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American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

economist.com

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Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#111

Post by serf »

lukas099 wrote: post #71
throwaway23597 wrote: post #5

LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.

Interesting; I didn't think the article author was "pretending they're so surprised" about anything. Do you have any reason to think that they've expressed opposing views in the past?

>I didn't think the article author was "pretending they're so surprised"

it's not as dramatic as feigning surprise, but the mere act of choosing a specific topic to report on makes known the ideas of what a specific journo may think the public will find intriguing.

in other words, "Water is Wet." gets no viewership, but "5 Ways You May Not Know How Water Can Kill" does get views -- likewise when a journalist has a topic like "Why X is Y", we (the reader) can presume that the work holds some novelty other than stating the obvious.

'pretending to be surprised' comes from the premise that class is such an obvious distinction in the United States that stating such is about obvious as stating 'Water is Wet.'

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#112

Post by kenjackson »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #67
kenjackson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why the term "white privilege" sells so poorly to whites. And why CRT is attacked so vigorously. Everyone likes to think they made it on their own. The guy who inherited a multi-million dollar business thinks he has had no more real advantage than then guy who was raised in an orphanage in Uganda. While I firmly believe that this privilege exists, you just can't legislate based on it, because you'll get n…

There's white privilege in Pensiltucky? Elon Musk knows he wouldn't have made it big without family connections, but the white guy from Western Pennsylvania knows that he was up against a whole lot and made it anyway, against all odds. That's why "white privilege" sells so poorly.

I agree. Let me give you another example of privilege -- being able-bodied. It doesn't seem like a privilege, because there are still obstacles you must overcome, but it's just one less obstacle.

IMO, the only thing that makes "white privilege" somewhat interesting, is the extent to which the country made laws and regulations around race. If it were merely tribal preferences of liking people who were genetically closer to you, I'd view it more like being tall as a privilege. But the fact that we used the government and other legal instruments to prop one above the other gives me a certain level of discomfort that I don't have with all the other forms of privilege that exist.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#113

Post by happyopossum »

Tronno wrote: post #86
matrix_overload wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Your first link contains an anti-semitic dogwhistle. Is this intentional?

That’s not a dog-whistle - it’s straight up antisemitism.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#114

Post by anonporridge »

heavyset_go wrote: post #78
anonporridge wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, parental income can be a terrible proxy. High income doesn't necessarily indicate wealth or high class. It usually indicates highly educated, high level working class, like doctors and software engineers. Families with generational wealth often have very little direct income. All wealth is in assets that they borrow against, which doesn't count as income. Even when they take income or realize capital g…

I grew up with kids of wealthy families that were able to get student aid based on their parents' incomes, which were low to non-existent.

Meanwhile, I know people whose parents had very high incomes, but didn't actually have any real, accessible wealth saved, didn't save for their children's education, and had slept walked into too expensive of a lifestyle to divert any of their income.

Because their parents made too much, they got zero financial aid and ended up covered in mountains of loans because their parents didn't actually have the money to give them.

To be fair though, the fault in this case lies exclusively on the irresponsible parents who had the option to provide for their children's education, but opted to leave them to the wolves.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#115

Post by scotty79 »

googlryas wrote: post #89
throwaway23597 wrote: post #5

LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.

The goal of whom? Please don't vaguely hand wave about the .1%. Who specifically with means has had this goal? Because without any kind of evidence or idea of who is doing it, it just sounds like a conspiracy theory. I ask because whenever I see instances of the ultra rich trying to control the narrative, it always comes off as obvious and ham fisted. The obvious rebuttal is "well you don't see when they succeed", bu…

Bezos for one. He specifically bought newspaper to massage the image of billionaires like him. I don't think he's beneth that tactic given that Amazon has huge employee rotation by design because they haven't anticipate running out of people.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#117

Post by VictorPath »

Five years ago we could see the continuing national oppression of the Lakota by America, during the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy. Imagine if Russia was trying to ram an oil pipeline through the Ukraine right now. Americans complain the Russians don't respect the sovereignty if the Ukraine, but Americans don't respect the sovereignty of the Lakota.

In the same manner Africans are nationally oppressed by America. This was more evident in my parents time when they couldn't vote, use white bathrooms, drinking fountains, play major league baseball etc. During Robert's life as well. Some of those restrictions have been removed, but looking at statistics we see how Africans are kept out of these places. The Supreme Court generally lessened the overt oppression against Africans since the 1950s, it looks like they are headed back to the old days now.

I don't think Europeans can comprehend the schizophrenia of America's attitude towards those of African descent. Like here, their friends at the Economist (probably some 20 something factotum just out of university) carry this idea on. Of course painting America's national oppression of the Africans it kidnapped to here as just, the natural order of things etc.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#118

Post by vasco »

matrix_overload wrote: post #63
throwaway23597 wrote: post #5

LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.

Quoted post unavailable.

This was interesting until it blamed Jewish people.

If you don't like class systems, blame those who perpetuate them. The extremely wealthy, the royalists and the supporters of caste type systems. Otherwise you're just being antisemitic when you could be making an interesting point.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#119

Post by j33zusjuice »

nu11ptr wrote: post #35
dgs_sgd wrote: post #23

> For more than 40 years the court had allowed some positive discrimination I’m not a fan of the term “positive discrimination” at all. It tries to hide the fact that the “positive” effect to one group is necessarily at the expense of another. Whether it’s positive or negative just depends on which group we’re talking about.

Agreed, if you have a finite amount of resources and "positively" favor one group over another, this automatically disfavors another group. When skin color is used for this "positive" favor, we have a term for the impact on the other group: racism. Have we not learned that racism is ALWAYS bad?

Based on comments I read on here this morning about how some people think it’s ok to be racist because you’re basing your disdain for them on the way other people who look like them behave, no.

(To clarify, the comments said, “I dislike people of X color because of the behaviors I’ve observed in people of X color.” And they argued that it wasn’t the same as just hating people based on color, although that’s exactly what it is.)

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#120

Post by aiisahik »

matrix_overload wrote: post #63
throwaway23597 wrote: post #5

LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.

Quoted post unavailable.

Agree but for purposes of this specific article, the Economist is a British publication. The largest owner is a Dutch holding company.
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