veganfan21 wrote:
Terry's Peeps wrote:
WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Media, academia and the bureaucracy seem to all be in agreement with the general principle that being white is bad and that being a white man is doubly bad (unless you are carrying extreme amounts of white guilt regarding events that happened literally centuries ago). It is absolutely obvious. To deny it is like denying the existence of the moon. You know its on a dark path when the saying "its OK to be white" is considered hate speech. Look back throughout history and once the rhetoric takes this tone its extremely rare for it to not accelerate and become extreme. Leash has a fucking kid, a kid I assume is white, how the fuck do you expect a guy to react to this shit?
White kids will be fine. They just aren't being born with as big of a head start as we were.
When was it when white guys had a head start? When they were being shipped off to fight in Vietnam, Korea or Japan? Most white people aren’t yachting on the weekends.
Okay... I know we like to go back and forth but you've got to go sit in the back of the class 'cause you just suggested that white guys haven't had a head start in America for about 200 years.
I see WF's point, but I'll assume based on his other posts that I won't agree with him entirely.
There are a variety of structural "disadvantages" that don't depend on race. Someone's whiteness doesn't necessarily matter if that person is born into a broken home, and/or is raised by uneducated caregivers, is exposed to violent crime throughout their formative years, is unable to benefit from services/programs/activities that more affluent peers have access to, etc. These types of things can afflict anyone regardless of race, and if you're one of these people then you definitely don't get a "head start" in life compared to peers who are born into two-parent homes, who do have a strong support system growing up, who are raised/influenced by educated caregivers, who do have access to extracurricular activities, etc.
That being said, it's obvious that race does matter of course, and this is where someone like Bernie Sanders got into trouble when he was running. It obviously sucks for anyone to be born into poverty and/or broken homes/communities, but I think it's still fair to say that the misery is compounded when you're black and born into those conditions. I wouldn't say that an underprivileged white person has a "head start" over an underprivileged black person (a black kid from an affluent/decently well-off family would have the "head start" over an underprivileged white kid), but many African Americans have to endure other difficulties/hurdles that are strictly race-based on top of other socioeconomic challenges they may be facing alongside underprivileged white communities, and this is what makes their case unique. The problem is when we try to organize everything into neat circles (all white people have head starts over black people, etc.) when the reality is much more nuanced.
I will attempt to illustrate what a "headstart" happens to be and how it functions. I will provide but one example of ehat it looks like.
1. Paul Vallas
2. Arne Duncan
3. Ron Huberman
4. Terry Mizany
5. Barbara Byrd Bennett
6. Brizard
7. Forrest Claypool
8. Janice Jackson.
Notice a pattern? I sure do. All of the whites on the list were essentially political hires. Not one of them had any connection to education. Each of the Whites sans Claypool used CPS as a springboard to bigger and better things. Duncan and Huberman were young guys who up until that point had never been all that successful at anything. They also all came straight from City Hall.
If you want to know what a "headstart" looks like that's it. You can probably look at other sectors and you'd find the same thing.