This was written by a freshman at Princeton, and it's excellent. Read it. http://theprincetontory.com/main/checking-my-privilege-character-as-the-basis-of-privilege/
The problem with "you didn't build that" is that some people can't accept what "that" was referring to (infrastructure, history, context, etc). It is no different than saying we wouldn't be free today without the sacrifices of previous generations. The problem is a president from the wrong party said it, so his words were muffled through the walls of conservatives' anuses as they promptly shove their collective heads up their asses every time they see or hear him.
Eh, a well written argument, but there are few more annoying things than a white male trying to argue he's a victim on the same level as anyone else. The comments below are even worse, especially the one who says he was "targeted by cops" because he was white and the Grand Wizard who said white people were the only ones who built America. I can sympathize with the guy in one way, as being told to "check your privilege" is incredibly obnoxious and pretentious. Plus, being told to feel guilt over your whiteness is stupid. However, he does have privilege as a white person. He can create all these scenarios he wants, but, if he adds "and black" to the end of them, it does change the impact of his situation. Just acknowledge that you have a benefit, to a certain extent, of being a white male in this country and leave it at that.
While it is certainly true that Republicans took his comments out of context and made them to be something they weren't, it didn't take Republicans distorting those comments for people to find fault with them. While what he said is true, the idea that without infrastructure, research, etc people wouldn't be able to build their businesses, he still said "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." That statement, even in the context of his larger point and regardless of how true the larger point may be, is going to rub people the wrong way. I'm sure a lot of people only heard the distorted version, but there were plenty of people who heard the entire speech and took exception to it, and I don't think you can fault them for it.
I just don't see how one could take exception to it without being a delusional narcissist. that = "this unbelievable American system" How offensive that I'm not George Washington.
To be clear I meant people wouldn't be wrong in taking exception to Obama saying "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." even if said people knew the intended meaning of those words. If you can't see how a business owner would roll his eyes at that statement, in the context it was intended or not, then I don't know what to tell you. Anybody with half a brain wouldn't take exception to the statement as a whole. What I mean is simply that Obama's choice of words wasn't very good. Republicans are gonna make a fuss over anything he does, but he made it easy for them on that one.
It's actually not perfectly verbatim. He actually says "If you’ve got a business, that, you didn't build that." I just watched the video, I would argue that in print it's not really clear that "that" doesn't refer to the business, in the video of his speech it clearly doesn't refer to the business. Not using that to support my other argument, that's not really a part of the point I was trying to make.
I agree with this sentiment. He was pretty sloppy in his statement, even if I also agree with IP on the content of his statements. I still feel Elizabeth Warren said the same sentiment much better than Obama did.
I did too with my original quote, but it's not perfectly right. He actually said a quick "that" between the words "business" and "you". Check the video. I believe in the video it is perfectly clear what he means but that in the transcript it's not as clear and can be interpreted both ways. Obviously the clarity of the whole thing is up for debate, but the fact that there's a discrepancy between the video and the transcript is not.
He doesn't explicitly make this claim, but that article bothers me in that it seems to assume that because your parents/grandparents had it tough, you aren't privileged. And that's a silly argument. My Dad grew up too poor to go to college without joining the military. But the army put him through school, and then grad school, and then med school, and by the time I graduated high school, he was a surgeon with his own practice, and I was NOT too poor to go to college. My Dad had it harder than I did. I have opportunities that he didn't have (for instance, getting an M.A. without taking on mountains of student loan debt or years of indentured servitude). I don't think anyone's disputing that. I don't think anyone can reasonably dispute that. That I can admit that some folks have had it harder than I have doesn't mean I'm ashamed of myself or of anything I've accomplished, it's just being honest.
This implies that it wasn't available to everyone, successful or otherwise. It has nothing to do with who said it. The current president isn't the first to have said something so senseless. His tripe has been the argument in ivory towers, advanced by those who inhabit those type of places, for centuries.
The next time you hear someone say we owe veterans of the past for our freedoms today, I hope you set them straight.
Can you make this make sense in the current context? I won't dare set them straight, in fact. We owe them a debt of gratitude.
And as you recognize that, why can't you say the same for the country and infrastructure we inherited?
what does that have to do with the implied message in the "you didn't build that" silliness? The message is that someone successful won because of some limited access to the stuff that our forefathers built or procured for us. The analogy simply doesn't work.
