My Debut Column at Salon: On racism, privilege talk, and schools

You should check out Jill Leovy’s new book ‘ghettoside’, perhaps for a review ? It gives a pretty convincing non racist (in fact it shows how racism drives the phenomenon) critique on how black on black murder in inner city neighbourhoods is the primary source of those neighbourhoods woes. (how the incentives to prosecute minor offenses negates the desire to solve meaningful violent crimes, which undermining the rule of law and encourages a succesion of retaliatory and ‘honour based’ murders)
It’s a pretty amazing bottom up description, full of empathy but clear sighted. It’s got only good reviews so far so I’m curious if there’s a more ciritical take out there on it. (all this said, I’ve only read less than half so far)
Nice column btw, congrats and all that.

I wrote a weekly column years ago. I wonder what would have changed in my writing if I’d done it fortnightly instead. And I’ll be curious to hear your reflections on how writing the Salon column ends up influencing what you write elsewhere — whether you write less, or more, or differently, or on different topics, in your scholarly work and your other prose.

I think you might be confusing interracial harmony with a heterogeneous distribution of races. If you want to measure interracial harmony, you can measure it by looking at how often people marry people of another race, or how often people employ people of a different race, relative to some past baseline. And you have to include Asian-Americans. When I find scholars who disregard data on Asian-Americans, I don’t read their work because I know they are removing data that falsifies their hypothesis.

As far as statistical distributions are concerned, they’re the result of self-segregation, which indicates homophily but doesn’t necessarily indicate a dislike of another group. It’s worth noting here that the least diverse colleges in the U.S. are historically black colleges. Meanwhile many predominantly White institutions actually have an under-representation of Whites relative to the national demographic distribution (and an over-representation of Asian-Americans).

Also, if your black and Latino population goes from 30 percent to 15 percent, that means the other 15 percent have moved somewhere else, possibly to an an area that was 0 percent black and Latino.

It seems meaningless to speak of resegregation without taking into account changing demographics. In many places, it has become mathematically impossible to not have “majority-minority” schools. There just aren’t enough white kids to go around anymore.

Bi-monthly means every two months. Semi-monthly means twice a month. Bi-weekly means every two weeks. I suspect you intend one or the other of the last two. In any event, congratulations.

This sentence, springing from Arendt’s remark, does a lot of work, not all of it salutary: “In the United States, we often try to solve political and economic questions through our schools rather than in society.” When I read this I hear a variation on the “ivory tower” versus “real world” theme, or on “those who can’t do, teach.” Schools are in society, they are part of the real world. (These days, loan debts among post-secondary students are a handy reminder of this fact.) Why wouldn’t we want to include schools among the institutions where we effect needed change? How is desegregation of schools any more a “burden” on children than, say, the overt and insidious perpetuation of racism at home across the dinner table?

I understand how the sentence fits into a more nuanced context of the column. But it, and your two closing sentences, take your criticisms of education and “privilege talk” too far. “Privilege talk” is one avenue for change. Our expectations shouldn’t be unrealistic, and of course we can find cynical cases, such as the White Privilege Conference. We need to call those out, as you have done, for what they are.

“Actually, no, it’s not.”

No, it is, for exactly the reason you react to it being pointed out with hostility. When the best argument you can muster against an idea is “yuck”, that’s not reason speaking, it’s psychological defenses.

Brett’s @111 is just such a perfect example of William Barry’s @8 “I just love the way racist wingnuts adopt the “sheep’s clothing” tactic of writing in such a coolly analytic, how-could-any-sane-person-disagree, tone. Makes one gag.”

As one might expect from an ideology that has to name its house journal Reason.

Ta da! BB, on cue.

Like an indefatigable, always on, A.I. (well, A.I. is an oxymoron in this instance, so, pathetic little robot, let’s say).

I always hate to waste a comment, it feels like punishing readers for my mistake, but it’s “Mitropolous”

The author was a kid in the 70s. I was a kid in the 50s, in the Delta. Racism was the billy club, the pick handle, the Colored signs over water fountains and on rest room doors, and the wage of a dollar a day.

When it was invidious the fact of racism wasn’t in dispute. The South got beyond the clubs and handles and signs and learned from the North to be insidious instead. This hilarious business of selecting white kids to talk to selected white kids about their selectedness is sublimely insidious. I expect it to be emulated soon in the land of cotton.

How do those people sleep at night?

I don’t think equality in education has, necessarily, a lot to do with equality qua equality. Rather, equality in education is about meritocratic inequality. You can be black, poor, woman, whatever, but if you are super-smart and extra-hard-working you go right to the top. And vise versa. And the top is a looooong way from the bottom. It’s something that justifies inequality. Only the undeniably deserving take champagne baths, eat caviar, and fuck models. And only the undeniably undeserving are homeless on dog food.

MSM – thanks, the statistics were useful.

I’m from Illinois, a large downstate city where 60-70% of all school-age children in the district are eligible for free meals. A cousin who volunteers for a church program that provides weekend meals for children from the elementary school in the church’s neighborhood was describing the program/recipients last fall when I was home. I asked how many of the children are given food to get through the weekend, and when she answered “All,” I burst into tears.

Why wouldn’t we want to include schools among the institutions where we effect needed change?

Of course they’re among those institutions. What Corey is talking about is, for example, deciding that the barriers to residential desegregation created by law and by long established real estate sales practice are hard to break down, so instead we’ll put some children in buses and send them wherever for most of their day, because that’s not as hard, and we’ll let housing slide.

Hogan, Dean,
I see the “let the schools solve the problem thing”, as more of an intertemporal (intergenerational) punt. Educate the children well, and over time they will do the right thing and solve it. Its not a complete cop-out as a strategy, but it does transfer the heavy lifting onto others.

And can I just say, you all should do a little more shilling for your own writing, maybe. I for one would love it if e.g. Henry were to drop a short post and link here when puts up a Monkey Cage post. I mean, I try to keep up on Twitter, but that shit is easy to miss!

Just a tiny point, not affecting the content or the argument of the piece, with which I have no quarrel at all, but Microsoft Word is not the place I would go for an authoritative account of the English lexicon (there is a lot else it doesn’t recognize in actual current usage). The OED has an entry for ‘resegregate’ (Word has just red-lined it for me), with the definition, “To segregate again, esp. on the basis of race.” They have example quotations beginning from 1865, with the first attested usage in the “racial basis” sense from 1923, and the most recent example (2002) from The Nation (which does not mean there haven’t been other uses of the word since).

To get an in-depth understanding of the problem of racism in language usage, I would recommend U. of Arizona anthropologist Jane H. Hill’s book, “The everyday language of white racism” (2009).

“I laughed at this until I just realized that I was being educated on privilege by an article written by someone who is white, male and privileged.”

And who went to Yale and chooses to send his own daughter to a school that is rapidly ‘resegregating’ because he can afford the property prices that allow him the choice.

Sometimes our self deception can be downright funny.

I understand the point about “elite priveledge” private schools and their lip service to racial issues…clearly there are such schools and you’ve cherry picked several.

Unfortunately, I think you do a vast disservice to 1,000s of private schools which are quite distinctly not white, not wealthy and not elite in any sense of the word. The vast majority of private schools are religious based and tend to be very reflective of the communities they serve. Nearly all actively try to recruit and maintain diversity and devote considerable aid, grant and scholarship resources to achieving that goal. If they are undiversified it tends to be on religious lines (i.e. all Catholic, no muslims), not ethnic.

As such, your rant against private schools is pretty wholly without merit. It needs to be far more focused on particular types of private schools, not private schools as an institution. Its true that every big city will have its Daltons, Spenses and Collegiates…but just as those aren’t representative of the broader make-up of their city, they also aren’t representative of private schools as a whole.

I am glad you find your self deception as funny as I do Corey!

“People who get rich in the private sector have to do SOMETHING other people value, to get rich”

This is so obviously false.

“Who gets “rich” on a government salary? I’d like to know more about this racket…”

It may depend on your definition of ‘rich’ but there are many people in the UK who get rich on government salaries by most people’s definition.

“I just feel way too glass-house-ish to enjoy throwing stones at the elitism of other people’s education.”

“And who went to Yale and chooses to send his own daughter to a school that is rapidly ‘resegregating’ because he can afford the property prices that allow him the choice.”

Would anyone be at all surprised if those making the argument that privileged white people such as Corey Robin (and myself, incidentally) are hypocrites for talking about privilege turned out to be the same people who wish people would stop talking about privilege?

How convenient.

I find it hard to attack private schools when I maintain a deep and abiding affection for universities, which are by far the most effective instrument for maintaining privilege yet invented, and consume far more government resources than whatever subsidies the private schools may obtain to boot.

If the egalitarian objection to private education was that it consumes government resources then you might have a point. But it isn’t. You don’t.

Further (to my @44): We could have the makings here of a whole new right-wing meme. Why stop at discussions of privilege? If you are well-off, you just can’t be a liberal/ of the left in any sense. Join us!

Oh, and did I say: “How convenient”?

“Why shouldn’t somebody who came by a resource rightfully . . .”

We made our money the old-fashioned way: we inherited it.

“If you are well-off, you just can’t be a liberal/ of the left in any sense. Join us!2

You can. But if you keep doing the thing you complain about other people doing, some people are sometimes going to notice.

At the same time, in elite universities, there seem to be simultaneous efforts to make merely middle class kids aware of their inability really to compete (see the Atlantic’s education line for about 20 years), and to make them aware that now that they’re at an elite university, they ought to take the same attitudes that would be seemly for the much more comfortable. So that’s complicated too (as witness, Belle’s story about her friend from grad school).

Corey Robin: “In her public school this year, my first-grade daughter learned . . .” [emphasis added]

A top-tier public school, perhaps. But a PUBLIC school, people.

But never mind. Far be it from me– or the actual facts– to interfere with anyone’s smug sense of superiority.

“A top-tier public school, perhaps. But a PUBLIC school, people.”

A public school that you can go to if your parents can afford to live close by. What’s the difference between that and just getting out the cheque book, except your education gets paid for by the state?

“I’m not sure why this has become such a thing recently”

Because it has become internet shorthand for ‘STFU’.

There are many reasons for invoking privilege, one of which is to correct the assumption of a “level playing field” so adored by those neo-Hobbesians who view social interaction as sport, among others.

“I’m not sure why this has become such a thing recently”

Because it’s a new way for leftish Americans not to talk about class?

Well, okay, but then we’d tire of going on about advantage so much. Besides, per OED, here’s the definition of “privilege”: “A right, advantage, or immunity granted to or enjoyed by an individual, corporation of individuals, etc., beyond the usual rights or advantages of others…” I think engels is on to something. Perhaps we associate privilege more easily than advantage with class.

That’s a bit passagg Victoria, we can if you want, but we don’t have to.

“That’s a bit passagg Victoria, we can if you want, but we don’t have to.”

Great. I really would rather not.

@engels:

As an old labor shit-stirrer, I am with you all the way on the “class” thing.

But I see this (your) kind of objection frequently, and it puzzles me. I guess I missed the part where talk of “privilege” and talk of “class” are somehow exclusive rather than, say, mutually re-enforcing, or just different idioms for talking about the same thing.

So, they are not necessarily exclusive, possibly mutually re-enforcing (my view), and not quite the same thing.

Still a bit of the left eating its own in this kind of discussion.

I think generally speaking, “class” is used where you can actually point to privilege, and “privilege” is used where the privilege has to be imputed, usually on the basis of some immutable characteristic such as race. At least, that seems to be the normal usage.

If you can actually demonstrate privilege, you call it class.

I would appreciate your analysis of the Arendt essay. I was prepared to be shocked, and I was initially shocked, but doesn’t she have a point? After all, by any factual criteria, school desegregation was never realized. Here in Philly, schools with >95% African American students are as common as abandoned factories. In Little Rock, a decades long desegregation law suit was brought to an end last year – with the success of still no desegregation.

I think Arendt was also right to urge fighting for marriage equality (shockingly, anti-miscegenation laws were only declared unconstitutional in 1967). Of course her tone of lecturing the NAACP how their struggle should be prioritized comes off as – whitesplaining, is that the word? But she does seem to have a point. Surely, she also must have kept in mind the fact that when the Nuremberg laws were internationally condemned, the Nazis correctly pointed out that the US had almost exactly the same laws.

Why pick on Dalton, founded by the same German Jews who founded the New School and Brandeis, and traditionally a place for liberal entertainment figures to send their kids. Why not Andover or Choate, where the banker’s kids go?

Apropos of this discussion, albeit without naming privilege per se: http://martinprosperity.org/content/segregated-city/

mdc: “Thankfully, abolitionists had bigger fish to fry.”

Here’s a few notes taken from “Rebels in Paradise” by Bruce Laurie about what some abolitionists actually did: in 1841, David Ruggles takes a seat in a whites-only railroad car in Massachusetts, railroad employees toss him out and he loses a court case he brings about it. A short time later Frederick Douglass does the same. Embarrassed, carriers agree to integrate voluntarily. In 1843 abolitionist agitation and third-party political pressure causes Massachusetts to repeal its law banning interracial marriage. Later in the decade Boston closes a segregated school and opens nonsegregated classrooms to black students.

Travel: marriage: school: the same well-known kinds of issues as in the latter part of the 20th century. These are fundamentally about racial privilege, not class, and I don’t think that abolitionists really would have seen some large disjunction that somehow discredits what people did later.

Ending the discrimination you mention is what I meant by “bigger fish.” I meant to contrast this with “making people aware of their privilege,” a project I am a little skeptical of, since it abstracts from the injustices that may be the source of those privileges.

Would anyone be at all surprised if those making the argument that privileged white people such as Corey Robin (and myself, incidentally) are hypocrites for talking about privilege turned out to be the same people who wish people would stop talking about privilege?

Who said anything about hypocrisy? My point (which I thought was fairly clear), was that someone of privilege *is* capable of educating others in privilege.

My other point is that I am enormously suspicious of cheering for any article that attacks all the institutions that perpetuate privilege that I don’t care about, but somehow totally misses those institutions that perpetuate privilege that I actually personally value.

My university education has helped ensure that me and my middle class peers stayed there by providing a clear class marker that every employer sees. I am incredibly grateful for the privilege that my state-paid university education afforded me, but by now I am also well aware of the fact that the entire institution is vital in perpetuating the privilege of me and my peers.

(And no, free tuition would not help. As Ta-Nahisi Coates has pointed out, universal programs can serve as drivers of privilege.)

Does that disqualify me for commenting on privilege? Obviously I don’t think so. But it does mean that the institutions of the massively privileged middle class like me feels, well, glass-housey.

If articles like this are to be more than making ourselves feel good, then the middle class readers of Salon (myself included) are in far more urgent need of understanding the enormous privilege that underscores *our* day-to-day lives than they need to be “tsk, tsking” the privilege of others.

Anyway, that’s the sentiment underlying my comment, although perhaps a lot stronger than I actually feel. Perhaps it was that on reflection I felt a little hypocritical for enjoying the article so much.

engels, please. He didn’t say that.

“Musically gifted.” “Innate gifts.” I often wonder. I’m not sure anybody couldn’t do what Bach did, much as I love Bach. And I do love Bach.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air …

Bach maybe, but Beethoven?

Delurking to suggest a few articles for those who are curious about the differences between “privilege” and “class.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack.”
https://www.isr.umich.edu/home/diversity/resources/white-privilege.pdf

John Scalzi’s “Straight White Male: The Easiest Difficulty Setting There Is.”
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

You might also be curious about the concept of “intersectionality,” that is, Kimberle Crenshaw’s idea that we all are members of various groups that might have differing levels of privilege. I don’t have any great articles about intersectionality offhand, but if you’re curious you can google it.

“There is the mistaken belief that the only ‘privilege’ that you can have relates to skin colour. This is not the case. You can be privileged because of your class, educational background, religious background, the fact that you’re able bodied or cis-gendered.”
– from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10572435/Intersectional-feminism.-What-the-hell-is-it-And-why-you-should-care.html

I don’t mean to turn this thread into a discussion focused on privilege/intersectionality 101, however. Because I do agree with MPAVictoria that we don’t need to have this conversation here, now–but for those who are interested in a little food for thought, enjoy!

Tell that to all the upper-class black men who have been pulled over for driving their nice cars through “white” neighborhoods, or followed through stores as if they’re about to shoplift, or harassed by police for shoveling snow in their own driveways because they “matched the description” of someone doing something in another town, etc., etc. Ask Henry Gates. Ask Yaphet Kotto. Ask Forrest Whittaker.

You know what, never mind. You’re far too thick to even be capable of understanding it.

It’s not a privilege to not be harassed, Phil. It’s a right.

A privilege is something you can inherently only have on other people’s expense. But rights and good things we all can have.

Sometimes it’s a little of both. We can’t all send our kids to the best schools, so if you can do that, it’s a privilege in one sense. But we can all honestly wish for everyone’s kids to go to good schools, so Corey Robin is not inherently being exploitative by doing it.

Other times, it’s very clear. I draw extremely little tangible benefit from non-white folks being harassed by cops.

Calling a right a privilege is wrong on both ends. It jumbles together things it’s very hard to do anything about – the things where we just throw up our hands and “acknowledge” our privilege without doing anything about, such as being able to send your kids to a friendly and good school – with injustices that should be much easier to abolish, such as police discrimination.

Other times, it’s very clear. I draw extremely little tangible benefit from non-white folks being harassed by cops.

Really? You think so? I bet the white people of Ferguson (and New York, and Los Angeles, and Chicago, and Miami) feel like they derive some very tangible benefits from non-white folks being harrassed by cops. For one, it keeps “them” off the street, doing all those crime things that non-white people do. For another, it draws attention away from white criminals. (See, e.g., the portion of the Ferguson report about blacks being subjected to car searches more frequently even though whites were 26% more likely to be found with contraband.)

Yeah Phil, I really think so. For all I know the white people of Ferguson think otherwise, but if so they’re simply wrong. Whatever tiny benefits they get from other people being harassed, if they imagine those things being worth the cost in increased racial tension, then they’re either racist, or dumb, or most likely both.

About the privileges of being a white criminal, that’s a privilege I don’t make use of, neither do most people. But even so, it’s not the petty white criminals of Ferguson who are responsible for the structural injustice. They’re at best passive recipients of it, and I guarantee you it makes zero difference whether they “acknowledge” that privilege or not.

So, what advantage am I supposed to be apologizing for? Sure, the local school is quite good. But, I live in a mixed race neighborhood, and the black kids are going to the very same school. How can my (mixed race) kid be getting the advantage of “white privilege”, while they’re not, when they’re both going to the very same school?

Be smart, study, work hard, kiss ass – and some day you will achieve high – privileged! – socioeconomic status. Ah, but some have to be smarter, work harder, and kiss more ass than others. And even when they do achieve their privileged status, oftentimes they’re suspected of faking it. This is an affront to justice.

This is a liberal concern. Nothing’s wrong with it; nothing’s wrong with having this concern.

But this is not an egalitarian concern, and it’s unfortunate that it’s presented as such. The quintessential egalitarian concern is that these unequal socioeconomic statuses exist in the first place. When the status of a janitor is exactly as valuable as that of a factory manager, a doctor, as any other status, the whole issue disappears. And equality in education becomes meaningless. You get the education you need, that’s all.

@108

It’s not an egalitarian issue if you defined egalitarianism as an ethos of humility.

If you define egalitarianism as an ethos of everybody feeling free to do as their inner voice or whatever impels them to do, it is an egalitarian issue. If you believe this implies liberalism, you need to get out more.

“Many people obtain a larger benefit than any that they can reasonably expect to get from the left by feeling that no matter how poor they are, they are automatically a step up in society and can look down on a class of people lower than them. ”

Honestly, this seems so distant from the way anybody I know, anybody at all I know, appears to think, that it looks more to me like a way to understand some liberal conception of racism, rather than the real thing. I suppose it’s vaguely possible that I’ve never met any actual racists, but I’m certain that I know plenty of people you’d regard as racist, possibly including the guy I see in the mirror when I shave.

How can my (mixed race) kid be getting the advantage of “white privilege”, while they’re not, when they’re both going to the very same school?

He gets the benefit of, e.g., not having his resume round-filed when he graduates because his name is presumably not a “stereotypically black” name, and is instead a “white sounding” name.

BB: “I suppose it’s vaguely possible that I’ve never met any actual racists, but I’m certain that I know plenty of people you’d regard as racist, possibly including the guy I see in the mirror when I shave.”

Dude, you believe, according to your own writing here, that there are genetic differences between races such that black people can be scientifically said to be on average less intelligent than white people. You are a racist.

Ze,

It seems to me, at least in part, that the traditional, not-necessarily-Marxist left in the US, at least, defines itself as a withdrawal from or refusal of power, solidarity with the ordinary people, who view themselves as separate from power. It’s not about trying to get power for individual ordinary people. It’s about living a left-compatible life on a small scale, and maybe imagining a future utopia. This aligns nicely with the intellectual critique of power in liberal society (which, obviously, is frequently a left thing, but not always), but they’re not exactly the same thing.

There’s a political left, too, and there are less traditional US groups who view themselves as separate from political power but don’t themselves live, within their communities, in an egalitarian manner. These can be allied for various purposes.

It’s complicated, of course. There are arguments to be made that you can’t really have that traditional kind of egalitarianism for those out of power, unless you not only accept, but really fairly actively support, a kind of authoritarianism. But at the level of detail we’re talking about, I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem.

I think Ze (no relation) @22 and @108 makes an important point: the experience of contemporary liberal western democracies suggests that meritocracy is neither a stable system (in the sense of being able to recreate the pre-conditions of its own existence) nor a moral one in the presence of high inequalities of standards of living. (In fact, some 3 years ago, there was a beautiful comment by chris about this on a post here at CT; google Social democracy and equal opportunity to find it. On this thread was also a suggestion by Chris Bertram that he might write a follow up. I haven’t given up hope yet, Chris!)

Bianca Steele, would you elaborate on what you mean @110 and 118? It seems you are disagreeing with Ze (and thus implicitly with me) but I’m not sure I understand what you are getting at.

Z:

I’m not so much disagreeing with ZK’s theory as with (what seems to be) ZK’s implicit empirical assumptions. I don’t have time to write all this out. I appreciate your expression of interest, and if the thread is still alive tomorrow, maybe I’ll have time then.

Really, Victoria: I’ve already acknowledge that racism is real. I don’t define it the way Democrats typically want to, with a tendentious definition designed to make Democratic client groups innocent of it by definition. But it’s certainly a real thing.

Privilege is a real thing, too. Every time the President kicks somebody out of their pre-scheduled tee time, you’re seeing privilege in action. I’m just dubious about assigning people ‘privilege’ based on characteristics like race or gender, without bothering to inquire into their individual circumstances. Reality is much more fine grained than races and genders.

And, sexism is a real thing. On display every time a feminist opens her mouth, I should say…

Climate is always changing, which is not to say the models of it, (The map is not the territory!) are reliable enough to justify massive expenditures.

Vote suppression is a real thing, too. Even if calling 28 instead of 35 days of early voting “vote suppression” is an insult to anybody who ever faced the real thing.

Thank you for proving my point Brett. :-)

If your point is that contested concepts like racism are imagined by you to be not contested, but to mean whatever your side finds useful, yes.

Dr Ngo, just out of interest, what exactly did your ‘enlightenment’ re your tall-person privilege achieve?

engels: And the point stands: if you really want more money to go to the ‘bottom 20%’ you could advocate for higher taxes and benefits

Exactly! The desperate desire to go after the rich seems to override the reality (at least in Canada) that if we’re going to pay for real benefits for the people in real need, then it is the taxes on me and the millions of other $60K+ earners that are going to have to go up substantially rather than pretending we can pay for it all by taxing a few thousand millionaires (who probably have excellent accountants).

Brett #124 I’m just dubious about assigning people ‘privilege’ based on characteristics like race or gender, without bothering to inquire into their individual circumstances.

Seriously? Sure, you’re can find the odd case where the general rule doesn’t hold, but insisting that it doesn’t exist except by explicit example is to ignore the 99.9% of cases where it’s real and pervasive. It may be your philosophy in general, but it sure looks a lot like avoidance in specific.

I just wish the NDP (our left party in Canada and the party of my MP) would spend more time making it clearer that our political social responsibility don’t end with voting to raise the other guy’s taxes. (At least in my riding, an NDP stronghold that epitomizes comfortable middle-class-ness.)

mdc #99 Thanks for this. You motivated me to see what the numbers are in Canada, and they’re a *lot* better than they used to be. It’s ~30% with < $50K household income at least start university (vs. 45% above). For the lower income, that's probably 3 times better than I remember. Highly encouraging, especially if the graduation numbers are roughly in line…

Felicia #96 Excellent list. John Scalzi’s “Straight White Male: The Easiest Difficulty Setting There Is.” is probably my favourite introduction to privilege. Utterly non-accusatory, and easy to read without auto-defenses kicking in, it’s what I refer people to who aren’t prepared for TNC.

Corey – spot on in that article. I have had a similar feeling about some of the “White Privilege” discourse. In 2013 I attended the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference when it was in Seattle. One of the things I noticed was that there were several workshops and at least two organizations primarily devoted to doing white privilege education, in some cases explicitly for white and economically privileged populations. I don’t have the exact count, but my recall is that these workshops vastly outnumbered workshops on empowerment work with students of color, or building bridges across racial barriers, or addressing structural racism (though I do understand that there were some components of this in the white privilege work).

There does seem to be a cottage industry of white people doing white privilege workshops for other white people. Partly this is a response to the concerns of activists of color at being constantly called on to educate white people – particularly in a “tell me what to do to get absolution,” sort of way. It was argued that white people need to take responsibility for education each other, and there is an important role there. But it feels like it has morphed into a white-only echo chamber, where white people talk to white people about racism, rather than doing anything about it.

I know some of the people doing these workshops, and there is good work being done, particularly around specific issues like getting rid of Native American mascots. But I keep getting this image of a young Black man or and elderly Native American carver getting gunned down in Ferguson or New York, or Seattle. People of color are out in the streets fighting against racism and police brutality, while white folks all sit around becoming aware of their privilege. Yes, absolutely, white privilege awareness is important, but it needs to end in the streets.

One fundamental difference between class and other forms of socially-created classifications of human is that there are gay billionaires, female billionaires, and black billionaires[1]. But there are no poor billionaires.

So when you have a country run for the billionaires by the millionaires, it is unsurprising that that one group of voices will be marginalized. And one of the most effective tactics for this marginalization is the concept of ‘intersectionality’.

Whatever the deep theory says, in practice it is generally indistinguishable from the phrase ‘that would be an ecumenical matter’, as used by the smarter priest in the sitcom Father Ted to park any discussion he didn’t want to have.

[1]; that last in particular is a very recent development,.

Dr Ngo, in general my snarky comments likely achieve nothing. In this instance it was a genuine question: what do you perceive as the most important positive consequences of your attaining enlightenment regarding your tall-person privilege?

Fair enough, since it’s a genuine question. I’m not sure of any “positive consequences” aside from its contribution to my general sense that many of my achievements in life (such as they are) are due in part not just to my wondrous talent, hard work, etc., etc., but to extraneous factors such as maleness, whiteness, American-ness, and the like.

Being tall has a few physical advantages (ability to reach higher shelves) but also disadvantages (being more squashed in airline seats). Socially, however, it’s pretty clearly a net plus. It made it easier to date women (back in the day), since many women won’t go out with shorter men. It gave me more visibility (both literally and figuratively) in social/professional interactions, probably reduced my apprehension of physical assault (why would a mugger attack me when there are smaller targets around?), and – to judge by studies I’ve seen – may have enhanced my prospects for employment, salary, etc. over shorter candidates. (Have you ever noticed how many US Presidents were taller than their defeated rivals?)

I became even more aware of this during extended stays in countries where most of the population was significantly shorter than in the USA (Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Franco’s Spain), and thus my height was more comparable to, say, 6’3″ or so here. Without any extra effort on my part I became someone to be noticed and treated with a certain respect or fear; my wife might be battered by fellow pedestrians in Madrid, but people made sure to walk around me.

Height guarantees no direct “privilege,” of course, but if I were to make up a number out of thin air, I’d say it might be a 2-5% edge in the Game of Life, which any gambler will tell you is not inconsiderable. Awareness of this edge made me, I hope, a somewhat humbler person, though that may not be immediately visible to onlookers.

Thanks for the reply.

Did anyone notice that Brett has completely taken over the comment section here? I think you should just cut out the middle-man, and make him a poster, since it’s his blog now.

Now, that’s silly. Proportionately speaking, I probably make fewer comments than most here. Do I tend to drive the conversation a little more than some? Perhaps, and perhaps that’s because I’m the voice of dissent here, and an echo isn’t terribly productive of conversation.

Take my questions at 143. Who else here would ask those questions? And yet, they’re perfectly legitimate questions about the sort of definitions being used here. Without me, would you ever ask if all these ever so convenient definitions were valid?

While you folk are so confident you know the answers, that you don’t want to answer the questions.

There’s a liberal doctrine that racism is about power relations, and that blacks generally cannot be racist, because the power relations are wrong for that.

So, MPAVictoria puts forth, implictly, an example of undeniable racism. And I point out that blacks are undeniably capable of doing the exact same thing. DO the exact same thing. And ask if, contrary to that liberal doctrine, these things are racist when blacks do them. If a black attacking a white because of their race is a hate crime.

And you don’t want to answer those questions, do you? Why not? I think because you’re using a convenient definition of ‘racism’ that’s at odds with reality.

I think because you’re using a convenient definition of ‘racism’ that’s at odds with reality.

How lucky we all are to have someone as clear sighted as you to look beyond the shadows in the cave and describe the perfect and eternal form of racism to us.

If a black guy kills a white guy while shouting racial epithets, is the black guy a racist?

Yes.

Now let me match your serious question with two equally serious ones. For which of the two following groups is an average member more likely to be the victim of discrimination and abuse based on his physical appearance in the contemporary US: black people or white people? Which of all the ethnic groups is subjected to the least frequent discrimination based on physical appearance and to the least severe discrimination?

During my academic career I had to deal with a number of concepts that have multiple, sometimes overlapping, definitions: nationalism, socialism, etc. I once co-taught an entire course on “imperialism,” a concept/word on which whole books have been written. One crystal-clear finding in these otherwise murky waters: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SINGLE “CORRECT” DEFINITION OF ANY OF THESE WORDS. No dictionary can provide it; no author, however strong or subtle, can force everyone else to accept his/her version as authoritative; the earliest version does not have automatic priority over later versions. See Koebner & Schmidt: Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840-1960, http://www.amazon.com/Imperialism-Storyand-Significance-Political-1840-1960/dp/052113482X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426085058&sr=1-1&keywords=koebner+imperialism which shows that within a single generation the term had already morphed into something unrecognizable to those who coined it, and that’s before Lenin got hold of it!

(If I were to be – as in a just universe I would be – the Czar of All Languages, or even merely of English, I would straighten this out, but I’m not, so I didn’t.)

“Racism” has at least two major variant meanings in America today, as several previous commentators have noted, esp. Lynne @151. These are:

A. Hatred of or contempt for someone because of his/her race. An attitude that can be expressed by individuals of any ethnicity; widely reprehended nowadays in most civilized circles.

And Also

B. A system of prejudicial policies and attitudes established and reinforced by a ruling class (race) at the expense of those (of different race) who are less powerful. Useful in analysis of society and history. This “racism” is distinct to those who are, in a given context, more powerful; they set the rules and dominate the discourse, in a wide variety of ways. Unlike A. this does not require, or even imply, individual culpability; in the nature of systems one can participate without being conscious of, much less endorsing, the principles it is based upon.

Let me repeat. Neither of these is “correct” or primordial or the trump card. Both may be useful, provided one is aware of and acknowledges both.

Those who subscribe only to “B” may wind up excusing outrageous behavior by non-whites (in this context), however driven by hatred it may be. This kind of thing annoys Brett and many others.

Those who subscribe only to “A” too often use this as an excuse to avoid thinking about the systemic racism that underlies the society in which they live (and from which, in most cases, they benefit). This annoys those who believe our understanding of the world, and perhaps our survival, depends on recognizing and responding to this reality.

Both single-minded approaches are unhelpful. Neither will ever triumph; neither will ever convince the other. A reasonable person will (should) conclude BOTH that there are individuals who exhibit prejudiced attitudes and behaviors AND that in most societies the dominant (ethnic) group has over time devised ways of trying to keep the “others” down, or at least at bay. Within this simple framework there is enormous variation, and many sophisticated analyses – as well as stereotypes and mindless rhetoric – are out there, but we have to begin by recognizing the different definitions in play.

“For which of the two following groups is an average member more likely to be the victim of discrimination and abuse based on his physical appearance in the contemporary US: black people or white people? ”

Here’s the thing: I don’t much care, because I don’t meet any average people, I just meet individuals, and am committed to treating them AS individuals. I think people are entitled to be treated as individuals, not as mere instances of a group.

So, I could have an opinion about average IQ, and what does it matter? I’m not going to assume somebody I meet is stupid, just because they’re black.

Likewise, who lives in average America? Some people live in majority black cities, where blacks control the power structure, and where white people are more likely to be a victim of blacks, than the other way around.

I don’t like dealing with averages, for this reason. Averages obscure individual reality, and everybody lives in individual reality, not in the average. If you start thinking the average is reality, not just an abstraction, pretty soon you’re advocating policies meant to address wrongs on average, without regard to whether the individuals benefiting were wronged, or the individuals bearing the cost did anything wrong.

And my son, the Asian-American, is likely to take the brunt of that.

Brett gets the attention he does because he invariably shifts the topic of discussion to the current controversy du jour. He gets away with it because there are people on both sides who think sticking closely to the current controversy du jour is the best way to advance their cause, and because neither side can do that without a foil on the other side. Every time someone says, No, This isn’t on topic–I’m going to think about this a little more before I jump to the conclusion that this thread is about the current Twitter frouhaha–and then post about something else–they help prevent the hijacking of the thread.

Then we can get back to hearing how everything we’re saying about how “privilege” is used is wrong, which we would recognize if we’d read Marx.

Z:

On your question from yesterday: I’m not that interested in “meritocracy” in this discussion. If privilege is about meritocracy, mostly, it seems to be risk shifting from a way of describign a market distortion to just another way of describing how the market functions. You have to have special effects to get a movie audience, you have to be a white straight male to get a good job, kind of thing.

In my experience, “privilege” has connotations of getting above yourself, and it seems to me that’s probably at the root of how the accusation is used, at least some of the time. “Check your privilege” sounds to me like it means “you’re acting like one of them, the rich people who run things.” It’s associated with a whole lot of other attitudes. It definitely does not mean “you’re not acting feminine.” It could be used against a white man (though obviously a gender analysis would point out that it would be used differently). The assumption is that no one–at least not one of us–is ever going to have power, or want power. We’re not going to be the mayor, we’re not going to have a big house downtown. We’re not like the people who do, and we don’t really care what they do, as long as they don’t bother us, but whatever it is they do do, it’s not for us. So I think someone with the attitude that every society does have people who wield power is going to distort the word if they try to adopt it, and so it comes out like an explanation of how the market works, and not sounding as critical as maybe it really should be.

“beneficiaries of the discrimination so justified are a major client group of your party, and those who suffer to pay for it aren’t.”

Yep it is great to be a black person in America today!

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gap_n_6317202.html

Here’s the thing: I don’t much care, because I don’t meet any average people, I just meet individuals, and am committed to treating them AS individuals. I think people are entitled to be treated as individuals, not as mere instances of a group.

Except, of course, liberals and Democrats.

And I may be misremembering, but it’s actually possible that the Christian Russian was a Ukrainian who was told that wasn’t a real country anymore (this was 1989 or so).

Bianca,

I actually think that model is still very much in play at white privilege workshops. Many of them emphasize a confrontational position where the goal is to get white people to admit that they are privileged, and to prevent attempts by white people to deny their privilege. And there are reasons to have that focus – as we see with this thread, there are privileged folks who will do anything to deny that they have privilege. There is a huge “what about me, I experienced…” response that sometimes helps to illuminate the complexities, but also can divert away from actually addressing racism.

I think one issue is that we really don’t have a framework for understanding the interplay of race and class. On one side there is a tendency to focus entirely on race at the expense of class. On the other hand is the use of class to dismiss race issues – as we have seen in this thread. Marxists often see class as primal, and race either a side-show or an outcome of class oppression – the various storylines of racism being a tool to divide the working class and what-not – but that gives short-shrift to the actual experience of racism by people of color, including fairly economically privileged people of color. We don’t have a good understanding of working class racism, or of how white privilege may be different for people in different classes. Because working-class racism is real, and there are real, tangible examples of white privilege that is experienced by working-class and poor people. Even Critical Race Theory tends to see racism as advantaging working-class whites only in symbolic ways.

One of the really important things about the white privilege concept is that it refocuses the discussion on race as a constructed category for white people as well as everyone else. So we don’t look at race from the perspective of how people of color deviate from a non-racial “normal”, but see that our white “normal” is really a political and social construction as well. Which is why Jewish and Italian immigrants in the US were once not considered white, but now are. What I think is missing is the recognition that whiteness is constructed differently across class lines.

>> “to get white people to admit that they are privileged”
> I still don’t see what the point of that exercise is.

If you live as I live, in a white/asian middle-class bubble, then it’s incredibly easy to assume that everyone else has the same privileges you do. After all, they’re not really privileges, they’re minimum standards for a decent society.

Learning that significant segments of society do *not* enjoy privileges you assumed were universal may indeed motivate some to modify their personal conduct in small ways and perhaps even vote for policies that would help to extend those privileges across all of society.

Of course an examination of privilege can be done in a fairly bullying manner, and is occasionally used in social status games, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. One can educate those who can be reached fairly easily.

And just to be clear, I consider class one aspect of privilege. It’s simply a pretty handy word to encompass all the unearned advantages one receives for a variety of qualities.

ragweed,

Good points.

Interestingly, my memory of the class is that it was organized around the idea, “I experienced.” We were supposed to identify that we all came from different countries, or our ancestors did, and therefore we should be tolerant. That’s how these kinds of seminars are set up fairly often. There’s no ideological or theoretical indoctrination, only a simple framework and then a set of exercises from which people are supposed to (depending on the subject matter) learn skills or draw conclusions. So the fact that the categories people were asked to sort themselves into didn’t match the ones they used themselves (though also not the ones I see people using for theoretical or political purposes) seemed to result in unnecessary frustration, and to cut against the purpose of the class. Which was supposed to be about managing people from different backgrounds and avoiding discrimination and harassment. (There were possibly one or two South Asians and one white Muslim in the class, a few Jews, no blacks and no Hispanics or Brazilians. There was one African-American in the division at that time.) And there was, in fact, some basic advice like “don’t make racist jokes” and “don’t proposition people.” Maybe “don’t make fun of someone’s accent.” But it felt like the basic message was contaminated by the secondary message that anything we’d come into the class believing about non-discrimination was wrong or irrelevant. And that only encourages people to think like Brett Bellmore.

I have no idea what a white privilege seminar looks like, or what privilege talk looks like when you get past the concept of the “ability level” and talk to activists rather than allies. But I’m pretty sure that what we got in that one- or two-day course, delivered by consultants or by in-house HR staff trained by consultants, had little in common with what an activist would have liked to see, and probably less in common with any theory developed by academics or activist intellectuals or grassroots activists to describe race and identity. Though possibly message control across the spectrum, from campus to twittersphere to consultancy, is better these days.

Now this Brett

I don’t like dealing with averages, for this reason.

is just silly. Of course, you like dealing with averages: in this thread alone you have made generalizations about Democrats which make sense only on average, asserted that “black people can be scientifically said to be on average darker skinned than white people, too” (which may be a tautology, but presumably not, as I for instance am usually categorized as white, I am of caucasian ethnicity yet I am of a darker complexion than many African-American) and not disputed Rich’s assertion that you believed black people have on average a lower IQ than white people.

So again, simple assertion of facts, I don’t ask you to do anything about it, I don’t ask you to pronounce a moral judgment (good/bad, deserved/underserved…), I certainly don’t ask you to support a specific set of policies in relation to these assertions (say, affirmative action).

-Black people are more frequently the victims of discrimination than white people based on their appearance. More likely to be true or false?
-The abuse black people receive based on their appearance is more intense than the abuse white people receive. More likely to be true or false?
-White people receive are less frequently the victims of discrimination and the discrimination they receive are less intense than any other ethnic group. More likely to be true or false?

You like to describe yourself as empirically minded and you like to challenge people who refuse to answer the questions you think are important and potentially challenging to their world views. Do you live up to your own standard?

Seconding bianca steele: ragweed’s @@134, 135 are excellent. Thanks!

In Belle’s safe thread from last month, JanieM also expressed opposition to “privilege” talk—the basic idea being that a lot of what gets classified under the “privilege” umbrella should really be thought of as basic rights. This thread is really bringing me around to that view (to the extent that I hadn’t been brought around already).

“-Black people are more frequently the victims of discrimination than white people based on their appearance. More likely to be true or false?”

Kind of complex, actually. Whites are more likely to be subject to formal, institutionalized discrimination, Asians even more so, while blacks more likely to be subject to informal discrimination, but in black majority cities, whites can be the ones on the receiving end of the latter, too.

“-The abuse black people receive based on their appearance is more intense than the abuse white people receive. More likely to be true or false?”

Since abuse covers the entire scale up to being murdered for both blacks and whites, I’d rate this false. Forgot to add the ‘average’, didn’t you?

“-White people are less frequently the victims of discrimination and the discrimination they receive are less intense than any other ethnic group. More likely to be true or false?”

Again, varies from place to place, but, suppose I grant it’s true.

To point this out again, average people don’t exist. Individual people do. When you create policies that treat people on the basis of averages, you inevitably benefit some people who weren’t wronged in the first place, and wrong some people who weren’t guilty.

People are entitled to be treated on the basis of their own selves, as MLK so famously dreamed of. Don’t perpetuate a wrong in the name of fighting it.

#177 Maybe we should have a collection to buy Brett a cottage in Ireland. Without internet access.

Brett Bellmore, do you think the private economic system leads to more inequality, or less inequality? That is, as an empirical matter of fact?

People are entitled to be treated on the basis of their own selves, as MLK so famously dreamed of. Don’t perpetuate a wrong in the name of fighting it.

MLK believed in and fought for affirmative action, reparations and labor unions, and paid for it with his life. You don’t even deserve to speak his name.

“What i find sometimes even a bit offensive is the implicit asumption that privlege can be rank ordered on a single scale that is then applicable to every situation. ”

I think this is more your misunderstanding. Check out the links provided above. :-)

Brett, how can Congressmen who get rich through corruption because their salaries are certainly not enough to explain how members of Congress so reliably become wealthy serve as an example of people getting “rich” on government salaries

@181, who says I’m a marxist? I like that angle, but I like other angles too, Dugin’s, for example. If anything, I’m a pluralist; let a thousand flowers bloom.

As for the ‘human rights’, check with mcmanus, but I’d be very much surprised if any marxist would think of it as anything but a gimmick. You do realize that marxism is incompatible with liberalism, don’t you?

Ze, I said ‘possible exception,’ and I’m not going to get into an argument about whether Dugin is correct or human rights are a ‘gimmick’.

“Brett, how can Congressmen who get rich through corruption because their salaries are certainly not enough to explain how members of Congress so reliably become wealthy serve as an example of people getting “rich” on government salaries”

They’re on government salaries, and they’re getting rich. Is that incompatable with getting rich on government salaries? I don’t think so.

There certainly are people who get rich on government salaries due to the salaries themselves. They’re relatively few in number. Mostly people get rich on government salaries because their jobs give them the opportunity to be profitably corrupt. Because they’re transforming government power into renumeration.

And that’s what I was contrasting to private sector wealth, which, to the extent it is achieved without renting government power, (A deplorably high and rising extent!) is achieved by providing other people with something they want.

‘Do not feed’ is a hard principle to live by.

It’s true that most people entering Congress are already wealthy. But their wealth tends to take a huge jump after they take office. In part because they can earn money in ways that are illegal for other people, such as insider trading.

The broader point is that to be elected to Congress, a person needs to spend a year or more raising money, and then, from the moment that person is elected, is raising funds to be re-elected. Your congresscritter is on the phone every day asking very rich people for money.

Now, cranky middle-aged libertarian gun hoarders like Brett are very quick to pass broad judgements based upon who people live and work alongside, and yet seems to have a blind spot towards those who are compelled to associate with morally-dubious people of wealth because money is speech or whatever.

(The idea that members of government are shaking down the sainted private sector is perfectly hilarious, and the hallmark of a crank.)

Brett, have you ever thought of setting up your own blog? Then anyone who wanted to learn more of your opinions on the free market, guns, communism, women and black people could just head right on over?

Brett @198: Yes, members of Congress get richer as a result of their “public service,” but not primarily in illegal ways. They get rich by working for the private sector afterwards, either as lobbyists, consultants, or executives. The corruption runs from the private sector to the public sector. Your (implicit) suggestion that all would be less corrupt and more efficient if government power were reduced and business went unfettered is sheer fantasy.

Admit it, Brett: the US government is, since Reagan and in many eras before, a wholly owned subsidiary of big business.

Corrupt government gives them that other way, it’s the ruination of free market economics.

Is it fair to define government as ‘corrupt government?’ That’s basically what you do, seemingly without thinking about it. Perhaps this is a prejudice of yours that could bear some examination?

Seems to me you have conceded elsewhere that markets can’t function without a state to enforce contracts, adjudicate disputes, etc. So, government is the genesis AND the “ruination” of the market?! That’s a tough position to uphold, Brett.

It’s as though FDR never existed. As though the flowering of the middle class in America never happened under a regime of historically high taxation.

Brett Bellmore, are you in favor of stronger antitrust enforcement, lesser terms for intellectual property protection, and end to tax subsidies for big business?

Without these policies, the link is broken in free market economics between the businessman, and the interests of everybody else.

Ragweed, I think you’re running together some views which can be part of a Marxist take on racism (eg. it’s a product of capitalism, it’s used to divide workers, it harms white as well as black workers) with others which imo no-one serious would defend (it doesn’t exist or is just a proxy for class, working class racism doesn’t exist). (I agreed with a lot of your other points btw.)

“But please answer my first question: Brett Bellmore, do you think the private economic system leads to more inequality, or less inequality?”

Yes, probably it does. ;

Ok, seriously, it probably leads to greater.

Think of wealth as a thermal distribution. The ‘colder’ the economy, the less inequality there’s going to be, because the curve is bounded at zero, and the less wealth there is in the economy, the more tightly people have to be clustered around that lower bound.

The ‘hotter’ the economy, the more inequality there will be, because the distribution will cover a larger range, but will still range from zero to wherever.

Free market economics will naturally create greater inequality of wealth, because it creates wealth, but does nothing to dictate how that wealth is distributed, leaves that up to people’s free interactions. And that will naturally lead to inequalities of wealth.

No, because the free market creates greater inequality by giving people opportunities, which some will take advantage of, and some won’t. You don’t deprive people by giving them opportunities.

The free market unequalizes up, not down.

I agree with Walt that CT should just make Brett a poster. It would be preferable to having thread after thread like this.

Yes, actually, I dispute that that is the evidence. But I think we might be using the term “market system” to refer to different things.

How do you deprive people of opportunies by permitting them to freely engage in economic transactions?

Brett Bellmore #218: “I think we might be using the term “market system” to refer to different things…”

Suddenly the conversation shifts back to theory. Let’s stay on the evidence.

The evidence is pretty clear that in the US, the rate of “new business startups” has been in decline for decades. Since around 1985, inflation rates have been under 5% while interest rates have dropped steadily, now near zero. The “labor force participation rate” for men has declined for decades, and for women it has declined since the peak at around 2000. The “employment-to-population ratio” for 16-19 year olds had declined since the late 1970’s and for everyone else it has declined since around 2000. Median incomes have stagnated for about 40 years and the bottom quintile’s incomes have gone backwards.

You don’t think that these things are evidence of lack of opportunity, in business startups, in investments, and in jobs growth?

Are you going to blame all of this on laziness, on skills gaps, on retirements? Already got news for you: the EVIDENCE won’t support it.

“You don’t think that these things are evidence of lack of opportunity, in business startups, in investments, and in jobs growth? ”

No, it certainly is evidence of all those things. I just don’t think our market is all that free any more.

How do you deprive people of opportunies [sic] by permitting them to freely engage in economic transactions?

A contracts with B to abduct C and hold C in captivity. (I have a bit of time today, let me know if you want some more examples.)

I just don’t think our market is all that free any more.

*cough*

So, yeah, the greatest period of economic growth in US history coincided with the highest taxes in US history and incidentally the emergence of the middle class.

And when John Mitchell, sometime in the 1970’s I presume, said,

This country is going so far to the right you won’t recognize it.

he wasn’t kidding. And Reagan had his day. Bush I put Clarence Thomas on the SCOTUS, the SCOTUS gave the presidency to Bush II, we had a wonderful gift to M-I-C and the gods of Mayhem and Murder AND now we have a GOP so rabid that our government truly doesn’t function.

A contracts with B to abduct C and hold C in captivity.

Where A is a monopolistic enterprise and C is his would-be competition.

I used to get to work by bus in 20 mins. Then I had the opportunity to a buy a car, I did and I could make in 10. Then everybody else did, and now it takes us all more than an hour, sitting in traffic. I can’t use the bus anymore because the company went out of business.

A contracts with B to extract minerals in a populated area. Toxic runoff causes life-threatening illnesses in C, F, W, Z, etc.

(So easy and so much fun!)

A buys gun from B, uses it to shoot C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M in high-school massacre.

A buys gun from B, uses it to shoot B, then has gun store with which to sell an even bigger gun to C.

I am going to do some work. I eagerly await reading Brett’s explanation of how permitting market transactions to take place never results in a ‘net deprivation of opportunity’ tomorrow. Thanks for everyone who actually commented on the topic, some of that was enlightening.

Might a kick up the arse not be more effective ?

Actually, Brett was assaulted in his youth in a manner similar to this. So no, let’s not be the cause of more trauma-induced reactionary politics.

Besides, good reasonable arguments are good clean fun.

While there are certainly situations where I’m privileged by being a white male, the problem that the OP describes, school segregation, is caused by economic class, not racial privilege. In the US, there was a time when this wasn’t the case, but legal discrimination was abolished decades ago. A black or latino millionaire can buy a house in an area with good schools, or send his or her kids to an expensive private school, but the socioeconomic segregation of the housing market makes this impossible for most non-whites. It’s a class issue.

mattski – ‘a kick up the arse’ is not a call to violence, or even a demand that we literally kick someone up the arse. It’s, I dont know, a colloquialism ? Think of it like a ‘shove in the right direction.’
I don’t think reactionary political views are caused by trauma, in fact I think that’s a little patronishing. I think people believe stuff because they have put some amount of thought into their positions. I’m not going to assume Brett’s set of (nonsensical) opinions is the result of some deep seated embitterment. As such there’s no need to treat him with kiddy gloves (which I’m sure he’d agree with)

On the larger point, I agree he’s both an affable and likable man, much like the infamous H*ct*r St C. But yes arguing with him is pointless if your goals are to (1) convince him he’s wrong (2) learn something interesting.

Ronan,

I forgot to include a smiley-face @ 240! Sorry about that. But my intention was on the lighter side of things.

Seriously, the way I see it a good well-reasoned argument is a wonderful instrument. Both a swift kick in the ass and a genuine expression of caring. That’s why I call it love, but keeping some tongue in cheek because love can be sassy… and a little painful!

:^)

(smiley emoticon wearing sunglasses)

@Norwegian guy – except that that is not actually the experience of people in the US. Sure, the African-American millionaire can buy a house in the richest part of town, and buy with that a certain amount of safety. But he (particularly) or she is still more likely to get arrested for driving while black. The number of prominent, wealthy, well-known African-American celebrities, congressmen, city-councilmen and even mayors who have received gross mistreatment at the hands of police is legion. Wealth does not buy total protection from racism.

And for an ordinary middle-class family trying to move into a mostly-white middle-class neighborhood it can be even worse.

Which is one reason why “it’s not race, it’s class” is bull****. It’s race and class, working in conjunction and interacting in different ways. Not really that hard to understand.

It’s unavoidable that the rhetoric will get over-heated. One of America’s major parties is dependent on getting 80-90% of the black vote. You can’t achieve those sorts of percentages if people cool down enough to think about things, they might notice that they agree with the other party on some topic they care about. You need them, psychologically, to be on a war footing.

I don’t think we’ll ever have racial peace in this country so long as the Democratic party is dependent on there being bad racial tensions.

“On the contrary, African-Americans are the most astute voting bloc in this country. They tend not to fall for the bs, unserious nonsense, dishonest policy arguments, etc. put out by the Republicans”

By, essentially, completely refusing to listen to anything Republicans say, and uncritically believing anything Democrats say. That’s not what I call “astute”, even if the Democratic party finds it useful. Not only does it make them gullible where Democrats are concerned, it means Republicans have no particular motive to try to appeal to them, because the attempt is pointless.

And that’s the problem: Maintaining that useful state of affairs requires maintaining racial tensions at a high boil. It’s contrary to the institutional interests of the Democratic party for racial tensions to diminish.

“And given the constant flood for the last 8 years of things like this I don’t think it’s the Democrats responsible for “maintaining racial tensions at a high boil.”
+1. Black people are not stupid BB. They know that Republicans hate and fear them.

Good to see a little Maoist Self-Criticism out of you, Brett.

People are still arguing against Brett?

For the record, while Brett is definitionally a racist I still think he’s better than the people who were just saying that we need to get ready for military conflict with Russia. Brett is not “respectable”, which limits the harm that he can do. I think that focussing on him and ignoring the elephant in the room is cowardly. You can’t say anything about some “Russia expert” saying that we need to counter the latest threat — those conversations were closed off due to the bad manners of the people wondering why we had to get involved in another war — so, as walt said, people feel like Michael Jordan running circles around Brett.

There was a whole thread about Russian planes buzzing Dorset and about how the UK needed to be militarily ready. You somehow missed that? I guess you also missed that the threat-countering verbiage was never followed up with an explanation of just what people were really suggesting. (I realize that you, Ronan(rf), disavowed military involvement but you weren’t the person talking about countering the threat in the first place.)

I got banned from the relevant threads on CT during the humanitarian run-up to the 2011 Libya intervention (i.e. bombing), which people in Libya are now so happy and grateful about. As always, it’s just so rude to say that people are spreading war propaganda.

“I don’t think we’ll ever have racial peace in this country so long as the Democratic party is dependent on there being bad racial tensions.”

Now that’s funny. Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater, etc. etc.

“‘Russia expert’ made me think you were talking about Daragh McDowell specifically,”

We wouldn’t want to be rude. Let’s just say “Russia expert”.

Who knows whether various Russia experts might have had more to say on the thread? It was cut off with various people’s replies deleted in order to give the last word to someone who said that socialists and all kinds of illiberal types were going to cooperate with fascists, as their anti-war sentiments showed.

Certainly can’t have that peace, if they insist on remediating it by engaging in it.