One last note on "white advantage" as it applies to states. When liberals crow about how well the "blue" states are doing vis-a-vis the "red" states there is a strong double standard. Whites (and white males) accumulate wealth, influence, and power through many societal factors including the force of history. A similar dynamic occurs for states as a whole.

The best predictor of how well a state is doing now is how well they did back in the day. It is not like there is some magic to being a "blue state". Mississippi is a relative dump. It was a dump a hundred years ago and will likely be a relative dump fifty years from now (and yes I know there are many good people and places in Mississippi, but in aggregate it has issues). If it suddenly became a "blue" state, became liberal and adopted progressive values it would not magically become the new Vermont (or whatever blue state you would rather use).

Naturally I think they would be better off adopting those values, but let's not pretend that alone would upend the weight of its history.

SBB, I can sort of see your point. For instance, if I were a native (Indian/First Nations) person, I could literally walk into my MLA's office and have a government job within a week, and I would not have to perform, at all really, to keep it. But, does that make up for the fact that my father was taken from his family at age 6 and sent to a residential school and had his language and culture beaten out of him, only to continue the cycle of violence when he had his own family? This is all hypothetical of course. I for one don't believe in soft or hard affirmative action hires, because two wrongs don't make a right, but I think its an honest attempt by policy makers to right a past wrong.

An interesting (and impossible to answer) question in regards to "privilege" is "who would you rather be?" Barring any Freaky Friday technology we'll never be able to properly test the answers to that question.

On a somewhat related note, I have heard of a legal proceeding in ancient Greece that comes close*. The wealthiest citizens of the city-state were each responsible for maintaining a ship for the navy. If you thought there was someone wealthier who was not one of those pressed into the duty you could appeal in court to get him to pay for your ship, provided you agreed to swap all your wealth for his (I'm assuming including the cost of the ship). Not sure how that would work in the present day. To dispute an affirmative action hire the judge sentences you to live out the plot of the major motion picture "Family Man".

*Note - this is taken from QI, I'm sure someone how actually knows what they're talking about has a more accurate take.

I notice the water I swim in too well. The pool is almost entirely modern liberal in premise

I think multiple people here have mentioned that the election, while not in question, was still rather close. You're not quite as alone as you think, poor baby.

But, does that make up for the fact that my father was taken from his family at age 6 and sent to a residential school and had his language and culture beaten out of him, only to continue the cycle of violence when he had his own family?

No, and I'd be all for remedial action not based on race at virtually every stage of the process.

There's a big leap from a First Nations guy to an upper or upper-middle class American non-white.

I think multiple people here have mentioned that the election, while not in question, was still rather close. You're not quite as alone as you think, poor baby.

I don't swim in the general American pool. Few people here do.

I don't swim in the general American pool. Few people here do.

I don't blame them. You have any idea how many people pee in there?

An interesting (and impossible to answer) question in regards to "privilege" is "who would you rather be?"

Who was the philosopher (economist?) who basically posited (paraphrasing) to determine if a system was fair you could not know what your role was before hand and would still agree to participate?

Gah, my memory is terrible.

Mississippi is a relative dump. It was a dump a hundred years ago and will likely be a relative dump fifty years from now (and yes I know there are many good people and places in Mississippi, but in aggregate it has issues). If it suddenly became a "blue" state, became liberal and adopted progressive values it wold not magically become the new Vermont (or whatever blue state you would rather use).

Take New Mexico as an example.

Who was the philosopher (economist?) who basically posited (paraphrasing) to determine if a system was fair you could not know what your role was before hand and would still agree to participate?

Are you thinking of John Rawls? Not to be confused with Commissioner Bill Rawls.

It seems what SBB is actually saying isn't that privilege doesn't exist, but that class overpowers race or other forms and should be weighted as such. I suppose that is true, depending on the situation.

I don't swim in the general American pool. Few people here do.

Gaelan's the only professional philosopher here, and even he's perfectly capable of moving the discussion beyond philosophical platitudes and metaphors and into tangible reality. Try it out.

It's a problem, a think, that privilege is a statistical kind of thing but gets explained like an absolute. Being white is often to my advantage (although it's hard to notice when I would've gotten screwed over for being black if I had been black), and very occasionally to my disadvantage (for instance, when my girlfriend's father harassed her into breaking up with me because I was white, and I became depressed enough to drop out of school - but that's probably the only time it was seriously to my disadvantage, and if I'd been black, it probably would've happened more than once; thinking of my ex's parents, I could believe at least thrice). Similarly I'm likely to go to a better school than if I were black (mostly not true, since I lived mostly in black neighbourhoods as a kid). And so forth.

And so when it's presented in a "being white will give you these advantages" fashion, people are resistant, because they know from their own experience they didn't get all of those advantages in an absolute way.

Are you thinking of John Rawls?

Yes, thank you. It was driving me mad (madder? less sane? differently sanity abled?).

Who was the philosopher (economist?) who basically posited (paraphrasing) to determine if a system was fair you could not know what your role was before hand and would still agree to participate?

Are you thinking of John Rawls?

Principle 1: "Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all."

Principle 2: "Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society."

What do you call Fergie Jenkins, Lennox Lewis, or Yannick Noah?

Canadian, British-Canadian, French.

SBB, you were the one making a rather incredible assertion, backed by absolutely no evidence whatever. I'll be glad to elaborate on your counter-question, but you first owe it to us to either put up or shut up about your unprivileged life as a white person on planet Earth---not to mention how you wouldn't have benefited in the heyday of Jim Crow.

So you're punting on offering for peer review a falsifiable hypothesis of white privilege, then? Are all white people privileged?

Once again....

1. You make a blanket autobiographical assertion about your lack of any racial advantage in being white, a claim that rather hilariously extends back to the Jim Crow era, without a shred of autobiographical detail.

2. When challenged to provide such details, you filibuster and try to change the subject.

Again, I will have no problem answering your counter-question, once you follow up on your original claim by backing it up with something other than more repeated assertions. Is this really so hard for you to do?

And for reference, here's the undocumented assertion of yours that I find dubious, to say the least. But feel free to back it up with specifics if you can:

I have never benefitted from white privilege and would not have benefitted from it in its heyday. (A heyday you can read about, in grand detail, in the Joe Kennedy biography that just came out.)

#2162 - Very well said.

One of my formative experiences was as a child in Florida during desegregation of schools being sent to a school where me, my older brother and sister and maybe one or two others were the only white kids present. It was very interesting (from my perspective now, I was in k - and maybe there through part of 1st grade, I am not sure since we moved a bunch), though since I had very fine blond hair I was somewhat upset initially because all the kids wanted to touch my hair since they had never seen its like in person.

a claim that rather hilariously extends back to the Jim Crow era,

Where are you getting the Jim Crow era? I grew up post-Jim Crow in the upper North. My forebears were all upper Northerners.

all sorts of fireworks going on in Michigan right now, and this page is devoted to race and privilege again? damn. (invites segue to RTW bill).

And so when it's presented in a "being white will give you these advantages" fashion, people are resistant, because they know from their own experience they didn't get all of those advantages in an absolute way.

Reminds me of what some lesser hitter said when people were saying he had an advantage batting in the lineup ahead of a great hitter: "All I know is that the pitchers are trying to get me out."

The SEC let Madoff run wild for almost 10 years, knowing he was running a multi-billion dollar ponzi scheme.

That's an inaccurate summary of the situation. He'd been investigated multiple times, but basically the SEC assumed he was front-running and their investigations were focused on this.

Even the famous memos to the SEC didn't allege a Ponzi scheme, they "merely" demonstrated that there was almost no chance that Madoff could be on the level.

You can find the SEC guilty of incompetence but there's roughly zero evidence of collusion.

all sorts of fireworks going on in Michigan right now

I find the Michigan situation depressing, so I have not spoken of it here - and I am not very well informed on the topic (partly because I do find it depressing). Anyway it is either a sign of the continuing and inevitable decline of unionization or is a conservative overreach (or perhaps both).

#2162: This book attempts to get at the questions of how we would go about measuring and controlling for equal opportunities. He tries to take into account a lot of what you raise-- from what I remember of the book, it's really data-driven, and drills down on a lot of specific conditions, rather than treating privilege in a blanket sense.

a claim that rather hilariously extends back to the Jim Crow era,

Where are you getting the Jim Crow era? I grew up post-Jim Crow in the upper North. My forebears were all upper Northerners.

Once again, these are your words, not mine:

I have never benefitted from white privilege and would not have benefitted from it in its heyday. (A heyday you can read about, in grand detail, in the Joe Kennedy biography that just came out.)

Since Joseph P. Kennedy's active life was lived exclusively in the Jim Crow era, what other "heyday" could you possibly be talking about? How could you have not benefited from being white back then? Granted that the first generations of European immigrants suffered a lot of discrimination at the hands of the Joe Arpaios of their time,** that very ethnicity helped to put them in positions of far reaching political power that black people could only dream about. And that's not even getting into the entire legal and social structure of Jim Crow itself.

And if you were born and raised in "the upper north", then tell us how unlucky you and your early 20th century ancestors were not to be born an Indian.

Now will you just quit your filibustering and answer the question?

**You can see some rather raw graphic examples of such prejudices here.

Since Joseph P. Kennedy's active life was lived exclusively in the Jim Crow era, what other "heyday" could you possibly be talking about?

The heyday of Fortunate Son privilege. Since I wasn't a Fortunate Son, I wouldn't have benefitted.

And if you were born and raised in "the upper north", then tell us how unlucky you and your early 20th century ancestors were not to be born an Indian.


Yes, as I suspected -- the "privilege" adheres to all whites and, therefore, biographical details are irrelevant and continuing demand for them unseemly.

"Hey, poor white shlubs in English council housing, don't complain -- at least you weren't born a Native American in 1845!!!!"

They thought we would be greeted as liberators

Most particularly damning they made no plans for the aftermath of victory. I mean it was very much a "now what?"

That's an inaccurate summary of the situation. He'd been investigated multiple times, but basically the SEC assumed he was front-running and their investigations were focused on this.

Even the famous memos to the SEC didn't allege a Ponzi scheme, they "merely" demonstrated that there was almost no chance that Madoff could be on the level.

You can find the SEC guilty of incompetence but there's roughly zero evidence of collusion.

Did you watch "Chasing Madoff" Ron? That is not the impression I got. Marcopolous went to the SEC several times, and also to Forbes and the Wall St. Journal, and none of them would touch it.

they made no plans for the aftermath of victory

This is a common mistake. Many folks think victory is an end unto itself or perhaps that victory takes care of itself. Such is life.

Most particularly damning they made no plans for the aftermath of victory. I mean it was very much a "now what?"

I think I'd go with complete misunderstanding of what would happen between Shiite and Sunni once the central authority was removed as most damning, but really, there's a lot to choose from.

I do wonder if Ray would end up doubling-down on SBB's stance. Legitimately wondering, not being snarky.

As far as I can recall, I've agreed with everything he's said on the past few pages (i.e., in this Duke LAX discussion). At least up to post #2127, which is as far as I've read. I reserve the right to revise this statement if I've forgotten something he wrote that I did disagree with.

But if you're asking specifically about his #2116, I will certainly double down on it without hesitation:

The latter is categorically false. It's certainly not the sum total of life, but if you've engaged in the competition for college/professional school spots, and jobs, being black is an advantage -- thus, you do not "lack racial privilege" in those spheres. Again, not the sum total of life, but a big part.

Which isn't to say being black might not have been a disadvantage in developing the record you bring to the competition (*)-- it also might not have been -- but to think that you didn't get a benefit in the admissions office and most/all hiring offices is way off.

Cosigned.

This is a common mistake. Many folks think victory is an end unto itself or perhaps that victory takes care of itself. Such is life.

Yes, very few wars are fought with the goal of reforming the opposition and recreating their society. Which makes some post-war ventures, such as post-WWII German and Japanese occupation, in this department all the more admirable.

Still, there's this press conference that Rumsfeld gave during the height of battle where he was asked exacxtly that: what happens afterwards? And the possum in the headlights expression that came over his face is a thing to behold.

If my academic and professional record wasn't stellar, you might have a point SBB.

Affirmative action might have pushed me five percent farther, but, no, it doesnt cancel out the larger effects of institutionalized discrimination.

It certainly does; there is no longer any institutionalized discrimination in American society.

At least, not against minorities. There is, in various settings, institutionalized discrimination against whites. College admissions, for one -- since affirmative action = reverse racism -- and another specific area is big corporations.

I know people in hiring positions at big corporations, and they have told me that hiring whites is often simply a non-starter. "I have a resume for you to look at." "Is the candidate white?" "Yes." "I can't hire the person." They are specifically given trouble if a white person is hired - they have to justify the hiring six ways to Sunday - and they are still asked why a minority candidate was not hired.

Now: this is anecdotal, so feel free to stick your head in the sand and disregard it. I will not reveal any details of the people involved or the companies. Suffice to say they are people I know very well and trust. But I don't expect anyone else to take my word for it when I've provided no details. But it's not like the evidence for this sort of thing is in short supply; it's all over the place.

Cosigned.

Well, that's lovely, if sad, but what I was going for was this one:

I have never benefitted from white privilege and would not have benefitted from it in its heyday.

This one as well?

EDIT: "It certainly does; there is no longer any institutionalized discrimination in American society."

Ah, I guess so.

I grew up in an all white suburb of Chicago in the 60's and 70's. I attended an all white suburban Catholic High school. I received an Air Force ROTC scholarship to attend the University of Illinois School of Engineering. There were no blacks in either my ROTC det, not my small Aeronautical engineering department. Upon graduation, I attended USAF pilot training, where there was one black student out of 60 in my class. After graduation, I was retained as an instructor pilot, where over the next 6 years, I saw very few (less than 1 in 50 or so) black student pilots. After leaving the service, I had a very tough time landing an airline job. Had I been able to turn black at that point, it would have been a piece of cake. During that time frame, United Airlines, under a consent decree from the EEOC, famously hired a black woman with 200 hours of single engine prop time (I had over 2,000 hours of jet time and couldn't even get an interview). However, had I been born black, it is extremely unlikely I would have been in that position in the first place. I can't say for sure that my life would have been worse, but It sure as hell would have been different.

Your brain makes me sad, Ray. What a glorious fool.

I have never benefitted from white privilege and would not have benefitted from it in its heyday.

My white forebears bequeathed me no wealth and few connections, none of which I availed myself of, having fled at first opportunity the locality in which they may -- repeat, may -- have prevailed. They could have used white advantage to accumulate those things, in theory, but they didn't.

It certainly does; there is no longer any institutionalized discrimination in American society.

########.

#2187. Seconded, thirded, or whatever - cosigned at any rate.

EDIT: Though I suppose for a sufficiently narrow definition of "institutional" a case (albiet weak) could be made that the extant US descrimination is really aggregated individual racism.

Since Joseph P. Kennedy's active life was lived exclusively in the Jim Crow era, what other "heyday" could you possibly be talking about?

The heyday of Fortunate Son privilege. Since I wasn't a Fortunate Son, I wouldn't have benefitted.

You most certainly would have benefited if, like hundreds of thousands of non-"Fortunate Son" immigrants, you chose politics as a career. Or perhaps you're not acquainted with the Irish run political machines that began to gain power by the 1870's, and were dominant in several of our biggest cities by the end of the first world war.

And if you were born and raised in "the upper north", then tell us how unlucky you and your early 20th century ancestors were not to be born an Indian.

Yes, as I suspected -- the "privilege" adheres to all whites and, therefore, biographical details are irrelevant and continuing demand for them unseemly.

IOW you're saying that it wouldn't have mattered if you or (especially) your ancestors had been born on a Native reservation. I'm not surprised that you'd actually believe that.

"Hey, poor white shlubs in English council housing, don't complain -- at least you weren't born a Native American in 1845!!!!"

This comment is based on a premise that I've said, or believe, that all white people have benefited equally from their skin color, and that no white people are to be found at the bottom of the barrel. Since I've never once said that, and since I've never believed such an absurd premise, I can only conclude that this is just another one of your many attempts to avoid any serious discussion of the interaction of race and class in America and elsewhere.

My white forebears bequeathed me no wealth and few connections, none of which I availed myself of, having fled at first opportunity the locality in which they may -- repeat, may -- have prevailed. They could have used white advantage to accumulate those things, in theory, but they didn't.

So what you're saying is there is no racism now, and there was also none when you were born.

Or is it that there was, but it never affected your existence? And it doesn't now, either?

At least, not against minorities. There is, in various settings, institutionalized discrimination against whites. College admissions, for one -- since affirmative action = reverse racism -- and another specific area is big corporations.

I know people in hiring positions at big corporations, and they have told me that hiring whites is often simply a non-starter. "I have a resume for you to look at." "Is the candidate white?" "Yes." "I can't hire the person." They are specifically given trouble if a white person is hired - they have to justify the hiring six ways to Sunday - and they are still asked why a minority candidate was not hired.

As a white person, let me say - I've gotten into University (repeatedly), been hired by big corporations, been hired by government departments. I've only ever participated in one hiring discussion where whether we should weight someone's demographic in the hiring decision (and the consensus was "maybe, a bit", but we still ended up hiring one of the men; he was clearly everyone's favoriate candidate.) Also anecdotal, but I believe the plural of anecdote is data.

Poulanc knows what is up.

So what you're saying is there is no racism now, and there was also none when you were born.

I'm saying I never benefitted from white privilege, having never been privileged in any real way on account of my whiteness, or the whiteness of my ancestors. I carved out my own path in life, far from the family homestead, one few if any of my high school friends/classmates did and none of my family did. I started on that path disadvantaged in wealth and connection as compared with the vast majority of my fellow travelers.

I was bequeathed attitudes and prinicples that helped, and my childhood was handled pretty well (other than the joke high school I was sent to) and prepared me for the path (without intending to do so) -- but that has nothing to do with me being white.

From hiring discussions I have been part of there is a strong bias towards "hiring people like me" in many decisions. People tend to like and feel more comfortable around people who are like themselves. That is not truly explicitly racist I would argue, but the impact of that in aggregate ends up being racist when you start from a spot where white men are in positiions of hiring authority. Things change over time, but it is very slow.

Personal Aside: I much prefer having a female boss, in my experience they listen better and also stay out of my way better and let me be an expert in the areas I have expertise. I am positive that makes me a self-loathing rodent or something :)

I would disagree that liberals adhere to this one (although the same could be said about Conservatives too, in other ways). Non-liberals recognize that when you develop big-government facilitated safety nets from which people can get many things for free, they will take advantage of it to the detriment of others. Liberals refuse to believe that there is anything more that a scattered few people like this, but the truth is, when people are indulged and never held personally responsible for their decisions, most of them will continue to make bad ones.

The thing is that conservatives insist on putting this into a moral framework when I, and I think other liberals, don't think the poor are there to serve as actors in a little morality play. The purpose of safety net programs is to put resources into the hands of people who don't have those resources. People who qualify for benefits are _supposed_ to 'take advantage' of them. And if we, as a society, decide that we are better off having a safety net than not, then it's not to our detriment that people use those benefits.

Welfare benefits in the U.S. are, and have been, so stingy that the common urban legends of young bucks buying T-bone steaks and women pumping out kids just to collect a check are basically that, a joke (which is not to say it has never happened anywhere ever). But in general, economic freedom means that once you have access to resources, what you do with those resources is your call. If somebody thinks they can have a better life by collecting benefits than working, even if they could theoretically hold down a part time job, so what? If you give somebody $30 and they go out and have a nice dinner at a restaurant, so what? Conservatives complain about liberal paternalism, but don't hesitate to engage in the paternalism of constantly monitoring every thing a poor person does in order to judge whether they have been 'responsible' or not.

I am currently reading Eric Foner's history of Reconstruction, and can't help but see similarities in the post-war situation when white southerners assumed that black freedmen were habitually lazy and wouldn't work unless they were forced to. So the southern states passed laws forbidding 'vagrancy' (for blacks only), and in some cases required blacks to sign a labor contract each year or be subject to a tax (which, if they couldn't pay, would be paid for by a white planter, who would then earn the legal right to the labor of that man for the following year). They also passed laws forbidding 'insulting behavior' by blacks. I feel that that spirit of paternalism, which wasn't really about the welfare of the freedman, but was an excuse to keep him politically and economically subordinate, is the same that animates modern welfare scolds, even if less explicitly racist than it used to be.

"I have a resume for you to look at." "Is the candidate white?" "Yes." "I can't hire the person."

I don't doubt you've heard this, Ray, because I've heard it from academics, too. The wonder is that there are any employed white people at all :) When I hear this from white professors (I stress, not where I'm working now, but anecdotally along the grapevine), I also always observe, objectively and from the outside, that the institution in question actually hires and tenures lots of white people. I always attribute such rhetoric to sour grapes or shoulder chips, or at least take it with several grains of salt, pick your metaphor …

I have never benefitted from white privilege and would not have benefitted from it in its heyday.

This one as well?

EDIT: "It certainly does; there is no longer any institutionalized discrimination in American society."

Ah, I guess so.

Um, stop. The second statement is different from the first one.

And the first statement was made by SugarBear as applied to SugarBear. I didn't know you were applying it to me, and I didn't cosign it as applied to me. If you're asking if I'd make the same statement about myself, my answer is no, but I also don't speak in those terms. I would say that I benefitted from the hard work and upbringing and education that my parents provided to me/enabled me to obtain. I was successful enough coming up through the ranks (high school, college, etc.) that I was able to be successful despite whatever harm I may have suffered from the reverse racism of affirmative action (*), but white people closer to the line are not so lucky.

(*) And I may have suffered from some. I only got admitted to 3 of the 8 colleges I applied to - one on the waiting list - and I was turned down by most of the law schools I applied to. I went to a 4th tier law school and then had to transfer to a 3rd tier law school after my first year -- moving away from my family and from Boston to Pittsburgh to do it -- in order to put myself in a better position to be hired out of law school. One disadvantage I had in the law school admissions process was that I was an electrical engineering major, which is a relatively difficult discipline, and so when law school admissions offices cross your GPA with your LSATs, I was at a disadvantage because my college curriculum was very difficult and yet my raw GPA was being compared with peoples' from less difficult disciplines. And the soft factors of diversity and the like didn't help me, as I am white: It may very well be that if I were a minority I'd have gotten into more colleges and more law schools than I did. But I give all the credit in the world to my parents for putting me in a position to succeed, and they did that through hard work as they supported my 10 siblings and I financially on my dad's engineer's salary. That is why it is silly when liberals boil so much of this down to race and being white; my parents worked hard, and were dedicated.

My metaphor for Affirmative Action:

There is a town. In that town everybody has a well. One of the residents of that town starts dumping toxic waste down their well. Slowly, over many years, that waste seeps into the water table. People living near that person start getting ill from the tainted water. Some die. There is a lot of disagreement about the source of the illness. Some feel that God has become angry with the sick people, for a variety of reasons. Some feel that their lifestyle has led them to ill-health. But as the circle of the affected grows, and it begins to sicken their children, eventually people come to realize that the problem is in the water table. The source is traced back to the contaminated well, but it turns out that the person who was dumping waste in the well is dead, he has no heirs, and there is no estate. What to do?

The thing to do of course is for everybody to contribute toward the health care of the sick, and to the cleaning up of the toxic waste. Some will argue that they shouldn't be responsible, that they didn't dump any waste, and that it is unfair that they should be 'punished' for the actions of another. But I think most would disagree.

Racism is just like that, a poison that was dumped into the very core of American society, it seeped into every nook and cranny, making everything toxic. It needs to be cleaned up, a process taking generations, and it will come to pass that those who are paying for the clean-up had little or no connection to those who did the dumping, or those who were immediately affected. Tough ####. That's racism for you, it poisons everything. Resentment at those who are getting the free clean-up on their property, or who are getting free fresh drinking water, is beside the point. Don't get mad at those people, get mad (if you like) at the short-sighted ############# who created the problem in the first place, and resolve that it never be allowed to happen again.

Your brain makes me sad, Ray. What a glorious fool.

Thanks for the productive discussion.

One disadvantage I had in the law school admissions process was that I was an electrical engineering major, which is a relatively difficult discipline, and so when law school admissions offices cross your GPA with your LSATs, I was at a disadvantage because my college curriculum was very difficult and yet my raw GPA was being compared with peoples' from less difficult disciplines.

However, once you got in, it likely helped you.

It may very well be that if I were a minority I'd have gotten into more colleges and more law schools than I did.

but had you been born black, you would have been less likely to be in that position in the first place.