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Somehow it feels "frowned upon" to celebrate that you're a white male. It's something we can't be proud of. Patriarchy and the fact that white males dominate t
by laichzeit0 10y ago
Somehow it feels "frowned upon" to celebrate that you're a white male. It's something we can't be proud of. Patriarchy and the fact that white males dominate the corporate world is apparently something that should be "changed". I hope Trump changes that.
- ricksplat 10y agoHave you actually checked your privilege? As a white male you are the wealthiest, healthiest, most celebrated segment in modern society. If you feel otherwise it's likely something going on in your own head. EDIT my point is that you're complaining you can't celebrate your white privilege, when in fact every day is a celebration of that. Not that because you are white you necessarily are any of those things - just that it is easier to be. EDIT2 > All it leads to is an endless loop of arguments Or, if you step back and don't get so "offended" it's also known as a "discussion". There's a huge amount of people who really, really don't know how good they have it. Talk about how they need more. Then get offended when you point out there are people worse off. Inequality is a serious issue, and yes we do need to have a discussion around "privilege", who is or isn't "privileged", and comparison of levels of "privilege".
- laichzeit0 10y ago> As a white male you are the wealthiest, healthiest, most celebrated segment in modern society. Yes. I don't want to feel that I need to apologize for this or be treated in a negative way. I get that we're at the top of the ladder, now leave us alone.
- ricksplat 10y ago>Somehow it feels "frowned upon" to celebrate that you're a white male. Clearly it isn't.
- noobermin 10y agoI'm not sure you need to apologize and it doesn't look like you have been treated in a negative way. I hope you don't consider this thread as "being treated in a negative way", it's a just discussion. EDIT: I really appreciate you replying. We are supposed to talk to you about it all, apparently, and it's good to have that discussion.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- flukus 10y agoWhere is all this wealth I get just for being white?
- labster 10y agoEverywhere around you. You have a indoor plumbing and electricity and always-on internet, correct? You eat three squares a day, right? In global terms, you are likely to be quite wealthy. Most software developers easily make it into the world's top 5%, if not the top 1%.
- konart 10y ago>Most software developers easily make it into the world's top 5%, if not the top 1%. You do realise they are what they are because they made it so? Or at least becasuse their parents grandparents did. They weren't born pro developets, not a single one of them had any guaratees of being succesful or fairly paid. And no - not all of them were born into a wealthy family of the 1% of the first world countries. You can check some noatable bios and see for yourself just how many of the so called 'world's top 5%, if not the top 1%' started at the bottom of the world.
- labster 10y agoYou seem to be attacking me for stating a fact. Who cares about why they are wealthy — people in the computer industry are astonishingly wealthy in historic or global terms.
- Chris2048 10y agoIt probably wasn't the fact, but the intent of stating that fact in context.
- konart 10y ago>astonishingly wealthy in historic or global terms Like if we compare a junior sys.admin to some kid of the similar age from an african village that has problems with drinkable water? Yes, well, no shit.
- mindcrime 10y agoTelling people to "check their privilege" is pretty close to the worst way to advance any kind of meaningful dialogue, from what I've seen. Speaking that way manages to be simultaneously presumptuous, condescending and demeaning. I'll go out on a limb and posit that we should drop use of the term "privilege" altogether. All it leads to is an endless loop of arguments about: the nature (or existence) of "privilege", who is or isn't "privileged", and comparison of levels of "privilege". I have yet to see one of these discussions change anyone's mind, or lead to any increased understanding.
- belorn 10y agoFully agree. Labels which aren't falsifiable is generally very bad and is mostly used as a pejorative term.
- cabalamat 10y ago> Telling people to "check their privilege" is pretty close to the worst way to advance any kind of meaningful dialogue, from what I've seen. Speaking that way manages to be simultaneously presumptuous, condescending and demeaning. Given the closeness of the election result, it may well have been the straw that tipped it over into a Trump victory. People who have spread the "check your privilege" meme should reflect on that. But I bet most of them won't.
- imtringued 10y agoMaybe you should start to see people as individuals instead of treating them as members of a group and putting all of them into a box labeled "privileged". Not every white male is part of the "wealthiest, healthiest, most celebrated segment in modern society".
- 7Z7 10y agoSociety does not treat individuals as individuals. People are put into boxes every day, and it's really only now that people are saying, "hey you know that being white means you probably get put in less boxes, and boxes of less negative importance, let's just acknowledge that", that people are suddenly imploring people to not put people in boxes.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Klockan 10y ago> As a white male you are the ..., healthiest, ... in modern society. Not true, Asians are healthier than whites and females are healthier than males. White males have some privileges but they certainly don't have all of them.
- ainiriand 10y agoWhen you say asians I think you are forgetting that the 'asian' group is mostly chinese people with really bad life expectancy. http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/china-life-expectancy http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/china-life-expectancy
- Klockan 10y agoYou need to compare within countries or it doesn't matter. Asians in the US lives a lot longer than whites in the US. Also if you want to find poor whites you just have to look at Russia where they live shorter than even China. Therefore we can conclude that being born in the US is a privilege in terms of life span, but being white is not. http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/russia-life-expectancy http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/russia-life-expectancy
- gozur88 10y agoYou realize women live longer than men, right?
- TeMPOraL 10y agoCongratulations, you've just perfectly proven the GP's point. This kind of reaction is what makes it forbidden for white westerners "to cultivate, maintain, and respect" their own culture. This kind of reaction, multiplied milionfold via media - both social and traditional alike - which can sometimes lead you to lose your job, or home. I get it - mistakes were made, some people in the past got trampled in order for the West to get where it is. We can, and should, absolutely talk about it[0]. But living our lives in despair over the "privilege"? Feeling constantly guilty for being born? That's an overreaction. Frankly, all that privilege talk seems to be just an attempt to guilt-trip the west into self-destructing. -- [0] - I'm talking pretty recent times; if you want to go back to the beginnings, then each culture has humongous amounts of blood on its hands.
- vacri 10y agoHorseshit. "white male" isn't a culture. Culture is movies and religious holidays and cuisine and clothing and birthday songs and literature and public holidays and sporting events and driving style and living arrangements and art preferences and so on and so forth. I must have missed the meeting where we declared it verboten to sing Happy Birthday, wear blue jeans, and burn sausages on a mass-produced barbeque when we have a day off and the sun is out. Culture is not "has white skin and a dick". That's a phenotype, not culture.
- cmdrfred 10y agoReplace white with another race, and replace your list of stereotypes with a list that is more appropriate. Would you now consider your comment racist? If so, congratulations you are a bigot.
- vacri 10y agoAmericans don't like to sing Happy Birthday, wear blue jeans, and bbq things on sunny days? Are any of these negative stereotypes? Who would be offended by saying that it's common in the US for people to do these things? Where did I pass judgment on wearing blue jeans? Denigrate people for singing Happy Birthday? Defend the humble sausage? My 'list of stereotypes' before that bit was intentionally culture free, apart perhaps from 'birthday songs'. Every (major) culture has all of those aspects. How is it bigoted to say that cultures have religious holidays or sporting events? -- I can't believe that I just got called a bigot for saying that in American culture, people sing Happy Birthday. In a thread that came from a guy whining that he can't celebrate patriarchy and white men holding all the positions of power, no less. How ridiculously over-sensitive are you?
- ericd 10y agoThis ignores the many white men for whom there is no economic hope, because their towns and regions are dying. Many of these white men are living off of disability because their jobs left and aren't going to be coming back. Many are addicted to pain killers and other drugs to help distract them from the reality of their situation. That is an existence without much hope, a slow, depressive sinking into despair. With that in mind, I think you can imagine why the drum telling them about how privileged they are and have no right to complain might inspire more than a little anger. Have the same empathy towards poor white men as you would to anyone else, and encourage your friends to, for everyone's sake.
- noobermin 10y agoCan we stop this tired meme? The median income for Trump voter at least in the primaries was higher than the nation's median and higher than Clinton's or Sanders'[0]. [0] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...
- ericd 10y agoThat article has very suspect figures. It says that all the major candidates had supporters with median incomes above the national median income. Which tells me that the population they're polling isn't representative.
- wool_gather 10y agoThat's not cause to suspect the analysis. Yes, the sampled population may not be congruent with the nationwide population. There's a reason for that: these are exit polls at the primaries. Only those who showed up to vote in those primaries can be polled. The article links to its source data: http://www.cbsnews.com/elections/2016/primaries/republican/virginia/exit/ http://www.cbsnews.com/elections/2016/primaries/republican/v... The VA results there, for example, also show that the majority of respondents for both Republican and Democratic primaries are over the median state (and national) _age_.
- RandomOpinion 10y ago>Have you actually checked your privilege? I'd check my privilege but President Trump already cashed it. /s Please never use that condescending phrase again. As last nights election shows, a lot of people are tired of being condescended to.
- Chris2048 10y ago> you are the wealthiest, healthiest, most celebrated segment in modern society. individuals experience reality as individuals, not in aggregate. Also, you can slice the cake as you wish - you can specify a group as "the wealthiest/celebrated" group directly, without conflating this with race or sex, whatever correlations might exist. The wealthiest white males live on the liberal coasts of CA and in NY, mean FA to rust belt white men who are being told to stfu because they are so wealthy/powerful/celebrated... in aggregate at least. White men can reject the establishment too - there is no contradiction in the fact that the "establishment" consists mainly of white males, so long as you understand that race/sex/etc aren't the only way to group the world.
- chillwaves 10y agoYou think Trump is going to make people who do not like you now, like you? I mean, how is it forbidden for people to just not like things?
- gozur88 10y agoIf a black man says "I'm proud to be a black man" it seems reasonable to most people. If a white man says "I'm proud to be a white man" people think he's part of a prison gang.
- adamsea 10y agoI think you are oversimplifying. Look at Black Lives Matter. It is an example of, If a black person says "Black Lives Matter", many white people say "you're racist."
- gozur88 10y agoNobody thought that in the beginning. BLM has earned its racist label.
- noobermin 10y agoI agree that that is unacceptable. Neither stance makes sense to me, but you can be proud of a heritage or culture, but having a particular color of skin doesn't make you automatically part of any culture...it has to do with upbringing or adoption may be, but birth race really has nothing to do with what is a social phenomenon. If you are proud of being part of a culture, that seems completely reasonable. May be we don't call white culture "white culture," some refer to it as "American culture." Perhaps that's what you want?
- vacri 10y agoBeing a white male isn't a culture. I'm a white male myself, and there's a lot of cultural differences between me and white men in Russia; white men in different social classes; in different workplaces; in different hobbies and so forth. Patriarchy is frowned upon because it's inherently unfair. You're complaining that people frown on you because you celebrate your social superiority over them?
- guard-of-terra 10y agoThere's more similarity between you and white men in Russia than you might think. The trajectory of both cultures were at times parallel. Industrialization. Space race. Higher education accessible for middle class. Having to figure out womens and minorities rights, freedom of religion and abortion. The bashing of white male culture obscures the fact that it's the culture that made universal human rights possible. Not done by Indians, Chinese or Arabs. We invented this idea that women and men, black and white should be viewed from same angle. Was universally unthinkable before.
- vacri 10y agoFirstly, I'm not American, so no, 'space race' is not part of my culture. Similarly, just because you can draw parallels, does not mean the cultures are the same. American men like to drink to excess? So do Russian men. Ergo the cultures are the same? But wait, Japanese men also like to drink to excess. As for "white men figuring out women's rights"... are you serious? Women have had to fight for their rights every step of the way. And as for universal human rights, that wasn't a "white male" thing either. It came from certain parts of Europe, not "white males". You can't simply take everything that came from any white country and just claim that it's a monoculture.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoIt's sad that 'space race' is not part of your culture. You've missed out on one of Top 5 Things To Do In XX Century. WRT women had to fight every step: In Soviet Russia, which by the way I don't really like, women got quite a few rights over a range of time without big struggle, and that in part encouraged other white women in the world, and then all other women too, to go for what's theirs. The white European male culture is what made fight for human rights possible. It's where it all happened, just like Jesus happened in Jerusalem and not in Ohio.
- grkvlt 10y agoBeing white and male is pretty awesome, though, so maybe it's better not to get the rest of the human race jealous? /s Seriously, people seem to make the mistake of assuming that because we need to change the fact that the corporate world is dominated by white men, that makes being a white man in the corporate world bad. It doesn't, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that - it's the fact that there are not enough other members of the human race represented i.e. restating the thing we need to change as a negative statement, we see what it is that is bad about the situation.