linguoboy wrote:Travis B. wrote:But in general, I am not exactly privileged in all ways.
And I recognise that. But being White really is a big plus. For instance, White people in this country have roughly
twice as much access to mental health services in this country than Black people. So as shitty as things are for you at times, it's very likely they'd be significantly worse if you weren't White. That is something worth acknowledging when the subject comes up.
Oh, this is definitely true. Really, I am pretty well off as seriously chronically mentally ill people go. I can actually work - or at least pretend to do so well enough to get by - at a well-paying job that gives good benefits, when many seriously chronically mentally ill people are limited to minimum wage or near-minimum wage jobs or cannot work at all and are stuck with the measly income provided by SSI/SSDI or no income at all. I live in an area where there are decent mental health providers not far away, and I can drive, so I am not stuck with providers very close by, when many people have to deal with a small selection of often pretty poor providers nearby and are frequently limited by either not being able to drive and not having anyone to drive them or living too far away from any major population centers to make it practical to find a decent provider. I live close to a
good psychiatric hospital, while many are faced with ever-shrinking numbers of beds in psychiatric wards, leaving people who should be inside stuck outside even when they are only barely safe to be so, or even stuck in jail cells because it is not safe to allow them outside but there are no beds available for them. In many places law enforcement has taken up the role of emergency mental health responders and providers, something that law enforcement officers are not trained for, or if they are, are not adequately trained for, with very poor results. And I have a family who will let me live with them indefinitely, and for that matter can afford to rent a decent apartment in a good area if I cared to do so, while so many mentally ill people out there are homeless. And so on. And all of this only gets worse for people living in poor areas and minorities.
linguoboy wrote:Travis B. wrote:linguoboy wrote:It's not about "what someone else did", it's about what you are doing right now, which is derailing these discussions with terminological quibbles. Can you imagine the difference you could make if you spent as much energy educating other White people in how not to be racist while using the soothing sympathetic approach you think would be most effective as you do being the first to jump in here with #notallWhitepeople! every time this topic comes up?
But this is about collective responsibility, because it implies that races have guilt.
How? Who even introduced the concept of "guilt"?
I should take that back. What was introduced was not guilt per se, but rather the idea that all white people in America are inculcated with white supremacism and fascism by American culture. Which is not guilt per se, but rather is claiming that all white peoiple in America share far right-wing beliefs and racism.
linguoboy wrote:Travis B. wrote:And as for why I jump in with #notallWhitepeople, as you put it, is that I vehemently object to collective responsibility, and take it personally, because it implies that I am somehow personally responsible for centuries of oppression by white people despite not having oppressed anyone as far as I can recall.
Travis B. wrote:Of course, it seems you expect me to become an activist, something that takes a lot more time and energy than these arguments on the ZBB, time and energy I don't exactly have right now. (I am basically pretending to work right now because I am not entirely functional as it is.) Maybe we'll see when I am not nearly constantly depressed.
I thought you were an activist already. You certainly seem to be an adamant believer in economic justice and social equality.
I sit online on the ZBB in my spare time, whether at home or in empty time at work. I don't go to demonstrations. I don't actively propagandize. I don't go to meetings discussing how to effectively do so. I used to, a very long time ago, and then I got sick, and that was the end of that. Every so often I think I should, but that is really only possible in good times, and even then I rarely have the energy anymore. (I am jealous of my friend Liz, who is an invariable font of energy, allowing her to do stuff like take up pro bono cases outside of everything she does for work and still have energy left over for everything else she does in her free time, but I am not her.)
linguoboy wrote:But I'm not asking you to do anything more than you do already. I would just like to see a redirection of effort. Every time I'm tempted to respond to a discussion of issues related to social justice, I first ask myself the question, "How will this help?" That is, is this a comment which somehow furthers my long-term goals of insuring that everyone in this world is treated equally or is it just ego service? An embarrassing amount of the time, it's the latter. It's me reacting to something personally and wanting to demand recognition and reassurance from those with bigger fish to fry. When it comes to taking up all the air in the room, we White guys are the worst. Becoming aware of this and trying to do better is really the very least we can do to make this world a better place.
In these cases that you are referring to (as explained below in this case), the idea in question was fundamentally something I could not agree with as said. I could sympathize with the motivation behind saying such, but not what came out of such motivation. In these cases it was oppression of black people by white people resulting in wanting to ascribe racism to all white people (or at least all white people in America). I could ignore what was being expressed out of sympathy for the underlying motivation, yes, in that that would potentially further social justice and so on. The problem for me, though, is that to me racial prejudice is wrong, regardless of whoever is expressing it, regardless of how privileged or less privileged they are.
linguoboy wrote:If you know you're not part of "the vast majority of white people [who] are racist as hell", then Chagen's not talking about you, so there's no reason to take his remarks personally and you don't need to put effort into refuting them (which you were so quick to do, you misread what he was even saying). Instead, you could respond to his political points instead (like thetha did). It is a thread to discuss the upcoming election, after all. Or just ignore it, like you've ignored most posts to that thread.
It was just the way the idea was expressed that bothered me. Things ascribing properties to entire races (in this case an entire race within a particular country), or whatever group one is not voluntarily a member of, tends to really bother me. I would have been just as bothered if it was someone claiming that all Mexicans in the US are wetbacks or that all Muslims sympathize with terrorists. If Chagen had said
many rather than
all I would not have been nearly as bothered.
As for the rest of the thread, honestly, I am sick of this race, and want the election to be done with ASAP. The more depressed I am, the more that is true.