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But imagine how much revenue we'd be missing out on if every new invention that could shave a few cents off the bottom line had to be researched first? Just on

But imagine how much revenue we'd be missing out on if every new invention that could shave a few cents off the bottom line had to be researched first? Just one of many brilliant decisions that the primarily white men who have ran this country throughout history made on behalf of all of us. Without our consent, of course. Good luck proving your dad's colon cancer was caused by industrial solvents in our water supply. Call your congressman! It's a democracy!

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nerdponx 4y ago
I assume you're being downvoted because of the unnecessary reference to "white men". The sentiment here is spot on, but really, this is one area where race doesn't matter much. There are plenty of white people suffering from this stuff as well. There's definitely some value in looking at this through a critical race theory lens, as with most issues in the USA, but in this case you might say that the CRT model has poor explanatory power.
anigbrowl 4y ago
I think it's more useful to look at this as a class/economic leverage issue, as selfishness and the use of administrative power to extract economic rents seems to be a universal phenomenon. 'White' as a proxy for the racialized dynamics of European colonialism is sometimes a convenient shorthand, but glosses over other important contexts like white being a symbol of monarchy, because the aristocratic class were not required to labor outdoors. This intraracial social marker was significant enough to appear in flags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flag#Ancien_R%C3%A9gime_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flag#Ancien_R%C3%A9gime_... The 'white Russians' that fought against the 'red' communists carried the association of whiteness with traditional monarchy forwards into the 20th century and this revanchist monarchism continues to shape radical politics and factional identities in the present, although the symbolism is so diluted as to be unrecognizable to most: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement If we only look at 'white identities' in terms of racial coding, we fall into the trap of inadvertently criticizing people for a fact about themselves they didn't choose and can't change, and whose structural social privileges (vs those of non-European origin) are so unevenly distributed that the resulting intra-ethnic discontent has to be micromanaged through an elaborate ideological apparatus.

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nerdponx 4y ago

I assume you're being downvoted because of the unnecessary reference to "white men". The sentiment here is spot on, but really, this is one area where race doesn't matter much. There are plenty of white people suffering from this stuff as well. There's definitely some value in looking at this through a critical race theory lens, as with most issues in the USA, but in this case you might say that the CRT model has poor explanatory power.

anigbrowl 4y ago

I think it's more useful to look at this as a class/economic leverage issue, as selfishness and the use of administrative power to extract economic rents seems to be a universal phenomenon. 'White' as a proxy for the racialized dynamics of European colonialism is sometimes a convenient shorthand, but glosses over other important contexts like white being a symbol of monarchy, because the aristocratic class were not required to labor outdoors. This intraracial social marker was significant enough to appear in flags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flag#Ancien_R%C3%A9gime_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flag#Ancien_R%C3%A9gime_... The 'white Russians' that fought against the 'red' communists carried the association of whiteness with traditional monarchy forwards into the 20th century and this revanchist monarchism continues to shape radical politics and factional identities in the present, although the symbolism is so diluted as to be unrecognizable to most: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement If we only look at 'white identities' in terms of racial coding, we fall into the trap of inadvertently criticizing people for a fact about themselves they didn't choose and can't change, and whose structural social privileges (vs those of non-European origin) are so unevenly distributed that the resulting intra-ethnic discontent has to be micromanaged through an elaborate ideological apparatus.