August 3, 2007: Dog swims 4km daily to feed her pups

[Flint]

Criticism should be, and will be, levied against any person who displays a confusion of ideas, while forcing a point where it doesn't belong. Having a strong feeling is important (in its own way), but you have to present yourself in an orderly, logical manner, in order to be taken seriously. If you meander all across the spectrum, it looks like you have no idea what you're talking about. That really doesn't help anybody.

[freshnesschronic]

The white privilege being present is the use of Spanish. The Mexicans don't have the privilege, they must conform to the white clouds in the atmosphere. The white people do have the privilege, that is why no one ever knocks on white people for their somewhat inappropriate use of Spanish.
I just want to show everyone a great journal I read.

White people need to acknowledge
benefits of unearned privilege©
by Robert Jensen This article appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper and was written by a Caucasian professor of journalism at the U of Texas. A followup piece can be found here. ]

Here's what white privilege sounds like: I'm 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 being white has advantages in the United States. 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 asked. 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 that you have unearned privilege but to ignore what it means. That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us every day: 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 open 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 nonwhite population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the 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 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 it's 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, is worth reading. I worked hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in a while, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my pay check, 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.

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 by the predominantly white University of Texas, headed by 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 nonwhite tenured professor. 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. 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 to my benefit. 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.

White privilege is not something I get to decide whether 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.

[TheMercenary]

Fresh, you and many others are attempting to redefine a common term. Racism defined does not include the word "white person".

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

And guess what... Did I miss anyone?

All Scots/Kiwis fцck sheep.

[freshnesschronic]

I don't think I'm trying to redefine the word racism. Heck the first recorded racism probably happened between Ancient Egypt and the Nubians.

I'm here to discuss and explain as best what I know based off my life experiences, no one can discredit me on that.

Let me share one story before I leave for the rest of the day.

I remember two years ago or so I was inside my Jewel Osco (grocery store) and looking at the magazines. Specifically the video game and computer gaming magazines. An elderly white lady past behind me and stopped to my left. She gazed around for a second then said abruptly "isn't it awful how they can put that crap on shelves? I can't believe they allow those people to do that." She was obviously referring to the hip hop and import car magazines slightly below the gaming magazines I was looking at (she thought I was looking at those mags). I wasn't expecting her to have said anything and her statement was a bit off, to me at least, so I was like "uh...eh" and didn't say anything as I didn't even really know how to react. She then looked at me with a disapproving frown and said "Oh, you don't speak English do you."

Have you ever experienced such a high level of racism that you can't even comprehend it? I was so amazed that she said this. My eyes widened and I stuttered, "I, I, what? I speak English....." I was at a total loss of words because I could not believe what had just happened. My friends were like "dude I woulda slapped that bitch" after I told them. My white friends were like "that's fucked up" too.

I am certainly not here to degrade white people, if anyone has assumed of me of that is mistaken. I am here to share what I know and my feelings on subjects and issues and I am sorry if they anger some of you. But at the end of the day I am going to be who I am. I am trying to bring some diversity to this board, because my experiences definitely do not match up with many of yours and vice versa. But isn't that a good thing?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by freshnesschronic

I don't think I'm trying to redefine the word racism.

Have you ever experienced such a high level of racism that you can't even comprehend it? I was so amazed that she said this. My eyes widened and I stuttered, "I, I, what? I speak English....." I was at a total loss of words because I could not believe what had just happened. My friends were like "dude I woulda slapped that bitch" after I told them. My white friends were like "that's fucked up" too.

So it's not about racism. Oh. Ok, glad you cleared that up.

Dude, don't you see it? You have fallen for the concept hook, line, and sinker. Take the issue, "racism", redefine it, not my problem.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The concept is about as valid as a made up holiday.

As opposed to holidays that haven't been made up yet?

[Flint]

Oh, God. Not the "whether holdiays are made up or not" fiasco. Again.

[DanaC]

Fresh. I agree with some of what you are saying. Being white in the West is a distinct advantage most of the time. But...that doesn't mean that all white people are advantaged by being white.

To suggest that racism is alive and well in America is not exactly unorthodox. Nor, is it unorthodox to suggest that a person is more, or less likely to experience the world in a particular way depending on their ethnic origin and skin colour.

But...and this is where my understanding of the world veers sharply from yours. Being white, is not in and of itself a protection from bigotry, disadvantage, poverty, exploitation or abuse. The world is not that simple. To suggest that a white skin means you have no understanding of what it is to be subject to those things is, if you'll forgive me, a little naive. To suggest that nobody with white skin knows what it is like to be subject to insulting and degrading stereotypes, is likewise naive.

The points you raise about the hidden, unthought of advantages that being white in America brings are interesting and valid. But the world is more complicated than white -v- ethnic minority.

[barefoot serpent]

I've got 5 bucks sez that the Worlds Tallest Man comes down to the river and uses his body as a bridge for the dog to cross over to the island.

[Silazius]

The doggie is Chinese, but also part white (and light brown).

[Flint]

Originally Posted by freshnesschronic

I remember two years ago or so I was inside my Jewel Osco (grocery store) and looking at the magazines. Specifically the video game and computer gaming magazines. An elderly WHITE lady past behind me and stopped to my left. She gazed around for a second then said abruptly "isn't it awful how they can put that crap on shelves? I can't believe they allow those people to do that." She was obviously referring to the hip hop and import car magazines slightly below the gaming magazines I was looking at (she thought I was looking at those mags). I wasn't expecting her to have said anything and her statement was a bit off, to me at least, so I was like "uh...eh" and didn't say anything as I didn't even really know how to react. She then looked at me with a disapproving frown and said "Oh, you don't speak English do you."

Have you ever experienced such a high level of racism that you can't even comprehend it?

Originally Posted by elderly white lady

I was at the grocery store, and I saw a nice young man reading a computer magazine. I noticed that the store also stocked those horrible magazines with the girls in skimpy outfits all over the cover. I commented to the young man about how those sleazy pornographers are allowed to put that kind of magazine on the shelves at a grocery store where families shop.

He just stared at me with a strange, bewildered expression on his face. I have no idea what he could have been thinking. Does he have no social skills? Does he not speak English? He just stammered some nonsense, so I continued on my way. I have no idea what his problem was.

Two years later, and you’re still fuming about this "racist" encounter. The "white" lady didn't specifically mention anything about race; she didn't do or say anything that couldn't have a non-racist explanation. The "racism" could have been in your imagination - notice that you're the one injecting racist commentary into this encounter.

You constantly assume racism to be the motivating factor in your encounters with white people. Therefore you are classifying them by race, and assigning qualities to them based on race. That's racism!

[freshnesschronic]

Flint you are the master of rationalization. If you honestly don't feel like she was acting racist then you have are trying everything you can to discredit me or you are the epitome of ignorance.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by freshnesschronic

Flint you are the master of rationalization. If you honestly don't feel like she was acting racist then you have are trying everything you can to discredit me or you are the epitome of ignorance.

So is this about White Privilege or racism?

[StereoMike]

This "white people have privileges" issue leads to nothing.
If a guy in Tibet would never know of internet and western culture he would never think he has less privileges.
Missionaries carried christendom into the jungle (they might even have thought it would help). Think about it and ask yourself if it makes sense to normalize all cultural values and traditions to bring all to a "white" niveau.
Sure there's apartheid and racism on a grand scale on this planet. But I think the privileges you have should be seen in cultural context.
In some parts of the world you're king of your village with two cows. Here you need a Villa and several German cars.

regarding the initial topic: I really don't get your point: people in china do eat dogs.
Yes I say this in general, I could also say : People in America do drive cars. Despite the fact that kids, most elderly and some other guys don't drive cars.
But I can also say Italians don't eat dogs. There _are_ cultural differences. And some of them are funny. For me and for you. If you're a native chinese, then all this touching, hugging and hand shaking of those long nosed western people is strange to you.

As a kid I learned the importance of being able to laugh about oneself.
Life's much easier with this ability, Freshnesschronic.

mike