gnomon
Well-Known Member
Why?
Anyway the concept is based on the notion that white's are economically and socially advantaged due to the history of slavery. In other words that if you are "white" than you are economically and socially, even politically advantaged, because you are descended from European ancestry while your economic, social and political situation favors you because you are descended from white Europeans.
I remember when I was arrested for minor possession of marijuana over 20 years ago. I didn't hire a lawyer and received a six month probation and a $600 dollar fine. A few years later I read of minorities receiving harsher punishments for the same crime. As I researched the enactment of drug laws it was quite apparent that minorities received harsher sentences than whites for the same crime.
However, I also recall one of my brothers friends who is descended from Polish Jews growing up in New York City. He was the minority and received much abuse for simply being white in a minority community.
Yet again I recall my experience at Ridgeview Hospital. I was a mere retail worker who luckily at that time had great health care. Here I was in a hospital for people suffering from drug addiction and mental disorder along with professionals suffering the same. Practically everyone in that community was white. Ridgeview at that time was considered a top tier facility for rehab. Once you graduated from rehab you could attend an aftercare program and attending one of those programs was one African American doctor who pointed out the fact that he was the only African American among a group of several dozen professionals in that group,.
During that time and you know I have posted about how the enforcement of drug laws in this nation focused on minority communities never mind the fact that illicit drug use was the same among all communities.
In other words, the enforcement of drug laws in this nation absolutely shows a privilege of one's perceived race and the treatment one gets from the judicial system.
But that is not the overall discussion. There is the discussion that if you are born white you are born into privilege. Well I was born Southern and quite frankly do not see the economic so called privilege of being born so. As well as born manic depressive.
But I should be privileged. I can trace ancestry of European background to the early 18th century in Georgia. I have read histories of one my great grandfathers fighting for the South in the Civil War allowing for freedom of his three slaves that he owned. My parents grew up less than Middle Class, didn't own property and my father was the first of my heritage to actually graduate from a college.
Now I watch my nephew struggling through college after graduating high school at the age of 20. He was born with a developmental disability. His physical features are predominantly Asian. Of course his father, my brother, is obviously European in physical features but he takes much from his mother who is Han Chinese mixed with Thai, her father, from Cambodia. She left Cambodia after Pol Pot decided to enact a genocide against all non-Khmer people. She was a child. Her older siblings left before her and were able to bring her over when she was a child. Her father was lost as they escaped that regime and is presumed deceased during the scourge.
I'm consistently pissed off that people assume he is Chinese.....because let's face it. Americans love to generalize cultures and place people they meet into a neat summary. He is attending a University near me and I'm afraid, because of his disabilities, that something bad will happen.
Sorry for the rant.
Is there white privilege.....yes. I personally think I have benefited from it in the sense of the law. Have I benefited from the concept of it in terms of finances due to the forced labor in America's early history.....no.
As to its merits......I think many have. And to be slightly argumentative in that regards....look North to those industries that relied heavily on slavery and so many famous families benefited economically from their privilege.
Sorry.....lost myself there.
The obvious weakness is the fact in the judicial system of this nation, our so called free nation but yet we incarcerate a higher percentage of people than even those nations we recognize as totalitarian.....this nation is still depriving non-whites of proper due process, over incarcerating non-whites for the same crimes....and the fact that non-whites have lacked the financial backing and support in the legal system along with portrayals of non-whites in the media....and just damn.....
I apologize for my earlier flippant response but......
What do you have to say?
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