silverthorne | Observations...

There was a long rambling post here that served no purpose other than me being upset, and by proxy, upsetting whoever read it.

It's erased. So at least I've learned something. Not so sure I still won't upset someone with this, but I'm trying not to here, all right? Just trying to get a wider perspective than I apparently have.

So...okay then.

Will someone please be kind enough to tell me what would be considered appropriate ways to help fix this situation? I'm understanding the reasoning about white america needing to be held accountable for the 'crimes of the past' as well as the present, but what I'm not getting a clear idea on, is what, exactly, I can do as a person to help rectify it. Since I can't change my skin color, my racial inheritance, or what the guys who have a lot more money and power than me are doing, what can I do as a person? What are you expecting? My own ideas of treating (and thinking of, despite the examples I used first post) people as people and not skins is apparently not enough.

No, this is not sarcasm, this is a person who's been up all night reading on this and getting a lot of the 'it's our/white people's fault and we/white people need to fix it' part, but not finding a whole lot of practical application for the average person living an everyday life. Except for talking it to death. Which still does nothing to help the situation. So I'm asking for a succinct run down.

What can be done?
What do you do?
What would you want done?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes, I forgot.

There are people who want the current day, adjusted for inflation, compensation better than the 40 Acres and a Mule that freed blacks got when the war was over.

That... would be a lot of money.

And I'm tempted to say would only really help fuel more racially-based ire; "someone's getting what I'm not based on skin color, when they personally didn't earn it".

I don't disagree.

The logic, though, is that such people demanding such compensation are owed it because of generations of labor paid only in abuse, rape, and the sale of their children out of their own families at the whim of the master.

Such people believe that such compensation is owed because nobody really wanted to give them darkies anything when the war was over, and there are still those who insist The South Will Rise Again.

In retort to what you say about "someone getting what I'm not based on skin color when they didn't earn it," the response would be something along the lines of "everything you have you got off the blood of my ancestors without personally earning it."

Oh, absolutely. I understand that viewpoint. Though when you translate it to modern-day words, and since we're realistically so far removed from those generations/families or whathaveyou, any kind of reparations offered to blacks would cause a HUGE outcry, and not just from whites.

*spends a minute giggling at the icon in current context, especially since it's ...y'know...Snow White*

Agreed.

I actually had a Civil War history teacher in college who apologized to the ancestors of the blacks in the class for what her ancestors did.

There were like three of us, including me, who went, "None of us were alive then. We can't go back and prevent it. You didn't personally do anything directly to us. All the apology is doing is keeping it in the mind of those who want to remember -- and since they want to remember, anything would bring it to mind for them. Let's get on with the class, and consider yourself forgiven."

(And look, she's so aptly horrified!)

That's a good way to look at it. Ugh this is all so sticky. :/

it is, which is what I was trying to point out--the more you hinge it on skin color and not just flat out piss-poor current treatment of human beings within a coeity everyone is supposedly sharng, it gets mired in this sort of confusion. People spend more time pointing fingers and holding folks accountable for being race-related to the actual assholes than working together to fix the problem and getting rid of said assholes.

And that's why I keep getting hung up on the racial label that's applied to the problem.

What racial label?

'White Privilege'.

The term hinges on being born white, and therefore assumed to automatically have privileges other races don't in regards to safety, voting rights, fear or lack thereof and other advantages.

It also automatically negates your right to point out it's a race-based term if you happen to be white. Because that's autmotically taken as a refusal to accept responsibility for the damage your race has done to other races over the course of history.

Even if you do acknowledge that things have got to change, and treating anyone in certain ways based on the color of their skin is dead wrong.

Alright. I'm going to be honest, this conversation is getting cyclical and it's kind of frustrating me.

I'm going to ask you to define the "it" I'm hinging skin color on, or vice versa. Again -- white privilege is not synonymous with economic privilege, though it can contribute to it and often does. White privilege isn't even the same as (intentional, pre-meditated) racism; the system to which it contributes is "racist" by way of discrimination based on race. White privilege is not the problem, it is a SYMPTOM of the problem, which is the ongoing institutional racial discrimination in favor of whites in America.

The term hinges on being born white, and therefore assumed to automatically have privileges other races don't in regards to safety, voting rights, fear or lack thereof and other advantages.

No, it assumes you are given those privileges by other people (most commonly other white people) because of the color of your skin.

It also automatically negates your right to point out it's a race-based term if you happen to be white.

I have no idea where you got this, honestly. Can you explain why?

Because that's autmotically taken as a refusal to accept responsibility for the damage your race has done to other races over the course of history.

...or this.

Even if you do acknowledge that things have got to change, and treating anyone in certain ways based on the color of their skin is dead wrong.

Well yes, it is. Positively or negatively, intentionally treating person x a certain way because of physically difference is discrimination, which technically means "the act of discerning or noting differences". But just "discrimination" =/= racism.

Because it still tags on the word 'white'.

And last time I looked, that's still a race and skin color.

Well yes, because it's specifically talking about white people and their effect on society. What word should we use?

coeity was supposed to be society

Observations...

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It boils down to I think we need better terminology

Re: It boils down to I think we need better terminology

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