| > There are more whites in prison and in poverty than all other groups combined. Come on. At least make an attempt at fair statistics. The percentage of blacks in prison and poverty is far higher than whites. That's what matters, not absolute numbers. > Race makes for great politics, but it isn't a factor to success. Race is totally unrelated to success in terms of causation, but it is correlated to success on a statistical basis such that it can be used to predict things with better-than-average success. In other words, we do not live in an ideal color-blind world where race isn't predictive of anything outside of basic genetics-related factors. If you want to argue that the causation behind the correlation is something like a counter-productive victim-hood culture, that's a legitimate hypothesis to discuss. But there's no room given facts on the ground to deny the correlations between race and various factors like education, success, wealth etc. Thankfully, we indeed live in a world with far less racism and race-based privilege than historic times, and there are definitely cases where other privileges outweigh the issues in race. But if you believe we actually are in a world where there's no privilege to being white or Asian versus being black, you really aren't making a sincere effort to study the evidence. You can point all day to the non-straw-men who actually make ludicrous arguments about race and privilege. That doesn't disprove reasonable arguments. As an analogy, Piltdown Man was a hoax, but it doesn't disprove the facts of evolution. > It is exclusively used by those who want to push a particular extreme ideology and dehumanize 'THOSE OTHERS'. Well, now you're just wrong. I used the term "white privilege" and I don't believe the extreme ideology and don't aim to dehumanize anyone. I also know many others who use that term without the extreme ideology. Your claims that I could say nothing about a group of people based on race is also wrong. I can't honestly just apply stereotypes to an individual, but you can make guesses and be statistically right more often than chance. I can guess a bunch of things about experience based on someone's race. I can guess that a black guy has experienced things like white folks crossing the street when they are out walking or other subtle things like that. I can guess that they at least know many people who have single parents and that they know people who have spent time in jail or prison. Those guesses can be wrong, but they will be right more often than chance. > you tell me how much 'headwind' the whites in the group got and how much easier their life is due to all their white privilege You seem to even misunderstand the terms. Having privilege is like having a tailwind. And you're putting a lot of assumptions and words-in-my-mouth that I never said. I never said anything like a claim that whites all have easier lives. > Consider that you're the Scientologist in your analogy. That's ludicrous. That's like saying to the Buddhist that they are a Scientologist and refusing to listen to anything they actually claim about their beliefs. You seem totally convinced that anyone who even uses the language that so viscerally offends you necessarily believes a bunch of nonsense. You're not even willing to consider the possibility that my beliefs are different from your assertions. What you're doing is a good job of validating the crazy people's views. You're so willing to jump to conclusions about my beliefs, this conversation will be read by any of the extreme P.C. folks as proof that people like you are just racists at that core. I don't believe that. I don't really know what you think. I just am reading that you are willing to make emotionally-based and incorrect assumptions about my views, so that leads me to discount whether you might be an intellectually reasonable person generally. > I'm just going by what you said. No, you're going by imagining a bunch of stuff behind what I wrote that isn't there. From the beginning, you made assumptions, and you aren't (re)considering how I could write the things I did without believing the things you assume I believed. |