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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#281

Post by jakelazaroff »

jollybean wrote: post #235
breakyerself wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can debate all day long about the merits of explaining systemic racism to young black kids vs keeping them ignorant about it. However the people ignoring the facts are the ones who deny systemic racism exists. It may be better for children of color to be ignorant about it, but certainly not adults of any racial background.

It's not just about explaining, it's about identity, ideology and activism. To posit the issues as 'merely explaining' is kind of to strawman people's legit concerns. CRT, for example, goes way beyond 'explaining' - on purpose. If this were an in issue of merely 'explaining to people who systematic limitations might work' - and being sufficiently nuanced about it, then I think this whole thing would be a lot less con…

> CRT, for example, goes way beyond 'explaining' - on purpose.

That is not true. Critical Race Theory is a framework for viewing legal and social structures through the lens of race and racism.

I’m not an expert here, but this seems to be a fairly balanced summary: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#282

Post by anoncow »

rayiner wrote: post #30

> 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…

In the short term maybe a generation will not know how to deal with the knowledge of a system that is lopsided, but in the long-term waking up to the fact and then fixing the system is the only way we can have a better system.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#283

Post by rayiner »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #272
rayiner wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can debate all day long about the merits of explaining systemic racism to young black kids vs keeping them ignorant about it. However the people ignoring the facts are the ones who deny systemic racism exists. Because “systemic racism” is a term used mostly by college educated white people for other college educated white people. Not only that, it deliberately repurposes a label that ordinarily refers to prejudi…

> Because “systemic racism” is a term used mostly by college educated white people for other college educated white people. But we can agree that it exists, right? Whatever term you’d use, the phenomenon it describes is real. And it refers to present injustices as well as historical ones.

Many of the phenomena it describes are real, for sure, at least with respect to Black people. My Maryland county wasn’t desegregated until 1968, in my parents’ generation. That has produced statistical disparities that persist to this day.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#284

Post by watwut »

exporectomy wrote: post #122
ne0flex wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue there's a lot more nuances to system racism than the general narrative that is currently being perpettuated. Looking into those nuances would be frowned upon because certain groups differ from other groups for reasons that are not truly understood but would cause us to ask questions we're not comfortable with. Though anecdotal, I know several adults who have fallen into the "it's because systemic racism tha…

I think American culture has potentially gone down an ever-worsening path that comes from assuming blacks and whites are inherently identical. That leads to the belief that the persistent differences in life outcomes must be caused by oppression. That means there's an oppressor who is evil and deserves punishment. What if the fundamental assumption isn't true? How long do you keep punishing the oppressor for? Not to…

> That leads to the belief that the persistent differences in life outcomes must be caused by oppression. ... Not to get all Godwinny but that's also how 1930's Germans saw Jews.

That is not what Nazi Germany believed. Also, coincidentally, German Jews were not more rich then average, there was no persistent difference like that. They were lower middle class that clustered in the few cities. Portion of them were refugees from Eastern Europe.

Also, Germany had actually very small Jewish minority which was very integrated.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#285

Post by kenjackson »

neartheplain wrote: post #125
tstrimple wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. This never happened. You can't just eliminate explicitly racist laws from your books and expect all the racism and bigotry which led to those laws in the first place to disappear by magic. Pretending like there aren't different outcomes and general experiences between races also doesn't magically eliminate those differences. If you can’t me…

>>IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. >This never happened. Speaking as an American raised in the 1990s, the cultural programming of my childhood at least made progress in that direction. I was raised on popular TV shows like Sesame Street, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers, which showed people of all races coexisting in settings where race did not divide them. When the issue o…

The fact that these fictions didn’t change the fact that in real life the races where separated. Different schools, churches, neighborhoods.

At the end of the day we will never be color blind. Color is just too obvious of a characteristic. At best we can view the colors as equals. But we need to get rid of the systemic biases to do that.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#286

Post by frankiesardo »

livinginfear wrote: post #243

I always considered the current culture of cultivated-victimhood to be rooted in the manner Western people fundamentally define themselves by their triumphs against adversity. In the absence of real adversity, people seek and create surrogate adversity for themselves to triumph over. From this process they can rationalise themselves as having the inner-strength to overcome such barriers.

This is a clever comment and I'm surprised to see no further discussion. In the West, everyone needs to be the hero of their own story. Everyone needs to be an Achilles or a King Arthur, therefore everyone needs a dragon to fight. The bigger the enemy, the more morally entitled your actions feel.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#287

Post by watwut »

toomuchredbull wrote: post #256
danShumway wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other people have linked direct stats in this thread, and I encourage looking around at them. But also, just think about your theory in the abstract for a second. Less than one full generation has passed since redlining was made illegal. It's been less than 60 years since segregation was ruled illegal across the board. Do you really believe that the entirety of society has been reshaped in that amount of time and eve…

I've never been in a room on a hiring committee where they were like, you know what? let's give this white guy a chance. I have been in the room where were like, let's give this minority an extra chance literally dozens of times. I find it very hard to believe that there is an elaborate rouse being played on me personally and that despite not knowing any single person who would actively discriminate against someone,…

> I've never been in a room on a hiring committee where they were like, you know what? let's give this white guy a chance.

I have seen people giving white guys changes again and again and again. And then make them fall upwards. Some took up those chances, others did not. I am not even calling something sinister in all those situations (through in some yeah). Just stating that giving a white guy a chance is not something rare.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#288

Post by wsc981 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #264
fallingknife wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. I don't see how you can possibly deny the existence of systemic racism in a country where all the top educational institutions actively discriminate against asians.

What do you think about Affirmative Action? Is it systemic racism or systemic antiracism?

> What do you think about Affirmative Action? Is it systemic racism or systemic antiracism?

Racism of course. Since it’s selecting people based on race.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#289

Post by deviladvocate11 »

danShumway wrote: post #150
exporectomy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think American culture has potentially gone down an ever-worsening path that comes from assuming blacks and whites are inherently identical. That leads to the belief that the persistent differences in life outcomes must be caused by oppression. That means there's an oppressor who is evil and deserves punishment. What if the fundamental assumption isn't true? How long do you keep punishing the oppressor for? Not to…

Wait, what? We went from "teaching about systemic racism might be harmful", to "systemic racism doesn't exist", to "Blacks are inherently different from other races, which will naturally lead to different outcomes" to "critical race theory might lead to nazism." This is a wild rollercoaster of a thread and I want off of it. To jump off the original commenter's point, if you're concerned that there might be harmful ou…

Consider for a moment that you are both right. That there are in fact heritable biological differences that can aggregate to average group-wide differences like the parent comment implied, and that assuming that this is the case is harmful for the individual and society, like you argued.

If that's the case, the parent comment, while embarrassing for this site, has a valid claim - that at some point blaming everything on the system could become detrimental to everyone.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#290

Post by watwut »

throwawayboise wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #2

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.

Agreed. When I was young, victimhood was mostly scorned. "Don't be a crybaby." "Shake it off." "Toughen up." "Words can't hurt you." These were the messages I got from parents and teachers when I was feeling sorry for myself.

> "Don't be a crybaby." "Shake it off." "Toughen up." "Words can't hurt you."

That is different issue. When kids are bullied, these are good for adults, because they force the victim to be silent, so that peace is kept. If you are educator and believe those, problem with bullying is essentially solved.

You don't have to deal with bullies themselves. You dont have to spend effort teaching bullied kid how to effectively set boundaries. You dont have to listen to yelling as the kid is trying to set boundaries for the first time and inevitably failing.

You dont have to do anything, except telling the bullied kid to shut up.

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