Observations...

[silverthorne]

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?

Comments

[chiss.livejournal.com]

White privilege, (institutional and otherwise) racial discrimination of all types, is not about what happened "then", in the past -- it's about what is happening now, and will continue to happen until people actually learn that it IS happening and do something to stop it. You can't "change the way it's handled" unless people realize that there is a problem in the first place, which they are apparently loathe to.

"Past actions" have nothing to do with this. They way people act today, does.

What "wrong" issues am I/others obsessing about? I'd say the fact that there are people by and large receiving preferential treatment because of their race is a pretty big issue. And actually, no, comparing the current social standing of any race (which ties into their economic standing, their cultural mores, etc.) to any other race is incorrect and fallacious no matter how you slice it, considering each of them had and continue to have very different, distinct histories and cultures, not to mention timelines. It's not comparable. Apples and oranges.

I'm really curious -- who is making white people out to be "bad"? That seems to be a very common misconception when talks like this crop up. White people aren't a hivemind. We don't all fall in lockstep because we have the same color skin. There is, as you said, a "world of difference" between villainizing a group and presenting a breakdown of how that group is operating on a different level than everyone else in the society in which they operate and live. White privilege is a phenomenon that (unfairly) benefits white people, not a meeting of the minds that we all consciously contribute to in an effort to impede everybody else's progress.