I'm going to type this up, but you need to read it. You can't skim. You are continually assigning me opinions that I don't have or telling me I'm doing things that I'm not doing. I have zero desire to keep rehashing things over and over because my position keeps getting told to me rather than accepted for where it actually exists. And I will grant you this: My position is not black and white, no pun intended.
Let me start with this, at no point, have I ever renamed white privilege to white guilt. I don't even know how one does that or if it's even possible since one is an advantage and the other is an emotion. I said he HAS white guilt, but NOT that he didn't have white privilege. There is a gigantic difference between those two things. (I know you're probably thinking, "But you did!". No I didn't. Go back and read it or just keep reading here as I'll be addressing it again.)
Also, I specifically said this:
Leisher wrote: This isn't saying white privilege doesn't exist because being white comes with certain expectations and naturally makes you more appealing to other people that look like you. (Something that is true of all races.)
Yet, here's the belief you give me:
But you do seem to have an issue with acknowledging the existence of white privilege.
Point being, if you're not going to read it, can we please end the conversation here? It takes too much time to type all this stuff out. Onto my defense!
He's simply pointing out his white privilege.
No, he's not, and I cannot stress this enough: My position is that he is not where he is today solely because of white privilege, which is what his article implies. That is simply a misguided opinion thanks to white guilt. Or maybe it's not white guilt? Maybe it's simply the lack of being able to see the overall picture, because to say one's entire life is thanks to a single...what do you even call it?...phenomenon is ridiculous. However, it does scream white guilt, in that, he's willing to accept that is the reason for his success rather than a myriad of other things. (Or if you prefer, the "key element" to his success.)
That's why I feel like you are renaming it.
Hopefully, by now you understand that I'm not. Seriously, you can disagree with me on the point I'm making if you like, but this is a ridiculous statement.
Why does "Here's my family history and how we benefited from being white" become "I feel bad and we all owe black people stuff"?
As I explained above, he took it farther than it should have gone. Here's where I see it in his own timeline (Although, I'm not pulling the article up again. I'm just trying to get this done.):
-His grandfather makes money pre-POC (and women) having rights. - White privilege
-His mom fucks her way into the family. - Nope, this is pussy privilege.
-Mom gets dumped, but gets enough money to buy a house in a nice suburb. - Nope, this is 100% about money and his mom's intelligence to not waste it.
-Nice suburb has mostly white people and good schools - Based on the era, this is undeniably white privilege.
-He works and studies very hard. - Nope, this is 100% due to his
-He meets people and might have gotten some chances - A mix of luck, skill, talent, personality, political leanings (realistically you can't leave that out of Hollywood jobs), definitely religion, and some other things. Is white privilege in there? Probably, but it's not the key factor.
That's two times where it mattered, one other where it probably did a bit, and the rest was up to him or his mom. Only one of the times it mattered during his own lifetime.
And you can factor in other scientifically proven things on top of that like good looking people and tall people also having privilege because people just naturally give them more. Or how about how people trust blonds less and think they're dumber? And this goes on forever. There's tons upon tons of experiments and research in this field proving people have so many cues that are read by other people about their trustworthiness and so on that it's folly to give all credit to one simple thing. And we haven't even touched on smell, and this is all before a single word gets spoken, which brings in a whole other set of bias and bigotry.
This is all why I said his heart was in the right place, but why the article overall did not sit well with me. Did he get an advantage or two thanks to being white? Sure, but it certainly didn't make him successful. If that were true all white people would be far above anyone of color.
White privilege exists, but it is not the power that is implied. I don't get mailers from the Cracker Institute, I don't get invited to White Privilege meetings, when I'm broke white people don't bust down my door to pay my bills, and so on. White people just happen to be more trusting/accepting of other white people. And guess what? That's not exclusive to white people! Black privilege exists. Every race/creed/sex/etc. has privilege when it comes to dealing with people who look/think like them. Science has proven that.
So ultimately, I get sick of hearing "white privilege" when a white person has any success. I get sick of hearing about how many advantages whitey has in this country, and like you even said, it's used as an excuse as to why someone else doesn't succeed. The fact that this is usually said to or in front of an audience of white people in the same social class lacks truth and awareness. I get sick of hearing how whitey rules the world. Whitey doesn't rule the world. Whitey is vastly outnumbered and whitey doesn't run most countries on the planet. Now if you limit it to the U.S., yes whitey has the power, mainly because whitey conquered the lands and makes up the majority of people living here.
So that's my stance. It's why "white privilege" irks me so much. Of course it exists, but it's grossly overhyped and it ignores SO MANY other things.
Cakedaddy wrote: I was also kind of surprised you support BLM.
I don't, but I do support the current protests. NOT the riots, which is something I've gotten into an argument with a far left family member that is also trans. (Not important, but it's an interesting tidbit, so why leave it out?) I do think black people have to face injustice due to their skin color, but I also don't think it's a majority of cops. I think it's a small number, but departments should be doing more to weed out these bad apples.
But yes, I do find most of the people, particularly the most vocal, to be insanely hypocritical and ignorant. Most have no concept of what it means to sacrifice. What people did and do so that they can scream their ignorance from the rooftops. And so on.
Anyway, here's some other stuff I found last night before I got insanely busy today...
Speaking of hypocrisy:
Two men caught with gas and a lighter behind a chief of police's house.
Same mentality as when soldiers came back from Nam and got spit on.
This one is a bit...I don't know, but it is true, so it works:
Minneapolis city council working to disband police force and create new community police types that will only talk.
I truly hope this happens so we can watch the shit show that occurs.
No idea if this is real, but a cop I know posted this message from a black cop about the racism he faces from his own community:
I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and asked everyone “did you see who did it”, and the popular response from the very same family members was always, “Fuck the Police, I aint no snitch, I’m gonna take care of this myself. This happened every single time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization became clearer.
I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, “Make sure you come back home to us”. I always replied, “I will”, but the truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again. I was a target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They called me “Uncle Tom”, and “wanna be white boy”, and I couldn’t understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn’t understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy? I dove deep into that question…Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer.
Complaint: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man.
Fact: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on. It’s called Demographics
Complaint: More black people get arrested than white boys.
Fact: Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime. Data from the FBI shows that Nationwide, Blacks committed 5,173 homicides in 2014, whites committed 4,367. Chicago’s death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. Chicago’s death toll from 2001–November, 26 2015 stands at 7,401. The combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815) and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506), total 8,321.
Complaint: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more.
Fact: As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.
Fact: Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man. University of Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson examined the latest crime data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012. Professor Johnson’s research further concluded that 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually during this same period.
Complaint: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we don’t need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.
The more I listened, the more I realized. The more I researched, the more I realized. I would ask questions, and would only get emotional responses & inferences based on no facts at all. The more killing I saw, the more tragedy, the more savagery, the more violence, the more loss of life of a black man at the hands of another black man….the more I realized.
I haven’t slept well in the past few nights. Heartbreak weighs me down, rage flows through my veins, and tears fills my eyes. I watched my fellow officers assassinated on live television, and the images of them laying on the ground are seared into my brain forever. I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been me, a black man, a black cop, on TV, assassinated, laying on the ground dead,..would my friends and family still think black lives mattered? Would my life have mattered? Would they make t-shirts in remembrance of me? Would they go on tv and protest violence? Would they even make a Facebook post, or share a post in reference to my death?
I realized that they refuse to believe that most cops acknowledge that there are Bad cops who should have never been given a badge & gun, who are chicken shit and will shoot a cockroach if it crawls at them too fast, who never worked in the hood and may be intimidated. That most cops dread the thought of having to shoot someone, and never see the turmoil and mental anguish that a cop goes through after having to kill someone to save his own life. Instead they believe that we are all blood thirsty killers, because the media says so, even though the numbers prove otherwise. I realize that they truly feel as if the death of cops will help people realize the false narrative that Black Lives Matter, when all it will do is take their movement two steps backwards and label them domestic terrorist. I realized that some of these people, who say Black Lives Matter, are full of hate and racism. Hate for cops, because of the false narrative that more black people are targeted and killed. Racism against white people, for a tragedy that began 100’s of years ago, when most of the white people today weren’t even born yet. I realized that some in the African-American community’s idea of “Justice” is the prosecution of ANY and EVERY cop or white man that kills or is believed to have killed a black man, no matter what the circumstances are. I realized the African American community refuses to look within to solve its major issues, and instead makes excuses and looks outside for solutions. I realized that a lot of people in the African American lead with hate, instead of love. Division instead of Unity. Turmoil and rioting, instead of Peace. I realized that they have become the very entity that they claim they are fighting against.
I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged political climate, I am now more likely to die,… and it is still hard for me to understand…. to this day.
Officer Stalien
I hope this one works. It's a former gang banger speaking his truth about BLM:
https://www.facebook.com/kashlee.kelly/videos/554536008770728/
