Off-topic: Race.

[sun tzu]

I'm white, ethnically Jewish - before WWII, the grandparents hailed from Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Romania...).

[Zanosuke Kurosaki]

*We used to be upper-lower-middle class, but my mother retired from the military as I got out of high school, so we lost that hyphen around said time. And no one will get that joke...

I get it! We fluctuated between middle and lower middle class for most of my childhood, so I totally get that.

It's also a reference to a strip from around the end of the original Bloom County comic.
Oliver's Mother: "Honey, you know when you wanted me to invest in leisure suits? Well, I invested in MicroSquash instead."
Oliver's Father: "You mean we're now 'Rich'-African-American-Conservative-(insert a bunch more here that I can't remember because it was kind of long, actually)?"
OM: "Honey! WE'VE GAINED A HYPHEN!"

The whole strip was a set-up for a joke about 'isms' and classifying things, actually, now I think of it. so it was actually kind of relevant to this topic. Wish I could find it online now. =\

[oddtail]

My relation towards race is pretty indifferent. Well, mostly.

Race issues are interesting to me, but fairly foreign. Between WW2 and the Stalinist period, Poland ended up pretty monolithic ethnicity- and race-wise (for those not in the know, before the War it had always had very significant minorities, including what I am pretty sure was the largest Jewish minority in Europe). It has changed a little in the past few years, but the vast majority of people is still white, Slavic, usually with purely Polish (*) heritage that can be traced quite a long time back (I'm talking hundreds of years, because I guess everyone has *some* non-Slavic heritage if you look back far enough).

As such, the dynamics between races were never a "thing" on a personal level for me - I can recall, off the top of my head, only two people who are not white that I personally know - to the point that at least as a kid/teenager, I never really got how nearly *every* piece of American visual media has non-white people in the cast. It wasn't until later that I realised that's more realistic than I'd thought. I still notice a tendency to have a token Black guy, a token Asian guy etc. on American shows and in movies, but it's more annoying and less puzzling, now.

Other than one college course on African-American literature (which did show me that issues of race can be much more complex, meaningful and intricate than I'd originally suspected), I haven't had much experience nor knowledge regarding race, either in regards to relations between humans or race as a cultural/personal identity. It just doesn't really have a chance to come up around here, with the exception of the occasional anti-Semitic nutjob I have to talk to (**).



(*) This is a bit more complex, because some people's ancestors were from Lithuania, but a) the old Lithuania was not even geographically the same as modern-day Lithuania, and b) many of people living in Lithuania in the past few hundred years (especially the nobility, which accounted for 10-15% of Polish-Lithuanian population) were ethnically Polish. A good rule of thumb, though, is that people in modern Poland are usually ethnically Polish, with the exception of some regions.
(**) Anti-Semitism seems a bit weird in that it exists in a large portion of the population, even though virtually no Jewish people live in Poland nowadays, especially compared to the pre-War period. I guess people are just repeating the hatred and the stereotypes they got from their parents/grandparents.

[mindstalk]

White (Irish/Jew)

I'm guessing Trefle is in Malaysia.

Scalzi had an awesome metaphor for privilege: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/s ... -there-is/

[Otaking]

Scalzi had an awesome metaphor for privilege: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/s ... -there-is/

Man,

I love Scalzi's books but if there's one thing I hate more than white people it's white people trying to condescend to feel better about themselves by waving collective guilt around.

I want to learn to Dougie. Difficulty: Inferno

[Muttley]

I'm pink (therefore I'm spam?) Ethnically English with Norman French and Viking if you go back far enough. Not that it makes a lot of difference.

Otaking, I didn't get any feeling that John Scalzi was "waving his collective guilt around", more that he was demonstrating a soundbite for the hard-of-thinking SWM readers to get the point across.

[sgtrock]

Scalzi had an awesome metaphor for privilege: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/s ... -there-is/

Man,

I love Scalzi's books but if there's one thing I hate more than white people it's white people trying to condescend to feel better about themselves by waving collective guilt around.

I want to learn to Dougie. Difficulty: Inferno

Kate Upton already took care of that for all whites everywhere.

[Valerie]

Otaking, I didn't get any feeling that John Scalzi was "waving his collective guilt around", more that he was demonstrating a soundbite for the hard-of-thinking SWM readers to get the point across.

This. He was saying, "Oh, you think that word I'm using is the problem? Well then here's the exact same concept written out plainly for you without that word."

[Otaking]

Muttley wrote:Otaking, I didn't get any feeling that John Scalzi was "waving his collective guilt around", more that he was demonstrating a soundbite for the hard-of-thinking SWM readers to get the point across.



This. He was saying, "Oh, you think that word I'm using is the problem? Well then here's the exact same concept written out plainly for you without that word."

Ye-essss. I got that. Instead of reiterating the article to me, prove to me that you can divorce a white guy going on about privileged white guys from the concept of collective guilt. I submit that they are one and the same thing. You're telling me how he got there, and I'm telling you why he got in the car and took the trip in the first place.

Scalzi feels white guys out there aren't feeling collectively guilty enough because they don't understand how the system is bent in their favor, and so writes a paper on the subject. This says a few things:

It's great for whites to hate themselves. (Whites are really good at this already and do it for a hobby. See: Christian Religions). It's also ok for everyone else to bag on SWMs because the system is bent in their favor.

It's all about the system and not personal worth and drive. Are you a failure? Must be the system. Are you a success? You didn't earn it, it's the system. This can be detrimentally applied to anyone of any ethnicity.

It all just leaves a bad taste and I don't think an article like that really moves anyone's perspective forward unless they're too stupid to read in the first place and I feel those folks are going to inbreed themselves onto a Texas Chainsaw Massacre style dinner table somewhere anyway, solving that particular set of problems without any outside impetus. Yes I like to hyperbolize for teh funniez.

[Valerie]

Did... you even read the article? He mentions that someone who is not straight, white and male can have advantages that some/most straight, white males don't have. He referred to them as "stats." They were things like charisma, wealth, intelligence, etc. At no point, anywhere in that article, did he ever imply that white people or men or straight people should hate themselves. He's just trying to explain in clear terms that some types of people have it easier than some other types of people in some particular fields.

He didn't say "you are bad and should feel bad." He said, "There's a decent possibility that group X has an easier life than group Y, and I would like group X to understand that."

[Monet]

Really? I'm the only Black person? (To vote, at least... I'm sure there are some who lurk)

Should I change my avatar to Samantha? lol.

Um. Let's see. I'm an African-American, heterosexual, cisgendered, working-class Southern female.

[Otaking]

Did... you even read the article? He mentions that someone who is not straight, white and male can have advantages that some/most straight, white males don't have. He referred to them as "stats." They were things like charisma, wealth, intelligence, etc. At no point, anywhere in that article, did he ever imply that white people or men or straight people should hate themselves. He's just trying to explain in clear terms that some types of people have it easier than some other types of people in some particular fields.

He didn't say "you are bad and should feel bad." He said, "There's a decent possibility that group X has an easier life than group Y, and I would like group X to understand that."

When you read things...do you ever consider the agenda of who is pushing them on you?

Not only did I read the article but most of the 801 comments and his responses to them. He doesn't have to flat out say you are bad and should feel bad, the entire article is engineered to do this.

We're talking about an article called:

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

It's offensive right off the bat, (white males can only understand things put to them through the metaphor of video games, white males need to be 'educated' because they're 'too privileged') but as everyone knows you can't be racist towards white people. Kick them in the face again until they behave.

Here's another potential article title containing a metaphor. Let me know if this one is offensive:

Gay Black Male: Not everyone thinks you're a diva on a runway.

Just more mewling politically correct self-flagellation from the white crowd so they can feel better about themselves is all I see from anyone buying into this article which is just as pointless as any other form of racism. He seems to have written it to enjoy a giant troll more than anything by looking at his responses to the comments. I can respect the trolling more than the hogwash that is the text of the article.

Kilroy says:
May 15, 2012 at 1:24 pm

I’ll admit that my viewpoint is somewhat skewed from my perspective as a lawyer, which is probably a field where diversity and affirmative action make a much larger difference than in other areas. But black female from a wealthy family with a 168 LSAT and 3.8 GPA is going to get admitted to Harvard for law school. White male from a wealthy family with exact same stats and other experience points (clubs, extracurriculara, etc.) is not going to get into Harvard, but will be pushed down probably out of the critical top 14 law schools. Upon graduation in middle of her class at Harvard, black female from wealthy family will get interviews and easily land a position with one of the top big firms that find it very difficult to full the necessary diversity positions and are lucky to find a double minority. She then starts at $160,000 per year and is pretty much guaranteed Partner in 8 years. Straight White male from wealthy family graduates top 1/3 of his lower level law school, gets hired by a Big Firm in a small city making $130,000 per year and has about a 1/20 chance of making partner or being squeezed out in 3 years.

As far as the straight black male from Chicago ghetto compared to the straight white male from the Mississippi trailer park, you just hear a lot more stories of that occasional success story, usually through athletics at least to get a foot in the door at a university, compared to the white male. Off hand, can’t think of any success stories that start in a trailer park in Mississippi.

I could add my own experiences of hiring minorities in a large company and having them implode because they were expected to perform to the same level as everyone else but no one will listen because I'm a privileged bigoted white male. I would tell you that they were from Oakland and when they were first criticized on their job performance before they lost it they came back with the clear attitude of no whitey tells a brotha what to do. I would tell you further that there was a white guy in the same job position (who was even from Oakland) that had the same position and responded to nearly the same criticism by sharpening up and not only kept his job but received promotions and more money. You won't listen though because I'm just an ignorant SWM, too confused by my white privilege to really understand how the world works. I just can't keep up with the enlightened understanding of the far left because of my genetics.

Now it has happened that members of every ethnicity including whites have imploded in my particular company but I've had experiences with multiple blacks and one transgender who later went to play their race or gender card to attempt to keep their job after they lost it due to performance reasons. The whites did not have that option. Scalzi ignores most comments like this in favor of easier prey if you read the comments section because they don't support his white privileged worldview. The article is just a racist troll and I've lost a lot of respect for one of my favorite authors after reading it.

[FlyingFish]

I am white and obviously so. Most of my ancestry comes from the British Isles, particularly Scotland.

My father was born in Alabama in the 50s but my grandparents moved to what become Silicon Valley early on and he was spared the bad influence of deep South culture. Growing up, I was largely surrounded by whites, the children of refugees from every East Asian Communist revolution, and a Latino community that was Mexican in the sense that they had lived there since the area was Mexico. Later on during the tech boom (high school for me) we got an influx of immigration from the Middle East, India, and Pakistan.

I was never exposed to modern racism, at least not blatant enough for my child's eyes to spot, save when my great-uncle flew out from the South for a visit (he threw around the N-word like it was still fashionable; thankfully, his own children didn't pick up his opinions). On the other hand, our community simply never had a noticeable number of African Americans, so as an adult I have to wonder what cultural stimulus led to that.

My great-great-great-grandfather was a Dakota, which makes me Native American by Elizabeth Warren's standards (*rimshot!*) That's its own subtopic: how much of your ancestry has to be of X ethnicity to make you "qualify" as "an X"? Who or what defines those standards? Does it matter?

[Trefle]

Trefle, may I ask what country you live in?

Indonesia. mindstalk is quite close.

[grimmi05]

Working in retain I thin I see the worst of every race and ethnicity. All groups have their own special compliant that they use over and over again. Its gotten to the point that I can tell what race someone is based on that they are bitching about.

White: "do you have anything fresher?"
Black:"you don't have/aren't doing something because I am black
Indian:"can I get this for less money because their is something superfiaclly wrong about it"

Those are the three biggest ones with whites being the worst offender.