[mushbino]

Traditionally? Ivy league schools or your parent's network that probably came from the same.

Being white in America, or really anywhere else in the world comes with its privileges. If you haven't taken advantage of them, that's your own fault.

[snicky]

Not sure about America, but I don't understand what do you mean by saying that being white anywhere in the world comes with priviliges. I am a white male from a Eastern European country where 99.9% of people are the same race. How am I priviliged and in comparison to who?

[mushbino]

Historically, predominantly white empires colonize territories that aren't white. If you're black, brown, indigenous, you're most likely from a former or current colony. It's been used as a justification for blatant exploitation.

This type of marginalization has happened and is still currently happening in Eastern Europe, but it's done around ethnic and/or religious lines. The most obvious examples of this are the the treatment of Jews and more recently the Bosniaks in the Balkans. It also happened in Russia to the Cossacks and Crimean Tatars, among others. It operates on the same principal.

[snicky]

Sorry, but I still don't understand your point. How am I priviliged if people from a foreign country colonized another part of the world? I and my ancestors didn't have anything to do with this. Our country was, in fact, "colonized" for more than a hundred years too.

All the minority groups you just mentioned are also Caucasian, so they are priviliged, but at the same time they... are not? In your original post you made a racial claim that just didn't make much sense to me at all, same as all race-related stereotypes that try to somehow classify groups of billions.

[mushbino]

It's purely tribalism at its heart. It's much easier to exploit a group if they are perceived as different. Skin color and looks are the easiest things to distinguish one group from another. It's more challenging to marginalize a group if they can be seen as just like you and me.

In the Americas, the dominant group, both financially and politically has been people with lighter skin. This is how we've been trained to think for a very long time and it persists to this day. Had history played out differently and people with dark skin did the colonizing to people with white skin, things would be different, but that's not the case.

This same thing has been done to Jews in Europe and elsewhere for a couple thousand years. These groups of people who are "different" have been used as convenient scapegoats, which we know has played a central role in civilization since the very beginning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoating

To bring it back to the US, the black population and eventually the Hispanic population have been used as scapegoats for white societies to look at as the source of their problems. It's a way of maintaining social cohesion (in the dominant group).

[0-_-0]

Some more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Hungary#Ethnic_changes...

[john_moscow]

You are educated, smart and self-reliant. You are a threat to the Politburo and ought to be replaced with someone helpless, dependent and loyal. Everything else is just optics.

[AmericanChopper]

My parents were both drug addicts. How can I get in touch with their Ivy League network contacts?

[mushbino]

This can be debated on a case by case basis, but that's not how racism works. We're talking statistics here. If you're white in the US you are statistically more likely to have privileges not afforded to others.

If you're white re you more likely to be successful and face less discrimination from your point of birth going forward? Yes you are.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/race-report-statistic...

[AmericanChopper]

What you’re doing here is using the color of somebody’s skin to make very broad assumptions about the experiences of their life. Aside from the fact that these assumptions will often just be flat out wrong, it’s also a very racist way of viewing other people, and an especially arrogant way of treating them.

If you think people who are systemically disadvantaged deserve some additional help, then target it to people who are systemically disadvantaged. You can do that without without creating any racial discrimination, or any of the harm that comes along with it.

[mushbino]

If you take a historical map of the US slave population and overlay that with the concentration of the black population in the Southern US today and then overlay that with a map of median income, avg life expectancy, education, etc. you'll see a very clear connection.

I agree that a more level playing field along income lines would create a more fair and just society, but you're talking about a problem that the free market cannot solve and would lead to an argument for a very different type of economic model. I'm all for it, but it's a tough sell in the US.

[AmericanChopper]

And none of that makes anybody any more or any less entitled to help from society, or equal protection under law, based upon their ethnicity. Non-hispanic whites make up the largest population of people living in poverty in the US by a very significant margin. Those people are equally as entitled to assistance from society as any other ethnic group, and they are not at all deserving of facing the racial discrimination they face at all levels of society. These policies are definitively racist, which I guess you're welcome to offer your support for, but it doesn't change the fact that racial discrimination is racist.

The free market also has nothing to do with this conversation at all. All possible programs you could conceive for addressing problems like this fall under the umbrella of market intervention.

[t-writescode]

Further, if you do make it through the rough parts of your life and push through and find yourself in a situation where you _could_ get a job in some industrious, high-paying field, like hires like, so the reality that many other people of your ethnicity DO have those privileges allows you to take advantage of them, too because "oh hey, I was interviewing that guy and we really got along. he's just like me!"