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John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

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Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#251

Post by dbaupp »

jachee wrote: post #228
Inconel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think it's a very good idea to take stock of one's privileges relative to others, and how these privileges impact the outcomes of our lives, I'm a big proponent of the notion that privilege lies on a spectrum, it isn't binary. The distinction isn't between those with privilege and those without, but instead between different levels of privilege. Certainly whiteness, in a white dominated society, is one exampl…

>I'm a big proponent of the notion that privilege lies on a spectrum, it isn't binary. Agreed, and my genetic combination of healthy, cis, hetero, white, and male put me on the "more privileged" end of that spectrum. Recognizing privilege in oneself leads to recognizing it—and the desire to have it at least acknowledged—in others. It also empowers me to leverage that privilege to benefit others who don't share it. As…

Framing it as linear/just a spectrum leads to the "oppression Olympics" of people thinking that having white privilege means their, say, poor or abusive upbringing "doesn't count", like the originator of this subthread. However, this is wrong, because having privileges is multidimensional, there's so many axes upon which one can have (varying levels of!) privilege or disadvantage.

There's a lot of nuance that often gets lost or forgotten in people's knee-jerk reactions to being told/reminded of their privileges: often one understandably thinks about all the ways in which one still had to struggle, rather than recognising that there were ways in which one didn't.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#252

Post by deftturtle »

namlem wrote: post #199
philovivero wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the inventory of my life. I remember those months as a kid when the cupboards were bare, and so I'd just shrug and go to bed without dinner. Thank goodness for government-sponsored low-income lunch program. That was my only meal many days. Naturally I was surprised when recently I got informed I have white privilege by a bunch of spoiled children who've never known a day of hardship in their lives. I'm…

White privilege and class privilege often get conflate in this country. I guess in part because our society has historically been very divided by race and in part because Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of class. If you're white, you have white privilege, but you don't necessarily have class privilege. Class privilege isn't just about money either. If you grow up without much money, but to highly cultured a…

Thanks for the distinction! I know plenty of non-white persons who have lots of class privilege. It's worth far more than racial privilege.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#253

Post by rphlx »

The high ER "tail latencies" effect almost everyone in the US, UK, etc, at least everyone that's not hyper-rich enough to proactively retain dedicated private doctor(s) with high-end private facilities that can handle everything that a good ER can.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#254

Post by TheCoelacanth »

throwaway123355 wrote: post #139
sidlls wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, it ain't just the Republicans you identify that screw the poor. Democrats are in some ways worse because unlike Republicans they pretend to care (sometimes). The Democrats' candidate for president was offering Republican style market-based crap like tax breaks for profit sharing and work programs for low cost loans. She didn't even touch on poverty with anything concrete: just words. Their president from 2008-2…

Do you really think single-payer healthcare (versus the individual mandate in ObamaCare) was ever going to pass in the US? Obama literally adopted a Republican proposal for how to improve healthcare coverage, and the Republicans have spent every year since railing against it. As someone who's pretty far to the left, I don't see how a (fiscally) far-left candidate/party would make any progress in the US. The centre is…

We were one vote away from having a public option in Obamacare, which is what many of the people who aren't fully versed in healthcare jargon are really thinking of when they say "single payer". All it would have taken was for Joe Lieberman or any one Republican senator to allow it and most of the "single-payer" proponents would have been satisfied.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#255

Post by ygaf »

namlem wrote: post #202
emodendroket wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to minimize racial discrimination, but telling poor people about their white privilege seems not all that different from conservative finger-wagging about how American poverty isn't "real" poverty. Also, even if you only looked at white people American police shootings are at a much higher rate than comparable countries.

White privilege is a bad term. Trevor Noah once said that in South Africa, they call it the "black tax," which I think is a much better term. It's not a benefit that's conferred onto white people, it's a cost that imposed on non-white people.

That's more to the point, and more honest, but it has no intellectual circlejerk value.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#256

Post by micheljones »

emodendroket wrote: post #249
micheljones wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel white guilt like you, but then I took an arrow to the reeeeeeeeeeeee.

Why are you posting this garbage?

You mixed me up with the guy you're replying to, who keeps arguing that his racist views are not racist.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#257

Post by jachee »

delazeur wrote: post #241
makomk wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory that's what it was originally intended to mean, but these days there seem to be an awful lot of people who think it does mean that if you're white your life has been easy and you brought every hardship on yourself. For instance, this tweet was doing the rounds a few days ago: "Imagine sucking so fucking bad that being a white guy is hard for you?"[1]. 26,000 retweets, no ambiguity whatsoever, no real pushba…

One sarcastic tweet from a random nobody is not a bellweather of leftist discourse. That's a weak joke, not social commentary.

Of (overly pedantic) note: It's actually "bellwether".

A wether is a castrated ram. (Like a steer, speaking bovinely.) In a flock, a wether would be outfitted with a bell to serve as the lead sheep and herald the flock's motions, which is where we get the modern-day term.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#258

Post by jachee »

Grustaf wrote: post #217
jachee wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He made a mistake, paid his fine and that should have been that. Exactly. It's not like I even made a choice to drive with a suspended license. This was nearly 20 years ago now, and it happened in a tiny no-red-light town with no computer system. The ticket was for 61 in a 55 on a downhill grade. The dead-tree paperwork that confirmed that I had paid got lost, they had the wrong address on file, and I never found o…

Sorry, it wasn't clear to me that you were not aware of the suspended license. I still think that you can't complain about getting the initial fine, regardless of the size of the town where you broke the law. I also don't see how this is really connected with being poor. If you're arguing that many speed limits are set to low I'm totally with you, but that's a separate question.

I'm not even arguing that they're too low, I'm arguing that they should not be used as a fund-raiser.

The particular section of highway I'm talking about is about a half-mile long, on a downhill grade, and changes down 10mph.

The cops sit in the middle and ticket people as they're decelerating. It's a racket, plain and simple.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#259

Post by emodendroket »

micheljones wrote: post #256
emodendroket wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you posting this garbage?

You mixed me up with the guy you're replying to, who keeps arguing that his racist views are not racist.

No I meant the guy posting vacuous tired meme content

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#260

Post by jitbit »

chx wrote: post #130

This needs a retitle of "Being poor in the USA". You need to talk to someone who grew up in the DDR or the CCCP to get some perspective (although I bet people from the so called third world would have quite something to add, too!). I am a little better as I grew up in socialist Hungary. Some memories that this article brought up: off-brand toys? You couldn't even buy LEGO until like 1982 for Hungarian forints. A few…

Thank you for writing this.

I grew up in the USSR. And then early Russia (the country was recovering from the USSR wreckage, even more painful).

The "$800 car" bit made me smile too.

PS. Now, when I live in a nice EU town, own a somewhat successful software company, and my #1 mission is so my kids never, NEVER EVER, _EVEN IN THEIR DREAMS_ have a tiny glimpse of that life.

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