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OK, here's the truth about "white privilege" that some people don't want to hear.
White people and East Asians tend to have a future oriented mindset. What this means is that they promote education, save for a rainy day, practice birth control, etc.
Blacks, on the other hand, tend to have a present oriented mindset. That is why they drop out of school, do not practice birth control, and are more likely to spend their money on lottery tickets rather than save it in a bank account or investments. Before you jump down my throat, these are facts, people. Very easy to collaborate with surveys, government statistics, etc.
Are there exceptions on each side of the spectrum? Yes, absolutely. But this is how it tends to be.
The end result is that whites are much more likely to succeed in life because of their mindsets, and then often have money to pass on to their children as a result. Is it fair? Well, that's up to you to decide. But I think it's pretty clear... if you plan ahead and work for a brighter future, things will work out better than if you live with an attitude of instant gratification.
Uh; take away the culture differences between "can do" people and "lazy" people, there's not real difference between different races.
Every minority group has faced it's share of discrimination, but in this country, most Asian Americans are not the descendants of people who were brought here against their will and sold into slavery. Not to mention, Jim Crow laws were written specifically for Blacks. Apples and oranges and yet that still has nothing to do with wether or not White privilege exists. I'm not struggling, not do I consider myself a victim in anyway, yet my son has been pulled over by the police for DWB and I've been called racial slurs. Did it stop me? No but does racism exist? Yes.
What does it matter if your ancestors were sold by african slave owners to British slave brokers and brought here. That effects you, zero...not one iota.
Jim Crow Laws I'll give you. A sh*t stain on American history.
No one denies that racism exists in America. The difference is that it isn't institutional. Racism as a whole will NEVER cease to exist. People will always hold prejudices and that unfortunately won't change.
None of that means that being white makes your life easier. Having money makes your life easier. White privilege is misleading because "whiteness" isn't the privilege in the equation...it's money. Wealthy, well-dressed black men are probably pulled over a hell of a lot less than trashy looking kids because the assumption is that they would have little incentive to steal or break the law because they have more to lose. Looking like a you have nothing to lose, or stand to benefit from crime makes you stick out...unfortunately a lot of black, younger men present themselves this way thus attracting negative attention from the cops despite likely being 100% innocent of any wrong doing.
Dont care for either one of em.. On a side note I do feel privileged being white
being white, I do not feel privileged. probably more because of being a veteran than anything else. anything else that I have gotten is because of my hard work and my sound investment in both the stock market and my former business.
In the 1800's Blacks were either slaves or sharecroppers. In the 1800's Asians were poor gold miners and railroad workers. Both faced extreme discrimination, and the Anti Chinese immigration act was in place from the 1880's to the 1940's. Lynch mobs of white miners attacked and murdered Chinese immigrants in California, and the police did nothing about it, just like nobody tried to stop the KKK.
In the 1940's Blacks were living in segregation. They had to ride in the back of the bus and could not use the whites' better facilities. But segregation of Asian and white children in California also occurred. And lets not forget that during World War II, Japanese Americans were loaded onto trains and sent to camps, while Blacks were not.
Flash forward 70 years. Japanese Americans aren't demanding affirmative action for having their property stolen. Chinese Americans aren't living in ghettos in poverty, claiming its due to the discrimination they faced in the 1800's. In fact, Asian Americans have become MORE successful than White Americans, and have the highest household income in the country.
Oh, and lets not forget many Chinese immigrants who came in the 60's faced far more than racism. They were sent to death camps by communist governments, bombed by US planes in Vietnam, and died en masse after Mao's farming collectivization. None of them are demanding Whites sacrifice anything to help them out.
I know this since I AM a FIRST GENERATION immigrant.
What you could have done with the time it took you to post that smart aleck remark was do a 10 second google search on Bill O'Reilly's charitable contributions. Every cent from every book and from his website goes to charity, with a primary focus on veterans and underprivileged children. Since blacks are overrepresented compared to whites in both categories, yes he donates millions of dollars to help the black community. Next dumb question?
Yes, it exists. It would honestly be a bit idiotic to say it's simply not real.
But is it the problem with everything? No. It's not an all powerful force (anymore). As O'Riley said, if you work hard, you will be successful. This is true regardless of ones background. Stewart however is still correct because someone who is born black is likely going to have a harder time achieving that success simply because they are black. Now, the real reason is a lack of opportunity. Statistically, a black person is less likely to have the opportunity to achieve than a white person.
However, going back to support O'Riley, being a certain race isn't actually the problem. Most people today won't not hire someone because they're black. Sure, there are some still alive but they also think the confederacy will make a comeback, so evolution will deal with them in due time. However, we need to ask why blacks don't have these opportunities, and it really comes down to poverty. Why are more black people in poverty? And this is where Stewart becomes correct again: it's the ghost of Jim Crow. Because of the limitations of black Americans in the past, it's what led them to where they are today.
O'Riley is still correct, and I think Stewart recognizes this but many liberals don't, working hard is important and that's what determines one's success; not their race or gender or anything else. So why are black people struggling? I am convinced that there are just as many young Black Americans living in the ghettos of Chicago with the same ambition and ability as the white kids growing up in whatever suburb you want to use for the example, but there's is not a proportional amount of opportunity. The white kids have the opportunity the black kids don't. That's white privilege.
And yes, I'm a liberal, but I actually like Bill O'Riley. I don't always agree with him, but as far as news anchors go, I like him. He's fairly honest but very biased, but he's not alone. He's at least usually pretty reasonable, and I'd say he's extremely intelligent and even when I disagree with him, he raised good points. He's, as John said, the Pope Francis of Fox News. Bill O'Riley is basically what Shawn Hannity thinks Shawn Hannity is.
Dont care for either one of em.. On a side note I do feel privileged being white
I know a lot of people will disagree, but Bill O'Reilly was at least "more right" than Jon Stewart. Both were technically correct in their own ways, but the issue that O'Reilly mentions but doesn't adequately expound upon, is the fact that privilege isn't nearly as simple as just "black and white".
As Bill does mention without much emphasis, his upbringing was more privileged than some, but not nearly as privileged as others.
More specifically, the advantages that someone receives in this country isn't so much about being black and white, it is more about specific environmental conditions and social connections that someone has or makes in their early life.
For instance, the reason rich kids send their kids to private school has basically nothing to do with the fact that private schools are so much better than public schools. Its that rich kids send their kids to the expensive private schools that other rich kids send their kids. Those kids become friends with one another, and mutually support each other in their careers as they get older.
If you are brought up in an environment where no one really cares about education. Where few people work, or where there is minimal access to capital, experience, and entrepreneurship. Then you are raised in an environment where you neither have the drive to succeed, nor have the knowledge, experience, and social connections to succeed.
If you look at a white kid from the ghetto who was raised without a father, especially if he has the ghetto accent and values. Then he really has basically no more "privileges" than the black kid from the ghetto. On the other hand, I'm sure someone like Jon Stewart, who is a Jew, who was born in New York and raised in New Jersey, has significantly more advantages than almost every white person in this country. Especially in his field of work, entertainment(which is completely dominated by Jews).
On the other hand, the son of the black doctor or black lawyer who went to the same schools and lived in the same neighborhoods as the white kids, has effectively the same advantages that his white neighbors have, and probably even more(because of affirmative-action).
As many have noted, it is more about "class" than "race". In reality, it is your class that gives you privileges, not your race.
To explain better, all we really need to do is look at Asians. The median income of Asian-Americans is nearly $10,000 a year higher than non-Hispanic whites. But the poverty rate of Asians-Americans is about 25% higher than non-Hispanic whites.
Why? Because just as everyone else, poverty is cyclical. The Asians who came here with college degrees from their old country to make more money are very successful(IE engineers, doctors, etc). The Asians that came here fleeing destitution or persecution(such as the Vietnamese after the war), tended to come here poor and uneducated, and largely stayed poor and uneducated.
It is about class people, not race. The only way to break the cycle of poverty, is through education and hard work. Which is exactly what Bill O'Reilly said. The real white privilege in this country stems from the fact that white people largely already have a culture which has long promoted hard work and getting an education. Blacks will continue to underperform as long as they don't have a culture which promotes education and hard work.
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