General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" [View all]Rilgin
(787 posts)I have read a number of your posts. One of which in particular urged people posting to consider their audience. I am not trying to discuss the substance of your post particularly but one aspect related to communicating these issues.
I would refer you to the opening line of the quoted article. It starts by saying "explain to straight white men how life works for them".
Please consider if there is always a problem if you try to explain someone to themselves; especially if they do not know them individually. This concept should be pretty easy to understand, it is the basis of the allegation that someone is whitesplaining or mansplaining. It occurs all the time between individuals.
Explaining to someone else how life works for them rather than either asking them how life works for them or explaining how life works for oneself always comes off as a lecture whether its accurate or not.
No one is an expert or the authority of someone else's life experience and people always resent someone else trying to define them. All people, of all races, genders and sexual preference, do not like to be explained to by people who do not know them individually on the basis of generalizations. Communication always works best if you ask someone about themselves or tell someone else about yourself. Hopefully you do not disagree with this.
Please consider this. Perhaps, it explains why all posts explaining white people to a white person or POC to a person of color ends up in bad feelings and conflict among some posters. It might be better to not explain racial issues and discrimination that affect an individual or group by trying to define those problems in terms of other people who are not affected.
Identifying racial problems as discrimination against a group or individuals with a specific characteristic was the broad based rallying basis of the civil rights movement in the 60's and 70's. This effort was generally supported by all liberal and thinking people and helped identify some specific things that need to be changed. These efforts may not have solved all the issues and as a country we may have backslid (the election of Trump is good evidence), in the fight for social equality. However, please consider if it might be a better tactic going forward to not "explain" to any group or individual who is not your friend, wife, husband, boss, counselor or lover, how their life works if the goal is to discuss how another group or individual has a societal problem.