John Scalzi explains: "Being a straight white male is 'easy mode' for life" Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 NEXT | |
But people don't say "majority power holder privelige" they say white privelige. With the assumption that people of other races are disadvantaged. They don't say that conforming to norms gives you a better advantage in life, they say being straight gives you an advantage. And they say that being a man gives you an obvious advantage, which I pointed out isn't true everywhere. I'm not saying that the color of your skin doesn't put you on point plus or one point minus on the social ladder depening on where you are born. But it is just downright negligent to try and narrow down the multitude of little things that effect how your life turns out to "blacks got it bad and whites got it good". It ignores people of the "priveliged" group that are not very priveliged and it gives an unfair bonus to people of the "disadvantaged" group that were in fact born very priveliged. Do you think a serbian (a straight, white, christian serbian) who just got off the boat and speaks english about as well as a lawn mower would have an easier time than a well spoken black guy with a spotless record and with a great education? If not, why? Is the serbian not white? And is the term not WHITE privelige? | |
Hmm... That is a very sound point. I think the purpose of calling it white privilige is to make it easily identifiable and understandable. Also, lets not mistake the fact that being white is definitely an element to how this privilige works. It is not the only one, but it IS the only one that is not at all controllable (outside of sexual orientation). Maybe it should be renamed to make it less abrasive. | |
It's not a No True Scotsman argument, and you have no idea of what I've just explained. Nor am I really sure how to make it easier. * * * To try it another way, let's imagine you are rolling a 100-sided dice. If you get over 95, you get to be a wall street banker. If you get 51-94, you get to be a small business owner. If you get 11-50, you get to be a factory worker. If you get 10 or under, you get to be an unemployed bum. However, if you are a white male, +1 is added to your dice roll. Thus lots of white males are still unemployed bums and factory workers. But very slightly fewer than non-white males. Perhaps living in West Virgina might be worth -5, so a white, male, West Virginian has a -4 modifier. A white male West Virginian might very well think his +1 for being a white male ain't really worth a damn given his much larger disadvantage. | |
By natural standards, no. But by societal standards? Yeah, it is. Signed, Straight White Male. | |
Yeah, Whitey's ALWAYS keepin' the white man down! | |
That is not to say that white privilege doesn't exist, merely that it's not the only possible privilege a person could have. Unfortunately, yes, a lot of people like complaining about the privileges people have over them, while totally ignoring the privileges they have over other people. Also, white privilege is a convenient one to talk about, because it's uncontroversial. People should just stop being racist. Class privilege, well, that ends up with people talking about social safety nets and wealth redistribution, and then everyone is calling each other a fascist or a socialist or both. | |
Well, previous studies show that he'd have an easier time hailing a cab in New York City, so there's that.
I know all you see is trees, but I'm telling you, there's a forest there. | |
Which goes back to my point that being a white male doesn't necessarily give you an advantage. | |
What forest is it that I'm not seeing? I'm trying to point out that there are more factors to how a life turns out than skin color. Some that MIGHT be significantly more important than skin color. Which might be ignored if you focus too hard on skin color. Like just now you missed my point with the serbian, and put him in a position in which him being a serbian is not something the cab driver would notice. I was trying to point out that race is not the only deciding factor. But hey, maybe I'm the one missing the forest for the trees. | |
... But...the...article...focused on other factors beside race? Which was obvious from the title onwards? *confused* | |
It was a juvenile article trying to explain something we all already know about in video game terms, because life can truly be explained by difficulty settings. It acknowledged that there was other factors at play in one paragraph in the middle. It still focuses most on race (and sexuality), which I think is a gross simplification. Hell, even the assumption that being a straight white male is generally the easies thing to be in all things is an oversimplification. Would a white teacher have it easier in for example a school where most of the students and the staff are black? | |
The PvP in real life sucks for all involved. | |
You all are missing the point, hopefully not on purpose, but its clearly being missed here. We are talking base line unchangeable stats here not so much what you choose to do with the stats you are given. If a white teacher chose to teach in a black school it would be like in Skyrim trying to build an Orc into a restoration/conjuration mage. Orcs are naturally warriors and the warrior class is pretty efficient in terms of beating the game for how much work you have to actually put in. A white teacher would not have an easier time in a all black school depending on the situation. However, that white teacher will have a much easier time finding a job in a predominantly white school on the other side of town. At the same time a black teacher coming from the same school would find that they would have few opportunities to teach in a school that was not predominantly black. The point here is that the "default" settings of white, conformist, male make it easier to progress in whatever direction you decide (aside from Basketball) whereas other people with other races, sexual orientations etc will only be an advantage in a limited scope, and every other situation will require 1 or more extra steps just to be on the same footing that the white character was on from jump. | |
Which part of "all other things being equal" is failing to register with you? | |
Well, as it stands i think the West has never before been so tolerant of black people. Is Western society racist though? Difficult question to answer because the "West" is a rather nebulous concept, but my belief is that there are plenty of "liberal tolerant" environments in the West were black people arn't oppressed.
Depends where you are and who the ethnic minority is- but i'm fairly certain there are plenty of liberal and tolerant environments in our society.
Exactly, they're not the norm which carries with it inherent problems. But not being the norm (and let's face it, most people arn't normal) doesn't mean one get's automatically oppressed if you live in the right environment. | |
Maybe not.. But then, would a white school teacher have an easier time getting a job which didn't involve working in a school where most of the students and staff are black? The ability to claim a superficial "advantage" in something peripheral does not make you privileged, the fact that we can think of these situations is not an argument against the concept of privilege. The world is pretty effectively set up so that straight white people will never be required to do any of these things unless they actively want to, the reverse is not true. "Advantage" is a very difficult thing to quantify sociologically. It's not just money, it's not just getting the best jobs (although statistically there are certain factors which make you much more or less likely to do those things), it's things like being regarded as "normal", like not being stereotyped, like not being subject to what is now termed microaggression, like being able to get on with a wider group of people. Most of all, however, it's tied to the conceptual history and ideology behind various conncepts. "Whiteness" cannot be a bad thing, the overwhelming mass of people in society with any real power to determined whether something is a good or bad thing accept it as a good thing. And if anyone disagrees, we can rebuke or ignore them. That's privilege. I personally think the analogy here is incorrect in reducing privilege to question of relative "difficulty". Everyone thinks their life is hard, noone feels they have a particular power or authority or ease which other people lack, and actually, it doesn't matter so much. What matters is the centrality of particular forms of identity to society itself. It's less about whether black people can live without being racially abused, it's more about whether black people can walk into a room without having their blackness be the first thing anyone notices about them. | |
Another prejudiced asshole who thinks myths of discrimination and stories of discrimination that may or may not have happened elsewhere, automatically mean that every single person with a set of characteristics has it better. Maybe that Scalzi guy should try that Real World thing some day. Sounds like he hasn't visited it in quite a while. | |
Has anyone here read "Outliers: Stories of Success" or something similar? The thesis of the book is that our idea of success and failure is too tied up in the individual. One of the first things discussed in the book is the disproportionate number of elite hockey players in Canada born in the first three months of the calendar year. The reason for this is that March is the cut off for pee-wee hockey. Those kids born in those first three months are going to be slightly more developed, physically and mentally, because when kids are that young a month or two can really make a big difference. These kids become the stars early and then get extra attention and training from the beginning. This idea of looking at the factors of success and failure instead of just writing it off is important to this discussion. Are there plenty of poor white people? Yes. Considering white people are still in the majority, there is probably a lot of poor white people. But the idea behind the article isn't to say that we shouldn't care about white poverty. It is about white privilege. This shouldn't be about telling someone you got handed life on a silver platter, because most people actually haven't (unless you were born rich and pretty). It should about those born with a leg up using their advantage and working towards leveling the playing field. And are you sure they are assuming the same context? Or that I am? If i have a word fail I'm sorry, but i don't assume all straight white males are born into equal circumstances. | |
The part where West Virginian people are grouped together with middle class guys from some suburb in Maine under the banner Straight White Male. The article made a blanket statement about all White males, not the "average", not the majority, but all. The White guy from suburban Connecticut doesn't have the same difficulty setting as the White guy from West Virgina, or the White guy from Malmo, Sweden. | |
The world is not the US. There are many countries in the world where white people are not the majority. Just wanted to note that. In any case, my point with the school wasn't to say that blacks were priveliged in some situations. The point I have been trying to get across, perhaps badly, is if we boil it all down to skin color. We risk losing the other, often more deciding factors, like class, health, the conditions you grew up in, etc. I know when people say white privelige they do not mean to imply that white skin magically makes you better, but I think we focus on skin color too hard we risk simplifying it down to just that. The risk could be that for example media and government could focus on just getting more black people into for example university. When the real problem might be an under-representation of working class kids in University, and blacks are just over-represented in that group, which is a problem, sure. But if we can somehow help working class kids do better in school, you might help the black population out without some other group just taking their place. | |
Where does it say that they do? The only comparison being made is between the state of being a "straight white male" and being anyone else. It makes no difference to that statement whether the experiences of all straight white males are of "equal" difficulty or not, just that there are no situations you are likely to be forced to encounter in which being a straight white male will disadvantage you, which is largely correct. How the hell would you read that and come to any other conclusion? | |
Of course, being female makes you less likely to end up in prison when convicted of a crime, and to serve a shorter sentence if you do manage to get jail time. Gender has a larger effect on sentencing for any given crime than anything else, and the worse the crime, the larger the gap is. It's really an example of "privilege" not being as unidirectional as some might think. Especially male privilege. I strongly suspect I was not hired for a job because I am white. The job was at a "traditionally black" college in their IT department. Waht makes me suspicious that my being white was such a factor was that they made sure to note that it was a "traditionally black" school and the importance of fitting in and being "comfortable with the college environment" so many times that it came of as an "I'm not saying but I'm saying" kind of vibe. I actually wonder how much of "white privilege" is actually "class privilege", since white privilege is a lot less noticeable around here, but I'm from West Virginia, and we're y'know, generally poor and rural. | |
Yeah.. and in some of those places privilege functions differently. That said, there are still places in the world where a white minority is accorded cultural centrality despite being a minority. It isn't just a question of majority and minority, it's a question of who has the dominant voice within culture.
But if we don't think about skin colour then we allow unconscious prejudice to persist. I agree with you, there are many factors which influence a person's chances of success or failure, which is part of why I think "difficulty level" is an inadequate metaphor for privilege. But while you might be white and poor, or you might be white and ugly, you might be white and stupid or aggressive, you'll never be poor because you're white, you'll never be considered ugly because you're white, you'll never be regarded as stupid because you're white, because white people in general are not and have never been considered to be poor, ugly, aggressive or stupid because of their race. They are just people. Whiteness allows people to succeed or fail entirely on their own merits, without regard to their race. Heterosexuality allows people to succeed or fail entirely on their own merits, without regard to their sexual orientation. Maleness allows people to succeed or fail entirely on their own merits.. yeah, you get the idea. The fact that there are many, many of these "normalizing" factors which may affect different people differently doesn't change the fact that they all have a function.
Which would be nice if it worked. But it doesn't. Look, we have needs assessed scholarships. We've had them for a long time. One thing which has been noticed about needs assessed scholarships is that a disproportionate number of them still go to white people. How is ignoring race in favour of socio-economic background and ending up disproportionately advantaging poorer white kids any better than ignore socio-economic background and ending up disproportionately advantaging richer black kids? This is why we have ethnicity-based affirmative action in the first place, it's not to give black people a little leg up as a reward for enduring discrimination, it's because the existing "colourblind" mechanisms for ensuring social mobility are disproportionately excluding ethnic minorities. I know it might be hard to believe that people who are not malicious might engage in what is technically racial discrimination, but they do. They do it all the time, generally without even realizing it. You can't fight that by ignoring it because otherwise "oh, it might be unfair to white people". The current system is unfairly advantageous to white people of any socio-economic background. | |
From the article....
As I said before, the life of a suburban middle class White male in the U.S. is not representative of all White males in the entire Western World. White males are not some single entity with the exact same surroundings, culture, and status. Case in point, here is another group that has White males that don't have the "easy difficulty".
Try being a ethnic Swed in Malmo who openly doesn't like Islam or an Irish Catholic in Belfast that is proud of Bobby Sands. | |
I think this is a much better explanation, as his use of difficulty levels was confusing as it required the assumption of "all other things being equal", which is unrealistic since they rarely are. This explanation also allows for variance in difficulty among those of one's race while not discounting possible advantages and disadvantages a race may have. | |
It's always worth a laugh when the minority still clamor on about unfairness when the majorities less fortunate still outnumber them by a vast amount. If you point it out it becomes less about numbers and more about an issue of percentages (which I'm curious to see). If that doesn't support it it becomes something else. There will always be a reason people can find to complain about those they feel are better off. Your reply here indicates a particular context that is often assumed; economics. More on that later...
The playing field has been leveled; from a legislative standpoint. People will never... and let me be perfectly frank about the meaning I'm using, never ever in a million years so long as humans exist... never get over social issues that great conflicts of any sorts. The goal posts will simply be moved to another controversy which is deemed unfair by those that don't control it. I'm a more than willing to insure certain things are leveled; such a placement tests. But I fail to see the value in lowering other things for fairness sake; such as the physical requirements for women to serve in combat duty. One make sense; the other is counter productive. Besides the idea that leveling the playing field is sometimes putting others at a disadvantage.
Personal experience; white privilege makes the following assumptions... they are purely caucasian, they are male, they are hetereosexual, they are from a 1st world western country, they are at least middle class or higher, they are free from genetic abnormalities, they are free from psychological issues, they are tall, they are thin, they are attractive, etc, etc. Now it's true that some of those suddenly change when they are directly challenged, but at that point you're talking about the privilege of what *they* are considering the privileged elite to be, because at the very least they are jealous of their attributes and possessions. In the Skyrim thread there was an obvious context; Skyrim. Within Skyrim (making this shit up, I've never played the game), you could get ice resistance, which gives you a +1 against ice. Which is great, when you're fighting ice stuff. A fire breathing dragon comes along and suddenly your ice resistance means shit. Ice resistance also means shit in games which have nothing to do with ice; like Mario Brothers or Sim City. You change the context and suddenly the privilege no longer exists, so this discussion of white privilege only exists within the context of a white centralized society. Being male means shit in many context; even in a patriarchy society that people claim we exist in. Being white means shit in various contexts, being straight means shit in various contexts. So a white straight male dominated society suddenly gives white straight males a leg up in certain things? Stop the presses. So what do you do about it? Create legislation where their sexuality, race and gender can no longer be used as considerations for anything in the society. But what would you do after that? What do you even need to do after that? Now you fully admit that you are aware not every straight white male is born into the same circumstance, but then you're adjusting the context to fit the one context that seems to be the center of things; which currently happens to be dominated by straight white men, at least within the context our current western society; money. Should you go to the East; it would be straight, Asian males... who just happen to be affluent. Will Smith is privileged; is it because he's straight and a male? Or because he's rich. What do you really think governs our society more? Sexual and racial identification? Or cash? I'm sure some people are going to argue that it's easier to make cash as a straight white male than any other classification, but that's just reaching for excuses at that point. I can tell you I'd actually make more money as a female with better job security and have a better love life if I was bisexual. So where's my fucking privilege? How is it that in the very society I am suppose to be privileged in, would be all around easier if I was not who I am? I feel like I'm ranting at this point. So yah, seems like these discussions simply illustrate the jealousies we have for whose positions and statures we deem desirable. It's a giant circle jerk because it changes with the context. I'm just not fond of people using it to explain away the hard work I've put into my life. | |
You obviously missed This Thread, where Gorfias is steadfastly defending the Republicans' repeal of the Lily Ledbetter Act (which widens the amount of time women have to sue their bosses when they find out they were being underpaid) because the RIGHT of men to be paid more than women for doing the same work experience childbirth arglebargle. So, yeah, we're still not quite there yet. | |
So what? You only get one shot at life, so I don't see anything wrong with this. | |
That the US has no equal treatment of women, doesn't mean that other countries aren't at that point or even beyond it. Actually, I'd say advocating discrimination is the largest threat to feminism. That makes feminists (or insert any other advocacy group) the enemies of whomever is in favour of equal treatment, and worse yet, they're doing exactly what they initially set out to stop. Trying to get egalitarianism by discriminating others is like trying to put out fires with gasoline; even if you were to completely cover the original fire, a new one a lot bigger is going to spring up.
During the entire article he refers to white men as a homogenous group. That's the generalisation right there. It's no less stupid or incorrect than other racist statements like "jews are thieves" or "negroes are too lazy to work", and to be honest I'm mystified as to why people saying my two examples would be almost universally shunned, while the article the topic is about is taken seriously. | |
Ho hum... if you're going to bring something up as a counter point, could you at least do a little bit of digging first as to their reasons and not simply grossly misrepresent this issue? First of all, the Act involves any demographic being paid differently on discrimination grounds; not just women. Secondly, the primary reason they fought against it was because of the ambiguous terminology detailing the time frame involved in any suit. The intention was to prevent people from suing companies which either they were no longer a part of or had different management which may not have been involved in the first place. Even suggestion that the "republicans" opposed it ignores the few that actually voted in favor for it.
Right, so even though this legislation exists; it's simply not good enough for life to be considered fair? Where's the legislation opposing ladies night? You want equal pay? I want free drinks. I'm sure the likely response will yet again go back to the additional pay we somehow magically make, but then suddenly disappear when car insurance is brought up. I'm not disagreeing with you though; we simply aren't there yet. We need more legislation making everything fair! Rock beats scissors, it's bullshit I tell you, bullshit! | |
Once again.. Do these disadvantaged groups exist because they are white, straight and/or male? Again, legitimate point of comparison please.
Read again. Then repeat the question above.
So Sweden is the biggest threat to feminism? Not like our enlightened countries where there's no discrimination at all and everyone is equal.. Do you want to stop talking now?
What?
Look, I understand your life probably feels very hard and it's not nice when someone says that it's not because it makes your personal achievements seem less big, but come on, I refuse to believe that you cannot see the point here.. "Than they would be otherwise" pretty obviously means "if you were not white, straight or male", that is after all the main point of comparison within the article. It does not mean "if you were an entirely different person undergoing an entirely different experience on the other side of the world". Why the hell would it mean that? What clue is there within the text that it means that?
Except that it is. It's entirely different from those two statements, and the fact that you would even think to equate them is bemusing. "Jews are thieves" or "negroes are too lazy to work" are both essential statements about the assumed racial characteristics of particular people. Such statements are demonstrably and scientifically false, because they're grounded in the assumption (which we now know to be flawed) that "race" carries inherent behavioural attributes. Saying "being white will affect your life in X way" is nothing like the above statements, it's no different to saying that "being black will make you subject to discrimination in some areas of life". It's not controversial, in fact it's sociologically verifiable. If this is honestly what you think racism is, then I'd say the point is pretty much proven. | |
Yes, because they are travellers, they are at a disadvantage. The same for Sweds in Malmo. | |
Read your post again. Because they are travellers. Not because they are white. Not because they are straight. Not because they are male. This is an argument against locating privilege in a fixed subject, and it's one I'd probably agree with if that's what you were claiming it was. Instead, what you're claiming is not that privilege operates on additional axes that the "straight, white male" model suggests, but that privilege doesn't exist at all because if it did then every white person would be automatically better socially positioned than every black person on earth. No, that's not what we have to demonstrate. Once again, the "privilege" of whiteness is that it allows people to succeed or fail entirely on their own merits, without regard to their race. That doesn't mean there are no white people in disadvantaged positions, just that their disadvantages do not ever come from their race unless the area in which they are disadvantaged is culturally peripheral. Sure, you might have some problems if your ultimate ambition is to open a curry house, but there will generally be better alternatives available, and you will usually have easier access to them for being white than you would otherwise (again, see the correct meaning of "otherwise" in this context). If you openly go around proclaiming you don't like Islam and it results in negative consequences for you, that is not "racism", that is you failing to achieve social success within a given group because you are openly proclaiming your dislike of their religion, it's not rocket science. "Disliking Islam" is not an inherent part of being white, most of us manage just fine. | |
Wouldn't them existing despite being white, straight, male be even a stronger argument against the generalization that it's an easymode life? Though as far as the article goes, I find it extremely distasteful that genetics are even compared to difficulty selection...cause last time I checked, I did not exactly pick anything. | |
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Is that true if the black male was also atheist or otherwise non-Christian, though?
Like I said before, it's not about the straight white male always being better off, it's about all else being equal, the straight white male is generally better off.