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Very true…I respect him because he didn’t sugar coat anything. I know things aren’t going to change with whites having privileges. People of color who are trying to make a better life for themselves know that they just have to work twice as hard to achieve their goals. Having nothing handed to you makes you appreciate what you have even more. The question that was posed to white people to give up their privilege is pointless to me. It is what it is…They would never give up their privileges.
"I know things aren’t going to change with whites having privileges."
"The question that was posed to white people to give up their privilege is pointless to me. It is what it is…They would never give up their privileges."
Whites (within the United States, at any rate) once had the privilege of owning blacks outright. They no longer do.
Blacks once had no legal right to vote in large sections of the country. Now they do.
Local communities once had the right to treat black children despicably by providing them with "separate but equal" (wink, wink) school facilities. They no longer do.
There was a time when a black President of the United States was unthinkable. Now that has changed.
Whatever we want to call "white privilege", it certainly seems to be on the decline! Further, whites have helped make each and every one of these changes for the better happen, from white soldiers who died in the Civil War, to whites who voted for Barack Obama.
Anonymous,
Are you serious? Okay I am not sure why you brought up white soldiers dying in the Civil War. When Abraham Lincoln stated If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that...His main goal was to save the Union. All the things you have listed do prove that blacks have made a lot of progress. Also Blacks couldn’t have done it alone, and that is clear to everyone. The fact still remains that “white privileges” will never go anywhere. Most whites will not know how it feels to be racial profiled, or told that they can’t get a loan. Yes the country has come a long way to vote a mixed man as the president of the United States. Now that we have a mixed president does that means that “white privileges” don’t exist anymore? It’s on a class level. A white man and a black man go into a bank for loans who do you think will probably get the loan? The white man most likely would get the loan, and that Anonymous is ” white privilege”. Another example is a black man who gets pulled over just because of the color of his skin, or he just looks suspicious. How many whites do you hear about getting shot, beat, and set up by the police? Again that’s “white privilege”.
Tim Wise is a true ally. And one of the keenest white men out there next to Ira Glass.
(I have a newfound love affair with Ira Glass)
I am not convinced that white privilege (or male privilege or my growing understanding of U.S. privilege, for example) ever really declines. It changes shape and people without the same privilege have to constantly remain vigilant, constantly remain aware of what new forms privilege takes. And people with privilege have to constantly question and critique themselves for the same things.
And just a history note on the whites who fought in the Civil War to the ones who voted for Obama--the majority did not do so out of any sense of racial egalitarianism. They did so out of their own self-interest. It just so happened to work out (arguably) in favor of people of color. If the self-interest had turned the other way, perhaps the action and the result would have been different. If it was a matter of truly being anti-racist then slavery, segregation, et. al. would have ended an entire generation earlier when truly egalitarian tendencies merged with the republicanism of the revolution.
Perhaps.
Privilege is a tricky and finicky thing.
Luckily, the whites who did join hands with people of color at various historical moments for truly anti-racist reasons often did so with an understanding that their own liberation depended on the liberation of everyone of all colors and statuses around them.
I think Tim Wise really gets this. And isn't afraid to say so. Hence, he is an ally.
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