*Sigh*

[silverthorne]

Okay. Tolerance is a good thing. Cultural diversity is a good thing. Letting people keep their traditions is a good thing.

...I just received a 200-page-thick workbook for the nurses in post partum.

It is pages and pages of how to deal with people from different cultures. Everything except how to deal with white people.

Thing is, most of it? Is common sense and general ettiquette that even the dreaded 'white people' know. Or at least it was at some point. Lord knows I was raised that way, because most of what I read was 'no shit, I knew that already'. The rest of it, if you listen to your patient in the first place and work with them (and the patient communicates and just doesn't get all closed-mouthed), should come easy enough.

The nurses though will have to go to classes for this. Memorize it all. Take tests. Get certificates for it or do it all over again.

Just so someone's toes don't get stepped on.

I'm all for being polite and meeting people in the social middle.

But this? Shit like this, when it's required reading because if we don't do it, some numbnut somewhere will take exception to the way you bow your head to them or something else which should be pretty damned trivial in the face of trying to take care of a sick patient, will sue the crap out of the hospital for racial discrimination.

The fact that we even need books like this just make me want to hide from everyone on the fucking planet until they remove cranial mass from rectum area.

This is when I start losing faith and losing willingess to listen to 'white people are horrible' things. This right here.

Everyone has got to bend a little, or we will all break.

Comments

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

Live in Texas or Arizona for a while. You perception of 'white is dominant' will change dramatically--white shareholders or not. (I wish I could show you the photo gallery of our hospital higher ups--yeah, there are whites, but also blacks and, predominently, people from various places in India.)

A lot of people do equate the two, and that is the part of the problem.

And thank you for the definition, because I was really starting to wonder.

The nurses are black, hindu, other folks from India, hispanic, etc. It's a pretty even distribution--in a 'rich' neighborhood (or at least upper middle class), and the clientel is the same mix. There are just as many rich of 'other' ethinic groups in this place as there are whites. In my department, my boss is hispanic and black, one of the guys is hispanic, the other man is black (and incidentally, is the one that's rude to everyone else in the place, is constantly on break, and will drag his shift work out every single day so that he doesnt have to help with extra assignements everyone is expected to work at. Sadly, it's a coincidence that he's black, but by the same token? last guy in his job was white and doing the same thing and was gone in a month. This guy? He's on his third year here).

And...I suppose I would be more inclined to buy into 'white priviledge' if the jobs I've worked down here did what you descibed. Thing is, I'm actually in the minority role...right down to getting complaints addressed and problems fixed (or not). If I complain (and, incidentally, the 'racial' examples I used for skyward were for a direct purpose and as an illustration, which was bad on my part but too late now) about a fellow worker for not doing their job (or being rude), if they're white? They get written up ASAP (and fired within a few weeks if they keep it up). Not white? Don't always get written up. Rarely get fired. And if they're sure you're the one that reported them, will proceed to be as rude as they can get away with for months.

So yeah, I see preferential treatment...and it's all about keeping people who are not white happy and not feeling like they're being picked on for their race. White folk though? Have been known to come into work, and get fired for something they did the day before (and that the non-white nurses have been doing repeatedly for a long time) and be escorted out by noon.

So yeah, I'm kinda leary of the whole 'white priviledge' thing both because of my own experiences and because honestly, what's being described is a small percentage of even the white population. Annnnnnnd the rest of us whites? In the same damned boat with the non-whites screaming about white priviledge.

[chiss.livejournal.com]

Live in Texas or Arizona for a while. You perception of 'white is dominant' will change dramatically--white shareholders or not.

No, it wouldn't. You've stumbled into something that's kind of an area of expertise/interest of mine, or at least my major (that being Sociology, and the stratifications of race/class therein, and the resulting correlations between). And now that I've said that, I'll muck something up bigtime and look like an idiot. ;)

I do agree that white people are not 100% dominant everywhere, all of the time. However, you've set up a bit of a false dichotomy; it's not a case of "white people are dominant everywhere or they're not dominant anywhere". There is a liberal, ivy-tower theorem that says people of other races cannot be racist against white people, or labeled as "racist", and I definitely disagree with that. However, the instances of individual racism that you're no doubt experiencing don't even begin to shift the dominant paradigm, and that is that white people maintain systematic, macro-scale power in terms of money and privilege over other races. By the nature of race relations, there will be times when there are more minorities than whites in places, and racism can and will result. The rub here is this: do those small "pockets" of minority-on-white racism change the power that white people have in America as opposed to minorities?

The answer is no, unfortunately. And while racism stings and hurts and is a HUGE detriment to a person's quality of life no matter how large or small the scale it's on, the presence of those "pockets" doesn't change the presence of white privilege.

Annnnnnnd the rest of us whites? In the same damned boat with the non-whites screaming about white priviledge.

There is no way to express how untrue this is or how potentially it hurtful it is to those non-whites who are affected by that white privilege. It doesn't affect a "small" percentage of whites. Have Americans had a black president? No; one is running and the vast majority claim "America isn't ready". Can a white person be arrested by the police for driving in the wrong part of town based on their skin color? No. Are the overarching cultural goals set up by the media for whites/displayed in mass media as in large part limited to music, sports, or crime?

I could go on. Social privilege is not the same as economic privilege, and whites have social, macro-scale privilege over all other races virtually everywhere. The fact that there are places where other races have gathered and exercise small-scale prejudice against whites doesn't change that fact.

[derek-bliss.livejournal.com]

Then I guess I have nothing more to say.

[chiss.livejournal.com]

And I'm sorry about that.

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

Why be sorry? If you have the evidence, then my point is moot. My own fault for 1) Not knowing what you know and 2) Bringing it up in the first place when really my own common sense should have won out yet again and I should have just kept my mouth shut.

And likewise the result of this discussion. It's no big deal. Difference of opinion, and who knows, I just might end up agreeing with you at some point. I don't right now, but then I'm just now getting into all of this, despite having experienced the above for over a decade, so...we'll see.

[chiss.livejournal.com]

Why should you have kept your mouth shut? People never learn if they never disagree and never ask questions, and this is a pretty important topic.

And really, I'd hazard to be presumptuous and say I know how this barrage of information feels. I've been there before -- "I'm white, but I've had a pretty shitty-to-normal lot in life, have had to endure rough times like everyone else, and now some college-educated hippy bastard is sashaying in and telling me I've been handed everything on a goddamned platter like the Duke of Earl? What the fuck?"

And people's experiences do vary, for certain. It's doubly-hard to understand or swallow if all you've known in your adult life is the opposite of what we're trying to tell you. And like I said -- while it's not true everywhere, it's important to know about this kind of stuff because the only way we'll be able to fight this shit and make it a thing of the past is to know it exists, and from there, decide what to do as a people to make it extinct.

But knowledge, as always, is the first step.

(I still <3 u btw)

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

I think that the problem is that I understand that what you are talking about is perpetuated--by a limited priviledge few. And yes, they are white for the most part.

And yeah, whites HAVE been dominant for a long time.

But even mere 'pockets' are an indication that that's changing. And they're very angry pockets a lot of times, which have the potential of repeating our mistakes.

And the problem that I see is that it seems it gets laid solidly at white peoples fight to 'fix it', when it's everyone's problem. And again, I get that yeah, whites are most recent and most widespread (at least in recent history), but again, where's the meeting from the other side?

That's the flaw I see. And part of what set me off, because although I know things need to change, I don't believe that dumping it all at the most recent maurader's doorstep to sort out by themselves is the answer. Which seems to be the expectation.

(No worries, I know you do. Or you'd quit talking to me.)

[chiss.livejournal.com]

what you are talking about is perpetuated--by a limited priviledge few

The privilege I'm speaking of is in no way confined to what I'm guessing you're referring to as (economically) privileged white people. Every white person in America has a social leg-up compared to any other person of non-white heritage you can claim, at least when in the company of other whites. And considering white people are the ones whom are still firmly in positions of power and most often promoted to them due to those racial prejudices, and that will not change until that white privilege is deconstructed.

I totally disagree that the "pockets" are an indication of change in the direction of widespread minority-on-white prejudice. They're an indication of people being righteously and completely validly angry that there are other people in the country getting special treatment by nothing other than the luck of the draw of getting the right skin color, no matter if they've been a bane or a boon to that society or country. They have every right to be pissed off which is probably where most of this prejudice is coming from, though their racist conduct is no more pardonable than any white person's you can name. However, it's important to realize it may be coming from a different place.

And the problem that I see is that it seems it gets laid solidly at white peoples fight to 'fix it', when it's everyone's problem. And again, I get that yeah, whites are most recent and most widespread (at least in recent history), but again, where's the meeting from the other side?

That's something of an ethical SNAFU, to be honest. We as a people lay our prejudices, racism, fears, and all other brands of fuckery you can name on the backs of people for years just because of the color of their skin, then expect them to help us clean up the mess we made when it's done nothing but negatively affect them and their quality of life? I can completely agree it's everyone's problem, but white people -- even if we don't consciously consider ourselves racist -- take part every day in a racist system that directly benefits us. We by nature of the history of absolutely despicable race relations, largely because of white people, in our country have the obligation to at least take the lion's share in helping clean up the mess. And the first step in that, as I said, is recognizing the privilege exists even if we have been socialized to not "see" it in our day to day lives.