West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: M Dogg™ on October 21, 2003, 04:19:03 PM
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WHITE PRIVILEGE SHAPES THE U.S.
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.
Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism in the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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Service-Related Racism
________ while black.
We once took a family trip to Disney and I was disheartened by the service I received at one of their shops. My sweet-loving husband got a hankering for a hunk of peanut butter fudge, so I decided to indulge him by making a stop at a sweet shop in the park. I stood in line for several minutes while the couple two places in front of me made what was apparently the life-altering decision between chocolate and vanilla. Next up was a pretty blond girl with her husband. She quickly gave her order for two pieces of chocolate-peanut butter to the fudge handler and moved on to the register. At the register, the cashier greeted her with, "What are you having?" since the fudge was already packaged up in a white paper bag. The girl replied, "Two pieces of fudge," and was promptly rung up and on her way. I'm next. I move up to the register with my own identical white bag containing two pieces of fudge. The cashier looks at me and gives me the same line, "What are you having?" to which I reply, "Two pieces of fudge." The cashier pauses a moment and looks at me. "I'm assuming that's all," she questions. Dumbfounded, I watch her begin to open my bag and riffle through the waxed paper, investigating the contents. Satisfied that I wasn't trying to pull a fast one, I presume, she rings my candy and hands me my change. I turned away red-faced and hurt and practically ran to meet my waiting husband to share this humiliating story.
So what's the deal?
Can we ever know the reason the cashier suspected me of wrong-doing and not the blond girl in front of me? No, we can't. But I can tell you that while the incident I experienced may not have been discrimination by many people's assessments, it sure felt like it to me. And this type of service-related discrimination is happening across the country every day.
Recently, a couple was dining out at a posh Thai restaurant in Miami Beach. Upon receiving their bill, they found that a 15% gratuity had been added to their charges. This is normal practice in many restaurants for large parties and this particular restaurant's policy was to add the gratuity for parties of five or more. But this was a party of two. Confused by the charge, the couple called for an explanation and were reportedly told by the manager, "You people don't tip well." The couple was black.
This story made the headlines and the restaurant has already suffered some serious repercussions as a result of their actions, including being thrown out of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitor Bureau. But, don't be fooled into thinking that incidents like this don't happen every day just because you aren't hearing about them.
"______ While Black"
You've heard of "DWB - driving while black." May I suggest, in the case of the Miami couple, "dining while black?" How about "hailing a taxi while black," or "shopping while black?" Clarence Page suggested these two phrases in his column for the Chicago Tribune back in October 1997, written in the aftermath of another service-related discrimination incident. In that case, a black youth was forced to remove the shirt from his back after he was suspected of shoplifting it from the store he was shopping in. The boy returned to the store the following day with his receipt; he had purchased the shirt the day prior to the incident. Need more? Actor Danny Glover recently filed a formal complaint with New York City's Taxi & Limousine Commission for drivers who consistently fail to pick up and transport black passengers, despite their being on-duty and unoccupied.
Pervasive Racism
Besides blatant discrimination, many blacks feel the brunt of more subtle discrimination on a daily basis. I have felt the eyes of sales clerks upon me as I shopped in expensive stores. Even when I'm not being actively watched, I find myself being very aware of my actions. My thoughts too often run along these lines: "Don't open your purse and reach in for a Tic-Tac or your keys until you leave the store. Make a grand gesture of replacing that item you have picked up to examine more closely. Don't stand looking at the same item for too long, don't want to be accused of anything." I've even found myself leery at restaurants, hoping that the chef hasn't seen me and my interracial family before he prepared our meal. (Hey, I've seen those undercover video shows!) Lightheartedness aside, I realize that I am a product of our society. I have been trained to know that I was, as comedian Chris Rock has put it, "born a suspect," and to behave accordingly.
I know that many will suggest that I'm simply paranoid and that things really aren't that bad, but I challenge that this pervasive racism has become so much a part of our culture that we have actually come to expect and accept it. It's normal to be cautious when approached by a group of black men or even a single black man. It's reasonable to assume that a black person driving an expensive automobile has either stolen it or is a drug dealer or a professional athlete. So normal and reasonable in fact that it's easy to justify these thoughts. We don't like to talk about it, but these types of broad assumptions penetrate our mind in ways that we are sometimes unable to recognize as racist. And the fault doesn't lie entirely in the hands of the offender. We are all responsible for ensuring that our actions do not further contribute to these problems.
It's Everyone's Problem
I'd like to give the cashier at Disney the benefit of the doubt. After all, she's probably gone through a zillion videotapes on fair business practices in her training at the Disney Institute. She's probably a good and loving woman who, in her mind, hasn't a racist thought in her head. And I'm willing to bet that whatever instinct made her distrust me simply because of the color of my skin, has crept into all of our subconscious minds at one time or another. We've been poisoned by our past and we've been misled by the media. The damage has been done and the residuals, like service-related discrimination, are being swept under the rug because we're afraid to look them in the eye. We all want to believe that things are fine and that we have gotten past the hateful history we were handed, but it's time to be honest with ourselves and each other. Racism and discrimination do exist. And they affect us all.
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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group
Peggy McIntosh
Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women's status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.
Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see on of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women's Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"
After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow "them" to be more like "us".
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American coworkers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.
I usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.
I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals,the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge," I will be facing a person of my race.
If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, out numbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
I can choose blemish cover or bandages in flesh color and have them more or less match my skin.
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience which I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these prequisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.
In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color. For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systematically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.
We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power which I originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the U.S. consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.
I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the U.S. think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.
Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantaging associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective State-ment of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently. One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.
Disapproving of the systems won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But a white skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to be now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.
Though systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and I imagine for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.
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Good post.
BTW, I was thinking about applying to the Univ. of Texas at Austin, but when I read that part about it being predominantly white, I have come to the conclusion that I won't attend a school full of racist crackers.
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Good post.
BTW, I was thinking about applying to the Univ. of Texas at Austin, but when I read that part about it being predominantly white, I have come to the conclusion that I won't attend a school full of racist crackers.
rofl
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Good post.
BTW, I was thinking about applying to the Univ. of Texas at Austin, but when I read that part about it being predominantly white, I have come to the conclusion that I won't attend a school full of racist crackers.
Another thing about white privilege is that no matter what, it is hard for a minority to attend college without having white people around, but there are many, and I mean MANY college without minorities in general. In my school, many white people have never saw a minority on campus, and that is said for almost every college in the state of Minnesota, except for the University of Minnesota. That can be said for almost every state also, except the Cal State system in Cali, and a few other states. But even in those universities, minorities are highly underrepresented. So unless you are going to a historically black university, I doubt you'll find a college that wouldn't have racist crackers. And I say that after traveling and going to see different colleges, and talking to transfer students from all states. Oh, and I mean racist crackers as in racist white people that are intent in keeping minorities down, because they are crackers, they crack a whip on uppity minorities. I use the word in it's correct content.
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^^^ That's why I think I'm just gonna apply within the UC system and a couple of large BETTER universities where there are fewer white people in comparison to other schools. UCLA is only about 30-40% white; that's not bad.
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Good post.
BTW, I was thinking about applying to the Univ. of Texas at Austin, but when I read that part about it being predominantly white, I have come to the conclusion that I won't attend a school full of racist crackers.
Another thing about white privilege is that no matter what, it is hard for a minority to attend college without having white people around, but there are many, and I mean MANY college without minorities in general.
boo fucking hoo,maybe they should make the grades to get in before whining that there are more whites in universities. remember sikotic that used to post here?(dont know if he does now) bu thes a pretty smart MINORITY,and from what i understand he takes school pretty seriously. i can gurantee you that he will get into a college,so maybe if minorities want to diversify the college crowd,maybe they should take school seriously,and apply what intelligence they may have to their school work. with affirmative action now in place a minority with good grades is guranteed to get into a college
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Does M Dogg ever stop whining about white people? Seriously man, get a life.
I love how all these Mexicans move to America and whine about how oppressed they are. I think I am going to move to Mexico and complain about "Mexican privilege" because there aren't any white people around. Racist ass spics.
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^^you are my new all time favorite poster on wcc lol
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Does M Dogg ever stop whining about white people? Seriously man, get a life.
I love how all these Mexicans move to America and whine about how oppressed they are. I think I am going to move to Mexico and complain about "Mexican privilege" because there aren't any white people around. Racist ass spics.
LOL... does CWalker ever get dumber. Have I not said before, my family never immigrated here, WE WERE HERE. We are from California, which was Mexico. We lived in California for 1000s of years before white people were ever here. Then one day, there was a war, the after affects of the war was for us to become U.S. citizens.
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I want to have a keystyle battle against M Dogg.
I have always considered myself to be the white Chuck D.
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I want to have a keystyle battle against M Dogg.
I have always considered myself to be the white Chuck D.
That can be arranged... I'll set up a thread right now in the battle board. I wish you good luck in your keystyle WCC debut.
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Good post.
BTW, I was thinking about applying to the Univ. of Texas at Austin, but when I read that part about it being predominantly white, I have come to the conclusion that I won't attend a school full of racist crackers.
Another thing about white privilege is that no matter what, it is hard for a minority to attend college without having white people around, but there are many, and I mean MANY college without minorities in general.
boo fucking hoo,maybe they should make the grades to get in before whining that there are more whites in universities. remember sikotic that used to post here?(dont know if he does now) bu thes a pretty smart MINORITY,and from what i understand he takes school pretty seriously. i can gurantee you that he will get into a college,so maybe if minorities want to diversify the college crowd,maybe they should take school seriously,and apply what intelligence they may have to their school work. with affirmative action now in place a minority with good grades is guranteed to get into a college
OK... why are you here to begin with, I mean WCC. This is a hip-hop board, and your reppin' the Beatles. Also, the troubles with Minorities are that we are not allowed to have an even start. Read the articles, they are from college educated WHITE people. Maybe that will make it more believable for you. Read about white privilege, it's taught in college, which I am in. I'm a senior Social Studies Education major at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, which is one of the top 50 schools in the United States according to all college rankings. I grew up in broke ass Rialto, California, poor, and I read books on different topics that interested me, mainly history. I took studies seriously, and I knew others that did too. But, colleges mainly take students that go to prep schools, that are in white neighborhoods, and attended by white people. The SAT and ACT were made to be culturally bias, and this is the truth because they were made so Jewish people would not pass the test, and enter college and make natural born Americans look bad. I did lots of research on these topics, I have sources, and educated opinions on these. I know what I'm talking about. But if you don't believe me, then I can quote the white people on this. After all, in White Privilege: If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
See, it's out there, and as long as people like me are getting educated, and sick and tired of our communities being expose to this quit form of racism, then you will see that more and more of us will speak out against it, we will begin find knowledge, and use it to help advance ourselves, and our communities to be on an even field with white people.
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really man,if you dont like how things are just leave,im so tired of hearing minorities bitch about every god damn thing its not even funny. go live in canada,maybe things up there will suit you better,because i along with many othe rpeople dont want some whining minorities in this country anymore.
and about the beatles comment,does it look like i post in the music sections of this board? obviously ive been at this board before,for a very long time,which is why i post here. is there a rule that says everything in our signature and avatar has to be centered around rap?
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I have always considered myself to be the white Chuck D.
Almost a blasphemous comment.
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really man,if you dont like how things are just leave,im so tired of hearing minorities bitch about every god damn thing its not even funny. go live in canada,maybe things up there will suit you better,because i along with many othe rpeople dont want some whining minorities in this country anymore.
and about the beatles comment,does it look like i post in the music sections of this board? obviously ive been at this board before,for a very long time,which is why i post here. is there a rule that says everything in our signature and avatar has to be centered around rap?
i'm not about quitting, I'm about uplifting my community, and trying to help others that were in my situation. I am an education major for a reason. I plan on going to my old neighborhood, and helping the kids there go to college, or at least allow them to believe in themselves. You are the type that would re locate the blacks that were fighting for their civil rights. Would you tell them to move to Canada. My family has lived in the same valley for hundreds and hundreds of years, long before white people came here. I still live in that valley, I ain't leaving. I'm sorry, I don't quit, I fight, and the best way to fight ignorence is education. So I'm trying to educate you with credible educated authors, who study these things. That way you know that there is a problem, so that when I am teaching, when my students go out into the world, you would be able to be understanding, instead of resentful.
As for the Beatles thing, I think that if you ain't here for this boards main reason, which is to connect with other westcoast hip-hop fans, that get the hell out, because I've been here since day one, and I am here to discuse hip-hop. I come here every so often, I key every so often, but I am here for westcoast hiphop news. I know there is no rules, but at least respect the culture, because people in the hip-hop culture also have been protesting about this shit too. As for me, I'm doing something about it. I mentor Latino youth in Minnesota after they come from Mexico, I walk the walk too.
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I liked those articles.One day I would like to use the advantage of being White to help form a group which will bring together people of all races.
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the beatles have done many things that rap music uses today,so just stfu about that BS
and yes i would move blacks out,i would move mexicans out too,because in my humble opinion they have created a not so comfortable environment in this country,and i would much rather live with my own kind.
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the beatles have done many things that rap music uses today,so just stfu about that BS
and yes i would move blacks out,i would move mexicans out too,because in my humble opinion they have created a not so comfortable environment in this country,and i would much rather live with my own kind.
go invest in a island..... then you can live off the fat of the land for scraps of food and run from wild animals.... because in my humble opinion you serve no real purpose to this country... but that is in my own opinion...
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and you serve a purpose in this country? oh please tell me what purpose you serve,other than to mislead the countries youth with your lesbian antics lol
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and you serve a purpose in this country? oh please tell me what purpose you serve,other than to mislead the countries youth with your lesbian antics lol
This kid, just read the damn articles, look at truth, and stop being a dick, are my Native ass will have you deported. (feels weird going down to an ignorent person's level.
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what do the articles have to do with what we are discussing now? we're talking about what is considered racism,and how youre lesbian sister serves no purpose in the country.
hurray for white privilage i guess
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then go
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what do the articles have to do with what we are discussing now? we're talking about what is considered racism,and how youre lesbian sister serves no purpose in the country.
hurray for white privilage i guess
After I posted the articles... I want people to read about real topics. Not stupit beef that you have. If you want to have beef... go to anywhere goes. I want to try and discuse white privilage and racism, that is why I made the thread.
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what do the articles have to do with what we are discussing now? we're talking about what is considered racism,and how youre lesbian sister serves no purpose in the country.
hurray for white privilage i guess
Not stupit beef that you have. If you want to have beef... go to anywhere goes. I want to try and discuse white privilage and racism, that is why I made the thread.
stupit? discuse?
we have been discussing those things,and i have come to te conclusion that all minorities in the US bitch and cry at least 1/3 of their life because they are slackers and use this kind of shit as a scapegoat
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I serve a great purpose to this country... I do work for the catholic church. teaching children about god love and grace..... I plan on having a grip of brown children. to flood the schools with more minorities ... and also going to college to be a well educated women with an establish mind ... what is your purpose of this county? To serve non-American views ... in fact they are views of Hitler ... who is an emery to America ... and men who lost there lives trying to defeat him in battle ... to bad people like you.. give good white people a bad name.. If I was overseer I would have declared you a disgrace. and booted you along time ago
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I serve a great purpose to this country... I do work for the catholic church. teaching children about god love and grace..... I plan on having a grip of brown children.
ill pay you to not have any children.
lol@god
HEIL HITLER!
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I serve a great purpose to this country... I do work for the catholic church. teaching children about god love and grace..... I plan on having a grip of brown children.
ill pay you to not have any children.
lol@god
HEIL HITLER!
i say make more minority babies! heil to the brown people
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i am a full supporter of minority abortion
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LOL... Unique and I are solders in a war that our dad taught us about for years. Our Dad is a straight radical, it's cool, he gots me wanting to be a radical too. Cruz Bustamante in 2006, fuck Arnold... lol... j/k. Arnold's cool but I want Cruz in office, I agree with his politics more. As long as there is not more Pete Wilson.
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i am a full supporter of minority abortion
well i plan on being a mexican breeding machine... lol
i am going to marry the most radical mexican there is around here.. and like M said... make more brown soldiers...
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good for you,i mean,its not like theyll amount to anything.
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Good post.
BTW, I was thinking about applying to the Univ. of Texas at Austin, but when I read that part about it being predominantly white, I have come to the conclusion that I won't attend a school full of racist crackers.
...but yet you're not racist, even though upon hearing that a school was white, you call them all racist crackers? Fuck you, this is the last reply you get from me in any post, because you're a fucking racist, and if that's the way you think, you don't deserve my presence. I'm going to go talk to some people I can at least have hope for.
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good for you,i mean,its not like theyll amount to anything.
thats what you think... but they will.. becuase i am working real hard to have a good future... this why i can provide for all 20 little pinks... running around.. then they will have there little pinks running around... i am just going to bake beans.. till the end of time...
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Good post.
BTW, I was thinking about applying to the Univ. of Texas at Austin, but when I read that part about it being predominantly white, I have come to the conclusion that I won't attend a school full of racist crackers.
...but yet you're not racist, even though upon hearing that a school was white, you call them all racist crackers? Fuck you, this is the last reply you get from me in any post, because you're a fucking racist, and if that's the way you think, you don't deserve my presence. I'm going to go talk to some people I can at least have hope for.
8)
BTW, Sub-Z, if you're so fed up with minorities complaining then maybe you should leave and go somewhere where minorities don't complain. Or just fuckin go wherever your cracker ancestors came from because if you can't be a patriotic American who values the visions of our fouding fathers then you don't belong in this country. 8)
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good articles. I think I read them all before in a college class a few years ago. I never really realized a lot of that shit till I had that class. It's sad to see how uneducated people in this world are.
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This is a nice article written by the big homie Bret Jacobson. It's an opposing view to the articles first posted up.
No Room For Racism
There is a common perception in America that conservatives are racist -- they are small-town hicks with little education and a fear of change. They chew chaw, spit on the sidewalk and have beady eyes… and they probably have a shotgun rack in the window of their pickup truck. Right?
Wrong.
The ideology of conservatism is inherently non-biased, non-racist and non-bigoted because it is an ideology of results. Conservatism is about finding the right person for the right job. A true conservative believes that individual organizations -- whether a large corporation, a nonprofit, or a small family -- make the best decisions for finding the ways to success. If a company believes customer service is the key to success, they will hire friendly employees. If technical excellence
is the order of the day for a biotech company, it will do its best to hunt down the best chemical engineers and doctors. The most important ingredient is to serve what customers value most.
That is a powerful lesson for those who dont understand conservatism, because in a society driven by the bottom line and public relations, there is no room for racism, bigotry or narrow mindedness. Customers do not like to hear that they are associated with racist companies, and the most cut throat business person will never think about any employee factor besides the economic impact of job candidates. While there is no room in conservative orthodoxy for racism, modern liberalism is built squarely on a foundation of “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” From every syllable of their
condescending rhetoric to policies that promote poverty, liberals constantly reinforce the idea that minorities are automatically underprivileged and therefore require extraordinary legal and social protections.
Bigotry is a common tool in the quest for power and a sense of self-righteousness evidently desired by “progressives.” Liberals would have no crusade to fight if everyone knew that America is increasingly reaching the nobility of a merit-based playing field -- a scary proposition for those who believe those lacking talent or drive must be protected from themselves by the more enlightened (read: better-bred). But by reinforcing the notion that there is a vast group in our society that is constantly tread upon, and so defenseless that they cannot possibly be expected to fight for their rights in the same way every other group in American history has done, the implication is that minority groups must be patronized and pandered to.
Quickly examine the policies favored by progressives. They constantly fight the battles of yesterday as they continue to focus on affirmative action, women's rights and class warfare. But those issues have essentially been settled for decades and ganging up on the few violators under
the pretense of a critical mass facing societyis worthy of ridicule and scorn.
While it may feel wonderful to fight for a perceived underdog, every individual in the real-world America will continue to be judged on how much value their mentaland personal acuity add. That leaves “civil rights leaders” such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, women's rights activists such as Gloria Allred and Gloria Steinem and the conglomerated hordes fighting for affirmative action with a very real problem: a vacuum of legitimate issues that must be filled with a sound and a fury that signifies nothing, save perhaps their own inflated sense of self-purpose.
If middle-class white kids want to make it a more just society for all American citizens, they should take responsibility for their own actions and mind their own damn business. No self-righteous marches, no sit-in demonstrations and definitely no poetryladen coffee hours. As P.J. O'Rourke has noted, the best duty a citizen can perform is to obey the laws and pay one's taxes. If you follow that prescription, you will judge others based on their relative merits, which is the ultimate form of justice.
There's some food for thought. Condescending liberals get their rocks off by patronizing minorities, do you?
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this is not a conversation til I get into it.Now bigotry is something the devil uses,it's a tool he uses to make us not get along.Open your eyes and see,it keeps you farther from God and causes you not to be able to see your neighbor for who they are yor neighbor,instead of some black or white person that lives next door.It seperates us,digs its claws in and if we don't do anything about it in the end can kill us just like any of satans other tools....................
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Fuck a conservative or a liberal, because both sides don't want the true story of racism, and white privilage out there. The facts are this, the idea of white privilage is that the United States has underlining racism. And because of this, true conservatism cannot work, because people still see race. The right man maybe a white man, it maybe a black man. Would a great man like Martin Luther King ever run for president. NO, race is still seen. Collin Powell was the man the Republicans felt would be great for president, why, because he is the bast man for the job. Who did the Republicans nominate, George W. Bush, someone that has shown to not half the skills of leadership that Collin Powell has shown by Collin Powell looking for many alterative ways to fighting the whole Middle East when he meet with all the Middle Eastern leaders, and tried to be a goodwill person. Bush and Powell don't usually see eye to eye. So why put in George W. Bush as oppose to Collin Powell, well, Powell would have actually won the election. Hell, why would Powell not except the nomination, because even he knows race is a huge reason why they wanted him in. Yeah he was the best man, but at the sametime, race was seen, and that taints the facts. A black man can't even run for president if his the better man, because race is still seen. A white man still can, because we don't see white race, we see a white person. That is the trust form of white privilage, what happened to Collin Powell and why we have George Bush as president now is exactly what I'm talking about white privilage. And you know what's funny, not a single minority really talks about white privilage, its what most white people talk about. It's there, and it's not liberal or conservative, because in politics, both parties want to have as many votes as possible, and don't want to be seen as racist. It's really just an underline thing in American culture.
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Fuck a conservative or a liberal, because both sides don't want the true story of racism, and white privilage out there. The facts are this, the idea of white privilage is that the United States has underlining racism. And because of this, true conservatism cannot work, because people still see race. The right man maybe a white man, it maybe a black man. Would a great man like Martin Luther King ever run for president. NO, race is still seen. Collin Powell was the man the Republicans felt would be great for president, why, because he is the bast man for the job. Who did the Republicans nominate, George W. Bush, someone that has shown to not half the skills of leadership that Collin Powell has shown by Collin Powell looking for many alterative ways to fighting the whole Middle East when he meet with all the Middle Eastern leaders, and tried to be a goodwill person. Bush and Powell don't usually see eye to eye. So why put in George W. Bush as oppose to Collin Powell, well, Powell would have actually won the election. Hell, why would Powell not except the nomination, because even he knows race is a huge reason why they wanted him in. Yeah he was the best man, but at the sametime, race was seen, and that taints the facts. A black man can't even run for president if his the better man, because race is still seen. A white man still can, because we don't see white race, we see a white person. That is the trust form of white privilage, what happened to Collin Powell and why we have George Bush as president now is exactly what I'm talking about white privilage. And you know what's funny, not a single minority really talks about white privilage, its what most white people talk about. It's there, and it's not liberal or conservative, because in politics, both parties want to have as many votes as possible, and don't want to be seen as racist. It's really just an underline thing in American culture.
You're a clown.
Quit complaining about the white man holding you down, get up, get out and get something.
Nobody likes a whiner. Shit, do you even have a job or do you just complain all day about how shitty the white man is. Scapegoatism is an easy way not take responsibility for your actions.
The reason Powell didn't run for president is because his wife and family didn't want him to. Don't speak on shit you don't know anything about and blame it on race.
Your comments reek of a 1940's Germany.
I've got no job. Blame it on the white man
I don't like my job. Blame it on the white man
I see successful white people. Blame it on the white man
I see successful minorities. They are puppetts of white man
I didn't get into the college of my choice. Blame it on the white man
I don't have enough money to pay for my college. Blame it on the white man
I lost at Madden 2004. Blame it on the white man
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I've got no job. Blame it on the white man - I got a job
I don't like my job. Blame it on the white man - don't mind it
I see successful white people. Blame it on the white man - props to successful people, whatever the race
I see successful minorities. They are puppetts of white man - No, props to successful people
I didn't get into the college of my choice. Blame it on the white man - Actually I did, I'm in a top 50 college in the nation
I don't have enough money to pay for my college. Blame it on the white man - I love taxes, because they pay the difference
I lost at Madden 2004. Blame it on the white man - Actually I'm 10-3 right now, and speeding to the Super Bowl with the Raiders, God I love the new owner mode... lol
Dogg, all that shit is not important. It's the underline of United States mentality of white privilage. White's don't even know they got privilage. But whatever. An educated minority is a threat to white people, oh my God, that Mexican is getting educated... oh no... he might spread truth to other Mexicans, and get educated, then they would pick our fruits anymore... oh no... they wouldn't clean our dishes, or swipe the floors, oh no... they'll work beside us. Oh no... can't have that. Their leaders must be currupt and racist, like Cruz Bustamante, and they can only get this way from Affirmative Action, after all, they aren't smart enought to really succeed, are they?
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Diversity and Multiculturalism: The New Racism
By Michael S. Berliner, Ph.D., and Gary Hull, Ph.D.
Is ethnic diversity an “absolute essential” of a college education? UCLA’s Chancellor Charles Young thinks so. Ethnic diversity is clearly the purpose of affirmative action, which Young is defending against a long-overdue assault. But far from being essential to a college education, such diversity is a sure road to its destruction. “Ethnic diversity” is merely racism in a politically correct disguise.
Many people have a very superficial view of racism. They see it as merely the belief that one race is superior to another. It is much more than that. It is a fundamental (and fundamentally wrong) view of human nature. Racism is the notion that one’s race determines one’s identity. It is the belief that one’s convictions, values and character are determined not by the judgment of one’s mind but by one’s anatomy or “blood.”
This view causes people to be condemned (or praised) based on their racial membership. In turn, it leads them to condemn or praise others on the same basis. In fact, one can gain an authentic sense of pride only from one’s own achievements, not from inherited characteristics.
The spread of racism requires the destruction of an individual’s confidence in his own mind. Such an individual then anxiously seeks a sense of identity by clinging to some group, abandoning his autonomy and his rights, allowing his ethnic group to tell him what to believe. Because he thinks of himself as a racial entity, he feels “himself” only among others of the same race. He becomes a separatist, choosing his friends — and enemies — based on ethnicity. This separatism has resulted in the spectacle of student-segregated dormitories and segregated graduations.
The diversity movement claims that its goal is to extinguish racism and build tolerance of differences. This is a complete sham. One cannot teach students that their identity is determined by skin color and expect them to become colorblind. One cannot espouse multiculturalism and expect students to see each other as individual human beings. One cannot preach the need for self-esteem while destroying the faculty which makes it possible: reason. One cannot teach collective identity and expect students to have self-esteem.
Advocates of “diversity” are true racists in the basic meaning of that term: they see the world through colored lenses, colored by race and gender. To the multiculturalist, race is what counts — for values, for thinking, for human identity in general. No wonder racism is increasing: colorblindness is now considered evil, if not impossible. No wonder people don’t treat each other as individuals: to the multiculturalist, they aren’t.
Advocates of “diversity” claim it will teach students to tolerate and celebrate their differences. But the “differences” they have in mind are racial differences, which means we’re being urged to glorify race, which means we’re being asked to institutionalize separatism. “Racial identity” erects an unbridgeable gulf between people, as though they were different species, with nothing fundamental in common. If that were true — if “racial identity” determined one’s values and thinking methods — there would be no possibility for understanding or cooperation among people of different races.
Advocates of “diversity” claim that because the real world is diverse, the campus should reflect that fact. But why should a campus population “reflect” the general population (particularly the ethnic population)? No answer. In fact, the purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and develop reasoning, not to be a demographic mirror of society.
Racism, not any meaningful sense of diversity, guides today’s intellectuals. The educationally significant diversity that exists in “the real world” is intellectual diversity, i.e., the diversity of ideas. But such diversity — far from being sought after — is virtually forbidden on campus. The existence of “political correctness” blasts the academics’ pretense at valuing real diversity. What they want is abject conformity.
The only way to eradicate racism on campus is to scrap racist programs and the philosophic ideas that feed racism. Racism will become an ugly memory only when universities teach a valid concept of human nature: one based on the tenets that the individual’s mind is competent, that the human intellect is efficacious, that we possess free will, that individuals are to be judged as individuals — and that deriving one’s identity from one’s race is a corruption — a corruption appropriate to Nazi Germany, not to a nation based on freedom and independence.
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Nice article, but the problem is that now you have a scholar trying to redefine words because he feels he can. In fact, it has been agreed with many many many scholars that what he says is not true. Though I will give you props for at least coming up with educated article. I do have tons of respect for you, and am actually glad you are reading and looking up articles by people that are not just spitting bull shit, but have facts to back them up. I hope to see more from you soon, as this challenges me to now sight my sources, and to come up with educated arguments, as oppose to just speaking for CWalker, in hopes he understands.
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Professor Gregory Jay
Department of English
University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee
Last Revised December 2002
1. Who did we learn about in school today?
Like most words, "multiculturalism" needs to be understood from both an historical and a conceptual perspective. Historically, "multiculturalism" came into wide public use during the early 1980s in the context of public school curriculum reform. Specifically, the argument was made that the content of classes in history, literature, social studies, and other areas reflected what came to be called a "Eurocentric" bias. Few if any women or people of color, or people from outside the Western European tradition, appeared prominently in the curriculums of schools in the United States. This material absence was also interpreted as a value judgment that reinforced unhealthy ethnocentric and even racist attitudes.
Observers noted that teaching and administrative staffs in schools were also overwhelmingly white and/or male (whiteness being pervasive at the teaching level, maleness at the administrative level, reflecting the politics of gender and class as well as race in the educational system). Eventually parallel questions were raised (once more) about the ethno-racial or cultural biases of other institutions, such as legislatures, government agencies, corporations, religious groups, private clubs, etc. Each of these has in turn developed its own response and policies regarding multiculturalism.
Finally, "multiculturalism" may also have become a popular term as "race" lost much of its former credibility as a concept. Scientists agree that, in terms of DNA genetics, "race" has no significant meaning as a way of categorizing human differences. Intermarried families offer the puzzle of a parent and child considered as belonging to two different races--clearly an absurd idea given that race was thought of as biologically passed from parent to offspring. Thus "culture" began to replace "race" as a term for distinguishing among distinct human groups.
2. Is there any justice in this world?
The concern to create a more "culturally diverse" curriculum had roots in the intellectual and social movements associated with the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s. These included Black Power,La Raza, the American Indian Movement, and the Women's Liberation movement, each of which challenged the norms and effects of educational policy. Multiculturalism also is directly related to global shifts of power, population, and culture in the era of "postcolonialism," as nations around the world take independence in the wake of the decline of Western empires (whether European, Soviet, or American). Perhaps more importantly, the Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) --- which outlawed explicit school segregation --- led to the admission of large numbers of non-white students to public and some private schools (also occasioning the "white flight" that has largely succeeded in re-segregating schools in most major cities). Teachers and school administrators then faced a student body with very different faces. This demographic cultural diversity was accelerated by postcolonial immigration from non-Western European nations during the last two decades -- especially from Mexico, Latin America, and Asia, which was hastened by the liberalization of immigration laws in the mid-1960s.
3. Melt or get out of the pot!
The historical event of multiculturalism brings with it many complicated conceptual problems, causing a rich debate over what multiculturalism is or should mean. America's traditional conception of itself as a "melting pot" of diverse peoples joined in a common New World culture has been challenged by some multiculturalists who consider the "melting pot" metaphor a cover for oppressive assimilation. To them, the only way you can melt in the pot is by assimilating -- becoming similar to ---the dominant or "hegemonic" white culture. In this argument, assimilation is rejected. Then multiculturalism becomes a movement that insists that American society has never been white, but always in fact multiracial and diverse. This movement seeks to preserve distinctly different ethnic, racial, or cultural communities without melting them into a common culture. Here the common culture is seen as white supremeacy, a culture of bigotry and discrimination, and the remedy as an emphasis on the separate characteristics and virtues of particular cultural groups.
4. Out of Africa?
Most controversial in this regard is the movement known as "Afrocentrism," which in various versions seeks to document the centrality of African cultural traditions to the foundation of American and Western history, and to celebrate that African tradition so as to increase the self-esteem and educational success of African-American students. Critics of Afrocentrism dispute both its intellectual claims --- the scholarship and historical conclusions it advances --- and its educational claims --- especially regarding the effect of an ethnically-centered curriculum on the academic achievement of students.
Defenders of multiculturalism have published a number of respected books to substantiate their scholarly claims. They point out that critics of Afrocentrism rarely investigate whether or not the traditional Eurocentric curriculum has artificially improved the performance of white students. See, for example, debates about the cultural biases of "standardized" tests like the SAT or the GRE, on which many of the questions assume a body of cultural knowledge more likely to be found among white suburbanites than students in the ghetto or barrio. Or consider arguments that white males in the past created an artificially easy time for themselves in college admissions and job competition by excluding women and minorities. Critics of Afrocentrism have had more success challenging some of the details of its historical claims than in refuting the general charge of Eurocentrism. Many middle-of-the-road writers claim to reject both "-isms" as making the same mistake of asserting a dominant "center." They instead advocate models of cultural hybridity and impurity that see each culture as a changing node in a network without a single center.
5. Is identity political?
One problem with certain strands of multiculturalism is their reliance on "identity politics." "Identity politics" refers to the tendency to define one's political and social identity and interests purely in terms of some group category: race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, religion, etc. Identity politics became more popular after the 1960s for many of the same reasons that multiculturalism did. The critique of America's "common culture" led many people to identify with a particular group, rather than with the nation --- a nation, after all, whose policies they believed had excluded or oppressed them. People increasingly became Native-Americans, African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, Gay-Americans, etc., in an explosion of hyphenation.
This movement for group solidarity did in many cases provide individuals with the resources to defend their interests and express their values, resources that as disparate individuals they could not possibly attain. As the American economy began to decline in the late 1980s, the scramble for a piece of the shrinking pie increased the tendency of people to band together in groups that together might have enough power to defend or extend their interests. American society is now often seen as a battleground of special-interest groups, many of them defined by the racial, ethnic, or cultural identity of their members. Hostility between these groups as they compete for scarce resources is inevitable. In defense of identity politics, others point out that these divisions between cultural groups are less the voluntary decisions of individuals than the product of discrimination and bigotry in the operation of the economy and the social institutions. It is these that divide people up by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, etc., privileging the dominant group and subordinating the rest, they claim.
6. Breaking up is hard to do.
Still, most analysts admit that in practice individuals belong to numerous different groups and have complex cultural identities. The theoretical term for analyzing people in terms of their group affiliations is "subject position." Each person occupies a variety of subject positions -- is positioned socially, economically, and politically -- by virtue of how his or her subjectivity is shaped by group identifications. When we analyze our identities, we can break them up into numerous facets of ourselves, until it seems that Humpty Dumpty can never be put back together again.
A person may think of herself or be treated at one moment as a woman, at another moment as Asian, at another moment as upper-class, at another moment as elderly, at another moment as a lesbian--each time being either helped or hindered by the identification, depending on the circumstances. The various parts of our cultural identities may not add up to a neat and predictable whole. Multiculturalism, then, insofar as it groups individuals into categories, may overlook the practical reality that no one lives in just one box. Recent proponents of multiculturalism, indeed, have emphasized the multiculturalism within each individual.
7. The end . . . and the beginning.
In my classes, the essays and stories we read, and the films and videos we study, give expression to the history and conceptual arguments over multiculturalism. There are many accounts of multiculturalism--many "fictions" about it. I am personally less concerned with discovering the "true" multiculturalism than I am with examining how different artists and writers have expressed their experience of it. In literature and the arts we tend to get the messy complexities in all their detail, rather than the abstract rigidities we get from theorists, polemicists, and statisticians. The texts (written and visual) should allow you to better comprehend the character of multicultural life in America today and to respond by evaluating your own personal relationship to the question of cultural identity.
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Instead of posting stupid ass articles that you mindlessly accept as fact, why don't you start thinking for yourself?
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Instead of posting stupid ass articles that you mindlessly accept as fact, why don't you start thinking for yourself?
I do... infact why more than I post articles. But I want you to see that in fact I have prof, and studies done my people to prove my point. I feel as if being a college educated Mexican-American in one of the best colleges in the nation is not good enough for you. It's like I have to post educated white people's work to get through to you. Shit, what do I have to do, post what a former conservative turn activist against racism has to say. I mean, I feel as if no matter what, you don't want to hear the other side, you want to stay close to it. I will listen. I understand why white America would be mad. I know about it, I listen to it, I am force feed it because it's around me 24/7. I chose the college I'm in because I would finally be around people that are just like you, and it's true, most of this college is white people (92%), rich and Republican. I live with you, because an education from this university proves that I can be just as smart as a person of privilage. (not white, because not every white person gets excepted to this school, but most here are rich and went to prep schools) In order to have a respect opinion in this country, I have to surround myself with the other side, and I don't mind, because I plan on moving other Latinos up. People of my area, I want to help, and that's a lot of different races I might add. But you don't seem to respect my opinion, even though I worked hard for many years studying, reading, living the experience, taking the classes, and talking to people that have a different opinion than mind, and taking what they have to say in account. But no matter what, no matter how much I try, and no matter what I say, and how I say it, people like you, people that don't want to hear it, wouldn't listen. So instead of using my own voice, I sight others, and not everyone I sight I agree with. BUT, I will say that I respect their opinions. I respect a Pat Buchanan, because his worked hard, and I may not agree, but his earned his place, same with a Collin Powell, same with a George H.W. Bush Sr. But it seems that no matter how much I work, I can't be respected because to you, I'm a liberal, Mexican-American male from poor backgrounds that would agree with United States values and Patroitism. Well I say this to you, was it not Thomas Jefferson that said "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
This government has violated these rights many times over, and today ignore the problem. We have a democracy, so if this is the case, we can over turn the government with our votes, and it is the right of the people to do so. I just don't pull stupit shit out my ass, I look up what I'm mad at, I read the articles, look at both sides, and depending on my life, with is as a Mexican-American male who grew up in a very liberal part of California, I then think for myself, and come up with an opinion. If that is not good enough for you, then I ask you, what more do I need to do for you to listen to me?
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LMAO@ Sub Z
damn pink you really are a whore... why would you want so many kids and make mexicans look worse?? dont here in TX in most counties we have the most teenage pregnancy, and alot of kids bieng born... too alot of other raceist ppl we are known as a bunch of brown ppl that just make babies and flea into the country... you and idiot i swear... have kids with m dogg so they be retarded and hopefully die at birth...
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Instead of posting stupid ass articles that you mindlessly accept as fact, why don't you start thinking for yourself?
Same can be said for Engel
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LMAO@ Sub Z
damn pink you really are a whore... why would you want so many kids and make mexicans look worse?? dont here in TX in most counties we have the most teenage pregnancy, and alot of kids bieng born... too alot of other raceist ppl we are known as a bunch of brown ppl that just make babies and flea into the country... you and idiot i swear... have kids with m dogg so they be retarded and hopefully die at birth...
i am not a teenager.. i am already a 21 year old women... i make my own choices in my life.. and if i choose to get married to a mexican/chicano man... and plan out having children with him... that is my choice... that is something that i choose for myself...
so dont waist your time responding to me.. because your the only puto here...
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LMAO@ Sub Z
damn pink you really are a whore... why would you want so many kids and make mexicans look worse?? dont here in TX in most counties we have the most teenage pregnancy, and alot of kids bieng born... too alot of other raceist ppl we are known as a bunch of brown ppl that just make babies and flea into the country... you and idiot i swear... have kids with m dogg so they be retarded and hopefully die at birth...
i am not a teenager.. i am already a 21 year old women... i make my own choices in my life.. and if i choose to get married to a mexican/chicano man... and plan out having children with him... that is my choice... that is something that i choose for myself...
so dont waist your time responding to me.. because your the only puto here...
ok you do that and become a whore... its your life
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LMAO@ Sub Z
damn pink you really are a whore... why would you want so many kids and make mexicans look worse?? dont here in TX in most counties we have the most teenage pregnancy, and alot of kids bieng born... too alot of other raceist ppl we are known as a bunch of brown ppl that just make babies and flea into the country... you and idiot i swear... have kids with m dogg so they be retarded and hopefully die at birth...
i am not a teenager.. i am already a 21 year old women... i make my own choices in my life.. and if i choose to get married to a mexican/chicano man... and plan out having children with him... that is my choice... that is something that i choose for myself...
so dont waist your time responding to me.. because your the only puto here...
ok you do that and become a whore... its your life
you are an idiot.... net gangsta... and i notice something... why do you spend hours at a time at the WCC and almost all your post are about me??? do you have no life what to ever?
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LMAO@ Sub Z
damn pink you really are a whore... why would you want so many kids and make mexicans look worse?? dont here in TX in most counties we have the most teenage pregnancy, and alot of kids bieng born... too alot of other raceist ppl we are known as a bunch of brown ppl that just make babies and flea into the country... you and idiot i swear... have kids with m dogg so they be retarded and hopefully die at birth...
i am not a teenager.. i am already a 21 year old women... i make my own choices in my life.. and if i choose to get married to a mexican/chicano man... and plan out having children with him... that is my choice... that is something that i choose for myself...
so dont waist your time responding to me.. because your the only puto here...
ok you do that and become a whore... its your life
you are an idiot.... net gangsta... and i notice something... why do you spend hours at a time at the WCC and almost all your post are about me??? do you have no life what to ever?
if you look at the time on my posts there at night rarely on daytimes this is like the only time i have posted during the day because unlike you and many others i do have a life... so go to church and tech kids how to be whores like you...
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LMAO@ Sub Z
damn pink you really are a whore... why would you want so many kids and make mexicans look worse?? dont here in TX in most counties we have the most teenage pregnancy, and alot of kids bieng born... too alot of other raceist ppl we are known as a bunch of brown ppl that just make babies and flea into the country... you and idiot i swear... have kids with m dogg so they be retarded and hopefully die at birth...
i am not a teenager.. i am already a 21 year old women... i make my own choices in my life.. and if i choose to get married to a mexican/chicano man... and plan out having children with him... that is my choice... that is something that i choose for myself...
so dont waist your time responding to me.. because your the only puto here...
ok you do that and become a whore... its your life
you are an idiot.... net gangsta... and i notice something... why do you spend hours at a time at the WCC and almost all your post are about me??? do you have no life what to ever?
if you look at the time on my posts there at night rarely on daytimes this is like the only time i have posted during the day because unlike you and many others i do have a life... so go to church and tech kids how to be whores like you...
you dont have a life gangsta... the net is your life.. thats why you are up in everyone business.. you have to hold down the net gangsta.... before someone trys to get crazy up in here internet game....
damn you so gangsta.... to be reppin the WCC... damn i want to be just like you!
::)
stop wasting my time little boy.. with you posting 24/7...
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OMFG i hvent fucking net banged since like a year already so get over it that shit dont faze me...
plus like i said its 11 o clock ill probaly be posting all night because i dont post during the day because unlike your dyke ugly fat ass i have a life instead of fucking people i meet over the internet... you meet guys to fuck over the internet if i fuck somebody its gonna be people i know in real life so who is the one without a life? but now that you are lesbian its ok im sure u will find you a woman or you can go have abunch of other slutty kids with your brother and hopefully they die at a very young age... i wont bother you no more you seem to be really upset about it im sorry for makeing you cry... ill go on with my life and you go on with your and let a guy rape you again ::) which im sure never happend...
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OMFG i hvent fucking net banged since like a year already so get over it that shit dont faze me...
plus like i said its 11 o clock ill probaly be posting all night because i dont post during the day because unlike your dyke ugly fat ass i have a life instead of fucking people i meet over the internet... you meet guys to fuck over the internet if i fuck somebody its gonna be people i know in real life so who is the one without a life? but now that you are lesbian its ok im sure u will find you a woman or you can go have abunch of other slutty kids with your brother and hopefully they die at a very young age... i wont bother you no more you seem to be really upset about it im sorry for makeing you cry... ill go on with my life and you go on with your and let a guy rape you again ::) which im sure never happend...
what ever net G.... go ahead a rep the online gangsta....
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is that all u gonna say? if im a internet gangsta your an internet whore...