priviledge do you hold? The number one, most important one, is home ownership.”
Yes, and there is definitely systemic racism going on in the mortgage and lending industry, as well as unofficial discrimination policies. This is a concrete problem and we must all demand that it change. I have no problem with this. My problem is with critical race theory, which isn’t even a theory at all because it cannot be tested and therefore cannot be proven or disproven.
Academia engendered these “theories,” and they are pointless. Better they had spent all that energy educating everyone about unfair housing, and unfair apportionment of tax money which causes school boards in white areas to get much more money that school boards in POC areas. A lot of white people don’t even know about this stuff, because it isn’t being hammered on them like “you are all racist.” We need activists telling people about practical systemic problems they can work to change in their local communities.
I’ve been saying this forever. THANK YOU! I feel like the phenomenon described as “white privilege” actually does exist–but refers to the discrepancies between the black vs white demographic, both on a systemic scale as well as more personal instances, rather than any actual “privilege” that white people possess.
I refuse to call it “white privilege”. To me that is intentionally pejorative and Carrie’s a hidden agenda, and I do not honor the jargon. If you read Peggy MacIntosh’s book, the so-called “privileges” it lists have more to do with either being treated with basic decency (eg, not being harassed by the police or store personnel), or else are the result of being an ethnic majority (eg, being represented in the media). These are not privileges, which are more commonly defined as special perks above and beyond what the vast majority receive, especially in terms of wealth.
Second, where attention goes energy flows. White people. WHITE people. Is the problem with whites? Or with the fact that blacks aren’t being treated equally? The phrase centres the focus on whites. Yet the problem is with the way other races are treated. Right?
I mean, the entire way the phrase is structured and defined seems designed to target not the actual problem but to frame it as whites hoarding some sort capital. This generates resentment and sows confusion as to what whites are actually enjoying.
And yes, it works. The phrase is a slippery slope. There are plenty of people in disadvantaged minority communities who seem to be getting the message that whites are pampered princes and princesses. There was an article a couple of weeks ago on buzzfeed discussing “white privilege”, which framed the BLM protests as people fighting for their lives while “white people” were whining about wearing masks. The message was “this is the result of white privilege”. It implies that “all whites are selfish, frivolous, and wealthy enough not to worry about actual issues that they’re causing by being white”.
I suspect that this was exactly the intent of the phrase. It’s Discourse Analysis 101. Framing whites as being “privileged” leads to resentment. If it can be framed as “their privilege comes at your expense”, then we’re down to zero-sum thinking and conflict theory. And yes, the framers of this language actually were operating from that mindset.
Yet, having makeup and band aids in your color does not come at others’ expense. Being treated with civility by authorities (which isn’t actually guaranteed for whites) does not exist at blacks’ expense. There isn’t a limited amount of this stuff, it isn’t a pie.
“White Privilege” SHOULD be called Minority Disadvantage, or Black Disadvantage. I’ve actually been saying this exact thing for several years! It is not, and there’s a reason behind that. The phrase isn’t intended to solve problems, it is intended as a power grab based on perceptions that may not be factual, and I find it quite sinister.
So, you’re right to bring this point.
Liz said: “I suspect that this was exactly the intent of the phrase. It’s Discourse Analysis 101. Framing whites as being “privileged” leads to resentment. If it can be framed as “their privilege comes at your expense”, then we’re down to zero-sum thinking and conflict theory. And yes, the framers of this language actually were operating from that mindset.”
Yes, that’s a succinct and powerful point re: white privilege vs. minority disadvantage! Thank you.
I’m not clear on how this is actually legitimate. You say that there is a ‘sinister’ meaning behind the use of ‘white privilege’ rather than ‘black disadvantage’. I can see how you are trying to move away from language that makes some disadvantaged persons feel resentment, and that’s a fair point. But – as you point out – privilege is defined as an advantage or ‘special perk’ that some group receives, due to position, wealth, etc. By that very definition, white people have been provided with a number of privileges that persons of color have not received, including such things as home ownership. This is in addition to the many other injustices perpetrated against persons of color historically.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not sure it’s an ‘either-or’ situation here with the terminology, but instead a ‘both-and’. There may very well be both white privilege and minority disadvantage, and depending on the case one or the other, or both, may apply.
RigelDog,
Awesome observations! You’re making too much sense…
@RigelDog,
EXACTLY. I’ve come up with this exact conclusion. I’ve never heard anyway make the same arguent. It is discrimination (Black dis-advanteg) not white privilege.
You can add to this list the false claim that white people have been privileged throughout US history. Really, what it is is black people have been discriminated throughout US history.
For example, not being allowed to live in a certain neighborhood in Chicago in 1970 due to being black is not white privileged, that’s discrimination towards blacks.
As much as I really want to agree with what you wrote here, it sort of sums up what people mean when they say “white privilege.”
To you, it’s NORMAL to be treated fairly and with respect. When you see non-whites treated unfairly, you see it as a bad thing. And that’s great. You think black people SHOULD be treated in a “normal” respectful way.
What you aren’t seeing is that for most black people, being treated unfairly IS the norm. It IS reality. So from that side, getting unequivocal respect wherever you go is very much a privilege.
“To you, it’s NORMAL to be treated fairly and with respect.”
It’s my experience that it’s pretty normal to be treated unfairly and disrespectfully on a regular basis, because there are enough human beings who think only of themselves and there are enough human beings who push other people around in various ways, and so on.
But the books of the Critical Race Theorists and their related Theorists are bibles of how to treat people unfairly and disrespectfully and get away with it by talking about skin pigmentation, sex organs, etc.
I have never, in my whole life, witnessed such an outpouring of bile, vitriol, hatred and violence in the name of progress and justice.
Life is now MORE unfair and MORE disrespectful, thanks to CRT etc.
We live in a verbally abusive accusatory culture now in which victimhood is cultivated up to a point of dangerous laughter. Patricia Evans wrote books about verbally abusive relationships years ago which can be applied to systems of critical theories. Being Woke appears more to me like looking down on people who had no time to explore critical theories of cultural Marxism, especially as applied to systemic racism.
We appear to have lost the ability to cherish each other and be joyful. People walk on eggshells around each other – which is abusive.
Looking into Non-Dual Buddhism and the way non-dual psychologists deconstruct excessive thinking, then… sinking into the present moment, may offer some healing to the abusive revolutionaries out there who sometimes secretly appear to ponder „white genocide.“
Peter Fenner wrote a book called „Radiant Mind“ which helps a lot to allow the creative flow of deeper awareness to come through. We max need the tools Peter Fenner teaches to be happier again.
One of his questions he asks is, „is this what you think is happening happening now? It never is. Then we go into somatically feeling this out and the emotions change and awareness comes in. I feel so free.
In those moments, I feel free from the burden of our times. It liberates the intellect a little. Yes, abuse and cultural Marxism is a very interesting topic to me.
And yes, abuses in society must be worked out but not via abuse.
We need to find ways to cherish each other more… Non-Duality, the term does not rule out Duality whenever practical, but it speaks for itself.
Katinka,
It’s interesting you mention non-dualism. There are many forms, including Christian, Taoist, and Judaic non-dualism. And yes, all these systems have to do with working with the egoic reactions to events, and transcending them while still maintaining the ego as an important aspect of our consciousness. In transcending our reactions we can begin to have a vision of the underlying unity of all phenomena and beings.
My impression of most post-modernist thought systems is that they have so denigrated and/or ignored the spiritual aspects of the human psyche that they do not even think it is relevant at all. I think (and I could be wrong) that their concern is completely for the material realm and its systems, not realizing that there are systems of the spirit and psyche that are important influences on what goes on in material dimensions.
When postmodernists decided religion was oppressive and needed to be booted out, they threw out not just exoteric religion but the esoteric practices that have been responsible for honing consciousness to a deep field of awareness for thousands of years. I do not think it has been good for our academic programs, which used to tend intellect, soul, and spirit all at once.
>>Shouldn’t you ask the question, how to make the infrastructure safer, the laws more just, especially if you have been to pretty European cities where traffic fatalities are close to zero?<<
Most roads are state or city controlled (local).
But to the point of working to improve an existing system of highways and car use, yes. Of course. I think what is being argued against are those who want to dismantle it.
> I think what is being argued against are those who want to dismantle it.
“Dismantle” is relative. In the case of traffic, gradually introducing strict speed limits, taking away lanes and parking space from cars to favor other modes of transport, returning public space to pedestrians, investing into public transport instead of highways, introducing vehicle entry fees to inner cities, introducing strict liability etc. can all feel like “dismantling” the system if people are used to going with their cars everywhere. My point is not whether you agree with these specific policies, but, that these policies can all be argued for consistently and on the basis of evidence, and can be introduced democratically, despite the initial outrage, as they have been many times during the previous decades. And these policies did not lead to returning to horses for transport, but that traffic became safer and more efficient.
Sorry for going a bit off-topic, but it’s much easier to talk about traffic than the actual topic at hand, and hopefully it brought some ideas across.
Now, for the topic of racism and discrimination. I don’t claim to have a complete systemic analysis, but just want to bring two examples to illustrate, that the choice between justice and freedom is not binary, when one looks a bit deeper into how the “system” works.
1. Racial profiling: it is often argued by conservatives, that legislation against racial profiling puts cops under generic suspicion of racism. And I acknowledge, that such legislation would be difficult to maneuver in places with high levels of crime. However, I still stand against racial profiling, even if it would (in theory) lead to slightly more criminals getting away with crime (an increase in the false negative rate of police). I think that the view, that we would rather have some criminals get away with it, than to unjustly use violence against innocent people, is deeply rooted in liberalism.
2. Positive discrimination for hiring is very often presented as a choice that will necessarily lead to injustice against the majority and a decline in meritocracy. But, if one looks more closely at how hiring works, it is a process with many steps, namely a CV screening step and an interviewing step. CV screening is notoriously susceptible to bias, so it does make sense to compensate for known biases (of which racial and gender bias are well documented), even if it means more unqualified candidates slipping through to the interview phase, which is costly. Companies afraid of missing out on good candidates because of bias do this even from self-interest. So positive discrimination in the CV screening phase does not necessarily lead to hiring less qualified candidates, if the final interview is purely based on merit, and it is not unfair against anyone (but can increase costs for the company as it final interviews are costly).
Sorry it became such an essay, hope it at least shows that “systemic” analysis can’t just be dismissed based on making it look absurd, as Lindsay tries to. At the very least you have to show why the analysis is flawed, and better yet, provide an alternative analysis.
BKE –
As you discuss the issue of ‘Dismantle’ being a relative term, a really important component of Critical Theory which is missing in your response is the fact that a founding principle is Systemic Racism is indeed SYSTEMIC. (not yelling just ran out of ways to highlight a specific word) So any attempts to deconstruct the system are still being done within the System and are therefore invalid. Critical Race Theory identifies a problem, prescribes a fix, and at the same time explicitly states there is no solution.
You can propose realist solutions that may actually improve POC lives but the Critical Race Theory movement will never accept them as having solved the core problem: Whites are Systemically Racist. Thus the cycle is unending until there is an actual total dismantling. And yet, should the Critical Race movement still exist in that day, Whites will still be Systemically Racist.
I don’t read much Critical Theory at all and therefore I did not set out to defend them. I pointed out that, ironically, Lindsay’s thought experiment about traffic is the perfect example to demonstrate the importance of reasoning about the wider system and culture and that only looking at the concrete incident isn’t satisfactory as long as one cares about traffic safety.
True, everyone is part of the system in some way or another. But, in a real-life system, the parts aren’t absolute and equivalent. The argument “racism is systemic therefore the system can not solve it” is not true for real-life, evolving systems, so arguing that based on some rigid theoretical framework is a non sequitur.
The point being made is that you are essentially highlighting the difference between making actual, rationally thought out solutions for progress in a non-binary world vs. the cyclical and vague terminology laid out by critical theory that make it impossible to actually make progress.
Lindsay’s thought experiment about the traffic accident is interesting in a sense, that it is actually a good example for when the “systemic way of thinking” is superior to the “local theory” (ie. it was just an accident etc.)
Thinking about traffic in a “systemic” way allows to ask questions like “how can we make the infrastructure safer so that such accidents are less likely to happen?” and “how to optimize for competing objectives of efficiency/safety given limited space and resources?”. And yes, this leads to trade offs with car use. Recommended reading here is “Fighting Traffic” from Peter Norton.
To put it simply: if you live in a wasteland of highways and notoriously unsafe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, where thousands are killed by traffic accidents every year, then is it really the best way to think about the “accidents” locally? Shouldn’t you ask the question, how to make the infrastructure safer, the laws more just, especially if you have been to pretty European cities where traffic fatalities are close to zero?
Talking about “car centric culture” isn’t obscuring the reality, it opens up different solutions which are simply not available by thinking locally.
I found this article to be very funny. In my head, all I hear Is “ I did not know people of color were mistreated. I can’t be white privileged. “ Yes, you can be and you are. That does not make you a racist or complicit but you are benefitting from laws that were put in place by racist people to protect the white race.
I’m African American. All I have asked from the whites that I have befriended or work with is to respect the fact that my experience is different from theirs. I have been received severe racial abuse from whites on multiple occasions and blatant discrimination based on the color of my skin. I don’t think all whites are racist, far from it. But, I ask that they understand and respect the history that has us at the breaking point that we are at today. We are simply asking for equal treatment. We need white allies to help push that agenda forward. But, that will require you to lose some of the privileges you enjoy. Stop running from the past and making excuses so you can sleep easier at night. If we truly want to live up to the principles laid out by the founding fathers (some who held slaves), we need to do this together.
Michael Stevenson, you sound reasonable enough, let me suggest a way to communicate the same message that is less offensive.
“White Privilege” as a blanket statement assigns a magical privilege to white people based on their ethnicity, something beyond their control. Statistically, black Americans probably suffer some degree of impairment from historical racism. It assumes a zero sum identity war to say that statistically white Americans benefit from that, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that’s true. The important bit, is that not all white individuals benefit, and not all black individuals are impaired. To suggest as much is both inaccurate, and offensive in the old fashioned racist way we all understand quite well.
Instead of using these rhetorically powerful but dishonest and ambiguous terms like “white privilege”, be specific. In what *specific* way are black Americans being treated unequally, and what *specific* privileges would you have white Americans relinquish?
For example, if you point to a county in which zoning laws are clearly unfair towards a certain area that is predominantly black, and suggest a way of remedying that, pretty much everyone would be on board.
But if you merely hint at these vague invisible “historical” forces that magically benefit all whites in unspecified ways, people will assume the worst, and given the level of dishonesty behind terms like “systemic racism” and “white privilege”, that’s no surprise.
Chris, that was a solid rebuttal!
I’d just like to point out that starting off a response to a person who identified as African American by saying “you sound reasonable enough” is exactly the kind of “invisible” unquantifiable, and deniable thing that people are referencing when they talk about systemic racism.
Except that that statement could be said to any commenter, regardless of their color. It’s condescending, but that’s all. Condescension isn’t suddenly ‘systemic racism’ just because it’s directed at an african american.
oh please. you’re looking for a problem where there isn’t one. he’s simply acknowledging to a stranger that he believes the man will listen to his rebuttal in good faith and would likely have said that to anyone making the same argument. if saying “you sound reasonable” to someone on the internet you disagree with is a sign of racism in your mind, then I would argue that’s actually proof of the ludicrous anti-reasoning James Lindsey is speaking about in critical theory.
” I don’t think all whites are racist, far from it”
Then you are a reasonable person, and not subject to the type of toxic thinking Lindsay is attacking. He is not claiming there are no issues with racism. He is saying that we should be approaching and attacking them straightforwardly, rather than obfuscating both the problems and the solutions in a murky haze of thought soup.
Something you said really caught my attention:
“that will require you to lose some of the privileges you enjoy.”
This got me thinking; if someone was able to specifically identify something *I* would need to give up in order for POC to have equal treatment, I would have to concede this as an instance of *my* White Privilege.
This seems like a perfectly reasonable test of personal White Privilege.
On the other hand, if I have to give up nothing as a result of POC getting equal treatment, then I can reasonably conclude I was not the beneficiary of White Privilege after all.
What do you guys think?
I have to go along with some of the others in asking what privileges you think I should give up as a white person? Serious question.
What Peggy MacIntosh, for example, describes as the inherent privileges of being white are very often how life ought to be irrespective of race–eg, not having to worry about being a representative of a specific race all the time, being treated fairly by authorities, being represented in the media, etc. My question is why should whites give up what “ought to be”? Shouldn’t it be that blacks and other minority groups are treated the same? Doesn’t it seem like we should be working towards guaranteeing this instead of asking whites to give up these “privileges”? I don’t think it is a zero sum game.
But you could be thinking of privileges that I’m not aware of. So, I’m still curious to hear what they might be-I might actually end up agreeing if you can explain it to us. What privileges do you think whites should lose specifically? Thanks.
Hell, Liz, you just described the entire concept of white priviledge. Yes, it”ought to be” fair, but his particular system was created that way. Shouldn’t it be that blacks and other minority groups are treated the same way? Amen. We’re not asking you to give anything up. We’re asking you to trace the history from the time of , say, reconstruction to today.
Again, I don’t think any white person should lose a priviledge. To acknowledge that the playing field isn’t level and to know what’s be done historically is a start.
See, that’s what I think. Yet the OP of this thread actually referenced whites losing some privileges. I still don’t know what these might be.
I don’t think whites are being as wilfully ignorant as some suggest–they just take issue to that kind of terminology. Starting off by telling people they’re privileged and need to give some of this up is great way to shut down dialogue and actual work. This is why I questioned it.
Yes Liz! should not the goal be to uplift everyone in American society to the point where no one is considered ‘this or that’ by their color?
the left has already dismissed MLK and the huge progress this country has made in race relations. the left would have school children believe America is irredeemably racist to it’s core.
i believe most people want America to be neutral over race and ethnicity, neither pro nor against. the question is how do we continue to get there? is it by bringing poc up or by bringing white people down (in daily accusations of racism and microaggresions)?
a nation divided against itself can not stand. unfortunately i believe that is the end goal of the left
Liz and Chris – great responses. It’s amazing what can happen when we focus on actual problems, not regressive misconceptions.
Here is a great conversation: https://www.manhattan-institute.org/race-riots-and-police
@Micheal Stevenson,
” you are benefitting from laws that were put in place by racist people to protect the white race.”
I have a big issue with the critical race theory when it says our laws benefit white people.
I have a big issue with this because our laws never mention race. They don’t say “Hey murder is illegal. But, you know not for white people it is ok. We want this law to benefit white people.”
Please explain to me how laws in the United States are designed to benefit white people. They don’t explicitly say they are. So the burden of proof is on you budy. To argue they were written by white people therefore they benefit white people is not an argument. That’s circular logic.
Let me think for a second. Maybe, you are saying black people are so different from white people (“Have different experiences”) that the laws written by white people shouldn’t apply to black people. If true, you’d be saying we need different laws for white and black people? I don’t what you think, so let me know.
“We are simply asking for equal treatment. ”
Which USA law explicitly gives people. Does not discirminate due to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc.
“But, I ask that they understand and respect the history that has us at the breaking point that we are at today. ”
I’m all for that man. I’m all for respecting your different experience.
“We are simply asking for equal treatment. We need white allies to help push that agenda forward. But, that will require you to lose some of the privileges you enjoy”
Name the privileges. if you can’t you don’t have evidence and you don’t have an argument. The best I’ve heard is white people have majority privilege. Even that is not much of an argument considering white people aren’t much of a majority anymore.
Remember, though, that the benefits of a law do not suddenly cease the moment the law is changed. If it were that simple, then your claim here would be fine. But, for instance, at least through the 1980’s, there were laws on the books that allowed landlords to discriminate against people of color (see Rothstein’s “The Color of Law”). Those laws are now, I believe, all overturned. But for those persons of color who were not able to purchase homes, the negative impacts of those laws may still be affecting them. Vice versa, white persons who were allowed to purchase homes may still be benefiting from those unjust laws, even if they are no longer on the books. That’s one example.
@Micheal Stevenson,
Like the other person said you sound like a reasonable person and I’d like to hear what you think.
” you are benefitting from laws that were put in place by racist people to protect the white race.”
Our laws never mention race. They don’t say “Hey murder is illegal. But, you know not for white people it is ok. We want this law to benefit white people.”
Please explain to me how laws in the United States are designed to benefit white people. They don’t explicitly say they are. So the burden of proof is on you. To argue they were written by white people therefore they benefit white people is not an argument. That’s circular logic.
“We are simply asking for equal treatment. ”
Which USA law explicitly gives people. Does not discriminate due to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc. Once again, explain how USA law benefits white people.
USA law does not prevent racism. Sure. I and most white people do not judge people by race. So, we have a hard time believing we unconsciously do.
“But, I ask that they understand and respect the history that has us at the breaking point that we are at today. ”
I’m all for that man. I’m all for respecting your different experience.
“We are simply asking for equal treatment. We need white allies to help push that agenda forward. But, that will require you to lose some of the privileges you enjoy”
Name the privileges. List the evidence. The best I’ve heard is white people have majority privilege. Even that is not much of an argument considering white people aren’t much of a majority anymore.
“I have been received severe racial abuse from whites on multiple occasions and blatant discrimination based on the color of my skin. ”
I am against that, most conservatives are against that. But, people who believe in systemic racism say white people are racist no matter how kind they are to people of color.
Michael Stevenson,
I agree with everything you say here. I think the crux of the article is that using the notion of systemic oppression to say all whites are racist doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I actually think many more whites are racist than will admit it. I also don’t think that trying to make all white people confess their racism is a good way to get people to open up to accepting all the bad stuff that has been going on for people of color. It just makes them defensive. You can call it “white fragility,” but honestly, most people don’t like being criticized, regardless of their race.
There have been a lot of studies done in cultural and interpersonal reconciliation techniques, and almost all of them depend on two parties agreeing to listen to each other in good faith, and allowing the aggrieved party to have a say in an atmosphere of mutual respect. A lot of work like this was done in Germany after World War II between young Jews and young Germans, and people had very constructive dialogues.
But just telling people “you’re a racist” is pretty much nothing more than name-calling when you get right down to it, and most people don’t respond well.
/What privileges are you asking people to give up? Are you proposing that certain freedoms be traded for benevolent control?
“…will require you to lose some of the privileges you enjoy.” – What privileges do you want white people to lose to “understand and respect the history that has us at the breaking point that we are at today?”
I’m an immigrant from the USSR; my grandmother was a Jew. The Soviet government made Jedaism a nationality, something impossible to escape. My grandmother’s religion defined my mother’s and my Socio-demographic status. In the USSR, being a Jew automatically closed doors to the top universities, to top-paid occupations, the ability to get promoted, and to travel to other countries. Besides, Soviet Jews were designated by the Soviet government to be blamed for all the bad things that ever happened in the country, including accusations that by don’t consuming “their share” of vodka, Jews contributed to the alcoholism of Russians. Yet, I had never met a Jewish person who blamed their personal failures or the lack of personal success on ‘systematic’ anti-semitism.
Based on your comment, you believe that white skin automatically grants people privileges that black people don’t have. Can you name a regulation or a law that puts you (not your grand and great-grandparents) in a disadvantageous position compared to white people? What privileges white people must lose to compensate you for something you think you don’t have only because of the color of your skin?
“Similarly, as an adult, you are not – by definition – subject to abuse by pedophiles. Therefore you have adult privilege.”
Genuine lol, great metaphor.
“As if we needed more evidence that it’s great to be alive, last year a grand total of zero living humans were victims of necrophilia. Now compare that to dead humans, and you see a totally different, but sadly all too predictable story. Over to you Tom…”
My application of the logic: these academics are all complicit in the crimes of the Congolese war lords. They probably haven’t contributed, assisted or even gave a serious thought about stopping the atrocities happening there. You can only be pro-war crime and anti-war crime, and these people are definitely pro-war crime since they are not actively dismantling the war lords’ reign of terror. They are also benefiting and thus passively supporting their oppressive activities by using electronic devices made from minerals mined by Congolese child labor. The only way to become anti-war crime is to join the Congolese army and get deployed on the front line.
Solid logic.
Xi Zedong,
“They are also benefiting and thus passively supporting their oppressive activities by using electronic devices made from minerals mined by Congolese child labor. The only way to become anti-war crime is to join the Congolese army and get deployed on the front line.”
Yes, exactly.
The reason why I believe this metaphor fails is because the situation in which a series of accidents results in someone’s death does not really have a moral dimension. Living in a society where people “drive cars” and living in a society that exploits and annihilates minority communities are not similar. They exist in a different place on the moral continuum. There is nothing accidental about slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, redlining, voter suppression, etc. Systems of oppression are filled with people who have real intent to do harm. All of us, regardless of race, participate in and uphold certain oppressive systems without our knowledge. The moral dimension comes into play when we learn about a specific behavior that upholds systems of evil and then choose not to change our behavior. When we choose our own convenience or wealth over the health and safety of other people or the environment. Acknowledging our complicity in systems of oppression is not about assigning blame. It is about understanding that being a good human being, who does more help than harm to society and the world, takes real intention and energy. Actively working to dismantle evil is in fact a prerequisite to being good, once you are educated enough to identify the evil that exists around you.
Benjamin Mertz,
It is highly probable the “evil systems of oppression” supposedly clearly identified are based on deeply-entrenched and disseminated cultural cognitive biases/delusions, fueled by vacuous Conflict Theory, much more than actual apprehensions of reality. (BTW – My undergraduate is in Political Sociology. I used to be a Conflict Theory devotee). Current Critical Social Justice (CSJ) strategies are highly regressive. Hopefully, the genuinely liberal intellectuals will continue to successfully expose it, and the population as a whole will develop an authentic “class consciousness” and see through it, before any more damage is done.
There are certainly socio-cultural artifacts of a less-enlightened past. There are also those who still manifest unconstructive attitudes, but the trajectory of modern society was rapidly moving toward progress. CSJ, just as all collectivistic, identity-driven ideologies, has reversed that progress. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Einstein
More injustice will not remedy past injustice. Neither will more faulty reasoning heal past ignorance.
The way forward is a Systems Theory approach, where actual issues (which are typically localized and anomalous, i.e. a latent function, not the manifest definition of the entire system) are identified and addressed. This includes the aberrant thinking of Conflict Theory. CSJ adherents are typically averse to the actual solutions: 1. individual responsibility; 2. a rejection of postmodernism/unscientific thinking; and 3: ironically, their own inability to identify their epistemic Naïve Realism.
It is entirely possible to be entirely wrong, no matter how many people are buying into it. Santayana had something to say about that, however the world seems to rarely listen.
Follow up:
https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
Amen!
“Actively working to dismantle evil is in fact a prerequisite to being good, once you are educated enough to identify the evil that exists around you.”
Whoa, Benjamin, do you really think that?
Did you ever see that old Twilight Zone episode about the guy who decides to shrink all the evil people down to two feet tall (through his power to do so). He accomplishes his act and goes to the window to see the results – and can’t see out the window.
No, no, it is not a requirement for good people to dismantle evil. I couldn’t disagree with you more. God, no! Good people must *build* goodness, *build* connections, *build* community, and *build* their own skills in order to serve their families and communities. Goodness is all about growing, joining, and connecting – and next to nothing about dismantling, destroying, and deconstructing.
PREACH! Thank you. This genuinely inspired me. That’s exactly right – you articulate something I’ve been trying to put my finger on. “Good people” live out their goodness. They don’t waste their precious time and breath pointing their fingers at others and blaming others. They try to embody goodness for all. They “shine their light.” Those that are constantly fighting and blaming and whining are not “good,” in fact they’re wasting valuable time and space that could be used for actual positive acts and caring and generosity. Mind blown.
I whole heartedly agree with Rebecca. By coming together, & building together in positive way … we can make individuals, communities, and America better. You do not drive out wrongs, by tearing down & replacing with more wrongs. Maybe, because I believe in God… I believe that humans are imperfect and cannot be perfect, but can & should strive to always be better, individually & collectively.
Rebecca, you raise a fair point, but – as with these discussions broadly – more precision is required. My two cents… The main analogy in the original post does appear to bypass the moral dimension entirely. To that extent, the argument may suffer.
To your point more specifically, could it not be the case that being good in the way you described – building, growing, joining, etc – will necessitate some dismantling as well? Is there a way to truly have one without the other? In other words, it seems unlikely that any broad generalization of normative ethical behavior will be sufficient.
I suspect that Benjamin is onto something in the sense that any immoral ‘system’ (for lack of a better word) will have effects that extend far beyond what any individual, or perhaps even a society, may expect, and to that extent a recognition of these potential effects, that need to be ‘dismantled’, may be valuable to have in a moral toolbox.
At the same time, I think that your account captures something important that some ‘activists’ probably have missed; namely, that a singular vision of any kind usually includes some blind spots. And those blind spots can lead to unwarranted generalizations that carry the same general tenor as the biases such activists are attempting to dismantle. You perspective offers some balance here.
This is why I often find myself ‘stuck’ in the middle when it comes to these discussions. On the one hand, it seems reasonable to me that systems of oppression do exist, and that people benefit from them, and it’s important to both recognize and work to overcome such systems. On the other, seeing oppression in literally everyone and everything is dubious on various philosophical grounds. But I wonder if posts like the original are really providing clarity or simply adding to the miscommunication between the two sides.
@Benjiman Mertz,
The idea of systematic racism in the critical is about blaming people. They explicitly say they blame white people who behave in ways that oppress people of color. It is why they say all white people are racist.
I read your example of what you think systemic oppression is which is that people are so selfish they disregard how they could rearrange their behavior to help other people and the enviroment instead of serving their own interests. Or, they buy from companies that hurt the environment
I don’t think this analogy fits what critical theory says systematic racism is. They don’t identify explicit ways society oppresses people of color. You can explicitly identify how a company we buy from hurts the environment. They can’t explicitly name actions white people take in everyday interactions which suppress people of color. At least, not good ones. Their theory of systematic oppression is like a conspiracy theory. They say it is there even though you can’t see it.
With your example, no one questions companies don’t care about the environment. The dis agreement there isn’t whether they hurt the environment or not, the dis agreement comes from does the environment matter that much. Most people don’t think it does.
The dis agreement over systemic racism is whether it exists in the first place. Most white consciously judge people of color the same way they judge white people. So, they have a hard time believing they are magically unconsciously discriminating agaisnt people of color.
Do you understand what I am saying?
Noel Taylor and Benjamin Mertz,
It doesn’t have to require a moral dimension. The parallel is the unhelpfulness of such broad, vague generalizations and such attempts to find complicity in everyone in a particular category one identifies. It could be something with a moral dimension or something without it. The thinking is still unhelpful. It would be more helpful to look at specific people, specific policies and specific motives to figure out what is racist and address it. The new definitions and assumption that racism is everywhere (just have to figure out in what way) are sloppy.
Benjamin Mertz,
I agree with you up until the point where you say we must all be activists against racism or be complicit. There are many kinds of activism because racial prejudice is not the only problem in the world. Some people are trying to end world hunger, some trying to promote healthy environments, some trying to end domestic abuse. To say we all must jump on the bandwagons prescribed by critical theorists is arrogating to oneself the power to tell others what issues they must respond to.
Yes we must all in our personal lives make choices that help build more tolerance for all people, and indeed, for some of us, promoting kindness towards all living beings is a calling. But dismantling oppressive systems is not going to be for everyone, and to brand everyone who is not fighting that particular battle as a racist is, I think, solipsistic on the part of those who think that’s the only worthy battle.
This vast and inexorable web of “white complicity/privilege” has been compared many times to original sin. I believe, though, that the concept of original sin is much more humane than “white complicity” could ever be. To me, original sin is just another way of saying “life is suffering.” Life is hard, and being self-aware is hard, and sometimes tragedy is overwhelming, so by all means let’s say that imperfection is *built in* to humanity. Because it is. And for me, the concepts of forgiveness and compassion are also built in to this original sin, life-is-suffering idea. Since we all have original sin, we can try to extend the same forgiveness and compassion to others that we (believe god extends to us) (hope others extend to us) (struggle to extend to ourselves). In a way, maybe we *are* all “complicit” in the tragedies of the world. The insane part is thinking that only white people possess this complicity.
I’ve been thinking of white privilege along these lines: the “privilege,” evidently, lies merely in the fact that white people are not subject to anti-black racism (never mind other colors, y’know). So since you’re not subject to that particular form of suffering, that could be called a benefit (or so they say). Hence, “white privilege.”
Similarly, as an adult, you are not – by definition – subject to abuse by pedophiles. Therefore you have adult privilege. Therefore you are complicit in it. Therefore all adults benefit from pedophilia, and moreover *all adults are pedophiles*. (And anyone who denies it is a pedophile.)
I think your pedophile analogy is spot on. I might use that in a conversation or two. I’ll make sure to give credit where credit is due !
This was a good analogy.
OR, . . .when a system is set up purposely to hold a certain segment of the population back so that others may benefit, that could be called priviledge and in this instance, the one’s benefitting happen to be “white.” All the stuff about pedophilia and adults? Please that’s just deflection. As a black man, I don’t get upset at knowing that white america was given an advantage. What upsets most black people is that there’s no acknowledgement and we always here about “bootstraps” when we know damn well that you got the best of the best. Hell, even the worst of the best got some a helluva lot further than the average black person.
You missed the point, to wit: Applebaum expands the usual definition of complicity from intentional participation in a crime to include everyone who benefits from any “oppressive system.”
In the immortal words of Kyle Reese, “I didn’t build the fucking thing!” and the words of Sarah Connor, “I didn’t ask for this ‘honor’ and I don’t want it!”. That’s what you fail to understand, any privilege I have was assigned to me from far above and I cannot do anything to change it. I am not in charge. The people who are in charge like things exactly like they are and they won’t let me change it any more than they will let you change it. You and I, we’re cogs in their machine and as long as it’s working for those on top running things they will use their power to keep it that way.
Tell me, where do I go to turn in this privilege if I don’t want it? How do I apply to share it with you? Or to give it away to someone else like you? What if I don’t like the idea of anyone having special privileges over anyone else, what if I want equality instead where do I go to make that happen? Is there some office I go to, some forms I can fill out, what? I mean, what kind of privilege is it really if I’m not in control of it?
I don’t have power, I have a caste assigned to me by those who have actual power and I can’t alter it. I can’t renounce it and I can’t dismantle the system either. So how am I responsible, when I’m not in control and I have no choice but to live in the strata I was assigned whether I like it or not? Looking at me for solutions is a waste of time, I cannot create the change you need. I can agree with you all day long that the system is bullshit (and I do) but I have no power to change it. I am not in authority here.
I’m a nobody in this system, if you want change you have to focus on the people who actually have the power to make change happen. For that you want the 1%, the rich ownership class. I’m not in that club and never will be. They aren’t taking new membership applications either.
Just look for the implication that freedom is racist, and that you must give someone power to impose fairness by force.
Such a brilliant comment!
Excellent comment.
Original sin is, “not Thy will be done, but My will be done”, which is what Adam and Eve did, and how every human is born, as anyone who has ever dealt with a 2 year old knows.
Jesus prayed in the garden at Gethsemane, “yet, not My will be done, but Thy will be done.”
God’s will? When asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus said to love the Lord, and the 2nd greatest is to love one another. All good law derives from these; e.g., if you love your neighbor, you don’t rob and murder him.
All this type of theory does not account for the fact that there are different classes of whites. Since slavery was the original sin according to these people …my first traceable relative in America was a prisoner of war from Scotland transported against his will and indentured for longer than life expectancy. So the original sin happened against my white family also. The slave holders of that generation did not associate with my relative, todays white ruling class doesn’t associate with me. The whole theory is a bad dream of a tormented mind and explains nothing. I can imagine how it achieved orthodoxy.
Your pedophile metaphor is really interesting. I think it should be brought up in any discussion about white privilege.
Very insightful and educational article, with a few grammar issues/typos. If the author is interested in having someone read his articles before publishing them … I’m available. I’d love to forward this article to others, but would prefer a “clean” copy.
Awesome idea. It would be great for this site to have a proof reader. As a reader and a *very* under-qualified grammarian, I wince when I occasionally see scholarly incites presented with less than scholarly grammar. I don’t know anything about your credentials but I second your nomination!
I wince when I see ‘incites’ for ‘insights’.
Careful! I could share a few insights regarding incitement 🙂
I have to, because of the irony, but…. scholarly “insights.” 😉
Ha! Validation that it’s always good to have a second eye look over a text. Thanks for the catch!
Was this comment written by a bot? Hilarious.
That’s exactly what a Grammar Nazi would say if they wanted to use White Grammar as a tool to oppress someone who uses Non-White grammar.
Assuming epistemological superiority of one grammatical system over another, merely confirms that you are Hitler.
good one
You win this comment section