I, Racist

[Arctish]

According to your profile you're fifty. Assuming your parents are ~25 older than you, they went through primary school around 1940 and through college (if they went) or through their first work experiences around 1950. I wouldn't call myself an expert on US history, but my understanding is that racism - very overt, explicit racism - was well alive at the time, according even to the people who are most prone to deny that it plays any role today. So you still wouldn't be where you are had they been black.

You're still simply assuming that every white person benefited.

Every white person did benefit. We whites got to live in the better neighborhoods and attend the better schools, were paid more than non-whites doing the same jobs, had more opportunities for advancement, and were given more respect in general. And the further south they lived, the more white people benefitted from being white.

We don't benefit quite as much nowadays, but we whites are still the most privileged of the color groups.

 

[Metaphor]

You're still simply assuming that every white person benefited.

Every white person did benefit. We whites got to live in the better neighborhoods and attend the better schools, were paid more than non-whites doing the same jobs, had more opportunities for advancement, and were given more respect in general. And the further south they lived, the more white people benefitted from being white.

We don't benefit quite as much nowadays, but we whites are still the most privileged of the color groups.

Racism doesn't just cut up the economic and social pie differently; it shrinks and distorts the pie.

"Better neighbourhoods" don't spring, fully formed, out of nothing. There isn't a fixed number of 'better neighbourhoods' that must be divvied up among the scrambling masses. Because of racism, there was literally less 'better neighbourhood' to go around.

Some forms of racism benefitted individual actors at the expense of other actors, but other forms of racism benefit nobody. For example, if cops are more likely to shoot black people than similarly situated white people in similar circumstances, this isn't because there's some quota of shootings that cops need to fill and they've decided to spare white folk at the expense of black folk. Cops shooting black people doesn't benefit white people.

 

[whichphilosophy]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-metta/i-racist_b_7770652.html

But here is the irony, here's the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings. [bold: author]

Ask any Black person and they'll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White person might be complicit in a racist system.

Discuss.

She's right. You can't have the system be racist without the members of the system being racist. This is just crap trying to pretend that there is still rampant discrimination against blacks despite not having discriminators.

- - - Updated - - -

A few days ago, I had conversation with someone who made the general statement that they were not responsible for what people did in the past. I gave him this scenario:

Suppose I stole your mother's car and there was nothing she could do about it. I give the car to one of my children. One day, you see them drive by in your mother's car. Is it still a stolen car?

How many generations does it take for a stolen car to become an heirloom?

Your child is not a car thief. As the car is identifiable stolen property it should be returned but that's all. There should be no punishment.

If the person was found to know the car was stolen but continued to drive it, that would be breaking the law.

 

[credoconsolans]

Most people don't want to be the bad guy. Even more don't want to believe their life is in anyway better because of something bad.

Badness must always lead to more badness. Although I don't consider myself to be a racist, I do consider myself to be a realist. I know my life which has led me to become a middle aged southern white man has many times been made easier by the racism of other people. I was fortunate to always attend the top tier public schools. This was mainly because of where my family lived. It's no coincidence that better schools serve better neighborhoods. It may have been a small edge, but a thousand small edges add up to a big edge and I took advantage of all of them.

I make no apology, just an acknowledgement.

The burden of benefitting from bad things is real. It requires a high degree of denial to believe one earned everything one has through hard work and perseverance, but a lot of people carry it all day long. We all(rhetorical hyperbole) want to be good, or at least be seen as good.

A few days ago, I had conversation with someone who made the general statement that they were not responsible for what people did in the past. I gave him this scenario:

Suppose I stole your mother's car and there was nothing she could do about it. I give the car to one of my children. One day, you see them drive by in your mother's car. Is it still a stolen car?

How many generations does it take for a stolen car to become an heirloom?

Yes. Hence people's cars being recovered after being stolen 30 years ago.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Most people don't want to be the bad guy. Even more don't want to believe their life is in anyway better because of something bad.

Badness must always lead to more badness. Although I don't consider myself to be a racist, I do consider myself to be a realist. I know my life which has led me to become a middle aged southern white man has many times been made easier by the racism of other people. I was fortunate to always attend the top tier public schools. This was mainly because of where my family lived. It's no coincidence that better schools serve better neighborhoods. It may have been a small edge, but a thousand small edges add up to a big edge and I took advantage of all of them.

I make no apology, just an acknowledgement.

The burden of benefitting from bad things is real. It requires a high degree of denial to believe one earned everything one has through hard work and perseverance, but a lot of people carry it all day long. We all(rhetorical hyperbole) want to be good, or at least be seen as good.

A few days ago, I had conversation with someone who made the general statement that they were not responsible for what people did in the past. I gave him this scenario:

Suppose I stole your mother's car and there was nothing she could do about it. I give the car to one of my children. One day, you see them drive by in your mother's car. Is it still a stolen car?

How many generations does it take for a stolen car to become an heirloom?

Yes. Hence people's cars being recovered after being stolen 30 years ago.

This one was discovered after 42 years though there are some legal issues as mentioned below
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015...found-after-42-years-but-could-go-away-again/