General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A couple of years ago, I was personally responsible for starting a lot of OPs on Zimmerman [View all]JonLP24
(29,322 posts)"Holy crap man, you had all the cards in your favor, you had the lowest difficulty setting and you still lost. What a pathetic loser you are. (and by the way, don't forget to vote for us, because we care about you, you racist loser)"
Not only that, but because you have such a low difficulty setting, we are not gonna create any programs to help you. If you are a white male - YOYO (You're On Your Own)
The other part is that people seem to be claiming it is a low difficulty setting without having walked a mile in your shoes.
"all other things being equal" seems like a cop out too. It says to somebody in the 10th percentile. "Just ignore the 90% of the population which is economically better off than you are, because you are a white male, you are better off than those in the 10-15th percentile and thus you have 'privilege'." Apparently privilege over 5% trumps privation over 85% (that white skin, it's some powerful stuff).
I still say that is one fucked up definition of privilege, when I am privileged in the 10th percentile and Ellen Degeneres, Melissa Ethridge, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, etc.,etc., etc. are members of oppressed "groups". Yep, the guy making $20 million a year for playing golf is oppressed and the guy making $12,000 a year cleaning toilets is privileged.
Oh, I forgot, that last guy, he's just a complete screw up because with all of his privileges (and the straight A's that were apparently just given to him based on the color of his skin and his Y chromosome, and his university degrees (okay I did get one of those without going to very many classes)) he still ended up cleaning toilets.
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because if I talk about Oprah, or Tiger, everybody knows who I am talking about. If I talk about Chester, then nobody knows who I am talking about.
I could take some time to explain who Chester is, but it is much quicker and easier to just point to Tiger.
Here's who Chester is. He's an actual black male, who apparently was my nemesis. Not on purpose (I think) but there was a time when the last three jobs I applied for, were instead given to Chester. I applied for the full time janitor job at the place where I worked part time. Okay, first that was given to another black man, Layton. After about five weeks he was fired for not showing up every Friday. Then it was given to Chester. Then I applied for a job as dogcatcher. Chester also applied for it, and got that job. Then I applied for a janitor job at the Methodist church, and Chester got that job.
Strangely enough, I do not consider "not getting a job" to be some sort of privilege, but again, apparently I am part of a privileged "group" and Chester and Tiger and Oprah are part of an oppressed "group".
My point is very, very simple. In spite of the averages, the people in the first group do not all enjoy privileges any more than the people in the second group all experience oppression. If a statistical "reality" as you call it, does not translate to the personal, then it is not much of a reality, is it?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002692549#post5
I don't ever like searching posters posts but his are pretty easy to find using terms and staff like that. Particularly like 'white privilege threads' which were memorable.
I think there is one working from memory something about janitor job where his boss his black, the mayor his black, everybody over him is black, the President is black and being screwed up losing out jobs apparently to Chester but overall you get the picture. I noticed the "compassionate lynching mob" in this context with "I get it, he's black" which seemed to be his issue rather than MrScorpio's.
I have noticed DU administrators for one reason or another, don't notice or see it but a lot of the undercover racists that were obvious to me but they'll not outright say it but develop a pattern. DKF was one like that and Meta-Discussion was the only way apparently she was banned because another site was found she contributes to like a self-blog where she was more straight up to the racism and there was little objection over that banning because of comments made somewhere else but for a lot of us it was a finally but don't know why they don't notice or take longer to react and ban based on those things.`