221–230 of 510 posts
It's popular to be a victim these days. Much more popular than I recall it being earlier in my lifetime. It even goes so far as to regard people who aren't victims with contempt.
Reminds me of this spoof commercial I heard on some comedy radio show one time for the drug Nothingenol - for people who suffer anxiety over not having been diagnosed with a disorder.
When I first heard about "playing the victim" I was truly shocked. But here and here I would find some good piece of writing about "Don't be a victim..." and similar ideas along the same line. It took me a few well written articles, months to digest them, and deep long meditations, writing about a hundred blog posts but I am now grasping the concept and - date to say - it has changed my life.
I don't know about you, but not everything in my life goes as planned, and at times things go wrong despite my best work, and at times things even go terribly wrong.
In those moments, and in the post-mortem analysis, my starting point is that I was at least partly accountable/responsible for the outcome, the only question is the % of accountability/responsibility; and then - most importantly - what measures to take, anything from "doing nothing" to "hurry to stop the ripple effects" and everything else in between.
It's not that before I was constantly playing the victim, but .... observing the world while taking the polar opposite stand from a victim's position opens interesting perspectives and problem-solving algorithms.
There are truly victims out there, victims of terrible actions and behaviors; I am not referring to them, I am actually talking about me and me only.
I am sure we're going to see more of these writing on the same concept and - IMO - it's pure gold!
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Is this a moral or a factual statement? I guess I'd reject the whole victim/perpetrator dichotomy and say that people's conditions are contingent on forces largely out of their control. That's a factual statement. Lots of people and societies find this very uncomfortable - we generally like the cosmos to be largely about us, down to our decisions, both for the better and for the worse.
To be honest, this comment section is full of blanket dismissals that speak to living in a bubble away from people with very real grievances. I would say it is not particularly philosophical or moral or factual - it is a reflection of personal material status.
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"systemic racism" is intentionally deceptive language. I think you'd be hard-pressed to constructive uses of this jargon where people are actually trying to solve specific, well-defined problems.
Systemic racism isn't intentionally deceptive. It's self explanatory, but just like anything the more you investigate the more layered and multifaceted it becomes. For me it's 3 main things. 1. The way historical oppression can set a group behind another group even after any specific policy has been repealed. Poverty is often a cycle that can go on indefinitely for generations especially depending on things like upwa…
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Why is it so much the problem of the person being targeted though? The approach you describe seems not to address the behavior of the aggressors at all.
There's a tricky balance that needs to be struck between personal agency and the mechanisms which society puts in place to prevent aggressors from victimizing people. One such mechanism is the mentality of "believing victims". Not a bad thing on the face of it, but my feeling is that we've tipped over into a world where people are incentivized to become victims. In this way the mechanism ends up becoming weaponized a…
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I mean really. Do you really think that if someone who's unsuccessful because of laziness that if only they hadn't heard about systemic racism they would have a better work ethic? The laziness comes first. The excuse is crafted after the fact. If it wasnt that they'd claim to have some other disadvantage or problem.
>Do you really think that if someone who's unsuccessful because of laziness that if only they hadn't heard about systemic racism they would have a better work ethic? In the case of that particular individual I'd say it's less laziness and more of systemic racism being deterrent to attempt self-improvement. In the "even if I try, I won't get ahead because these systems will hold me back" sense. The point I was trying…
I would just say that anyone who claims they won't get ahead even if they try because of systemic racism is being ignorant. They might have to try harder than a white person would. They might face some adversity, but there really is no excuse for not trying. It would literally perpetuate the problem.
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"systemic racism" is intentionally deceptive language. I think you'd be hard-pressed to constructive uses of this jargon where people are actually trying to solve specific, well-defined problems.
Systemic racism isn't intentionally deceptive. It's self explanatory, but just like anything the more you investigate the more layered and multifaceted it becomes. For me it's 3 main things. 1. The way historical oppression can set a group behind another group even after any specific policy has been repealed. Poverty is often a cycle that can go on indefinitely for generations especially depending on things like upwa…
> So victimhood is a learned behavior after a certain age. As a brown guy with kids in the school system, that's why recent trends in education alarm me. I don't want my kids to be taught that there's this amorphous but pervasive "systemic racism" and "white supremacy" out to get people who look like them, but which they can't do anything about. It's dangerous experimentation with kids' psychology. Growing up as one…
[1] A couple example incidents: 1) I wasn't even made aware of AP classes because I didn't look like the kids in those classes. I had to do self study to take the test after I learned about it, which I ended up aceing. 2) I lost out a big scholarship that I would have easily gotten if my counselor had worked with me the way she worked with the white kids.
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I agree with this 100%. The problem is that I present white (although I do not identify that way) and so I have been stripped of the right to even suggest the very point you just made under extreme penalty of being labeled a “racist”. Which is…the worst thing you can be in American culture. My voice isn’t worth much and I am afraid, but if you stand, I will stand with you.
That treatment by the way, is extremely problematic. White people are empowered to amplify people like Ilhan Omar, who are extremely unrepresentative of their group, but are discouraged from amplifying people like my dad, a Biden voting Bangladeshi immigrant who hates being called a “hyphenated American” and wants to live in a “colorblind” society.
Though she grew up in a really tough situation and has worked hard to overcome it, she does not make herself out to be a victim.
She has strong principles and can sometimes overstate her case, but from what I can tell she listens carefully, genuinely wants to help people, and is doing everything she can to make positive change. I have watched a lot of congressional hearings in the past few years, and Omar is more careful, more prepared, and more serious than the vast majority of her GOP colleagues.
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My main problem with White privilege is that is drawing a big line between white people and people of color. IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. To start seeing people as individuals of equal value, based on their character not group identity. I'm white, my wife is not. I fear where my kids will land in all of this. If we are drawing hard lines between people how will half whit…
> IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. That’s, yes, the central complaint about White privilege. But from the rest of your comment I suspect thst you actually meant to attribute this problem to mentioning White privilege, rather than to White privilege itself. > IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. That...didn’t happen. Though the same kind…
If I were to go back in time, I would have written.
"one of the big civil rights achievements was to move towards getting rid of that divide."
Also yes, the problem is not the concept of white privilege. As a metric to show the experience of individuals in society it's not a bad thing. As a way of defining individuals it's bad, and as a focus it's not great.