[rayiner]

The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional. We who live in the U.S. are the beneficiaries of tremendous investment into the country by Americans who came before us. We either inherited these benefits, having been born here, or bought into them, by choosing to immigrate here. We have inherited their sins as well. I was not born here, but every morning I ride to work on a train line that was built when Jim Crow still reigned in the U.S. and would still reign for another half a century before it was dismantled by the federal government. The obligations incurred by our predecessors are baked into the brick and concrete and steel of the civilization which they built.

The marginalization of blacks in the U.S. is not some academic issue that happened in the long-forgotten past and involved long-forgotten people. At the time my grandfather was starting his medical practice, which would sew the seeds for the prosperity of his family in my own time, blacks in the United States were systematically oppressed, prevented from participating in society or getting an education. This all happened in essentially modern times. George Wallace made his stand to resist integration 16 years after the transistor was invented at Bell Labs, and 5 years after the first integrated circuit was demonstrated at Texas Instruments. It was not that long ago even on the technological time scale, and a blink of an eye on the sociological time scale.

[powertower]

> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

The idea that white people come from old money that gets passed down from generation to generation is not based in reality. Many whites came here from the peasant class, and stayed this way for centuries. And most still are in this class one way or another.

> We have inherited their sins as well.

Sure, if you ignore every single positive thing white people have done; and if you assume that white people have some type of an agenda to actively discriminate against non-whites (at a greater degree than non-whites do against whites).

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

That's a personal choice you made for yourself. Don't make it for me.

[eropple]

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

No, that's not what he's saying, at all. Nowhere has "old money" or "guilt" entered the equation and that you are feeling very defensive does not give you license to put words into his mouth. rayiner (who I often disagree with, but I have to applaud him for this) is saying that people with privilege have responsibilities as well as benefits. You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of privilege being born white and male in the United States.

He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

[powertower]

> He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

As a citizen of the USA I agree that I have a responsibility to my country and society. I just don't agree that you get to decide for me what that responsibility is.

> You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of privilege being born white and male in the United States.

Please, be specific about my situation and what you have decided my skin color owes, just don't use nebulous politically-correct terms such as white-privlege ... unless you are trying to end the conversation.

[eropple]

> As a citizen of the USA I agree that I have a responsibility to my country and society. I just don't agree that you get to decide for me what that responsibility is.

Society does. That's why it's there. You don't define the social contract. That mindset is what leads to "fuck you, I've got mine."

> Please, be specific about my situation and what you have decided my skin color owes, just don't use nebulous politically-correct terms such as white-privlege ... unless you are trying to end the conversation.

You're joking, right? "White privilege" isn't a term of political correctness. It's a sociological construct that's used to frame and discuss relative advantage given majority or otherwise preferential traits (such as, in the United States, being any or all of white, male, heterosexual, and Christian).

Using the common constructs of the topic isn't "ending the conversation", it's being specific. I'm not going to fall prey to the commonly-used tactic of enumerating exactly why privilege is what it is so that you can attempt to bury the overall point beneath the details on which you think you can nullify the entire academically settled topic. You are welcome to educate yourself on the topic if you so choose.

You won't, but you are welcome to.

[powertower]

So you won't define this social contract that you (you somehow also representing the society) are holding me to (the contract I'm supposedly violating or ignoring somehow by disagreeing with something you said, or having a different P.O.V.), nor will you enumerate what my white privileges are; both of which you have brought up. Because if you did so, you'd be falling prey to my (my!) tactics. And E.O.C to me too.

[stretchwithme]

A contract that you cannot get out of and that never allowed you to approve or reject it in the first place, is not a valid contract. Its slavery.

Of course, it is fictional. And if they can get you to submit to the fiction, they are only too happy to tell you how it obligates you to serve their pet projects.

[rayiner]

I didn't say anything about coming from old money, or feeling guilty about being white. Don't put words in my mouth. What I said is that we (in the sense of We the People) have built a civilization, called the United States, and in that process we oppressed the black race for hundreds of years, an oppression that didn't even arguably end more than just several decades ago. We, those who continue this civilization, both benefit from the actions of our predecessors and are bound by their obligations. We don't need to feel personally guilty for those obligations, because we did not personally incur them, but we're no less bound to them then we are to the debt we back by the full faith and credit of the United States or the Constitution we uphold as the supreme law of the land. None of us personally had any hand in any of these things, but that fact does not free us to disregard them.

[eropple]

> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

I can't upvote this enough, and this in particular reminds me of a Salon article from not that long ago[1]. The rhetoric is a bit much, but the core thrust of the article is sound.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/