Being White is a Privilege...

White privilege ain't what it used to be.

 

I picture you as Miles Finch. You're always so angry.

 

That will be the response. "I said it was diminishing, guys. It's really accelerated in the last half hour."

 

Not an argument, just a question: Can it be said that the "generation" of 20 somethings is the turning point? I got a lot of "privilege" by virtue of picking my genetics well, but only in that my father and mother had an opportunity to go to a state funded public college, the same opportunity that didn't exist for African Americans, at the time, because it was prior to desegregation. Sure, there were degrees from all "black" colleges and universities, but they didn't carry the same weight.

A large portion of Gen-Xers and thereabouts grew up in a middle class home, thanks to the ability of their parents to have obtained a generally respected degree and job, while minority parents were just then gaining entrance, on a large scale.

My dad grew up dirt farm poor, but had he been black, he wouldn't have gone to college, wouldn't have gone into business and would never have had the opportunity to provide me the books, meals, private education, etc, that I got today... only by virtue of race, not wealth.

 

I think the turning point is quite a bit further back. Blacks have had access to all large land grant universities for going on fifty years now. Programs like the Pell Grant helped make poverty, which disproportionately affected minorities, less of an obstacle to higher education. Like any social ill, racism will become less of an impediment to equality as time moves forward. The vast majority of sane people have long since disavowed such ignorance.

 

Yea, my discussion point was that those who attended immediately post desegregation weren't exactly numerous or able to find work as easily.

I would put it more in the 80s, which means we should be seeing more and more of their kids, now 20 somethings, leaving with degrees.

But that may just be an extrapolation to serve my viewpoint, not one based in fact.

But if we believe highest earning potential is in the 5th decade, we can say that those higher percentages of graduates in the 80s are now reaching their height of earning power, and passing that earning on to their kids.

But I absolutely agree, time will make the difference, but we can't discount the effect of education and immersion as a driving force for that change, if that makes sense.

 

Where did you get that? So, by using an example, I automatically exclude all other possibilities?

 

Yeah, either that or I said it three [uck fay]ing pages ago. Hell, I said this in my first response to you in this thread and now you are trying to pull this bullshit sarcasm on me?

 

So, again, what was the point for this whole argument? My first post stated that it existed and now, on page 4, you suddenly say "Yeah, it does". I'm missing where me saying it exists is any different than you saying it exists.

 

The only thing I took issue with was your assertion that poor Appalachian whites are simply the victims of their own unwillingness to pick up and move to where they would have more opportunity, yet you place no such obligation on urban blacks.

 

I agree with this more than the 50 year window, although the 80s brought the crack epidemic to the inner cities and made many places an absolute hellhole for it's inhabitants. Still, the 80s is when the enrollment in college and the effects of the civil rights movement were really felt in the improvement for blacks.

 

Because it was quite a different scenario for the two groups. Appalachian whites chose to live there and had no restrictions on where they could and could not go, nor lost any of their civil rights. Urban blacks in inner cities lived in circumscribed neighborhoods and had their rights harshly restricted, even in the north (or especially, really). Let me know when an Appalachian white tried to move into the big city and got their house firebombed or faced endless amounts of harassment because they decided to outside their neighborhoods. As I said before, the ramifications are still being felt, although diminishing, but the two are most definitely not the same.

 

If your only contention was the Appalachian point and you weren't saying white privilege didn't exist, why make the comment in the first place? It wasn't like I brought up the Appalachian point.

 

Much taller.

 

Bullshit. Some poor kid that was born into a poor white trash home stands no better chance today than a kid born into a poor black home. We're not talking about the 1950s; we're talking about white privilege as it exists today. Poor white folks don't have it. Period.

 

To me, there is a big difference between saying white privilege exists today and white privilege existed years ago, even if the white privilege of the past benefits white people today.

 

Sorry, the past matters. The world doesn't operate in a vacuum. That white kid from Appalachia still doesn't have the same issues of being harassed by the cops for who he is, get followed in a store, nor any of the other problems brought up in the otherwise pitiful video. No bullshit. You can sit there and try sarcasm on me or tell me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but it doesn't make it so.

And, every word of what I just wrote about the difference in Appalachian folks being there and black folks being in the inner city is 100% true.

 

Sure people are targeted for just being who they are in Appalachia. It's poor folks. Happens every single day; people who are poor and have been arrested before are targeted and rearrested every single [uck fay]ing day in rural Appalachia. Ask Hat, he's in the criminal justice system in East Tennessee. So, I won't use sarcasm, I'll just straight tell you that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

 

So explain why Asians aren't suffering at the hands of white privilege. Are you trying to argue that it's actually "not-black" privilege?

 

What do I care if you infer it or tell it? I've lived in East Tennessee and worked in the juvenile system, so your conclusions are just based upon shit you assume wrongly. I've seen it up close and it's not the same.