The Stone Cold Truth

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

Well you're free to 'splain it to us IM2...For starters, despite all my white privilege ......how is it i worked all my life ,almost 1/2 century now....., some weeks 7 days , and am still living so far below the poverty line i qualify for every hand out available? You've the floor sir.....

This is a noble invite indeed, altho it is all for nothing ---considering IM2 baffling display of 'wanting Racism to cease, but then he despises Whites for deciding to stop being racist' which then, worst of all, inadvertently shows us that he has no respect for his own opinions here.

Therefore I thought you might be able to appreciate this angle from a fellow White man Bob Jensen, who clearly gets it:

 

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

by Robert Jensen

Here's what white privilege sounds like:

I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.

The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.

So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.

He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."

That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.

That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.

White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.

I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.

My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.

Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.

I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.

But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.

All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.

There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.

Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships.

At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special.

I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be.

White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.

Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success.

 

[IM2]

So once again we see the infestation of white supremacists who are allowed to freely post off topic bullshit, troll thread after thread with no deletions, admonishment or penalty.

That's right!! How dare those white supremacists be allowed to login then infest threads with their trolling.

They should cease that nonsense! And become more like us negro-embracing Caucasoids on USM who like to post, on topic, just like how I did in this thread here. When my earlier post here did exactly address the OP words and the threadstarter's emo-badge here:

... "White Rage," by Dr. Carol Anderson.

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
...chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America.
... every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate, relentless rollback of their gains..

This is your first post in this thread:

The Stone Cold Truth

This is the OP:

It's now time to look at the cold, hard, graphic reality of what racism by whites has entailed. The information used in this thread will come from the book, "White Rage," by Dr. Carol Anderson.

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2016
A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016

From the end of the Civil War to our combustible present, an acclaimed historian reframes the conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America.

Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate, relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans.

White Rage — Carol Anderson

Starting with my next post, you will be shown in graphic detail the steps whites took to deprive blacks of equal rights and freedom after slavery ended up until our lifetimes. The root cause of the problems blacks face is white racism. That's a fact and it's time people faced that fact.

And I am doing exactly what I said I was going to do. None of these replies have addressed the legal cases that I have posted since the OP.

 

[IM2]

This thread is not about white privilege or wealth inequality. It IS about what whites have done since the end of slavery to stop or stall progress in the black community.

 

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

True, this thread is not about white privilege or wealth inequality. But you can't use your fatuity to get mad at facts/truths which lay out how white privilege and wealth inequality are what stop or stall progress in the black community' since the end of slavery.

It's astonishing how you feel that facts which are clearly, on topic, do not count as on-topic if IM2 was ignorant to those facts in his life.

 

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

Thanks for posting this so I can show you how my words were exactly on topic here.

... "White Rage," by Dr. Carol Anderson.

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
...chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America.
... every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate, relentless rollback of their gains...

This is your first post in this thread:

The Stone Cold Truth

...

None of these replies have addressed the legal cases that I have posted since the OP.

Huh?!!! At what point did your OP ask posters to address the legal cases you cited??? lol


...anyway...


You said it yourself here that White racism is the root cause of the problems Blacks face. So when I read a fellow White man who possibly did not connect with your overly-emotional rant, I tried to help him understand how he might not even be aware of how he awakes every day as a root cause as he involuntarily represents "powerful forces opposed to black progress in America... every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate, relentless rollback of their gains" when I posted this:

"How many mornings so far did you awake and say, as you exited your home, "Even tho I live in America that is controlled by us Caucasoid people, I think just for today, I am going to denounce my White Privilege in every place I go to. Just for today I am going to see what it is like for negroid people, everyday, navigating through a country which shits on their Rights & citizenry at every chance ---since 1863 and especially since 1964!" .... I would say, none. As in, I bet it has been zero times you awake on a morning to say that as you went out into a White-controlled society each day..."

...

Then I gave him examples of White people living today who Dr. Carol Anderson would be proud of because of their refusal to assist "the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America... every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate, relentless rollback of their gains" when I posted this:

"Now if you do, say that, then also live it each day? Everytime you exit your home as you go out into the world??--like a Rochelle Dolezal or Steph Curry or Jesse Williams or Jennifer Hoshchilds?? Then yes, you are correct that you are not any part of the reason for black discontent."

...

I'll remind you again, just like I had to do last week regarding those links you posted at me ---then you refused to come discuss those links you posted at me: Sstop getting mad at, facts, just because you did not know those facts existed. Stop acting like your choice to be, ignorant, is somehow all my fault.

 

[sparky]

or.....one can not fight ignorance w/ignorance or hate w/hate....~S~

 

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

or.....one can not fight ignorance w/ignorance or hate w/hate....~S~

True, indeed. I alluded to that earlier in terms of those Black citizens of today who claim to want White racism to end ---but then they attack White people who decide to stop being racist.

How much sense does that make...we'll never know

 

[sparky]

How much sense does that make...we'll never know

I know it doesn't work any better than our institutional remedies do

~S~

 

[Correll]

by Robert Jensen

Here's what white privilege sounds like:

I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.

The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.

So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.

He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter.".....

The white admission officer, was not going to give this kid points for being white, but was actually going to be taking away points for his white skin.


SO, the kid facing a white man making the call, was no "privilege".


Right there, the basic premise is disproved.

 

[sparky]

Right there, the basic premise is disproved.

merit doesn't predicate via race very well, does it?

~S~

 

[Correll]

Right there, the basic premise is disproved.

merit doesn't predicate via race very well, does it?

~S~

Not that I am aware of.

 

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

The white admission officer, was not going to give this kid points for being white, but was actually going to be taking away points for his white skin.


SO, the kid facing a white man making the call, was no "privilege".


Right there, the basic premise is disproved.

Jensen was there. Whereas, you were not there.

So guess who's really disproved here?

 

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

Right there, the basic premise is disproved.

merit doesn't predicate via race very well, does it?

~S~

Only for those who choose to wear, blinders, and therefore go through life exercising the ultimate white privilege which translate into the outcome described by this thread's OP amd title.

 

[boedicca]

The Real Stone Cold Truth is that the OP is a Racist Race Baiting Race Baiter who Race Baits and Spreads Hate.

 

[Ethos Logos Pathos]

The Real Stone Cold Truth is that the OP is a Racist Race Baiting Race Baiter who Race Baits and Spreads Hate.

...hmmmm...

I wonder if that is why the OP wants White-Racism to, go away, but then the OP attacks White people for deciding to stop being racist?

 

[boedicca]

The Real Stone Cold Truth is that the OP is a Racist Race Baiting Race Baiter who Race Baits and Spreads Hate.

...hmmmm...

I wonder if that is why the OP wants White-Racism to, go away, but then the OP attacks White people for deciding to stop being racist?

Racist Race Baiters gonna Race Bait.

The OP doesn't exist otherwise.

 

[flacaltenn]

If race didn't play a role in economic disparity the average white family would not have 15 times the wealth.

You really shouldn't be impressed with EVERY fact you come across... There's MORE poor white people on welfare than blacks.. And I'm very certain that the LARGER white population in prison are predominantly from economic challenged backgrounds.. So the AVERAGE income doesn't really apply to analyzing "criminal justice" issues.. Because economics and education (and to some extent morality) failures play an EQUAL role in the problem for most all races...

And who is responsible for the education failures? It would be almost 100% of prison inmates are victims of failing public education... Both BLACK and White and Brown... And yet you vote for folks who shun ANALYZING the problem, get rid of virtually ALL universal testing because it's racist and continue to constantly LOWER the expectations for achievement because it's actually LEFTISTS that consider these kids "too dumb to suceeed" if there are standards and testing.. Keep it up.. Vote for those folks.. They are not your OVERT racists, but they don't expect that your kids can compete....

No they don't. Again you want to ignore race as a factor when it is a major factor. In that same mixed race trailer park whites will call the police on black residents for things they don't on whites.

Irrelevant.. Their poor ass treatment by the justice system once they are ticketed or charged is the same horrendous mess.. And if they have take time off from work and have to sit in a General Session court all day for a 10 minute hearing, that's tough shit.. Or if they have to go to City Center 3 times to fix a bum warrant, nobody cares. Or if they try to pay a fine by sending monthly in the mail -- it will be IGNORED and maybe not even returned...

Maybe the "calls to the trailer park" is because whites don't act stupid and blind when they sense something is wrong... Blacks have a higher tolerance for living in danger... As witnessed by the really low numbers of them LEAVING all black, crime ridden communities...

Or MAYBE you're just wrong and busybodies and racists come in all shapes and colors..

You just go back to lecturing on 160 year old embarrassments. You;'ll never understand that constantly voting for MORE muscular big govt is stupid.. Especially if YOU KNOW THE FUCKING HISTORY.... You give up self-determination to the govt and all your economic/education/employment choices -- you DESERVE to be discriminated against and VERY POORLY served... You'll be working for THEM.. And they are largely morons that couldn't run a hot dog stand.

Because YOU KNOWTHAT HISTORY --- it's just on you if you don't realize that govt is NOT the answer to every grievance.. PEOPLE need to INSIST that govts SERVE THEM -- not just hand out free stuff...

 

[flacaltenn]

I am also doing this to show how government created the problem therefore government is responsible for creating suitable solutions which is a belief you don't like because you live in a conservative delusion whereby you tell yourselves that the government has never done anything for you.

Get off my cloud.. I've written articles about GOVERNMENT racism.. I've even had convos with YOU about the fact that a lot of racial tension is STILL CAUSED by inept, uncompassionate, MORONIC govt and the piss poor "customer service" they use at local, state, federal levels..

THAT'S my bandwagon.. And you think I'm working AGAINST YOU.... The very BASIS of disparate statistics on arrests, convictions, and warrants STEM from the fact that govt STILL does "one size fits all" justice at the town and city levels... And that's not SOLELY a racial issue unless you're a partisan whore that purposely CONFUSES economic disparity with racial bias..

In fact, the pitches I've made are making a difference. Justice reform is gaining traction.. It's just getting RUINED by leftist govt leaders who confuse fairness with totally decriminalizing shoplifting and speeding tickets... THAT'S POLITICAL PANDERING -- not actually getting govt to redesign the justice interface that the economically vulnerable fall prey to DAILY....

You'd THINK that to avoid getting warrants to arrest people who didn't pay the ticket for a broken tail light -- they MIGHT

1) Allow payment plans for those who qualify...

2) Allow zoning and licensing waivers for "convenience shops" that can REPAIR a broken taillight or other car safety issues using parts donated from Auto supply companies and volunteer labor...

THOSE kind of solutions... Instead, the city of Ferguson issued an average of 3.5 WARRANTS for every fucking household... With almost half of those INACCURATE OR BOGUS... And no way for person on the ledge of economic collapse to get the warrant changed or withdrawn without days off and a lot of wasted time...

More than 1/2 of "racial bias" identified in the "Ferguson Report" from the DOJ would disappear IMMEDIATELY if the town had a smarter more compassionate "customer service" and justice interface....

And this is what I am talking about when I said:

"The government is the people who formulate and carry out policy. The government by law must enact race neutral policy. But the people carrying out the policy can use race colored thinking in service delivery."

The 94 Crime Bill was in no way race neutral.. That's a fantasy.. It came simultaneously with minimum sentencing and disparities in drug crimes and a shitload of other defects...

But I guess you're STUMPED at how "people carrying out the policy" in Philly or Baltimore are STILL RACIST and predominantly black... Aren't you???

What I am stumped about is your attempt to name two cities when all over the country the majority of the towns and cities are majority white and were carrying out these policies in a much more extreme manner.

I'm just trying to follow your logic here that THE REST of America is racist and therefore any "criminal justice problems" are unique to black folk... But if you can't tell me WHY the criminal justice system isn't MUCH BETTER for Blacks in Philly and Baltimore where they are WAY OVER REPRESENTED in the city leadership and bureaucracy -- your entire argument that "laws are not racist" it's the IMPLEMENTORS of those laws are racist --------- is just bad logic and reason.....

The answer is power and control.. When you have no COMPETITION for your elected seats and lousy bureaucrats can't get fired easily, there's an ARROGANCE of "this is the way things gonna be".. And there's NO INCENTIVES for innovation or a more customer oriented interface to ANY of their services...

In Philly, Baltimore and many other dense places they suddenly become more interested in PANDERING and corruption and padding their own interests.. But THAT is not UNIQUE to these places... Most of the issues that drive your anger are SYSTEMIC governance problems -- not racial.... But they are to a LARGE extent political...

 

[flacaltenn]

Because race factored into his being murdered by a white man.

That's not enough to draw generalizations.. It's pooping on the VAST majority of whites when you go there.. It's as bad as resident racists posting "stupid black" videos... And it helps nothing...

You want to see how easy it is to dismiss that as emotional spew???

Spoiler: Click to see how easy it is to dismiss that "fact"????

And Malcolm X was assassinated by jealous angry blacks