Re Ferguson...my response...

[hilary1617]

Privilege is indeed about access. It is the ultimate mean girls club and unless you've not been invited to the sleep over then you'll never realise that you're on the inside.

That said, those who have newly arrived at the slumber party may quickly learn to regret accepting the invitation. After all, that's not pleasant company to keep.

 

[kirmy]

Indeed!

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Hi, @kirmy - I wish I knew how to quote your post, but I don't, so please bear with me --- you raise a lot of points, so let me try to answer them as best I can since you seem to be asking me directly:

re: your country's immigration policy - I can't answer that directly since I have no knowledge of it, but I will assume it is because the government has had significant experience with sub-Saharan immigrants moving to the country and requiring a disproportionate amount of welfare aid. I seem to recall that your country has extremely generous welfare and healthcare policies and I can only surmise that the government / population decided that they could not financially support unlimited numbers of poor immigrants coming to the country (of any color). Is it fair that there are different standards based on country of origin? Maybe not, but I assume if a non-white European citizen decided to emigrate then the 5000pounds would apply to them, and not the 100,000 figure; if a white African wanted to emigrate to your country they'd have to prove 100,000 in assets, right?

Regarding Katina: actually, there have been a number of Feed the World style concerts to benefit those impacted by Katrina. Also, a number of "gliterati" have publicly supported the relief efforts in a myriad of ways (too numerous to account here). The federal government provided at least $115 Billion in direct aid, 2/3 of which was immediately after the storm and provided food, shelter. In indirect aid the government has supplied far more than that, which if you had seen the city "before" and "after" would be readily apparent in the new infrastructure. That is hardly "baby Bush" sending "a digger". True, no one in the immediate aftermath of the storm realized how bad it really was until hours or even a day later. It was an unprecedented 400 mile wide storm; I can't speak for all people but certainly I had no frame of reference for the level of damage a storm that size hitting in the exact wrong spot would cause. I have a good friend from high school who lives in N.O., albeit not in the under sea level part of town, and even she didn't realize it was so bad and the worst of the damage was 7 miles from her house. People from all over America sent food, money, water and building supplies as quickly as we could ( the total of which was not part of the aforementioned $115 Billion in federal aid). Other parts of the country sent their electricity repair trucks -- thousands of them from all over the Southeast -- to help restore basic services. People from all over the US went to the city to volunteer, and to continue to visit since so much of the city relies on tourism for its livelihood. I know for a fact that within 6 months the city was hosting conventions because my company made the deliberate decision to not cancel one we were hosting so as not to deprive the city of the revenue. Was the government response great after Katrina? No, of course not and I think the entire country would agree with you. However, I do feel like we did the best we could (and are still doing) under the unprecedented circumstances; certainly neither the government nor the entirety of America turned our backs on the poor (of any color) and displaced of Katrina.

As for your questions about my personal life -- yes, sometimes I do get followed by store security, especially if I go out looking scruffy and am in an unfamiliar part of town. My sons do not fear being arrested after dark, but then again they are rarely out after dark and do not congregate in sketchy parts of town or engage in sketchy activities. After dark, if they are even out, they are usually at Boy Scouts or sports practice and I have worked very hard to ensure that my sons do not behave in ways that put them in line of sight for police. Now, if you are asking if my male relatives do fear this -- yes they do. But my male relatives do behave in sketchy ways and do things they oughtn't, so yes, they do fear that and have since we were kids. I do not live in an area of high crime or gangs, and I have mentioned before that my parents moved us to a small town (tiny, really) from South Side Chicago when I was a kid. So while I did not grow up most of my life in a high crime area, the rest of my family did. Instead, I grew up as an "outsider" in a very poor small town with few educational resources. Yes, most of my family lives off of benefits, as did I growing up; my dad was lazy and refused to work and my mom only got a little money from my sister's baby daddy (I think that's the proper term these days), and I worked and contributed starting at age 9. I haven't researched the child abuse, rape, or domestic abuse statistics but I will say that both my parents beat the crap out of each other regularly and my first husband beat me and tried to beat my eldest (which is why I left him). After we divorced he remarried and was jailed for incest of his 3 children, the eldest of which was his 5 year old son, so although I have been exposed to that, I am grateful to have dodged that particular horrifying bullet. I do not need to send my kids to work to feed my addiction, but #1 - I am not addicted to anything, having made the decisions necessary to avoid that and #2 - my parents did send me to work to earn money to help house our family. My point of all this is, Kirmy, that I do have a familiarity with the crushing social ills you list and yet somehow I managed to make different choices and have a different outcome. I am not the only one, as you know since you are also one. Somehow we and others managed to make other choices despite the chaos surrounding us without blaming the system. We took responsibility for our own choices and our own lives despite not having all the resources others may have had, despite not having good role models, despite having cards stacked against us. I am a middle aged woman of means enough to afford bariatric surgery because of the choices I made. I am not an uber-genius and I managed to do better than the examples I was shown. Although there certainly IS discrimination and unfairness in this world, it is possible to rise above it and be successful despite it. That's the point I have been trying to make, using my personal experience as an example.

Re: Katrina...I would rather live in a country where we ALL chip in ten cents to help each other in emergencies...and thus we would be ready for them at all times. A lot of the Katrina response was volunteer effort and that means that a few people (relatively- and metaphorically-speaking) gave ten dollars instead of ten cents. Which is good of them, but it also makes responses to emergencies dependent upon their emotional appeal to the masses.

And these...

My sons do not fear being arrested after dark, but then again they are rarely out after dark and do not congregate in sketchy parts of town or engage in sketchy activities. After dark, if they are even out, they are usually at Boy Scouts or sports practice and I have worked very hard to ensure that my sons do not behave in ways that put them in line of sight for police.

You probably are...and my mom was...good at this. Not everyone HAS a mom who can do this. Lots of moms are incarcerated. Do you remember Stand and Deliver, the movie about Jaime Escalante, the math teacher in East LA? If you do, you might also remember that those ghetto kids, who lived an hour's drive or a two-hour ride on the bus--and they wouldn't even need to transfer, just one bus--had never been to ANY beach. Their vision didn't go that far. They had no experience even imagining such an adventure.

I was volunteering at my kid's school one day and the arrogant, idiot English teacher wanted then to write their daily essay on the topic "Taking a Friend to Lunch." She got blank stares. I told her that they HAD NO EXPERIENCE eating in restaurants. She said, "Well...just McDonald's then." I said, "If they had enough money for Mc Donald's, they'd buy the BIG bags of beans and rice." She still didn't get it.

Even though I am NOT a fan of illegal immigration, my job back in the day involved working with people from that population. I took some of those kids on a whale watch cruise. Most had never seen an ocean. But we saw only the ass-end of one whale. A real downer. So we turned the cars around and went UP! And found snow. They had also never seen snow. And after that, just for fun, we ate at a real restaurant. They were terrified...poor things. But they got around to liking it.


...but I will say that both my parents beat the crap out of each other regularly and my first husband beat me and tried to beat my eldest (which is why I left him).

So...MAYBE (I admit to guessing here)...even though you were later able to rise even more above what you grew up with...you didn't take the express train there. Your early ventures in to what would prove to be your adult life might have taken you right back to where you came from.

You got out. And on a graph of Stanford-Binet results, http://ltastudent.lodiusd.net/MGood/Images/Stanford-Binet Scale.jpg I strongly suspect that you "reside" way over on the right...and from that vantage point, it is often difficult to remember that "almost everyone else" is not similarly able. In your case, I'd bet money on the assumption that out of any one hundred people who started where you did, you are more able to find alternatives and imagine things outside your life experiences than (easily) 98 of them.

And, since I may not reside next door but am occasionally allowed to park there, I dare say that you (and I) can take no credit for that. We can claim credit for or struggles and accomplishments in rising above our beginnings...but we cannot take credit for our native ability to do so...that was a crap shoot.

So I don't know how many of your extended family members are as bright as you...I suspect few or none. And therefore, imho, it isn't quite as simple as "I got out, so can anyone," (paraphrasing whatI think I'm hearing.)

Although there certainly IS discrimination and unfairness in this world, it is possible to rise above it and be successful despite it. That's the point I have been trying to make, using my personal experience as an example.

I agree with you. But I would add that some people are better-equipped that others to make that trek. So that if/when we do "make it," we might consider that on top of all our hard work, we were just damned lucky...and not everyone else had the resources we did.

 

[DianaCox]

There is a saying (baseball analogy) that goes something like this: He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

Usually that applies to people like George Bush (The Shrub), who clearly would not have made it in this world the way he has, had he not been born into financial and thus sociological privilege. However, I think that there is a genetic equivalent to this as well, and I for one have been aware of it since I was a child, and it keeps me (most of the time) from being too smug about my own successes.

I am very intelligent - I was born that way. I didn't make myself that way - I won a genetic lottery. School has always been easy for me. My brain works just like the educational system is geared - I have (well, had ...) an excellent memory for names and dates, and I was good at math. In some respects, I won the emotional intelligence lottery too - I liked the attention of adults (oldest child) and I liked pleasing them, especially teachers. Nobody had to tell me to go to college - I knew I was going to go to college when I was 9, because I already knew I wanted to be a scientist. When I became unhappy living at home, I figured out by myself that going away to college was the best way to get the **** out of Dodge - I just optimistically always assumed there was a way out - and optimism is another genetic trait from which I benefited.

Did my success in life come from hard work, self-control, and sacrifice? Of course it did - but, those successful traits were easier for me than others, just as turning down a second dessert is far easier for people who are genetically slender and lacking metabolic disorders - do they have more "willpower" than those who don't say no, or are they genetically predisposed to not want that second dessert? Do they get "credit" for having more willpower than us fatties? That's no more fair than my taking credit for the genetic gifts I was given.

Yes, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, if you were born into poverty and deprivation, is not easy. But taking complete credit for what was genetically easier for you than your siblings, neighbors, etc., when at least some of that was because you were born with the genetic gifts of intelligence, resilience, optimism, drive to escape rather than becoming numb to the abuse - and thinking it is ALL because you are a better person than those you were raised among - I think that is not completely fair either.

Thinking that you have achieved all that you have SOLELY because you are a better person than they are is a little presumptuous and arrogant in my view. Yes, you took advantage of the gifts you were given, but I think it is important to understand that you were genetically advantaged from the start is something that needs to be understood as you look back at others who did not get out of poverty and deprivation the way you were able to do. Certainly there were good choices that you made along the way, where it might have been easier to make others - but I think you should be more self-aware that you ALWAYS were enabled to make those choices more easily than the majority of your socioeconomic peers.

(I was just about to post this reply when I saw that SB had posted something very similar. While we do not share a brain, nor an identical background, we do share a similar world view - and I suspect therefore that this view is one you may wish to consider before straining your shoulder patting yourself on the back quite so much.)

 

[kirmy]

GULP!

Well I've been gazumped by these two feisty ladies in my reply.
Australia isn't exactly enroute for subsaharan immigration so no they had no experience of refugees from Africa. We had a "white Australia" policy until 1972 that classed aboriginals as cattle for the census. The last massacre of an Aboriginal tribe was in 1976. The reality is that I grew up in an institutionally racist country...as too did you. I seem to recall lynchings, mass demonstrations and institutional apartheid in American society. Oh and slaves........so the notion that all people were created equal really doesn't sit well with many of the remaining ruling class.

I am really amazed at your ability to diminish history to your own bell curve and make such sweeping assumptions. It's like listening to Barbra Bush try to be ghetto.

As for the request of your personal life...I think you can see it was to demonstrate a point on social status and deprivation. I'm sorry you had a terrible childhood. I'm glad you're happy now and middle class or above. Great. But it isn't about you. This thread is about the sociopolitical and economic factors behind Ferguson and your rigid inability to entertain the reality of a vast swathe of these people makes you come across as intolerant and dismissive of crushing oppression.

So my next question....are you the Pomeranian off OH? You sure seeeeeeeeemmmmm like her?

 

[DianaCox]

No, @kirmy - she's not the Pom. I can vouch for her on that! Besides, the Pom is one of those who grew up in rarified privilege - she was born into a Montana cattle baron family, father was an ambassador or Congressman (or both?), a Washington insider.

But I always find it interesting that poor people who get "lucky" (genetically or otherwise) become right-wingnuts in some respects - hence the "born on third base, think they hit a triple" - they think their success is ALL a result of their personal fortitude and hard work, rather than the result of advantageous genetic gifts that they were lucky enough to receive, and see themselves as morally superior to others who don't have those gifts.

4Kids - I'm sorry this sounds so harsh, and your posts are not way over the line in tone - they seem well thought-out, but with a HUGE blind spot to the actual advantages you have, and thus you seem oblivious to the HUGE contribution that luck of the genetic lottery gave you, and that your success (as compared to the failure of others similarly situated,, which you quite clearly demean) was not just due to your perseverance, hard work, etc., significant as those traits were.

 

[kirmy]

Well for me it is personal and I'm angry. My brother and sister are living below the poverty line and her statements made me batshit angry because they dismiss them as idiots who are in essence incapable of getting out of their own way. Addiction and inaction have robbed them of the basics of suitable education and thus a chance to move out of their situation. My sister may lose her house due to relying utterly on her limited sickness benefit because of ill health. She has no fall back. They are both intelligent people but profoundly dyslexic. My sister left school at 14 and joined a bike Gang and my brother dropped out of life and joined the international socialist movement in his teens. Drugs and alcohol did the rest. If they could change their circumstances they would have but they don't have the strength and have lived the same patterns for years and that's all they know. We have an abusive mother and a functioning alcoholic father and we ran....as fast as our legs could carry us. Luckily for me I found love in my peer group and they bought me up to value smarts.

But this doesn't make those that didn't escape any less then me. Ferguson shows me that young black men are seen as less. This blind spot is the terrifying blight on the American psyche and unless you pull the bandage off you're just wrapping up gangrene.

 

[DianaCox]

For all white people (or those who can pass): if there is any doubt of whether discrimination is overwhelmingly pervasive and oppressive, just ask yourself: would you have any objection to being turned into a black person, female or especially male? Do you honestly believe you would have be able to bring yourself into your current situation if you had been born black?

 

[southernlady]

Opening it back up...

R&R is NOT for the timid or easily offended. IF you do not want to participate, fine...walk away!

 

[Spiky Bugger]

And, for those who might have trouble following an occasionally disjointed conversation...you need to look at QUOTED posts that others have replied to.

The originals of those posts went into the bag with the dollies that their author packed up and took home.

 

[JackieOnLine]

oh, it's still here! was it here all along? I only looked in my "alerts".

 

[MsVee]

No, @kirmy -

But I always find it interesting that poor people who get "lucky" (genetically or otherwise) become right-wingnuts in some respects - hence the "born on third base, think they hit a triple" - they think their success is ALL a result of their personal fortitude and hard work, rather than the result of advantageous genetic gifts that they were lucky enough to receive, and see themselves as morally superior to others who don't have those gifts.

4Kids - I'm sorry this sounds so harsh, and your posts are not way over the line in tone - they seem well thought-out, but with a HUGE blind spot to the actual advantages you have, and thus you seem oblivious to the HUGE contribution that luck of the genetic lottery gave you, and that your success (as compared to the failure of others similarly situated,, which you quite clearly demean) was not just due to your perseverance, hard work, etc., significant as those traits were.

I think it comes from the need to separate yourself. A need to prove that you are NOT like "those" people. It is this need to assimilate. You want to prove that you are like everyone else you think of as normal. Your background impacts your future but it does not define it. White privilege is real but it is not a passport to prosperity for whites nor is it an insurmountable barrier for non-whites.

Money talks and it provides opportunities to those who possess it. However money alone does not guarantee access. I can remember when Oprah Winfrey was denied access to a store because the employee did not think that an African American was able to afford the merchandise. Oprah has a lot of money but she was still unable to gain access to the store.
It may happen to whites but I cannot think of anyone with wealth similar to Oprah being denied access to a store.

MsVee

 

[Spiky Bugger]

In re-reading some of this, I just realized I UNDER-reported my SAT scores. I want you ALL to know that they were well OVER 1400. I forget how close to 1500. (In those days, the max score was 1600.)

The thing is, I just scored 123 points with four little tiles in a Words With Friends game vs a currently unnamed opponent...who didn't even (immediately) respond with an admiring "WTF." (That omission has subsequently been corrected.)

And if I had not corrected the SAT score info, the currently unnamed opponent might think I had cheated or something...when it was just my native intelligence...well, also my hard work in overcoming my many challenges and of course all the freebies I got for being brown-ish. Give me some time and I'll think of one. Or not.

Oh, wait! Back when Republicans were about fiscal conservatism and minding their own damned business,
I was one. And for a very short period of time, some local politicos thought that I would be a GREAT candidate for local office. The draw? WHY were they ready to back me as a candidate? All they knew about me was that I was female, a registered Republican, and I was kind of brownish with a surname that ended in a vowel. And at the time,
I cleaned up rather well and spoke in complete sentences. But that's my big perq for being a minority...I was offered a chance to be the Palin-Keyes-Carson candidate of the early 1970s.

But I wrote that WWF word fair and square!!

~~~~~~~~~


And thanks to @MsVee for mentioning the bias in standardized testing. I am reminded of an "Unscramble the Words" test administered in the 1960s. East coast kids...the test was written in the East...were way smarter than kids in the southwest. The scrambled word was O-A-T-C. Children east of the Mississippi, where the test was written all knew the scrambled word was COAT, while those stupid kids, and many WERE minorities, in the southwest thought it was TACO. They all got it wrong. (And today the weather lady said that fall was in the air and the high today would be a mild 95°. Really. A MILD 95°. LOL. So those southwest kids who DIDN'T know from tacos, still didn't have much experience with coats. )

I got decent scores because I was sent to militarized...I mean Catholic...schools...where all of us kids from various backgrounds and cultures were boiled up and run through a sieve so we could be regular Pure 'Mericans, albeit somewhat more familiar than most with Latin.

My 123-point word, however, was from late Middle English roots, not Latin. So I did not use my privileged, $7/mo tuition education against my opponent.

And I wrote this while sober.

 

[DianaCox]

Oh puh-leeze, SB - is this my punishment for glancing at you STEALING the triple word blank I left for myself, and not noticing the HEE-uge number of points you scored - when I looked at the board at 1:30 in the AM just before I went to bed! A freaking four letter word. 123 points. Sheesh. I should just resign now.

Taking advantage of a minor lapse in judgment of mine to leave a triple word space at the end of a nice word, with a triple letter space three letters upstream - into which she dropped a J.

She's not just crazy smart - she's clever, stealthy, quietly sneaky - and she would have made a KILLER sleeper cell in the Republican party.

My SAT scores were also between 1400 and 1500 - but I still remember the number. I guess because I'm younger than her.

And the word was JAGS - and the S on the triple word box garnered triple points from the down word above it too.

PS: that's a mistake I won't be making again - I learn from my mistakes! Another of those genetic traits that give me an advantage over others.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Oh puh-leeze, SB - is this my punishment for glancing at you STEALING the triple word blank I left for myself, and not noticing the HEE-uge number of points you scored - when I looked at the board at 1:30 in the AM just before I went to bed! A freaking four letter word. 123 points. Sheesh. I should just resign now.

Taking advantage of a minor lapse in judgment of mine to leave a triple word space at the end of a nice word, with a triple letter space three letters upstream - into which she dropped a J.

She's not just crazy smart - she's clever, stealthy, quietly sneaky - and she would have made a KILLER sleeper cell in the Republican party.

My SAT scores were also between 1400 and 1500 - but I still remember the number. I guess because I'm younger than her.

And the word was JAGS - and the S on the triple word box garnered triple points from the down word above it too.

PS: that's a mistake I won't be making again - I learn from my mistakes! Another of those genetic traits that give me an advantage over others.

Good thing none of us have agreed to get involved in this! @kirmy @DianaCox

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BB3mmniEA...sM/_BXPDnuIbe4/s1600/scrabble+in+scottish.jpg