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> you have no control over Faulty assumption here. You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continue

• rusk 6y ago
  > white people holding on to their money and power That there is a racist statement. Yes maybe intergenerational wealth causes some issues but to cast it as a purely white issue is just stupid. Avarice is a feature common to all of humanity.
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    > That there is a racist statement. Hardly. It has nothing to do with who or what they are but rather is literally a description of what they are doing. > white issue It is a white issue that white people oppress others and are the only ones with the power to stop that short of violent overthrow.
    • rusk 6y ago
      Wrong. You can find examples of this behaviour right across the world, regardless of race. Doesn’t make it right.
    • SuoDuanDao 6y ago
      If white people are a monolithic entity, what possible incentive would we have to give our rivals more room to manouvre? I see two options - either race doesn't matter to anyone worth listening to, or white people aren't being aggressive enough in securing our own interests. Or can you articulate a third position?
• cyberdrunk 6y ago
  Most white people have very little money and even less power.
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    No, actually, not on average. [1] [1]. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-financial-inequality/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-f...
    • cyberdrunk 6y ago
      As reported in the link, median net worth of a white family is $171k. Which is just about enough to buy a median house... Meaning, that the median white family has a house they live in and little else. That's certainly not a position from which you can influence anything.
• peltier 6y ago
  >white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it. Why is the emphasis on white people and not wealth? There are so many different historical groups of "white people" I completely fail to take a submissive approach to the whole us race debate. Sure you guys have massive issues that stem from a long line of segregationist policies. Europe has its problems, but implying that this should lead to some sort of White only redistribution of wealth will lead to bloodshed. Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to equate class war with race war? Henry kissinger?
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    > Why is the emphasis on white people and not wealth? Because that's who has wealth [1] and they have it because they stole it from other groups via forced labor and literal theft of land and other resources and then explicitly disadvantaged them in post facto competition. [1]. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-financial-inequality/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-f...
    • orestarod 6y ago
      The ruling class stole these, not "white people". Throughout the history and the world, all places and races had their own class of oppressors, surprise - usually from the same race as the oppressed, and of course from a very wide racial variety. That US were built first from white colonists, who set the precedent for that place, does not mean whites are any different that other races in oppression. The ruling class also stole their wealth from the working class, including the white people in it, and if your aim is to bring equal racial representation, or a change on the dominant race, in the ruling class, rather than the abolishment of the present social and economoc structure, you are just maintaining the current situation and playing the capitalists' game.
      • guerrilla 6y ago
        Well said and reasoned; however, not all oppression is class based. My claim is that racism is a secondary oppression upon the first that you describe which white people (or whoever in other places) benefit from and participate in maintaining. It is true the inequality between the classes is much greater than any other but that doesn't mean that the others don't exist. I agree especially with your last point though and didn't intend to communicate otherwise.
• mlang23 6y ago
  I am white, granted. However, I have no extraordinary power nor am I really wealthy. Pushing these buttons, implying that I should be guilty for what I am, is only increasing the divide between the races. Accusing me of playing an acitve part in supressing others is simply a false allegation. This is racist. And you dont even realize! Both sides will have to work on how they communicate with each other to improve things.
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    > implying that I should be guilty for what I am No, on two levels. First, nobody cares about how you feel, guilty or otherwise. Second, it's not about what you are either. It's about what you have, i.e. wealth and relative power, and what you do. Those are things within your control, unlike anyone's race. > Accusing me of playing an acitve part in supressing others is simply a false allegation. You do play that active part by asserting your property rights on wealth and other rights that were taken from others and given to you rather than working distributing them. Nothing false about that. > Both sides will have to work on how they communicate with each other to improve things. No, one side needs to give up its power over the other.
    • mlang23 6y ago
      All the "wealth" I have results from my own income. And my "power" simply doesn't exist. Although I think these sort of comparisons are pretty useless, I am sure there are a lot of black people with more power then a blind white man.
• marliechiller 6y ago
  that is not a fault endemic to white people, but people who are well off. please distance yourself from identarian narratives and treat people as individuals rather than groups of people
• throwaway316943 6y ago
  I’ve got bad news. Wealth isn't a number in your bank account that you can carve up and redistribute. Its the output of a properly managed system of assets and liabilities. If you just seize the outputs and give them away it will turn to ashes in the mouths of the recipients. They’ll have nothing after it’s spent while those who produce the wealth will have taken their knowledge and capabilities with them. All this has been tried before and it always fails because it’s the wrong way to solve the problem.
• breakfastduck 6y ago
  Making people feel guilty doesn't enact positive change. This is not the correct way to approach the situation. It might make you feel morally better in yourself, but all you're going to do is put white people off even listening to you.
• logicchains 6y ago
  >You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continues from generation to generation, by white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it. An alternative way to look at it: what did western civilisation do to grow such a huge amount of wealth compared to the rest of the world? What could the rest of the world learn from this, so that they could build wealth of their own? Fortunately the answer is relatively simple, as evidenced by how most east Asian countries have now become just as wealthy/developed as western countries: by embracing markets, the rule of law and personal responsibility.
  • nicoburns 6y ago
    They gained a lot of that wealth by fucking over the rest of the world with superior military power. I'm British, and the British empire was literally 1/3rd of the world at one point. A lot of the infrastructure in Britain which enables to compete favourably against other countries in competitive markets was built off the back of trade in goods that we forced the populations of other countries to produce then took the profits of for ourselves.
    • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Capitalism? That's what you're describing. Is the 'forced' a stretch? Or was it based on slavery. I don't know.
      • nicoburns 6y ago
        I'm not describing capitalism, I'm describing straight up military occupancy and subjugation of the local population. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj for example. If you want a US perspective, then consider Cuba. Would you describe the US embargo against Cuba as capitalism? It's disingenuous for someone to say that countries have struggled because they failed to embrace markets when the US has actively interfered against governments that didn't embrace markets with sanctions and support for coups.
  • 6y ago
• nicoburns 6y ago
  > You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. Do I? I'd be (genuinely) interested to know what kind of power you think I have to change the system. Because from my perspective as a middle class white person I feel just as powerless to change the system as everyone else.
  • throwanem 6y ago
    There's not much that any one of us can do alone. Refusing to make excuses for an unjust system, and finding ways to make the shitty bargains required for survival that at least minimize the extent to which we support it, is the best sort of start I can suggest. We may be forced by circumstance, especially those of us who have given hostages to fortune, to be complicit. But we can recover some agency at least over the extent of that complicity. I'd like to be able to suggest some group or movement here, but I've never been much of a joiner. The BLM folks I've heard from seem to have good heads on their shoulders, though. You could do a lot worse than to consider their suggestions on the question of "how do I help?" I definitely do understand feeling powerless. But remember also that, as a middle-class white person, especially if you're male and the head of a conventional family household, that puts you pretty close to America's own idea of what America is. Believe it or not, there's a subtle kind of power in that. Things that might likely be ignored when said by - oh, someone like me, for example, who while also middle-class-ish white is a weird queer redneck loner and always has been - often are taken more seriously when said by someone who presents a gestalt of commonplace American normalcy, simply because of the sort of person who's saying them. That really is a power all its own. If your social and professional circles are anything like mine, you can often enough find opportunities there to wield that power - gently, of course, and with real care for those with whom you're talking; to be, or to be seen as, a humorless woke thought editor, is to fail - in a way that might help redress injustice in a small way simply by convincing someone else to think about whether they should see the world a little differently from how they have before. It's a small thing, for sure. And it can on occasion be a risk; if nothing else, to speak honestly from the heart on any subject constitutes a degree of vulnerability, and people don't always treat that kindly. But little in my experience worth doing is entirely unattended by risk, and little in my experience does more to ameliorate a sense of powerlessness than to hear someone say "you've given me a lot to think about", and then to see over time that they have thought about it. It's subtle, as I said. It's a small thing, and it doesn't always work. But it is something. And even when you fail - which you will, sometimes at least - at least you will have tried, and even in that there's a kind of consolation to be found.