I can’t look at you and tell if you grew up the child of a surgeon or a cashier. Or in a loving home or abusive one. With a trust fund or encumbered with debt. But I can make a fairly accurate guess at your gender or race.
What I think isn’t always articulated well is that people don’t feel like the totality of privilege and hurdles are taken into account in these discussions. We over simply our mental models and discussions to race and gender as if that was the totality of our life story and people naturally push back on this. (Not saying you are doing this) It doesn’t mean privilege doesn’t exist, just that it’s rarely as simple a picture as one tends to find in public dialogue and that’s why it makes some bristle
But as a white male - the U.S. did repress the Japanese, American Indian, Muslim, Black, Jewish, Hispanic etc in large swaths, and numerous other minority races in localized areas.
As a white male, I live in a country where I'm surrounded by successful people of all stripes - color, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc, etc, etc.
Do we have a perfect history as a country? no... but we also provide opportunity to all - and we have POC in EVERY level of society. From cops to Presidents.
(Hint: I never said Obama ended racism... in fact, I wouldn't say that because his policies and his party have made racism WORSE with their identity politics and making everything about race.)
The real problem with America is poverty. We need to help all impoverished people. All of them.
My benefits, as said before, are being American - and I embrace those benefits. Nothing to be ashamed of.
"life on the other side" I refuse to treat others as less because of their skin color. You might be racist but I'm not. I'm surrounded by successful people of all color (and sexs, religions, lifestyles, etc) who don't cry victimhood.
You will continue to be either a victim or treating "POC" as victims who aren't smart enough or good enough - IE treating people different based on their skin color. (IE: Liberals talk down to POC because they look down on them. You might want to check YOUR "priviledge" and how you treat others - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/30/white-liber...)
I refuse to treat minorities as if they aren't good enough... society shows that is a lie and, as I was raised, treating people differently based on skin color is racism.
You may be okay being a racist... I refuse to be one.
And why do you think that is the case?
You say historical racism, but what makes you think that it is only historical?
Did I say racism is only historical? No.
Having words put in one's mouth makes conversation deeply uninteresting. Thus I shall end my contributions here.
Now I do believe that more social democratic policies would benefit African-Americans a lot. But it would not completely eradicate the problems of racism and they would still be worse off than white.
The problem with only tackling racism and not inequality and poverty is that, even if you removed racism completely, African-Americans would still be stuck with being poor, simply for historical reasons.
Just like poor white people are likely to have kids which are poor.
I partly agree, but I’d argue that it’s less complicated. I would rephrase thusly: Poverty IS the problem. And historical racism is the cause of a lot of that poverty.
> even if you removed racism completely, African-Americans would still be stuck with being poor, simply for historical reasons.
I agree in principle. The question is how you solve for systemic poverty. I think the first, most obvious step is to enact a very steep inheritance tax. That would be the most effective way to dampen generational capital inequality.
The second thing you could do is a generous UBI because that would dramatically benefit the systemically poor. The most effective way to lower income inequality is to raise the floor.
Do you shrug and go "though luck! It is what it is," or do you use legislation to try to compensate and level the playing-field?
And to play the devils advocate. Say I was a racist and I was very okay with it along with 150 million other Americans. And together we make life miserable for POC. How do you suggest dealing with us?
What is your policy? What are your action points?
My action points? Stop treating minorities as victims and idiots unable to take care of themselves. Its called being a decent human being. Everyone - minorities included - already have opportunities for college and starting businesses and all that. It's called American Privilege's.
But of course, I am a white male, so all misfortune in my life must be my own damn fault.
Nor does a party voting for Biden and Harris - creators of "systemically racist" laws and corrupt DAs that used those laws to jail innocent black men - have any moral position to talk about such made up words and expect to be taken seriously.
By analogy, you can force male-only clubs to close and you can force male-only clubs to be inviting to women. Either action would dismantle the systems of male privilege.
Even Boy Scouts is now just Scouts and accepts everyone, but Girl Scouts is still girls only.
(That said, I’m all for making all such restricted spaces as rare as possible. Any structural division, no matter how well intended, has a cost to society.)
Some feminists call this idea "benevolent sexism", and oppose it on the basis that it supports the patriarchy™
Other feminists call this idea "affirmative action" and support it on the basis that it opposes the patriarchy™
Now of course the better solution for this disparity would be to empower women with physical defence skills, e.g. Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And to somehow exorcise the male erotic fantasy out of mainstream female fashion/culture. But as desirable as those solutions are, we can't rely upon top-down social engineering being effective.
It's also important to point out that men being (on average) physically stronger doesn't equate to women being "weak". And having objectively more at risk does not make one "need protecting" in any special way. Such twisting of language is political gamesplaying—and not healthy discourse.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your overall point, but when you say “weak” are you still speaking in the physical sense? If so I can’t follow the above statement. Weak/strong are relative terms. If you’re willing to say one is statistically stronger than the other, you are implying the other is statistically weaker. To not seems to be the type of wordsmithing used to avoid precise use of language. The reason I specifically put the “individual rights” piece in my previous comment was because I was hoping there was a basis outside the aggregate “average” argument that seems oblivious to individual rights.
I think the BJJ argument can actually be dangerous. Yes, it’s good for anyone to know self defense. But the vast majority of women won’t become skillful enough to overcome the (statistical) innate size/strength disadvantage, particularly any man with training. They can if dedicated enough, but if they don’t it can lead to false confidence.
I think the real issue with the argument is that it only plays well because it’s using terms that are currently socially en vogue. Consider how it would come across instead of saying “men are statistically more likely to rape” you instead advocated for a double standard based on “people of X race are more likely to commit Y crime”. It can be statistically correct and still morally wrong to advocate for such policy because it lacks a nuanced view of the problem.
Obviously I was not—otherwise I would have been entertaining a direct logical contradiction.
I am speaking in the terms offered by the user klipt earlier in this conversation tree. This is how dangerous rhetoric is formed. To call someone "weak", no matter how much you qualify its meaning, inevitably leads to many other subjective connotations that I do not agree with.
> To not seems to be the type of wordsmithing used to avoid precise use of language.
On the contrary, it's the type of wordsmithing used to avoid intentional misapplication of language.
> I think the BJJ argument can actually be dangerous. Yes, it’s good for anyone to know self defense. But the vast majority of women won’t become skillful enough to overcome the (statistical) innate size/strength disadvantage, particularly any man with training. They can if dedicated enough, but if they don’t it can lead to false confidence.
I think it's borderline offensive to assume that the "vast majority of women" won't become "skillful enough".
I think it's borderline offensive to suggest that building up confidence is a dangerous idea. Even "false confidence" can increase one's actual physical power. And to say that a policy is dangerous because it won't be effective in all encounters is ridiculous.
It seems you misunderstand the purpose of having broad BJJ training. It's not just about increasing skill. It's not just about increasing confidence (which for many women might be itself sufficient to stop an attack). Rather it's about the culture that would arise among MEN in response to a society where women have more confidence—whether objectively justified or not.
> you instead advocated for a double standard...
I did no such thing and I consider it highly offensive for you to imply that I did.
I think there’s some miscommunication here. The qualifier is that most wouldn’t become skilled enough to overcome the strength disadvantage. To be fair, the same would apply to men with the same strength disadvantage although that would be less likely due to the lower likelihood for the same strength disparity. Most people won’t spend enough time developing that skill. If I had to speak in broad terms, it would probably take a purple belt (maybe a strong blue belt) to overcome a large strength disadvantage with even a moderate amount of athletic ability. Most people won’t put in that time, irrespective of gender. If you disagree, join an mma/boxing gym (that actually spars) and see what percentage of people stick with it for 4-5 years. I would venture a guess that most people who flippantly advocate BJJ as a solution probably haven’t been in a real physical altercation and don’t know how it would go down. And no, sparring/rolling in the gym doesn’t generally equate to this type of altercation. I never claimed its not effective because it can’t handle every situation (because nothing can). BJJ is not worthless, it’s just pragmatically a low percentage solution.
I’m not quite sure why you’re taking so much as borderline/highly offensive but it rarely leads to providing clarity in discourse. Again, there is real danger with instilling false confidence (I.e. when confidence outstrips one’s abilities) whether you are offended or not. I’m not interested in placating someone at the expense of putting them at higher risk.
BJJ is heavily ruled based and that’s why it doesn’t necessarily simulate real world altercations. Many people dabble in martial arts, never spar, and develop the false sense confidence im talking about: There’s a saying in BJJ, “punch a black belt in the face, they become a brown belt, punch them again they become a brown belt, punch them again...”
Sparring in a gym is absolutely not stimulating a real life scenario which is why is can easily lead to false confidence. But it can show you your skill level without endangering yourself too much.
The point of the sparring comment was to illustrate how much work it is to get competent at a martial art. Advocating that BJJ will prevent rape is ignoring how few people will spend the necessary time to get skillful as well as ignoring all the blind spots that rule-based martial arts introduce.
Advocating BJJ is fine. Making someone think it’s going to save them without also pointing out that it will take years to be effective isn’t. People who miss that second part have probably never trained or been in a real fight or are trying to drum up business for their martial arts school. Honestly, it comes across as the you regurgitated the comment about BJJ because you heard it somewhere and ran with it. Anyone who’s trained in BJJ knows the first year or so you become acutely aware of how helpless you actually are on the ground.
The question that statistician and researchers have been asking if such statistics is at all meaningful in order to reduce crime.