Faulty assumption here. You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continues from generation to generation, by white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it.
Why is the emphasis on white people and not wealth? There are so many different historical groups of "white people"
I completely fail to take a submissive approach to the whole us race debate. Sure you guys have massive issues that stem from a long line of segregationist policies. Europe has its problems, but implying that this should lead to some sort of White only redistribution of wealth will lead to bloodshed.
Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to equate class war with race war? Henry kissinger?
Because that's who has wealth [1] and they have it because they stole it from other groups via forced labor and literal theft of land and other resources and then explicitly disadvantaged them in post facto competition.
[1]. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-f...
Precisely by making it a race issue instead of wealth distribution/class issue it becomes easier to shut people down who would support social programs, mostly by driving the well meaning masses into looking at it from the race perspective.
Keeping it as a race issue keeps the lower classes on eachothers throats. Heck I’ve seen arguments that Oprah, a billionare, is less privileged than a white hobo, because whiteness. And because it’s not about money but literally the amount of melanin in your skin there is no need to care about the money part.
Otherwise I wouldn’t care less what the yanks do but due to the large cultural dominance they have the issues spill to outside of US.
Do better, y'all.
[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
Because of the amount of violence that has and is taking place entirely on the basis of race rather than wealth.
Wealth is certainly a thing. But those who talk about how all these problems are just about economic class are sweeping the thousands of race-based and racist policies and actions under the rug.
That there is a racist statement. Yes maybe intergenerational wealth causes some issues but to cast it as a purely white issue is just stupid. Avarice is a feature common to all of humanity.
Hardly. It has nothing to do with who or what they are but rather is literally a description of what they are doing.
> white issue
It is a white issue that white people oppress others and are the only ones with the power to stop that short of violent overthrow.
I see two options - either race doesn't matter to anyone worth listening to, or white people aren't being aggressive enough in securing our own interests. Or can you articulate a third position?
An alternative way to look at it: what did western civilisation do to grow such a huge amount of wealth compared to the rest of the world? What could the rest of the world learn from this, so that they could build wealth of their own? Fortunately the answer is relatively simple, as evidenced by how most east Asian countries have now become just as wealthy/developed as western countries: by embracing markets, the rule of law and personal responsibility.
Is the 'forced' a stretch? Or was it based on slavery. I don't know.
If you want a US perspective, then consider Cuba. Would you describe the US embargo against Cuba as capitalism? It's disingenuous for someone to say that countries have struggled because they failed to embrace markets when the US has actively interfered against governments that didn't embrace markets with sanctions and support for coups.
Many civilizations have taken turns at doing this, from ancient Mesopotamia, now part of the Middle East, and onwards. There's nothing exceptional about Western civilization, in this regard. Nor, I suspect, will the US hegemony -- which was gained by selling arms to both sides of 2 world wars which both crippled the former hegemony -- be exceptional.
Do I? I'd be (genuinely) interested to know what kind of power you think I have to change the system. Because from my perspective as a middle class white person I feel just as powerless to change the system as everyone else.
I'd like to be able to suggest some group or movement here, but I've never been much of a joiner. The BLM folks I've heard from seem to have good heads on their shoulders, though. You could do a lot worse than to consider their suggestions on the question of "how do I help?"
I definitely do understand feeling powerless. But remember also that, as a middle-class white person, especially if you're male and the head of a conventional family household, that puts you pretty close to America's own idea of what America is. Believe it or not, there's a subtle kind of power in that. Things that might likely be ignored when said by - oh, someone like me, for example, who while also middle-class-ish white is a weird queer redneck loner and always has been - often are taken more seriously when said by someone who presents a gestalt of commonplace American normalcy, simply because of the sort of person who's saying them.
That really is a power all its own. If your social and professional circles are anything like mine, you can often enough find opportunities there to wield that power - gently, of course, and with real care for those with whom you're talking; to be, or to be seen as, a humorless woke thought editor, is to fail - in a way that might help redress injustice in a small way simply by convincing someone else to think about whether they should see the world a little differently from how they have before.
It's a small thing, for sure. And it can on occasion be a risk; if nothing else, to speak honestly from the heart on any subject constitutes a degree of vulnerability, and people don't always treat that kindly. But little in my experience worth doing is entirely unattended by risk, and little in my experience does more to ameliorate a sense of powerlessness than to hear someone say "you've given me a lot to think about", and then to see over time that they have thought about it.
It's subtle, as I said. It's a small thing, and it doesn't always work. But it is something. And even when you fail - which you will, sometimes at least - at least you will have tried, and even in that there's a kind of consolation to be found.
And if you change white to any other color the power that comes from embodying something people consider good is still there. Arguably a race other that white makes it more powerful because in some contexts that would imply successful social/economic mobility.
The power comes from embodying ideals. They're all boxes to check and depending on what square you start on you'll have an easier time checking some boxes than others. If you're a white guy born to a stable middle class family it's gonna be easy for you to get the power that comes from check the boxes that come with a stable middle class family of your own. But you'll never be able to check any of the boxes that come from overcoming the kind of adversity you never faced and climbing the rungs of the social ladder you never had to climb. Who's more respected the plumber who can afford a Corvette or the engineer who can afford the Corvette? Having a nice family in a nice house in a nice suburb won't give you any credibility if that's the kind of life you were born into and getting it yourself was just a case of going through the motions. If you have a nice family in a nice house in a nice suburb and you were born the son of a police officer in French Indochina in 1955 then you clearly put the effort in to get what you have.
It's not about race. It's about who you are and what you've done. Sometimes race can be shorthand for that but unless you are incredibly lucky/unlucky those are not the kind of events that dominate the arc of one's life.
I'd be more inclined to credit what you're saying if I hadn't seen precisely that distinction so often expressed by people who, in contexts not influenced by their perspective on race, uphold pure meritocracy as the highest good, whose primacy is a uniquely American virtue.
And, in any case, people's perceptions aren't as simple as you make them out to be. I think it would be very nice if they were! But to behave in contravention of reality is the best way I know to betray myself into foolishness. Maybe you've had better results with the method.
[1]. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-f...
No, on two levels. First, nobody cares about how you feel, guilty or otherwise. Second, it's not about what you are either. It's about what you have, i.e. wealth and relative power, and what you do. Those are things within your control, unlike anyone's race.
> Accusing me of playing an acitve part in supressing others is simply a false allegation.
You do play that active part by asserting your property rights on wealth and other rights that were taken from others and given to you rather than working distributing them. Nothing false about that.
> Both sides will have to work on how they communicate with each other to improve things.
No, one side needs to give up its power over the other.
Although I think these sort of comparisons are pretty useless, I am sure there are a lot of black people with more power then a blind white man.
It might make you feel morally better in yourself, but all you're going to do is put white people off even listening to you.