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I agree that some people have to work harder. And I'm not trying to be argumentative as I dig into your post:
Are you saying that a black girl and a white girl, similar IQ, similar family situation, at the same school, etc....the black girl would have to work harder than the white girl to get to the same place? (and by "same place" I'm thinking of a path that includes overall GPA in high school, ability to be admitted to college, college success, and lifetime career success). And if your answer to that is yes, I would appreciate further clarification as to why.
If your post was just a general statement about various people in various circumstances, with varying levels of intelligence, then yes, I absolutely agree that the effort to achieve is not the same. But that is an entirely different topic than white privilege.
Thanks.
I am saying the black girl will absolutely need to work harder, no question. There is a saying for black people that you need to work twice as hard to get half as much (and yes - women also have issues when compared to men, but as you can surmise, then being a black woman would act as a double whammy).
I'll share a condensed version of my own background that would be illustrative. I moved states in 7th grade. And just for reference sake, there was another guy in my class who also moved from out of state at the same time, he was white. And just for the fun of it, when we graduated high school he was Valedictorian, and I was #4 in our class, and we spent all those years in middle and high school on math team, and science team, and debate teams and so on together. I actually had pretty much all of my classes with him until we finished high school! So for all intents and purposes, he and I are pretty similar in terms of academic achievement. And class was also fairly similar, not that I know a ton about his parents, but we both had 2 college educated parents in a place where very few of our classmates had college educated parents. So class in our case was very similar too!
Anyway, back to the story. So when I am transferring over to this new school district, my parents bring my transcripts and test scores, and they say "my daughter should be in honors classes." The school told my parents that they thought my test scores were forged, and that in order to prove I should be in those classes, I would have to wait until the following year, until I could take the new states standardized tests. They also said that there was no way my IQ tests were accurate. My parents in this case had enough privilege to call bs, and threaten to file a lawsuit, and suddenly my test scores were fine, they let me in to the classes but warned my parents that they would remove me if I didn't have good enough grades.
Anyway, at some point, I had asked this other guy about if he had issues transferring his grades and scores when his family moved (my parents didn't share these details with me until I was older, I just knew that my schedule changed in the first couple days of school). He said no, they accepted my scores just fine, no issues for me. Eventually I learned that all the other black kids at my school struggled to get into honors classes, because teachers didn't recommend them. They were not having issues with the coursework at all. But the teachers didn't think they were qualified. Our honors classes lost plenty of white kids along the way who couldn't handle it, and they didn't do well in class at all, but they were still there year after year because the teachers never dropped them from the classes.
Eventually the district changed the way to get into the classes, in high school, and students could choose - but most of my black peers were behind since the didn't have the middle school honors classes that let you get to calculus in high school.
Anyway, back to me and my classmate. On the whole, I did well and had no issues. But there were a few teachers along the way that put up roadblocks. Like I had a teacher who said that I had a speech impediment, and thought I shouldn't be in her honors English class. So she signed me up for "speech therapy" 2x a week. Which as you could surmise would impact my performance in class. I went to the therapy session, and to paraphrase, the teacher was like WTF why are you here? Your speech is great, you enunciate clearly. The only issue I see here is that you talk a little fast, but that is not an impediment. Something seems fishy here.
I had other teachers who regarded me with skepticism when I walked in the door. Eventually that stopped as I got a reputation as being a good student, but the first year or 2 was rough. I had a teacher write me up for being late to class (aka walking in at the same time as the bell), and I saw other students breeze in later without so much as a warning. There are so many little things that end up getting in the way and distracting from you achieving.
Many jobs ago, I worked as a consultant. And the number of times I went to a meeting where people were shocked I was in the room, not a secretary, and actually knew what I was talking about was appalling. It is very frustrating when you ask a question or make a comment at a event and someone comes up to you to say "OMG you are so articulate. Did you go to college?" While it sounds like a compliment, it isn't. They are saying that because they are surprised, not because they are impressed.
Anyway you get used to a lot of weird slights, and getting passed over, and underestimated. Even if at the end you end up doing pretty well - it doesn't always match up to your white peers. While I am doing pretty well in my career, I'm still not doing as well as people that have lower qualifications and less experience than I do. And it is not because they work harder. Privilege opens doors not all of us have access to.
Hmm...
It depends on their "starting point" and how far they "made it."
I would think that for the majority of those that made it to the "stardom" from rags - it's a question of talent and pure luck.
For those that made it in "professional world" ( lawyers, bankers and what not) - they probably had a better "starting point" - i.e. nicer neighborhoods, better-educated families.
As for the rest - a lot of self-discipline, and often - a lot of faith and good old prayers.
But somehow I think this particular group doesn't make it too far.
They just make enough to "stay out of trouble" as much as they can.
That would be my thought.
Thanks for your reply.
How about just parents who value education, even (or especially) if they themselves had not had the advantage of an education?
You can stop right there, because "privilege" is nothing "arbitrary."
As I tried to explain it to you, it's a historic fact.
But apparently you don't understand what "world history" is.
No, I don't agree with your assessment. I think they function in the same way. Of course race is arbitrary and decided by society. And the other items in my list are more concrete. But you don't get to choose your gender, or if you are disabled, or which social class you are born into, any more than you get to choose your race categorization.
That doesn't mean that race functions as a big trump card in the US and is unimportant. I just don't agree on your assessment that there isn't privilege assigned based on other categories. They just have impact in different places.
I'm going to have to really to think about and wrestle with the sentence I bolded.
I think I have always assumed that hard work could pretty much conquer anything. To believe otherwise would seem painfully pessimistic and fatalistic. But (light bulb moment here) maybe my white privilege has kept me from imagining such an "extraordinarily unprivileged situation" that escape is truly not possible.
So then my next question would be: How can we as a society work toward eliminating those extraordinarily unprivileged situations?
I mean, I don't have a quick answer. If there was a quick answer, someone'd probably have implemented it by now.
I'd say three major starting points would be decoupling school funding from local property taxes, working toward universal access to health care (I'm especially thinking of sobriety and mental health support), and reforming the legal system in favor of a more restorative justice model.
I'd also encourage you to consider, the concept of "escape" in order to make a decent life for oneself. If someone has to leave their family, community, personal connections, etc. in order to do so, can we really progress as a whole? It's not like we can just empty every impoverished rural town and every impoverished urban neighborhood in America. What happens to the people left behind? And what happens to people when they're forced to give up part of their identity if they want to be successful?
No, I don't agree with your assessment.I think they function in the same way. Of course race is arbitrary and decided by society. And the other items in my list are more concrete. But you don't get to choose your gender, or if you are disabled, or which social class you are born into, any more than you get to choose your race categorization.
That doesn't mean that race functions as a big trump card in the US and is unimportant. I just don't agree on your assessment that there isn't privilege assigned based on other categories. They just have impact in different places.
Oh but they don't.
Privilege is something that's given to you at birth, IRRESPECTIVELY from your merits.
Advantage is something that you might get already as the result of your merits.
Between race based hiring quotas and H1-B visa jobs?
Freaking plenty.
Comparably to regular jobs, what is "plenty?"
( And what H1-B jobs have to do with AAs born in the US?)
Quote:
Have you been to.any Government offices or the DMV lately?
They're practically ALL minority employees.
And the customer's factory that I was talking about.....
Approximately 100 people on the floor.
Probably 70 of them are black.
Don't even try to tell me that POC can't get a job if they want one..
They can Bob, hypothetically speaking- they can.
The question is how many hoops they have to jump through in order to make it to the point, where this job is even offered to them.
The term "white privilege" has always rubbed me the wrong way. I am white, but I was very poor growing up. Neither of my parents finished high school, and my education was not a great concern of theirs. As a teenager, when I first mentioned my interest in college, my parents said, "We don't understand why a girl would want to go to college, and you know we can't pay for it." Despite all of that, I had a hunger for learning, always did well in school, and worked multiple jobs to pay my own way through college over 7 difficult years.
I have worked hard my whole life, and I am now a comfortable, high upper class retiree. None of my siblings went to college, so I don't believe there was some "privilege" within my family that I did not recognize. I feel the only "privilege" I had was an innate desire to learn, work hard, and make something of myself.
I'm curious, do you think it's wrong that I believe, "If I could lift myself out of poverty, so can anyone else?"
Congrats for beating the odds and you are absolutely right about that.
The Truth I've found is, "So our troubles we think, are of our own making."
If my troubles are of your making, then I'm effed... Or gasp, liberal.
The term "white privilege" has always rubbed me the wrong way. I am white, but I was very poor growing up. Neither of my parents finished high school, and my education was not a great concern of theirs. As a teenager, when I first mentioned my interest in college, my parents said, "We don't understand why a girl would want to go to college, and you know we can't pay for it." Despite all of that, I had a hunger for learning, always did well in school, and worked multiple jobs to pay my own way through college over 7 difficult years.
I have worked hard my whole life, and I am now a comfortable, high upper class retiree. None of my siblings went to college, so I don't believe there was some "privilege" within my family that I did not recognize. I feel the only "privilege" I had was an innate desire to learn, work hard, and make something of myself.
I'm curious, do you think it's wrong that I believe, "If I could lift myself out of poverty, so can anyone else?"
If "White Privilege" existed, why did Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren, have to lie about being a Native American to get ahead in life?
Since you jump in conversation like some kind of cowboy, here is a simple question for you -
does *affirmative action* hands them cars to make it from HERE to their potential place of employment?
If not, they simply can't make it to the point, where they are "affirmed" for anything)))
Affirmative action is a policy in which an individual's color, race, sex, religion or national origin are taken into account to increase opportunities provided to an underrepresented part of society.
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