Privilege has an established definition and is being deliberately misused in order to project collective guilt.
What is white privilege?
- Thread starter Talasour
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Yeah it is an odd way to view things, essentially claiming a group is “privileged” for not experiencing (much) racism... or at least not (much) racism in relation to skin colour (Polish and Jewish people for example can experience it unrelated to skin colour).
If anything not experiencing racism isn’t really a “privilege”, it ought to be the default everyone aims for. Essentially it’s just highlighting that racism exists... you could alternatively refere to say “black disadvantage”.
It’s not clear that racism is a huge issue these days, not that individual racists don’t exist - I don’t doubt that someone has experienced say an arse hole in the bus who came out with some racist statement etc.. but lots of the claims about it seem to be along the lines of naive “gender pay gap” type claims that ignore a load of other factors. The old racism of the gaps fallacy...
With that in mind it seems “white privilege” is a bit of a nonsense, deliberately divisive, term. “Majority privilege” would be a better general statement but the impact is rather questionable... you can no doubt make an argument in favour of “height privilege” and “attractiveness privilege” too.
White privileged is basically something for people who obsess about or over emphasise the impact of “race”.
Soldato
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This is why there are no right wing comedians. You lot dont get humour.
Unfortunately I'm from the North, so I can't take the **** out of anyone's English.
I agree. That's how it would be phrased if someone wanted to claim that were being genuinely discriminated against.
I suspect the reason it isn't it's because that wouldn't allow groups to politically charge the term so it can be be used as a means of attacking and shaming/blaming others to promote their own agenda.
That's clearly false, not to mention overly simplistic to categorise people as "left" or "right" wing...
There are various comedians that could tick some centre right or right wing boxes to some extent...there are various others (more in line with this thread) who, whether could tick various right or left wing boxes but are rather anti unwoke.
Here is a "right wing" comedian on the mash report:
**** obvious warning re: occasional swearing etc.. ****
here is one doing some one liners:
On the anti "woke" side - Andrew Doyle (creator and writer of Titania McGrath & co-creator/former writer of Jonathan Pie) is often accused of being "right wing" because of his anti woke takes calling out SJW type nonsense.... yet he's generally pretty left wing/liberal.
Ditto to Tom Walker who plays Jonathan Pie, he's broadly left wing and liberal but gets accused of being right wing because he calls out plenty of BS.
In fact I suspect that being liberal is enough for people to make accusations of someone being "right wing".
There are plenty of other comedians out there where you perhaps don't know their political views or how they vote... general principle in live comedy is to not punch down (in a broad sense) ergo some elements of group identity do come into play.
That isn't that you couldn't get a very funny comedian who makes jokes that are punching down - Bernard Manning was very witty/funny for example but was also openly racist - that just wouldn't be tolerated in most places these days and rightly so. Likewise there are people like Roy Chubby Brown who are not particularly funny (granted they're accomplished entertainers) and also have plenty of racist material.... then again I guess if there is a market for it in Benidorm etc..
It isn't like there is any shortage of right wing or indeed far right/racist (not that far right necessarily makes sense as being further along the same scale as right wing, but meh, if we're dealing with one dimension then might as well mention it) humour online, you won't find it in live comedy (or indeed on TV) for obvious reasons!
Various memes for example originate from 4Chan and some can be racist, others become associated with racism because of who uses them (that silly frog character for example). In fact the view there, just as blinkered as you take, is that "the left can't meme".
Both are clearly nonsense - creating humour doesn't depend on political affiliation - some mediums are more amenable to certain types of humour though.
To bring it back to the thread - wokeness etc.. (whcih is why we have a thread about white privilege), would seem to provide plenty of material for humour if done correctly, I'd expect to see more comedians target woke nonsense in coming years and I'd not expect them to necessarily be exclusively right or left wing.
I'll leave you with this:
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What is this "established definition" or privilege and in what way is it "deliberately misused"?
Exactly.
"White privilege" comes across as a thinly veiled insult, almost like saying "all white people are racists, but it isn't your fault".
Soldato
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You 'lot' also dont get sarcasm.
Soldato
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'Tony' doesnt care.
Utopia is not a real thing. It doesn’t exist now or ever. The universe itself doesn’t have utopia. It’s ever changing and has times of silence but also times of hell. You believe things that are not true. You believe in a future that won’t happen. You believe in white people that are apparently so against you, but they are not. They could not care less.
do you see the problem yet. ?
This just sounds like I want to be “Asian” (Example) But live and reside in the UK. But I’m not changing. I want to be exactly the same and I’m not adapting, westernising or anything. In fact why doesnt Britain just change for me. Until I’m happy with the system accommodating me it’s all white people fault.
utter garbage.
You don't even need to leave the UK to find the flaws in the white privilege argument, historically speaking the Saes have oppressed/persecuted the Celts worse that all the BAME groups combined, hell they still own our country xD
Who exactly are “you lot”?
It’s rather disingenuous to now claim a post was sarcastic given you seem to be quite quick to cry “racist” at people in other threads and IIRC made similar comments about “the right” etc... in the past too.
The veil is about as thin as a sheet of graphene.
It's just an excuse for racism. There's nothing new about it at all. The oldest example I've seen myself is in a 13th century anti-Jewish text, but I'd be amazed if that was the earliest example. When anyone promoting any irrational prejudice seeks to pretend it's justified and to blame the victims, they have two broad excuses - "it's justified because they're inferior" or "it's justified because they're privileged". Which is more effective to use more publically depends on the circumstances, though people like that usually believe both.
The worst oppression was Norman, so should we blame the French or the Danes or just people from Normandy? Also, who were the Celts? It's a Greek term for some barbarians from somewhere and it was probably more a culture than a people. So the people living in Britain (which wasn't Britain back then) are guilty of cultural appropriation from the Celts and the Celts are guilty of oppressing indigenous cultures and everyone is guilty! As long as they're "white", of course. The fact that the same things happened worldwide doesn't matter.
classic Motte and Bailey fallacy....
There are a very large number of differences between humans (some totally or mostly inante and others more cultural) that may offer them advantages in some scenarios.
Being 'white' is one amonst many of these.
In many scenarios whatever advantages there are of being white in the UK and USA are basically synonymous with 'majority privellege' because places like the UK and US are still majority and historically 'white' .
Much the same as being ethnically Han may help you get along in China (even without the active state lead discrimination often present when it comes to minority groups in China) .
The problem is that what is demonstrably not a particularly relevant factor* to people's overall success gets massively inflated with places like the UK and USA then labelled "white supremacies"
* demonstrable in that certain non 'white' groups frequently outperform 'whites' across a wide range of metrics in majority 'white' counties.
Racism exists in all counties.....
to some degree situationally their will be benefits to having certain ethic appearances in all counties in the world
(these are the easily defended "motte")
But the zealots then extract these true statements, almost uniquely only in the context of counties in north America and Western Europe, to assert that these are 'racist countries' and /or thoose with 'white supremacies' (the metaphorical "bailey")
When in reality these counties are some of the least racist counties in the world (considering their degree of ethnic diversity**) and the countries where being in the majority, ethnically, offers the smallest amount of advantage, vs most countries globally.
(** for example Japan may have few reported racist incidents but this is a reflection of its overwhelming ethnic homogeneity not the prevailing attitudes towards other ethnic groups of its population)
With their often being active state approved or condoned programs that actually systemically and by design discriminate against whites in places like the UK and USA.
Additionally what is often labelled "white privellege", in places like the UK, actually only applies to a subset of 'whites' (typically an already rich and well connected subset) rather than actually being something whites universally benefit from.
So yes the media, judiciary, politicians etc may be disproportionally 'white' but the are also often disproportionally from sub sets of 'whites' with many poorer whites at least as excluded from these posts as other ethnicities if not actually more so.
Certain forum members and political commentators then get to act all confused by the backlash when all white people are told that they are "privileged" in counties that will often actively discriminate against them and where thoose less well of are often being largely ignored by the state on account of their low class/ social status.
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If only someone could invent a book that contains words and their definitions....
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