Apparently, even discussing the notion of white privilege on America’s college campuses in 2015 is causing a massive fit among your local white nationalist groups, to the point where they’re concern trolling everyone in sight about how awful it is being a white guy.
The National Youth Front’s leader, Angelo John Gage, told TPM in a phone interview Thursday that he believes the bulletin board amounted to discrimination. He repeatedly took issue with the portrayal of white people and Christians as having “privilege.”
“State and federal law says you must keep the school discrimination-free. They’re not doing that,” Gage said. “The Civil Rights Act says you can’t have discrimination based on race, sex, gender — all that stuff. Here comes a board that discriminates against people for their race, sex, gender, religion. It’s the complete opposite.”
He defined privilege instead as something “handed to you.”
“‘Oh you’re black, here you go, here’s a scholarship.’ That’s a privilege,” Gage explained. “Or here’s a racial quota. ‘You’re not qualified but you’re black, so here’s the job’ — otherwise it’s racism.”
Exciting new quantum technology will need to be developed in order to successfully play a violin small enough for Mr. Gage here, so I’m really jazzed about those coming scientific advances that will benefit all of humanity. Perhaps these nano-scale breakthroughs can also be applied to locating all the lost fucks I give about “reverse racism” in a country that was founded on the wholesale slaughter of the people living here and then built with the blood of the enslaved dragged here from an entirely different continent.
And yeah, being a straight cisgender male roughly the size and shape of a refrigerator, the internet reminds me almost daily that there are things I don’t have to worry about as much in my life (even though I’m black.) I’ve learned a lot (mostly when to shut up and listen to others) about basic awareness, which is all this “anti-White” bulletin board seems to involve.
As a side note, aren’t these the same people complaining that making “safe spaces” in colleges and universities is “coddling” students and making them weak, because in college you’re supposed to be constantly challenged by new ideas?
Anyway, it doesn’t shock me that we’re still dealing with stuff like this in 2015, not at all, but at this point the changing demographics of America is just something that certain people are never going to be able to handle, no matter how much you try and educate them.
raven
Wait til you see what goes down at Valdosta State today.
Baud
@raven: What’s the story?
raven
VALDOSTA, GA (WXIA) – In the face of an expected large crowd at a protest rally in support of the American flag, Valdosta State University is closing all facilities on Friday.
Baud
@raven:
What was the original protest about? The story doesn’t say.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Meanwhile, my Chines boss likes me because I am white, so therefor have the magic mojo. Ya, it’s rough being white.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: The 1st Amendment got shredded again?
raven
@Baud: It seems as if it was a general protest and that Eric was the one that chose to walk all over the flag. Some goofy woman, Air Force Vet who was drummed out for a picture of her naked with a big American flag draped over her (can’t make this shit up) as a PETA protest decide to rescue the flag. She got detained and banned form VSU for life. A video of all this vent viral and the wingnuts in that area are on the case.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, the flag stuff is protected but you start talking about offing white people and then they find a gun in your backpack when you flee the cops, you are in deep shit.
Baud
@raven:
LOL. The Onion couldn’t have drawn it up better.
@raven:
Eric should flee to the Bundy Ranch!
Infamous Heel-Filcher
Especially head-deskable is that the backlash stems at least in part from just the title — the troglodytes are clearly reading it as asserting “all white people are devils” when in an academic humanities setting, “problem” means “situation that we tend to describe poorly or falsely”.
RSA
I don’t know how all the love-my-country-hate-my-government types can get so upset about the treatment of the flag, a set of visual symbols saying, “Here’s how this country is divided up to be governed…”
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Ah, the old gun in the backpack problem.
Joel
Cisgender. Unnecessarily complex. There’s too much jargon in society already, do we really need more?
Ryan
@Baud: It must be rough for writers at the Onion. They scarcely have time to enjoy the thoughts, then they see their independently generated thoughts on Fox and in the papers.
Funny how Gage didn’t mention that along with the scholarships and jobs come all the free housing and food that accompany the DWB arrests. Or Obamaphones.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yea people tried to jump on that and then they found video of Eric buy the piece in a local gun store. His shit is weak.
Betty Cracker
@raven: My grandparents used to live in Hahira back in the 80s. There are plenty of wingnuts in the area to rile!
Patricia Kayden
I wonder if racists like Gage know that non-Blacks who attend majority Black universities also get scholarships because of their minority status. It’s not just Blacks attending majority-White universities who get such benefits. Sigh.
cmorenc
@Zandar:
The world “cisgender” is not a misprint: it means “not transgender”, as in a person whose gender identity is consistent with their native sexual biology.
NEVERTHELESS, it’s not a word most people will not be familiar with, and will presume there’s a typo and you meant to say you were “transgender”. And the ones who do think you are deliberately “cisgender” rather than “transgender” (but don’t know the definition) will tend to assume it’s somehow associated with a combination of kinky sex and gross bodily fluids. And it’s definitely not a word to say in the sort of bar where you might get your ass kicked by some redneck dumbass.
Cervantes
@Joel:
Language aside, do you not think there’s an underlying (real) problem of privilege and discrimination?
raven
@Betty Cracker: Oh, one of my profs at UGA is a native! These cats are from there too!
Run Baby Run – The Newbeats
msdc
@raven: Where is the quoted material coming from? It’s not in the story you linked to.
While we all take a moment to mock the flag fetishists and savor the white nationalist butthurt, maybe we could also spare a moment to reflect on the idiocy of college students who think walking on the American flag or ranting about “killing the oppressors” (let alone bringing a gun to a goddamn campus) is going to help their cause.
Assuming they have a cause beyond performing the most extreme and obnoxious caricature of the college radical.
raven
And who can forget
The Newbeats – Bread and Butter
Got home early one morning,
Much to my surprise,
She was eating chicken and dumplings
With some other guy.
cmorenc
@cmorenc: I said “
Oops – inadvertently put too many “not”s in that sentence.
Benw
Shorter version: “it’s hard out there for a honky! Waaaa!”
Cervantes
@msdc:
The second and third of these are especially reckless.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: Not for me, says the straight white male.
kc
@Joel:
Seconded.
raven
@msdc: Crap, I took that quote from here.
rikyrah
Zandar
uh huh
uh huh
So hard to be a White Guy….
GET DA PHUQ OUTTA HERE.
Infamous Heel-Filcher
What existing term do you propose which communicates the same two ideas:
(a) not transgender, and
(b) transgender is not an aberration or disorder?
Personally, “cisgender” might be my favorite neologism of the past several years.
Comrade Dread
It is hard to be a middle-aged, white, straight Christian man.*
Banks are always offering me credit at good interest rates even when I don’t want it. Seriously, do you know how annoying that is?
*Sarcasm.
msdc
@raven: Thanks.
Betty Cracker
@raven: Not chicken and dumplings! Man, that’s just COLD.
@msdc: Here’s what I think: Walking on the flag = free speech. I might not like it, but it’s his flag.
Threatening to randomly kill people and bringing a gun on campus should result in a psych eval and time on a locked ward or jail cell.
Plenty of blowhards run their yaps about killing people to strike a blow against the oppressor (even right here on this blog, that happens), but backing it up with the purchase of a gun transforms the purchaser from loud-mouthed moron to potential terrorist, at least in my book. The NRA might feel differently.
Bystander
College students waxing hyperbolic and overly impassioned? Now that’s something new.
But misquoting Jefferson’s axiom on how to nourish the tree of liberty is mere 1st Amendment exercise.
Bystander
Everytime someone says “cisgender” I hear “sciss-gender” and involuntarily cross my legs.
raven
@Betty Cracker: The dude has a great voice, kind of like Lou Christie.
Cervantes
@Infamous Heel-Filcher:
It’s been around for twenty years or so. Notwithstanding that, I agree that it’s not yet widely understood. And notwithstanding that, I agree that it’s a useful term and should therefore be used!
Kropadope
And they say the Right Wing doesn’t have P.C. thought police. Not only do they have them, but they are better funded and well respected among wingers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, they do. This case is a textbook argument in favor of a waiting period***, but the 2nd Amendment says, “I have the right to any gun I want, any time I want, RIGHT NOW!!!!!”
*** would it work in this case? who knows, but a cooling off period never hurts
Tomas
RE: the side note
The master race ™ will be forged in the crucible of intellectual conflict and strife into hard steel!
Unless of course the master race ™ sees something scary or yucky or different or something bad that gives it bad dreams or something that gives it doubts about those too good dreams it sometimes has or someone who disagrees with it. Then the master race ™ needs to be protected like the fragile little steel flower it is.
Belafon
@msdc: I think the college students have more respect for the flag than thos people that have the ones that hang from their car windows. When those break off, and they do, the drivers don’t go back for those. They wouldn’t be walking on the flag if it didn’t mean something.
msdc
@Betty Cracker:
Of course. That should go without saying. But what exactly did these students think they were going to accomplish? “Hey, did you hear some college kid in Valdosta just trampled on the flag?” “Oh yeah, he’s right – GOD DAMN AMERICA!”
It’s performing self-righteousness through a parody of political activism, and it just feeds an equally performative and even more intensely self-righteous backlash on the other side. It does nothing to advance a political agenda, most likely because it doesn’t have one. Something to remember as left-wing activism slides into increasingly more symbolic and meaningless forms.
As for the blowhards, I don’t think we should be too surprised when one of them decides to carry his Fight the Power LARPing that one crucial step further. If we criticized Palin and O’Reilly and the like for fueling politically motivated violence on the right (and I sure as hell did) we ought to clamp down hard when we see someone doing it on the left.
Tenar Darell
Some professor wants to expand their students’ horizons, and prepare them for the diverse future. Some fragile soul sees and shares the flyer, and it becomes this wingnut outrage of the week. Is this what they feel like when we point out the latest video of a black person hurt by the police, and the tone deaf response of those in authority? FFS! One if these things is not like the other.
@raven: Huh? But I thought they wanted guns on campus?! She-it these people are nuts!
msdc
That said, I bet a whole lot of NRA members in Valdosta, GA suddenly discovered they were perfectly okay with gun-free school zones when this idiot turned up.
Brendan in Charlotte
@raven: There’s a lot of “white privilege” at the end of that article as well. Right after the police chief s quoted as saying that Eric “…hasn’t done anything wrong…” comes the sentence that he is to be considered armed and dangerous…
Cervantes
@msdc:
It sounds as if you observed the protest at first hand — but I could be mistaken.
D58826
@cmorenc: At this point I think the spelling should be ‘knots’. My head hurts:-)
Tenar Darell
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah. The past ten years or so it’s like the gun (for activists) has actually become a sacred object. It makes no sense to me. It really kind of feels like worship.
WereBear
But we are not that kind of bar!
jibeaux
Your first clue that you may be insufficiently aware of the power and nuance that words can hold is when you name your conservative group the “National Youth Front.”
There’s something about a bulletin board that seeks to have you identify your religious privilege etc. that’s so college. Not saying it’s wrong, it’s just….collegey. when the ASU (NC ASU) faculty head says the only complaints they really got were kids who thought maybe the boards could go someplace other than their dorms, I can feel that.
kc
@Cervantes:
Why would you assume that? There are plenty of videos, photos, and written accounts of the protest available online. It’s hardly necessary to have “observed [it] at first hand” to have an opinion.
rikyrah
GET DA PHUQ OUTTA HERE!!!!
………………
New Kinloch mayor blocked by police from entering city hall
POSTED 9:43 PM, APRIL 23, 2015
KINLOCH, MO (KTVI) – Our Fox 2 cameras were the only ones there as the newly-elected Kinloch mayor was greeted by police for her first day on the job.
Betty McCray was not only prevented from entering city hall, she was also told she’d been impeached before she got a chance to start.
McCray ran for mayor in the April 7 election and won.
After the election results were certified earlier this week by the St. Louis County Board of Elections, Kinloch’s outgoing administration refused to allow the city clerk to give McCray the oath of office, claiming voter fraud.
“Today is the first day that that the city hall door has been unlocked. They keep it locked,” McCray said. “You got to beat and you got to bang (to get in). They have an officer police sitting right at the door.”
On Thursday, McCray was ready to start on the job, but was met with strong resistance. Fox 2 was there with McCray when she showed up at city hall, where she was greeted by more than 20 Kinloch police officers.
http://fox2now.com/2015/04/23/new-kinloch-mayor-blocked-by-police-from-entering-city-hall/
Cervantes
@kc:
Sorry — why would I assume what?
Betty Cracker
@Brendan in Charlotte: If the guy really did threaten to randomly shoot people and is known to have guns, it would make sense for the cops to look for him and advise the public to consider him armed and dangerous. But I don’t know if he made credible threats or not. All the information about that I saw (after an admittedly cursory search) is from hysterical wingnut blogs.
S-Curve
Re the TPM story, western NC is a Klan hotbed, and App State’s most popular unofficial double major is skiing and weed. You get these cultural flareups from the skinheads there from time to time.
Tenar Darell
@rikyrah: That’s the town where 5 out of 6 police resigned? Hey, anybody for some end of Reconstruction redux?
ETA I really should stop reading the news for a bit. Everything old seems new again, déjà vu. Not quite like, but not unlike.
kc
@Cervantes:
That the commenter to whom you were responding “observed the protest at first hand.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Joel:
Considering the murder rate for transgenders, yes.
Belafon
@Tenar Darell: I think that’s a different town.
g
So a bulletin board soliciting opinions about white privilege is discrimination now? Whooda thunk?
OzarkHillbilly
@Tenar Darell: No, that was Pharma, down in the Bootheel. Kinloch is one of the more corrupt municipalities in N St Louis County. This has nothing to do with race (officials in Kinloch have all been black as far back as my memory goes, 40+ yrs) and probably everything to do with power politics and the money that flows from it.
Mike in NC
We just so happened to be driving through Boone, NC last year when we were informed that ASU was celebrating Parents Weekend and putting on a football game. It was impossible to even find a place to park. I seem to recall that about 99.9% of the people in the streets were white.
Cervantes
@kc:
Oh, that. I wasn’t assuming that at all.
And by the way:
Oh, sure, I agree.
I do have minor questions about accuracy and reliability — but I won’t belabor those.
PurpleGirl
@rikyrah: WTF! They ‘served’ her the articles of impeachment by mail. (head meets desk)
orogeny
For me, the whole white privilege issue boils down to how it is stated. There are lots of white males out there who worked hard and overcame a lot to get where they are. When we address the issue of privilege as “You had it easy…you’re a white male,” a lot of those kind of people take that as a denigration of everything they’ve accomplished. It’s not much different than the white folks who tell successful blacks that they had it easy because of affirmative action, even though they had to work their butts to get to the position where affirmative action could give them that aid. To me it seems like that’s one reason why the kind of obviously racist org that NYF represents can say things that resonate with a lot of not-particularly-racist white males. The question is, is there a way to address the very real issue of white privilege without insulting people?
Tenar Darell
@orogeny: Probably not. It really is very difficult to demonstrate that someone has unearned/unseen advantages. It’s like trying to explain water to a fish, or air to a bird, it’s just where they live every day. You cannot notice what you have not been trained to see. (Or what you do not want to see).
Cervantes
@orogeny:
Good questions.
First answer: Never say “You had it easy…you’re a white male.”
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: I am the Illinois side of things. But 33 miles from St. Louis. Not that far from Ferguson. Things seem to be FUBAR here.
Tenar Darell
@OzarkHillbilly: Wow.
OzarkHillbilly
@orogeny:
You mean outside of turning them black for a few days?
Amir Khalid
I am of Malay ethnicity, a group that has certain special privileges defined in my country’s constitution. The attitudes regarding these privileges among certain people of my ethnicity will be very familiar to those observing white privilege in America. You’ll notice the same sense of superiority and entitlement, the same appeals to the prejudices of the privileged group’s own lower classes, the same sense of being besieged by the Lesser Other, the same tendency to lash out at said Lesser Other.
Tenar Darell
@orogeny: @Cervantes: I tend to think of it like just as you need to learn how to fight as a couple, you need to learn how to talk about privilege. And there will still be hurt feelings and miscommunications and road bumps and even breakups.
orogeny
@Tenar Darell:
I’m a white male, and I know that that gave me certain advantages. But, I also left home when I was 17, worked as a laborer for 10 years and spent 9 years getting a college degree whole working full time before I finally got to a reasonable level of success. To say that I had it easy because if my whiteness comes across as insulting. I was also lucky enough that I was born with a reasonably good brain but no one talks about smart privilege. No one tells Neal DeGrasse Tyson that the path to his current status was easy because he was born smart. I really don’t know how to say this, any way I approach it seems to me like I’m trying to deny the fact that being white has advantages in our society, and I don’t want to do that. But, branding any white guy who gets offended when someone starts talking about how he had it easy because of his color and gender as a racist only seems to hurt the overall cause.
ruemara
I’m standing on a set where I’m working for free, where if I didn’t know a key person directly, I wouldn’t have the privilege.
And people are politely wary, like I may go off if I get jarred.
I am grateful to get the chance to work for free, because I can’t even give my services away. Meanwhile, I’m dealing with people who’ve never been on a set before, even in school.
Things are what they are. But the simple idea that you can have an opportunity just because you fit the right visual markers exist. It may not suit the National Youth Front or many perfectly non-racist but unconsciously biased people, but it is real.
Also, I’m in an office decorated with Reagan pictures, shots of the owner hugging Mitch McConnell and stuffed birds. Goddess help me.
Chris
@Cervantes:
“You had it easy… you’re a white male” is what a large section of the population is determined to hear and will hear, no matter how carefully you parse words, avoid offensive language, and caveat it with acknowledgments of how white male peoples’ lives still aren’t a walk in the park.
msdc
@Brendan in Charlotte:
I know, right? Just because he brought a gun to campus and talked about killing people! Check your privilege, sheriff!
RaflW
@msdc:
Hmmm. I recall being a college student, ohh, decades ago now (can that be true?). Pretentious and self-involved, we created some pretty stupid political actions. It’s the nature of being young and in the hotbed of college/early 20s/activist circles who are busy rejecting the learned wisdom of our elders.
I see it now in young cadres. But I do not see it as a slide “into increasingly more symbolic and meaningless forms.” I see it as the predictable cycling of generations.
ETA: I hope I don’t really need to say this, but I’m referring to the flag-trampling dumb-assery, not the gun and the terroristic threats. That is flatly unacceptable.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tenar Darell: We could try giving them a job as the only white person in that “division”. Way way way back when they were still making the first dirt, I had a job as a cook in an upscale restaurant. I was the only white person in the kitchen (just to show how progressive they were, they had one black waiter). One night there was a screw up on an order for a VIP and the shit hit the fan. At the end of the shift I was called for a meeting with the manager in which he said, “They did it on purpose, didn’t they? You don’t have to be afraid, you can tell me. You’re white, we’re white, you’re one of us, right?”
The more he talked the more pissed I became and no matter what I said there was no convincing him that the order never came thru on the intercom. By the end of the meeting I was well aware of the fact that I was a “race traitor”.
In the years before I had been well aware that I had gotten jobs because I was white or at least it didn’t hurt that I was, but this was the first time I not only had gotten a job because I was white, but that certain expectations came with that whiteness.
I have never gotten over the smell of it, kind of like a rotting corpse, you never forget.
NonyNony
@orogeny:
When guys who don’t think about these things start mouthing off about how affirmative action is the real privilege and white privilege isn’t a thing, I ask a simple question:
“So if they’ve got it better off, would you choose to be black? Do you think your life would have been better with those ‘advantages’ if you were exactly as you are now, but black?”
To a man none of them have ever said they’d rather be black. And I know of at least 2 cases where the individual involved essentially “checked their privilege” right there in a way that nobody ever outright asked to “check their privilege” has ever done to my knowledge and they’ve become much more thoughtful about how they respond to situations where race is involved.
It’s the kind of question that outright racists refuse to answer because they’re racist. But if you’re dealing with someone who hasn’t really given it much thought it can be an eye-opener.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: In India too, Brahmins and other upper caste people rail against the Indian version of affirmative action, which includes quotas for the scheduled castes and tribes in government employment and educational institutions.
ETA: Scheduled castes : Bureaucratese for lower castes, there is an entire list of who qualifies for these benefits.
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, I believe I covered this in the last thread when I mentioned “Finian’s Rainbow”.
Mike J
@NonyNony:
Or as Chris Rock points out, none of the white people in his audience would change places with him, and he’s *rich*.
catclub
@Betty Cracker:
depending on the religion and skin color of the person involved.
Tenar Darell
@orogeny: (ETA clarity & paragraph)
And I really had a silver spoon, right zip code, involved parents, tiger mom, great college, smart… I could be insufferable if I hadn’t had that smacked out of me by life, while being a lifelong autodidact.
I don’t know how you bring it up to a general audience without causing some people to think that “we all swim in a sea of unseen privilege” is somehow telling them “you didn’t earn that!” If you are primed to take offense, it is difficult to change that initial reaction.
There actually had been some success in using video games to break down this initial reaction. Basically the class gets assigned playable characters with different powers, they play, and lose…over and over they lose. Then the class starts talking about privilege. Amy Shumer used it in a sketch, to make a point about women in the military and rape, but it’s about privilege too. (Pay special attention to the boyfriend, his reactions and assumptions).
Citizen_X
@msdc:
Well, by golly, then it accomplished something!
orogeny
@NonyNony:
I’ve asked that identical question of many white guys complaining about how black people have all the advantages now and always get similar responses.
I just found this …it’s pretty good.
msdc
@Cervantes: Yes, you’re “just asking questions.”
Not questions that have anything to do with the points people make or the matter at hand, but questions just the same.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK: I’ve never seen it and know even less about it. If it wasn’t a movie, than I never saw it, sad to say.
RaflW
@Tenar Darell: It is also hard to explain to people who have often seen their own standing in life drop, or at least stay stagnant, that they have privilege. As the middle class has been hollowed out by shitty public policy and greedy corporations, a lot of white people are just not in a position personally to be receptive to a “white privilege” lesson.
They have many privileges relative to people of color. And white men of all classes have privileges over women, white and POC. But the advantages are largely invisible and are not of themselves sufficient to ameliorate their own economic and social struggles.
The folks most in need of an education on white privilege are those who have most successfully leveraged it – executives and civic & political leaders. You can bet your ass that Willard Romney is not the slightest bit interested in dialog about whiteness. Nor is, for example, Rex W. Tillerson, the ceo of Exxon (heck, he’s not even interested in looking at his hetero privilege, as trendy as Fortune 500 lgbt non-discrimination is). Etc.
All that said, I think it is helpful that college students are trying to unpack some of the whiteness issues. Its a start.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@orogeny:
I work in the entertainment industry, where there is a HUGE amount of unacknowledged privilege. Not just white privilege (though that exists) but class privilege. Of the people in my MFA graduating class, the only ones who were able to get writing jobs straight out of school were the ones who were able to do full-time unpaid internships for at least a year and “prove” they should be hired. And the reason they were able to do that was because they had rich family members to support them — one of them literally married a rock star (who was also her high school sweetheart, but they got married after he was a hugely successful rock star).
Now, does that mean that those people were not talented, or that they did not work hard? Of course not. But it does mean that they had advantages that their classmates did not have, because they were able to work for free long enough for someone to hire them. Not everyone has that privilege, so we end up with film and TV artists who are all from the same social class that could afford to take unpaid internships.
Tenar Darell
@orogeny: That is really good. I’ll use that again I think.
schrodinger's cat
This issue of discussing privilege of whatever kind is always going to be a political loser, since it makes most people immediately defensive. A better way to gain allies would be to focus how the system is rigged against anyone who has to work for a living and is not a part of the 1% who are able to live off of their investments alone.
msdc
@RaflW: I share your take on the generational aspect of this. But I also think we can see that kind of purely performative symbolic confrontation in movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter, which don’t consist solely of college students and have plenty of older participants or advocates who fall into the same self-defeating logic (a la Cornell West).
Plantsmantx
@raven:
I had to Google the first paragraph of your post to get to where it actually came from:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/04/23/vsu-flag-stomper-eric-sheppard-still-on-the-loose-accused-of-having-a-gun-on-campus-making-terrorist-threats-video/
The link in this sentence:
…took me to this site:
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/04/22/manhunt-continues-at-valdosta-state-university-eric-sheppard-jr-flees-capture-by-federal-authorities/#more-99823
I expected to see/read that the police took a backpack from him which had a gun in it. Instead, I read/heard that they found a backpack with a gun in it that they say is his.
As for the supposed terroristic threats, he says some harsh, ugly stuff on those videos, but they’re all in the context of “what we will be forced to do after we separate”. He’s not making any immediate threats toward anyone.
orogeny
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
That’s exactly right. Maybe when we talk about privilege, white privilege needs to be addressed as part of a whole package, some of which have nothing to do with race or gender. For me, I finally realized that the issue was not privilege for me so much as my getting getting what everyone should…it’s not that I was privileged by my race so much as that many others are underprivileged because of theirs. It’s not that I was “given” anything because of my race, it is simply that many others are not allowed the same opportunities that I had because of theirs.
msdc
@Citizen_X: Only until the next white guy wants to bring a gun on campus.
Tenar Darell
@schrodinger’s cat: Politically, yes that makes sense, but if you do that (similar to what FDR did in the 30’s) it is possible to basically leave the status quo intact, including maintaining all the gaps or even increasing them, even while helping people in general.
Ruckus
I wonder if the whole way of stating the concept of white privilege could be turned on it’s head. Lots of white people didn’t get much advantage in their lives even though most minorities got/get a lot less. It isn’t that all white people had it grand, it is that most all minorities had it a lot harder. Affirmative action is about reversing the systemic lack of privilege that minorities have. Lots of whites had lack of economic privilege but they still gained from not having that systemic lack of privilege that came with being a minority in a white, racist society.
I don’t have suggestions, just asking the question.
schrodinger's cat
@Tenar Darell: That is one possible outcome but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. The ACA is good start in that direction, we need to build on that.
Ruckus
@orogeny:
That is good. Along the same lines I am thinking.
Cervantes
@msdc:
You’re brainy. Do I have to spell everything out? Well, here’s what you wrote:
Given the amount of “theory” you put into this paragraph, I think it’s perfectly legitimate to ask if you actually witnessed the protest; or on what basis you’re describing it. If you’re relying on Internet reports, then are those reliable?
You may not like these questions — that’s too bad — and you’re free to ignore them.
Cervantes
@Ruckus:
Good and useful distinction.
Cervantes
@NonyNony:
A useful approach, I agree.
Nothing will work all the time, but this is a good approach that does not begin by devaluing what people (think they) have done all by themselves.
msdc
@Plantsmantx: Yeah, that “harsh, ugly stuff” includes talking about the necessity of killing oppressors, saying he doesn’t care for “Europeans” existence, and telling white students to their face that he hates them. (Also a nice side dose of anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories.) Link to the first video here for anyone who doesn’t want to get their verification from a site with Andrew Breitbart’s face on the banner.
He voices eliminationist rhetoric and he brought a gun to campus. Normally that would be enough for liberals and progressives to condemn him.
Or at least not make excuses.
msdc
@Cervantes: I know your shtick, Cervantes: ask lots of unrelated questions, derail the discussion, and if you do get answers, move the goalposts and derail it even further. Not playing.
Cervantes
@msdc:
“I hate you” is fine, maybe even justified — but I agree (again) that (credible) death threats are reckless and unacceptable.
Cervantes
@msdc:
As explained, the question is not unrelated.
And yes, your ignoring it does not surprise me.
Plantsmantx
@msdc:
Yes, it includes all that, but I’ll point out once again the context in which he put “the necessity of killing oppressors”. I don’t think that constitutes immediate terrorist threats…even when white supremacists say things like that. There are no hate speech laws here, and there shouldn’t be. You say he brought a gun to campus. I say the police say they found a backpack which they say is his, and they say there was a gun in it. Which of us are being more accurate, based on what has been reported?
Make excuses for what?
Tenar Darell
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes we should. But I can’t ignore that once again, a public policy with a differential application (thank you John Roberts!) has managed to leave out large a percentage of African Americans.
The Medicaid expansion is being refused. Even though the law would help (in overall numbers) many more poor whites than blacks. There is no logical reason for this. For example, the refusal to expand Medicaid has already started closing local, rural hospitals. Lots of people will die, just because of this. All those untreated heart attacks because the hospital is 25-50 miles away, instead of 5-10. All those distant chemo treatments, because you need to drive to the hospital and your family doesn’t own a car. Black or white, the problems of poverty are the same, no cushion or net to soften the blows of fate. Yet still the Medicaid expansion is being refused. Why is that? I think that racism has played its part, once again.
I don’t believe we can simply decide that our priority is improving ACA alone anymore without addressing the underlying racism that is part its refusal. Somehow, some way, we’ve got to address more than one problem at a time to actually fix this.
We’re probably just focused on different parts of the same problem. Basically, I believe that we need to expand our vision and focus, or the electric car coming from behind us will hit us.
Cervantes
@Plantsmantx:
There you go, asking “unrelated questions” and “derailing the conversation” again!
msdc
@Plantsmantx: Let’s take the “terrorist” language off the table for now (although it’s worth noting that language reportedly comes from Sheppard himself). He expressed hatred for his fellow students – in the abstract and directly to their faces – and brought a gun to campus. Why is this not a problem for you? Why do you keep trying to minimize it?
That’s easy: I am.
(Incidentally, the guy owns other firearms. He’s posed with them on social media. You can hear him admitting this in one of the videos, starting at 0:50.)
Raven already mentioned the confirmation earlier in the thread. Casting suspicion on this isn’t skepticism, it’s wishful thinking and denial of an inconvenient truth. That would fall under “making excuses” for extremely threatening behavior in my book.
Brendan in Charlotte
@Betty Cracker: completely understood. I just thought the juxtaposition was striking.
kc
@Mike J:
Shit, I’d change places with Chris Rock in a skinny minute.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Ruckus: I agree with you. I grew up in a poor, single mother household. My life has not been a red carpet with an Oscar goodie bag at the end. Yet, for all that, my life has been not nearly as shitty as it would had I grown up under the same circumstances, but black. I realize that. Most whites don’t.
Needs to be a way to talk about this and discuss with being able to tell white folks who really didn’t grow up in any way “privileged” that they do, in fact, have it less shitty than others like them with more melanin. Sadly, I think that boat has sailed. “Check your privilege” is a cheap catchphrase that has done nothing but piss a lot of white people off. Including me, to be honest.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@kc: I wouldn’t and the reason may strike you as rather odd: I’d take his money and his way with words and his skin color in a heartbeat, but damn, he is SHORT! I would not want to be short, I’m 6 foot 2 and like it.
kc
@RaflW:
Yep. And yelling at them about their racist white tears isn’t going to help.
Sometime I think the whole shitshow has been designed to keep people from paying attention to what’s going on at the top.
kc
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Of course you don’t want to surrender your height privilege! Next time you’re in a club swimming in a sea of height privilege, spare a thought for the poor short people surrounded by chests and backs at their eye level.
Actually, I do like being a woman, so I might not change places with Chris Rock, when it comes right down to it. I’d swap with Beyonce or Rihanna, thought.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: I agree. I assume there is a way to talk about privileges (including those held by Blacks in the Western world versus poor Blacks in 3rd World countries) without anyone feeling defensive or targeted. We shouldn’t be teaching privilege as a “you White folks have all the luck” theory where it would only be natural for White students to feel like they’re being attacked. I assume that even though I’m a Black female, my White neighbors and I have much in common despite our racial differences, i.e., both middle class, working, suburban, etc.
Cervantes
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Assuming [2] is true, why do you think it is? Why are you different?
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Wowzer. Looks like the Establishment is having a public nervous breakdown. She’s going to have to hang tough.
Ridnik Chrome
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The thing that utterly infuriates me about discussions of white privilege (which I agree is a real thing, although I’d say it’s more of a penalty that is levied on non-whites than a privilege given to white people) is that the people telling other people to “check their privilege” are very often upper-middle and upper class white people. If you’re white and working class, it’s like being lectured by your boss’s kid…
shortstop
@orogeny:
Not much different unless you’ve noticed the wildly disparate collective experiences of black and white people in this country. Have you?
For all but the most self-focused listeners, I should think it would be sufficient to remind folks that white people operate with a far greater cultural validation and political, social, educational, legal and economic base advantages. But, although I never accuse anyone of any demographic of “having it easy” (and I doubt too many people use those words, though many listeners of zero-sum leanings translate them that way), I have little patience for the vaporings of other white people over whether the brutal facts are being stated in a way that hurts their feelings. I really, really don’t think the most important thing about American racism is how it makes me feel. Why do you?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Cervantes: No idea.
raven
Looks like there are about 50 people at the flag rally/
Plantsmantx
Yes, “mentioned” with no link. It wasn’t “wishful thinking”, I was going by the report I saw, and I definitely don’t think it was wrong to question whether or not the police were telling the truth.
How I feel about him expressing hate for white students to their faces or behind their backs is irrelevant. The question is whether or not that in and of itself is something he can or should be prosecuted for. he can’t and he shouldn’t be prosecuted for that. Expressing the opinion that someone shouldn’t go to jail for saying they hate someone else isn’t “making excuses”.
Ruckus
@shortstop:
I really, really don’t think the most important thing about American racism is how it makes me feel. Why do you?
A very, very good point. That is part of what I was trying to get to. The way white privilege is presented gets taken about feelings towards minorities. That’s not intended in most cases, I’d venture. I’d like to find another way to present the concept so that feelings don’t become the issue, at least for the majority of white people who hear it. I think outright racists are always going to make it about them. I think reaching outright racists is a lost cause, noble as it may be. I think reaching people who take the words white privilege as calling them racist when they may not be is a problem. It shuts off a discussion that we all should be having. Otherwise nothing changes. I’ve known white people who have had a far worse life than some blacks I’ve known. Would it have been even worse if they were black? I’d bet yes, by a long shot. That’s because I’ve also known blacks who have had a worse life than their economic standing should have given them. Many don’t have that exposure.
To expand a bit, the southern strategy has intensified the racial disparity of this country and used an economic basis to do so. Whites who had it bad had it so for economic reasons. Minorities have economic reasons for having it bad because they are minorities.
ETA It’s not that all whites have it grand and all blacks have it bad, it is a convoluted subject. First we have to define bad. Is it that I’m not rich? You’re not rich? What makes a life good or bad? Opportunities or what?
Brachiator
@rikyrah: WTF?
Why is this nonsense still going on? Is it getting national coverage? How in hell do a bunch of goons get to nullify an election?
J R in WV
@orogeny:
That is good. We live in a rural, poor county in a rural, poor state. We have met and been friends with many people who cut wood all summer for heat in the winter, who, when they win some money on a scratch-off lotto ticket, immediately spend it all on a small travel trailer so then have a dry place to live, with a floor.
Others from that same background worked really hard to get a scholarship to the local University, or some smaller college far away. One young man who didn’t complete high school worked in construction, and saved ALL his income, and bought equipment to bid on construction projects. Now he’s rich by any standard. His wife is smart and beautiful, also.
A great essay, though, that’s for sure.
@Amir Khalid: and @schrodinger’s cat: people are people everywhere. They can be awful and wonderful all in a single instant. I worked with a couple from India. They had to flee to America because he was a Brahmin, and she was Muslim, and they were in love. Very smart capable people, too.
msdc
@Plantsmantx: Um, he’s being investigated for bringing a gun onto campus, dude. The campus police were protecting his right to protest prior to that, as every story about the flag protest mentions.
El Caganer
@Tenar Darell: Zardoz: Zardoz speaks to you, His chosen ones.
Exterminators: We are the chosen ones!
Zardoz: You have been raised up from Brutality, to kill the Brutals who multiply, and are legion. To this end, Zardoz your God gave you the gift of the Gun. The Gun is good!
Exterminators: The Gun is good!
Zardoz: The Penis is evil! The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the Gun shoots Death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth, and kill! Zardoz has spoken.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
I don’t know how you could impeach an elected officer before that person ever took and executed the duties (or didn’t as the case may be) of the office they were elected to. It doesn’t pass the smell test. She never even got into city hall, much less took over the duties of mayor.
So where could grounds for impeachment come from? Out of some dirtbag’s ass, no doubt. Seems like grounds for a fucked up lawyer to lose their license to practice law to me!
What a pretty picture of democracy. I feel for that woman, worked her ass off to get elected, and now faced with this!
Plantsmantx
@msdc:
Yes, I understand that. What I don’t understand is all the talk about how I feel about him saying what he said and the accusations of minimizing it and making excuses for it and his walking on a flag because I don’t feel that he should be prosecuted for it, even it it were possible to do so. If he had a gun he should be prosecuted for that. The rest is (or should be) irrelevant to any actual crime he may have committed.
Cervantes
@shortstop:
Question isn’t whether we have enough patience for them, or hurt their feelings.
Question is whether it’s possible to reach someone for whom you have little patience, or whose feelings are immaterial to you.
the Conster
@orogeny:
Unpacking the Invisible Backpack is the most useful description of what white privilege is that I’ve ever read.
raven
@Plantsmantx: He had a gun on campus. Period.
Paul in KY
@raven: What is he on the run for? What crime have they charged him with?
Edit: See it was gun on campus.
Plantsmantx
@Cervantes:
Ideally, you’ll have no patience with them and their feelings will become immaterial to you once you’ve concluded they can’t be reached.
Cervantes
@Plantsmantx:
(Sigh)
Convenient, isn’t it?
I hope you’re wrong but I suppose you may be right.
Then again, I expect you hope you’re wrong, too.
Cheers.
Paul in KY
@Tenar Darell: Any white person who doesn’t realize that they have it a bit easier in this country, due to being, white, is a ‘moran’.
shortstop
@J R in WV:
It’ll be interesting to read these “articles of impeachment” when they finally arrive in the mail (I can’t stop laughing at that part). Without having all the details, so far they appear to have been brought to us by the same type of great mind that thinks “unconstitutional” is a synonym for “stuff I don’t like.”
@the Conster: I had forgotten all about that. Strange to think it’s 25 years old. Plus ca change…
Gravenstone
@msdc:
When I was in college back the early-mid 80’s, there was one of the “radical” group who liked to jerk chains by using a US flag as a beach blanket. Some of the elder members of that group got themselves a conversation with BATF a couple of years prior because they decided to protest the closing of their dorm. Their chosen means of doing so was to drag the beat up piano from the dorm basement, out into the quad. Where they proceeded to burn it, by tossing Molotov cocktails at it. Fucking morons. Fortunately the Feds were somewhat understanding of their youthful idiocy and no charges were filed.
Pen
@Ridnik Chrome:
In my experience this couldn’t be more true. The correlation between being a comfortably middle to upper class white kid and using the phrase “check your privilege” is strong enough that the only other people I’ve heard use it in person are the college professors that teach it to them.
I fully understand white privilege, but being told my opinion is irrelevant to the discussion, without even bothering to find out what it is, by rich white brats tends to piss my poor ass off.
kc
@Cervantes:
I’m pretty sure the point of a lot of these conversation is not to reach people who disagree with the concept, but to demonstrate one’s superiority to them.
kc
@Ridnik Chrome:
white privilege (which I agree is a real thing, although I’d say it’s more of a penalty that is levied on non-whites than a privilege given to white people)
Yes. I’ve wondered if it wouldn’t be more useful to refer to a “black tax.”
Cervantes
@kc:
Which conversations?
And you’re pretty sure because … ?
kc
@Cervantes:
Which conversations?
See the OP, for example.
And you’re pretty sure because … ?
Years of reading liberal blogs and twitter accounts.
KS in MA
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Right, and that tends to influence the kinds of movies and TV shows that come out of Hollywood as well. (Not a very subtle point, I admit.)
msdc
@Plantsmantx: I’m glad you agree that the gun is the real problem and that that’s what has the police searching for him. Because earlier, when you cast doubt on whether he even had the gun (something you’re still nodding towards – “if he had the gun”) or whether the police fabricated it, you were completely minimizing the danger this guy posed to the campus.
Same with reducing his rants to “harsh, ugly stuff.” Yes, harsh, ugly stuff is protected too – right up until the point when it calls for violence. If someone from any other political faction – say, a RWNJ open-carry advocate – started talking about how he hated another race and how we needed to kill the oppressors, and posted pictures of himself brandishing firearms on social media – we’d want the police to investigate him, too. We’d probably be very relieved when they found and confiscated a gun he brought onto a college campus.
But for some reason this guy gets the benefit of the doubt?
msdc
@Pen:
That “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person” piece has cycled around my Facebook feed dozens of times. I think it even pops up on this thread.
Strangely, I never see “Explaining Class Privilege to an Educated Upper Middle Class Person.”
Infamous Heel-Filcher
So write it yourself.
Tenar Darell
@El Caganer:
(Oh dear)
All hail Zardoz!
Plantsmantx
@msdc:
Yes, I did cast doubt on whether he had a gun. That’s because the report I saw stated that the police didn’t take the backpack off his person, but found it someplace else. Under those circumstances, it’s not unreasonable to question whether or not the backpack and gun were his until it was proven that it was.
Huh? calling them “harsh, ugly stuff” was reducing them?
Copy/paste where I stated the police shouldn’t have investigated him.
In a situation where the police didn’t take a backpack off someone, but finds one that just happens to have a gun in it, the police don’t get the benefit of the doubt until they prove it belongs to that person.
Cervantes
@Plantsmantx:
Odd that such things need to be elaborated.
Plantsmantx
@Cervantes:
This person is indignant because I won’t endorse the expediency of not caring whether or not he’s guilty of anything other than being an anti-white racist.