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That's not quite true. It was a matter not just of an accent, but of the names, and the looks, too. If you met Paul's family, for example, you'd have no doubt as to their ethnicity.Quote:
Originally posted by Soledad
White on white discrimination such as with the Irish is definitely a part of history, but it's a matter of losing an accent. Much easier to overcome.
Good point, Karen. How many people had to change their names when they immigrated here to avoid problems? And there are a lot of races who will stand out just as much as anyone with a different skin colour. the Irish and Scots have the red hair, pale skin, etc. (like me... blah) The semetic races tend to have semetic features, like UABassoon's gf, my friend, Alexa. She's about as white as they come, but you can tell she comes from a semetic background. It's never a matter of simply "losing an accent".
I just get so tired of everyone blaming a whole race for a small group of peoples issues. Its impossible to define every single member of a race based on a few people. Stereotypeing is evil IMO.
Being an @$$ is being an @$$ no matter what race you are. Being nice is being nice no matter what race you are. As someone said earlier in this thread we all bleed the same color.
I'm an advocate of the quit whining principle.
Sorry if that sounds overly angry but thats just how I feel.
who's whining?Quote:
Originally posted by DJFyrewolf36
I'm an advocate of the quit whining principle.
I don't think anybody is whining here - just stating out their opinions..
I think the "quit whining" was directed at the people who whine about "My great grandfather was oppressed!" and the like.
Disney's Mulan! :DQuote:
Originally posted by Edwina's Secretary
Interesting that no one sees the issue of women in this. How many movies -- comedies -- are there about men dressing up as women? Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon (can't remember the name of it...Some Like It Hot?) Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, just to name a few. Comedies about women dressing as men? I can think of a tragedy movie -- but no comedies.
I don't know...what do you think?
Well...okay...so it's an animated flick... but it IS funny! :D
i love mulan!!!:D
I hate it when I am so late to a thread that is so interesting. I want to make a few comments, as a white female, and, so that no one questions if I have 'lived enough' to make these statements, I am 38. I have lived in the mid west and both coasts.
The problem with discrimination- be it religion, race, sexual preference, physical, whatever, is its necessarily silent nature. We ALL can say we aren't for discrimination. Who, really, would say, "heck yes, I discriminate! I hate (fill in the blank)". It is such a pervasive part of our CURRENT world. Forget the historical stuff...(not really, but, I am saying we have major problems today). While I might not have enslaved your people, my 'people' (the white majority) are still practicing discrimination today. It isn't in the form of endentured servitude, but, it still exists.
Just last week, in Boone County, Kentucky (reference for those inclined to look it up), a african american family was targeted. They had a cross burned in their front yard, and cinder blocks thrown through their car windows. 2004! This happened not in some backwater woods, but, less that 30 miles from the Greater Cincinnati area. I hear discriminatory stuff all the time! While not AT my work place (meaning from my co-workers or employer), I hear it in my capacity as an attorney. From clients. From other attorneys.
Because it is still in our country today (I am limiting myself to the US...), I think it is necessary to encourage, help, assist (you fill in the blank) minorities into colleges, into professional fields, into trades. I don't see it as the only answer, nor, necessarily, the best answer. But, it is an answer. Are there people that take advantage of it? Sure. It is human nature to take advantage of a situation. It isn't limited according to race/religion/gender.
I can't imagine what it would be like to be a minority. I can **nearly** relate, by way of two incidents, and they will stay with me forever. Both took place in Worcester, Massachusetts, and put things into perspective. One time, I was with my girlfriend and her daughter. They are african american. I had the little girl with me. She was young, maybe 2? We were walking around a deli, getting something to eat. I was helping her pick out juice, and we were acting silly, so, we had drawn some attention, I am sure. I was kissing all over her, making her giggle. My girlfriend had already sat down at a table. I turned to look at her, and she nodded for me to look over at a table of four older adults. They were all staring at me and the little girl. They had a look of disgust on their faces. As soon as I looked, they ALL averted their gaze. We went back to my girlffriend's table, and she told me she had seen them staring at us, and whispering to one another. Now, maybe they were just disgusted cause I looked particularly heinous that day. I can't say for sure. But, it was not a warm and fuzzy feeling I got.
The second time, I was in a store with a PR friend. We were just looking around. I think I was shopping for something in particular, and they didn't have it, so, we were just killing time. He brought to my attention the fact we were being followed by store personnel. We WERE! I now noticed it. However, I had been completely oblvious to it..as I am usually not followed around in a store. He told me it happened quite often with him. Now, he doesn't look particularly 'thuggish', nor were we dressed poorly. He said he gets used to it, and laughed when I first told him I thought he was mistaken. The store clerk kept up with us, discretely, for the whole 7-10 minutes we were in the store! (No, we didn't steal anything. :p ).
I guess my point with those two incidents is..as a white female, I don't even have feelers out for such type of discrimination. It doesn't happen to me, so, I am not in tune to it. I can't imagine what it would feel like to think someone is watching me just because of my skin colour.
it seems like people who are white and have black (or mixed) kids and people who are black and have white kids get stared almost more than just a single black person. (just to clarify, my mom is white, my dad is black, my older sister, younger brother and i are obviously mixed) one time when we lived in Georgia for a few months when my dad was in the army, my mother took me and my sister to a Kmart and these girls were sitting out in the parking lot (they were probly about 19-20) and they saw us and they started yelling at my mom "what have you done to that baby? you've cursed your baby! she's gonna grow up and HATe you!" and just stuff like that, there were more incidents like that, but that was the one i remember most.
oh yeah, lol, there was this one time when my dad was shopping with my little brother and he was a really pale baby, he looked even pale for a white kid, and there were 3 security guard following my dad around the store and he didn't get why, (and my dad isn't the kind to just keep his mouth shut) so he turns around and he asked them why they'd been following him for the last 20 minutes, and that flustered them alot...(maybe they'd never actually talked to a black man? ;)) but then they accused my dad of kidnapping my brother....then he got all pissed off and started yellingand then he showed then both their ID's and they let him go...but it's just the thought. and even though i think it's kind of funny now, it could have been a lot worse than that. people told my parents this place (i can't remember what it was called) but they said if they go there as a mixed couple with kids, they wouldn't be coming back.
there was a cross burning here too, it was a least a month ago, there was a black preacher and soe people came a burned a cross in his from yard, and i think they slashed his tires. i'm not sure exactly where this was, but it was one of the suburbs right north of seattle.
i think having a white scholarship program would defeat the whole purpouse of having other minorty scholarships. i think part of it is just people want more money to go to college (which is understandable) and so they think up all these thing they think they should be getting for anything they have (or haven't) done. and then they want to know why someone can get something adn they can't.
How in the world did I miss this thread???Quote:
Originally posted by Cataholic
I hate it when I am so late to a thread that is so interesting. I want to make a few comments, as a white female, and, so that no one questions if I have 'lived enough' to make these statements, I am 38. I have lived in the mid west and both coasts.
The problem with discrimination- be it religion, race, sexual preference, physical, whatever, is its necessarily silent nature. We ALL can say we aren't for discrimination. Who, really, would say, "heck yes, I discriminate! I hate (fill in the blank)". It is such a pervasive part of our CURRENT world. Forget the historical stuff...(not really, but, I am saying we have major problems today). While I might not have enslaved your people, my 'people' (the white majority) are still practicing discrimination today. It isn't in the form of endentured servitude, but, it still exists.
Just last week, in Boone County, Kentucky (reference for those inclined to look it up), a african american family was targeted. They had a cross burned in their front yard, and cinder blocks thrown through their car windows. 2004! This happened not in some backwater woods, but, less that 30 miles from the Greater Cincinnati area. I hear discriminatory stuff all the time! While not AT my work place (meaning from my co-workers or employer), I hear it in my capacity as an attorney. From clients. From other attorneys.
Because it is still in our country today (I am limiting myself to the US...), I think it is necessary to encourage, help, assist (you fill in the blank) minorities into colleges, into professional fields, into trades. I don't see it as the only answer, nor, necessarily, the best answer. But, it is an answer. Are there people that take advantage of it? Sure. It is human nature to take advantage of a situation. It isn't limited according to race/religion/gender.
I can't imagine what it would be like to be a minority. I can **nearly** relate, by way of two incidents, and they will stay with me forever. Both took place in Worcester, Massachusetts, and put things into perspective. One time, I was with my girlfriend and her daughter. They are african american. I had the little girl with me. She was young, maybe 2? We were walking around a deli, getting something to eat. I was helping her pick out juice, and we were acting silly, so, we had drawn some attention, I am sure. I was kissing all over her, making her giggle. My girlfriend had already sat down at a table. I turned to look at her, and she nodded for me to look over at a table of four older adults. They were all staring at me and the little girl. They had a look of disgust on their faces. As soon as I looked, they ALL averted their gaze. We went back to my girlffriend's table, and she told me she had seen them staring at us, and whispering to one another. Now, maybe they were just disgusted cause I looked particularly heinous that day. I can't say for sure. But, it was not a warm and fuzzy feeling I got.
The second time, I was in a store with a PR friend. We were just looking around. I think I was shopping for something in particular, and they didn't have it, so, we were just killing time. He brought to my attention the fact we were being followed by store personnel. We WERE! I now noticed it. However, I had been completely oblvious to it..as I am usually not followed around in a store. He told me it happened quite often with him. Now, he doesn't look particularly 'thuggish', nor were we dressed poorly. He said he gets used to it, and laughed when I first told him I thought he was mistaken. The store clerk kept up with us, discretely, for the whole 7-10 minutes we were in the store! (No, we didn't steal anything. :p ).
I guess my point with those two incidents is..as a white female, I don't even have feelers out for such type of discrimination. It doesn't happen to me, so, I am not in tune to it. I can't imagine what it would feel like to think someone is watching me just because of my skin colour.
Wow Johanna. I totally, 100%, agree with you.
There are times when I feel *stared at*, because of my skin color/religion. I can't help but notice people staring at me, and I know its because of who I am. It never bothers me to be honest.......Makes me laugh more than it hurts. It makes me laugh because of how ignorant they are towards me, and how little they seem to know before making judgements. I always give them a looooong stare right back, and that ALWAYS works in making them look away. :p
I am neither white, nor black, so I can't side with either, and say one faces more discrimination than the other. I would say blacks do, but recently, I have seen blacks at school calling whites *white trash* and other things that I can't stand hearing. But then the blacks call themselves *niggers* :rolleyes:, so I don't know what to think. They seem to call themselves that more than I have ever seen any whites say it. Why they would call themselves something like that, I don't know, but the fact is they do. I have heard it, and seen it, many times. I must say that us *middle colored ones*, are discriminated against just as much. I think all races experience racism up to a certain degree, by people of other races. It doesn't matter if you're white, black, brown, red, tan, whatever. SOMEONE out there is going to discrimate against you. While some races seem to face discrimination more, the fact is that all races face it to a certain degree. If you are white, and live in a land where whites are minority, I'm sure you'd face discrimination too.
Honestly though, discrimination in California is really, not like it is in other states. While I *have* experienced it, and continue to feel stared at on occasion, the fact is, whites are a minority here, and if you choose to live in CA, you choose to live amongst Asians, Indians, Mexicans, Arabs, and almost every other race that exists, so MOST whites here are very accepting and tolerant. Of course there are those bad apples here and there that show how much they hate you at first sight, but it still isn't so common that one would feel hated by everyone on the streets.
While discrimination is certainly not as *open* as it was in the past, it still exists in the hearts and minds of people. It doesn't only exist here in the US........it exists everywhere, in different forms, but still, everywhere. It is sad, and shameful, to discriminate against someone for something they have no control over. God created us in different colors, and we are all equal before God. We're all human beings, and no matter what the color, we are equal. Its just SO wrong to discriminate against people because of their race/religion/etc. Personally, I would *never* discriminate against anyone because of their skin color. I have friends that are as white as white can get, as well as friends that are of Asian/Indian/Arab/African/other descent. I cannot stand it when I hear people saying *Blacks act wierd* or *Chinese people don't know how to drive*, or any one of those sterotypes that I hear ALL the time. True, some blacks do act wierd, but a lot of whites and people of other races act wierd too. And I myself have experienced Chinese people driving poorly on the roads, but I have experienced that with other people too. You just can't make general statements like that. Its wrong.
I actually like it when people get married to someone of a different race. It always feels good to know there are people who love others no matter what skin color God gave them. To marry someone of a different race just shows how accepting and tolerant you are. I can't see why some people look down upon it. I feel its a good thing.....not only for the couple, but for their children too, who will most likely grow up not questioning and wondering about the skin color of others, just because it differs from their own.
I can honestly and 100% positively say that no one in my ancestry ever contributed to slavery...they were all dirt poor. They were farmers and coalminers and worked hard for what little they did have.
I used to work with a woman who is African American. She loves to play the race card and flaunted to everyone how her kids both got into good colleges ahead of 'all the whites' because they were black. She would holler discrimination whenever something didn't go how she wanted it to go. She joined 'HISPA' [a hispanic organization through our employers -they do community service and help Hispanic students enter good schools- she felt she qualified because her mom is half latino] and bragged that the only reason she did it was to swing a few free [company paid] trips when they had their Conferences each year. She went to Puerto Rico, New York, and Las Vegas...but passed on the trips to places that were not as fun. She never attended the meetings and did slightly less than the bare minimum to get to go on these trips.
She brought in pics of her mom and dad and her grandparents when they were young. She had always led everyone to believe they had had a very tough life and she too had really suffered. In the pictures these people were dressed to the nines. High fashion suits, gloves, stilletto heels, hats, jewels....standing outside Jazz clubs. So the next day I brought in pics of my family... my dad in his sailor uniform (not the dress whites..just the navy ones they wore every day) while he was on leave and mom in her little cotton dress. This was right after he had come back from the South Pacific. My granparents who looked like the old couple in the painting 'American Gothic', and the topper, my other grandfather in old wornout lace up boots, holey overalls, in need of a shave and and haircut. A good stiff breeze would have blown the man over. Both men died by basically working themselves to death leaving wives to raise the family or run the farm. The one in the overalls left his family penniless when he passed. My dad was two at the time.
I do not look down on her family for being able to have afforded nice things and enjoying their lives, and I expect no pity for my relatives and the lives they led. Because in the long run...my family learned to work for what we have, we don't expect handouts and we deal with what life hands us. She cannot say the same thing. This is not a comparison neccesarily of black vs white...but more the idea that you can get what you want because 'everybody owes you' rather than working for what you have.
I think we do all people, not just minorities, a disservice when we take the work ethic away from them and hand them everything. What purpose does it serve to have a kid get into college but he is not at the level of intellect to keep up, and yet we deny another from getting in when they might just do great things with that education?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have welfare programs either, but they need to be a helping hand to get the person back on their feet again and help find the best way to do for themselves, not support them for life.
I am so tired of the whole politically correct,bipartisan, frivilous lawsuit filing. finger pointing, unaccountable society we live in...but what are ya gonna do? I can't change the world, so I'll just go to work and manage my little corner of this world the best way I can- treating others the way I would like to be treated, and respecting our differences rather than pointing them out for scorn.
I know I got off on a ramble there...and I may not have even made sense...but the way things are in this world, I just think its time we all started banding together as Americans instead of segregating and tearing our people apart.
This is what I was getting at when I said Quit Whining. I don't see how it helps just hand out something to someone who doesn't work for it. I don't mean just minorites either, I mean EVERYONE! There are people of every race that think the world owes them and that every slight in history means more for them. A person in a miniority group sponging off of people really does make the rest look bad because people are real quick to stereotype based on bad things. Notice how no one stereotypes good things? Like Hispanic or black kids working hard in school *there are lots of them*. For every 100 of them, there is a person who feels like they need to have everything given to them and THATS the person people notice. What about those 100 kids doing right with themselves? Sigh, it is stupid that people always focus on the negative.Quote:
Originally posted by nibblets
I can honestly and 100% positively say that no one in my ancestry ever contributed to slavery...they were all dirt poor. They were farmers and coalminers and worked hard for what little they did have.
I used to work with a woman who is African American. She loves to play the race card and flaunted to everyone how her kids both got into good colleges ahead of 'all the whites' because they were black. She would holler discrimination whenever something didn't go how she wanted it to go. She joined 'HISPA' [a hispanic organization through our employers -they do community service and help Hispanic students enter good schools- she felt she qualified because her mom is half latino] and bragged that the only reason she did it was to swing a few free [company paid] trips when they had their Conferences each year. She went to Puerto Rico, New York, and Las Vegas...but passed on the trips to places that were not as fun. She never attended the meetings and did slightly less than the bare minimum to get to go on these trips.
She brought in pics of her mom and dad and her grandparents when they were young. She had always led everyone to believe they had had a very tough life and she too had really suffered. In the pictures these people were dressed to the nines. High fashion suits, gloves, stilletto heels, hats, jewels....standing outside Jazz clubs. So the next day I brought in pics of my family... my dad in his sailor uniform (not the dress whites..just the navy ones they wore every day) while he was on leave and mom in her little cotton dress. This was right after he had come back from the South Pacific. My granparents who looked like the old couple in the painting 'American Gothic', and the topper, my other grandfather in old wornout lace up boots, holey overalls, in need of a shave and and haircut. A good stiff breeze would have blown the man over. Both men died by basically working themselves to death leaving wives to raise the family or run the farm. The one in the overalls left his family penniless when he passed. My dad was two at the time.
I do not look down on her family for being able to have afforded nice things and enjoying their lives, and I expect no pity for my relatives and the lives they led. Because in the long run...my family learned to work for what we have, we don't expect handouts and we deal with what life hands us. She cannot say the same thing. This is not a comparison neccesarily of black vs white...but more the idea that you can get what you want because 'everybody owes you' rather than working for what you have.
I think we do all people, not just minorities, a disservice when we take the work ethic away from them and hand them everything. What purpose does it serve to have a kid get into college but he is not at the level of intellect to keep up, and yet we deny another from getting in when they might just do great things with that education?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have welfare programs either, but they need to be a helping hand to get the person back on their feet again and help find the best way to do for themselves, not support them for life.
I am so tired of the whole politically correct,bipartisan, frivilous lawsuit filing. finger pointing, unaccountable society we live in...but what are ya gonna do? I can't change the world, so I'll just go to work and manage my little corner of this world the best way I can- treating others the way I would like to be treated, and respecting our differences rather than pointing them out for scorn.
I know I got off on a ramble there...and I may not have even made sense...but the way things are in this world, I just think its time we all started banding together as Americans instead of segregating and tearing our people apart.
Well said Nibblets!
You know, I work hard for what I have. Thee's something inside me that won't let me accept freebies. Just yesterday I was offered a ton of stuff for free and INSISTED she take money for it... I had to talk her into $500. I feel like I'm robbing her. What makes me so different that I need to pay my way whereas other feel they are entitled sit back and wait for someone else to hand them something? It doesn't have anything to do with black or white becuase my white cousin is 30 and never ever had a job, lives on welfare and has a baby... no husband or boyfriend in the pitcure. She figures "why work when I can get what I want anyway?" GRRRR. Is it how we were raised? Then why is my cousin's sister VERY hardworking and industrious? Is it tied with mentality? Personality?
I too just try to live my life as honestly and happily as I can. I try to help everyone as I can. I am here only once, and I want to be proud of my life when its time to go.
Until everyone in the world becomes completely blind to race, sex, income level ... and everything else that we currently discrimate against ... there are going to be injustices and wrongs.
ALL discrimination is wrong ... it doesn't matter if it is whites discriminating against blacks, men discriminating about women, Asians discriminating against whites ... whatever. It's all wrong. And attempting to justify discrimination by calling up past discrimination is faulty logic in the worst case ... "Someone did something wrong to my people in the past, so I'm going to do something just like it to their people now." Two wrongs do not make a right.
well, this thread had certaintly progressed. i think some peole took what i was trying to say a little wrong, maybe i didn't write it very well, i didn't mean that we should just give scholarships to people because of their skin color, but i kind of thought of a good comparism, what if men started making a huge fuss and saying they're being sexually discriminated against? people would be like, shut up and quit whining, you've disriminated against women for years, just deal with it. it's kinda the same thing with the black-white thing, only since slavery ended so long ago, people think there isn't that much discrimination, just because it's not as public
I didn't take what you said wrong. I think you are really hitting it on the head. While I (being a white female, US born) can sit here and say, "I didn't discriminate against 'your people', so get over it", I know it isn't quite that cut and dried. The injustices have gone on for so long. It isn't righted easily. And, there are people that rely on handouts. God forbid I ever find myself in that position. I can imagine being so down in the dumps, feeling so oppressed (whether I am or I am not oppressed), and not having the guidance, education, will, whatever, to lift myself out. But, it is so hard to really live that feeling, since I have largely had everything I needed given to me-home, food, clothing, education, etc.Quote:
Originally posted by G.P.girl
well, this thread had certaintly progressed. i think some peole took what i was trying to say a little wrong, maybe i didn't write it very well, i didn't mean that we should just give scholarships to people because of their skin color, but i kind of thought of a good comparism, what if men started making a huge fuss and saying they're being sexually discriminated against? people would be like, shut up and quit whining, you've disriminated against women for years, just deal with it. it's kinda the same thing with the black-white thing, only since slavery ended so long ago, people think there isn't that much discrimination, just because it's not as public
An example- current day, kind of- is the still disparate treatment between men and women in the workplace. Women today still earn less, dollar for dollar, than men. Same education, same job, different pay. And, women have been afforded 'equal treatment' for decades! And, arguably, never had it so bad as, say, those that were enslaved.
I did my senior thesis (college, way back when) on Affirmative Action. Funny, I seem to remember having a different view of things then. 20 years later (goodness, I can't believe I admitted that), I feel strongly against what I wrote then. Why? Cause I see it too often in the work place, in the justice system. While we might be closer to 'perfection', we aren't there yet.
I pretty much agree 100% with Twisterdog's feelings on the subject. I did want to clarify on something said earlier about whites going in and dragging blacks off to be slaves. That is not at all how it happened. Whites bought black slaves from other blacks from warring tribes who captured them and sold them. Also that slavery has roots back to before the days of Christ and was practiced by various races and ethnicities. I don't profess full knowledge of every instance of slavery but I know it is referred to even in the Bible, and that Vikings and other warring/raiding peoples commonly took slaves as spoils of war. I think too many tend to think of slavery as only happening in the US during the civil war era and only were black peoples owned by whites.
Again I agree that there is no excuse for treating any person as less because of their race/sex/color, etc. etc. I also personally believe all people should have the same opportunity for employment and education based on their own efforts.
Whites Swim in Racial Preference
By Tim Wise, AlterNet. Posted February 20, 2003.
http://www.alternet.org/story/15223
Ask a fish what water is and you'll get no answer. Even if fish were capable of speech, they would likely have no explanation for the element they swim in every minute of every day of their lives. Water simply is. Fish take it for granted.
So too with this thing we hear so much about, "racial preference." While many whites seem to think the notion originated with affirmative action programs, intended to expand opportunities for historically marginalized people of color, racial preference has actually had a long and very white history.
Affirmative action for whites was embodied in the abolition of European indentured servitude, which left black (and occasionally indigenous) slaves as the only unfree labor in the colonies that would become the U.S.
Affirmative action for whites was the essence of the 1790 Naturalization Act, which allowed virtually any European immigrant to become a full citizen, even while blacks, Asians and American Indians could not.
Affirmative action for whites was the guiding principle of segregation, Asian exclusion laws, and the theft of half of Mexico for the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.
In recent history, affirmative action for whites motivated racially restrictive housing policies that helped 15 million white families procure homes with FHA loans from the 1930s to the '60s, while people of color were mostly excluded from the same programs.
In other words, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that white America is the biggest collective recipient of racial preference in the history of the cosmos. It has skewed our laws, shaped our public policy and helped create the glaring inequalities with which we still live.
White families, on average, have a net worth that is 11 times the net worth of black families, according to a recent study; and this gap remains substantial even when only comparing families of like size, composition, education and income status.
A full-time black male worker in 2003 makes less in real dollar terms than similar white men were earning in 1967. Such realities are not merely indicative of the disadvantages faced by blacks, but indeed are evidence of the preferences afforded whites -- a demarcation of privilege that is the necessary flipside of discrimination.
Indeed, the value of preferences to whites over the years is so enormous that the current baby-boomer generation of whites is currently in the process of inheriting between $7-10 trillion in assets from their parents and grandparents -- property handed down by those who were able to accumulate assets at a time when people of color by and large could not. To place this in the proper perspective, we should note that this amount of money is more than all the outstanding mortgage debt, all the credit card debt, all the savings account assets, all the money in IRAs and 401k retirement plans, all the annual profits for U.S. manufacturers, and our entire merchandise trade deficit combined.
Yet few whites have ever thought of our position as resulting from racial preferences. Indeed, we pride ourselves on our hard work and ambition, as if somehow we invented the concepts.
As if we have worked harder than the folks who were forced to pick cotton and build levies for free; harder than the Latino immigrants who spend 10 hours a day in fields picking strawberries or tomatoes; harder than the (mostly) women of color who clean hotel rooms or change bedpans in hospitals, or the (mostly) men of color who collect our garbage.
We strike the pose of self-sufficiency while ignoring the advantages we have been afforded in every realm of activity: housing, education, employment, criminal justice, politics, banking and business. We ignore the fact that at almost every turn, our hard work has been met with access to an opportunity structure denied to millions of others. Privilege, to us, is like water to the fish: invisible precisely because we cannot imagine life without it.
It is that context that best explains the duplicity of the President's recent criticisms of affirmative action at the University of Michigan. President Bush, himself a lifelong recipient of affirmative action -- the kind set aside for the mediocre rich -- recently proclaimed that the school's policies were examples of unfair racial preference. Yet in doing so he not only showed a profound ignorance of the Michigan policy, but made clear the inability of yet another white person to grasp the magnitude of white privilege still in operation.
The President attacked Michigan's policy of awarding 20 points (on a 150-point evaluation scale) to undergraduate applicants who are members of underrepresented minorities (which at U of M means blacks, Latinos and American Indians). To many whites such a "preference" is blatantly discriminatory.
Bush failed to mention that greater numbers of points are awarded for other things that amount to preferences for whites to the exclusion of people of color.
For example, Michigan awards 20 points to any student from a low-income background, regardless of race. Since these points cannot be combined with those for minority status (in other words poor blacks don't get 40 points), in effect this is a preference for poor whites.
Then Michigan awards 16 points to students who hail from the Upper Peninsula of the state: a rural, largely isolated, and almost completely white area.
Of course both preferences are fair, based as they are on the recognition that economic status and even geography (as with race) can have a profound effect on the quality of K-12 schooling that one receives, and that no one should be punished for things that are beyond their control. But note that such preferences -- though disproportionately awarded to whites -- remain uncriticized, while preferences for people of color become the target for reactionary anger. Once again, white preference remains hidden because it is more subtle, more ingrained, and isn't called white preference, even if that's the effect.
But that's not all. Ten points are awarded to students who attended top-notch high schools, and another eight points are given to students who took an especially demanding AP and honors curriculum.
As with points for those from the Upper Peninsula, these preferences may be race-neutral in theory, but in practice they are anything but. Because of intense racial isolation (and Michigan's schools are the most segregated in America for blacks, according to research by the Harvard Civil Rights Project), students of color will rarely attend the "best" schools, and on average, schools serving mostly black and Latino students offer only a third as many AP and honors courses as schools serving mostly whites.
So even truly talented students of color will be unable to access those extra points simply because of where they live, their economic status and ultimately their race, which is intertwined with both.
Four more points are awarded to students who have a parent who attended the U of M: a kind of affirmative action with which the President is intimately familiar, and which almost exclusively goes to whites. Ironically, while alumni preference could work toward the interest of diversity if combined with aggressive race-based affirmative action (by creating a larger number of black and brown alums), the rollback of the latter, combined with the almost guaranteed retention of the former, will only further perpetuate white preference.
So the U of M offers 20 "extra" points to the typical black, Latino or indigenous applicant, while offering various combinations worth up to 58 extra points for students who will almost all be white. But while the first of these are seen as examples of racial preferences, the second are not, hidden as they are behind the structure of social inequities that limit where people live, where they go to school, and the kinds of opportunities they have been afforded. White preferences, the result of the normal workings of a racist society, can remain out of sight and out of mind, while the power of the state is turned against the paltry preferences meant to offset them.
Very telling is the oft-heard comment by whites, "If I had only been black I would have gotten into my first-choice college."
Such a statement not only ignores the fact that whites are more likely than members of any other group -- even with affirmative action in place -- to get into their first-choice school, but it also presumes, as anti-racist activist Paul Marcus explains, "that if these whites were black, everything else about their life would have remained the same." In other words, that it would have made no negative difference as to where they went to school, what their family income was, or anything else.
The ability to believe that being black would have made no difference (other than a beneficial one when it came time for college), and that being white has made no positive difference, is rooted in privilege itself: the privilege that allows one to not have to think about race on a daily basis; to not have one's intelligence questioned by best-selling books; to not have to worry about being viewed as a "out of place" when driving, shopping, buying a home, or for that matter, attending the University of Michigan.
So long as those privileges remain firmly in place and the preferential treatment that flows from those privileges continues to work to the benefit of whites, all talk of ending affirmative action is not only premature but a slap in the face to those who have fought, and died, for equal opportunity.