Not quite sure how the quote function works, so forgive me if I mess it up.
[quote]Please don’t try to speak for all white people. I am technically white (although the headscarf puts me into a different category), and have always identified as such. The headscarf didn’t go on until I was well into my adult years.
When I first heard the concept of privilege broached, my reaction was more like “Well, obviously.” It was a statement of the blatantly obvious. And although this is not a topic that we on the conservative side of the ledger discuss very much, there seem to be no shortage of people on this “side” that took it the same way I did.[/quote]
Relating my own story is not claiming to speak for all white people. I do suspect that I’m not the only one who had that reaction, however.
[quote]Everyone is already on board with “social justice”. The debate is over the methods by which we eliminate social disparities, not that social disparities exist.[/quote]
Everyone is most certainly not on board! Look at the other response to my post, where the poster searched for seemingly any reason to discount racial disparities by comparing them to disparities in height and attractiveness. I see that kind of attitude at least as often as I see people who are aware of the issues and want to do something about it, and 90% of the “woke” ones aren’t willing to actually make any sacrifices like paying higher taxes to fix things.
[quote]I’m not sure how you are defining “substantial”, but from data we find in long-running surveys like the General Social Survey, we find that actual, overt racism in the US (e.g., the number of people who truly believe that white is superior to black) is pretty small, and we can take an educated guess regarding the age of that demographic.
Thus, the problem is not the “racists”; there aren’t that many of them and they’re not hiring anyone these days anyway, from the most part. The problem is economic exacerbated by education exacerbated by the fact that most of us find jobs through contacts.[/quote]
That’s partly a consequence of the age of colorblindness. It’s socially unacceptable for a white person to acknowledge that race exists, which thankfully cuts way down on the outright hate speech, but it also prevents discussion that leads to understanding. Very few people are overt racists, but there are a lot of “Sixth Sense” racists who don’t know they’re racist.
[quote]Put another way: respect in society is based on a lot of things, but one of the larger elements is income. In order to get more income, you need education, and you benefit if you have a contact network that can help you find that good paying job.
If you’re a statistically typical minority in America, you’re being educated in a crappy school that the “Educational Establishment” won’t let anyone fix; if you leap that hurdle, you don’t have easy access to money for higher education; if you leap that hurdle, you go into the job market without a network or mentors.
That’s what a systemic problem looks like. And the nice thing about that problem is that it’s tangible, quantitative, and therefore solvable, IF the right policies get put into place.
But, we don’t put the right policies in place. :-([/quote]
Very much agreed about the systemic Catch-22’s, but I believe there’s a reason we’re not putting the right policies in place, and it’s not because white America is on board with the hard work of fixing inequality and just can’t find the right strategy. The Trump candicacy and presidency has shown us how many white people have been quietly against social justice this whole time, and it’s going to be a long, hard slog to get to a majority of voters that actually want real change.