I have equal concern for all people regardless of race, and that is that hard work should pay off and "but i deserve....." should not. There is more to an individual than grades, this is true. But you should get in simply because you are black is morally no better than you should be excluded for it.Are you claiming that they cannot earn it by getting good grades just like a white student? That a white student from bad urban schools deserves less help than the black or mexican student?Are you claiming that black students are adequately represented in universities?Well... A law was made that allowed affirmative action in recruiting to university. Since then, black students have been accepted with lower merits... but also, asian students have needed even higher merits to get in. On average. Is this good? Does it help get us to equality? Is this fair?
Problem is that every privilege has consequences. It doesn't solve the problem. Far better to slash all sorts of rubber paragraph there is, make the legal system far more predictable. That will leave far less room for racist implementation of the law.
There's more to an individual than just their grades. There's also more to a university than just whether the admit one individual or not. Universities that better reflect our society as a whole are going to be better able to prepare students to function within that society.
That's part of the reason universities have programs to support students from poor families, because they're part of our society as well.
I'd also find your concern for poor white students more convincing if you actually showed concern for them in general, not just when it comes to issues of race.
The fact that you think "simply because you are black" gets someone into college indicates that you don't actually understand how affirmative action works for college admissions.
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The fact that you think "simply because you are black" gets someone into college indicates that you don't actually understand how affirmative action works for college admissions.I have equal concern for all people regardless of race, and that is that hard work should pay off and "but i deserve....." should not. There is more to an individual than grades, this is true. But you should get in simply because you are black is morally no better than you should be excluded for it.Are you claiming that they cannot earn it by getting good grades just like a white student? That a white student from bad urban schools deserves less help than the black or mexican student?Are you claiming that black students are adequately represented in universities?Well... A law was made that allowed affirmative action in recruiting to university. Since then, black students have been accepted with lower merits... but also, asian students have needed even higher merits to get in. On average. Is this good? Does it help get us to equality? Is this fair?
Problem is that every privilege has consequences. It doesn't solve the problem. Far better to slash all sorts of rubber paragraph there is, make the legal system far more predictable. That will leave far less room for racist implementation of the law.
There's more to an individual than just their grades. There's also more to a university than just whether the admit one individual or not. Universities that better reflect our society as a whole are going to be better able to prepare students to function within that society.
That's part of the reason universities have programs to support students from poor families, because they're part of our society as well.
I'd also find your concern for poor white students more convincing if you actually showed concern for them in general, not just when it comes to issues of race.
Except that, for some colleges, it actually does work that way. It's not a program that is actually evenly applied or fully understood by the people applying it, which contributes to the feeling some have that it's actually hindering racial equality.
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The fact that you think "simply because you are black" gets someone into college indicates that you don't actually understand how affirmative action works for college admissions.I have equal concern for all people regardless of race, and that is that hard work should pay off and "but i deserve....." should not. There is more to an individual than grades, this is true. But you should get in simply because you are black is morally no better than you should be excluded for it.Are you claiming that they cannot earn it by getting good grades just like a white student? That a white student from bad urban schools deserves less help than the black or mexican student?Are you claiming that black students are adequately represented in universities?Well... A law was made that allowed affirmative action in recruiting to university. Since then, black students have been accepted with lower merits... but also, asian students have needed even higher merits to get in. On average. Is this good? Does it help get us to equality? Is this fair?
Problem is that every privilege has consequences. It doesn't solve the problem. Far better to slash all sorts of rubber paragraph there is, make the legal system far more predictable. That will leave far less room for racist implementation of the law.
There's more to an individual than just their grades. There's also more to a university than just whether the admit one individual or not. Universities that better reflect our society as a whole are going to be better able to prepare students to function within that society.
That's part of the reason universities have programs to support students from poor families, because they're part of our society as well.
I'd also find your concern for poor white students more convincing if you actually showed concern for them in general, not just when it comes to issues of race.
Ok, explain to me how it does work without racistly giving an unfair advantage to a black student over a white one.
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Ok, explain to me how it does work without racistly giving an unfair advantage to a black student over a white one.
Unfortunately, you've trained me that an attempt at intelligent discourse with you is a waste of my time. Pithy quips are more effective, entertaining and rewarding. I'm now your little monkey that just dances in outrage.
I don't care if I'm called out for having a double standard in the discussion and viewed to have "lost".
Vive le Galt!
Ok, explain to me how it does work without racistly giving an unfair advantage to a black student over a white one.
When applied properly, the program actually doesn't discriminate. The reason for that is that it encourages people to hire anyone... African American, caucasian, male, female, human, body snatcher... All would be considered equally based on merit, with considerations given based om likelihood of succeeding without help.
If it were done correctly, it would actually serve as an equalizer in that it would give opportunities outside of those otherwise available.
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Ok, explain to me how it does work without racistly giving an unfair advantage to a black student over a white one.When applied properly, the program actually doesn't discriminate. The reason for that is that it encourages people to hire anyone... African American, caucasian, male, female, human, body snatcher... All would be considered equally based on merit, with considerations given based om likelihood of succeeding without help.
If it were done correctly, it would actually serve as an equalizer in that it would give opportunities outside of those otherwise available.
IF done correctly, i see few ways it could be done to be fair though. In practice it is often just an unfair advantage
IF done correctly, i see few ways it could be done to be fair though. In practice it is often just an unfair advantageOk, explain to me how it does work without racistly giving an unfair advantage to a black student over a white one.When applied properly, the program actually doesn't discriminate. The reason for that is that it encourages people to hire anyone... African American, caucasian, male, female, human, body snatcher... All would be considered equally based on merit, with considerations given based om likelihood of succeeding without help.
If it were done correctly, it would actually serve as an equalizer in that it would give opportunities outside of those otherwise available.
And not doing it leaves other unfair advantages in place and allows for even greater abuse.
It is far simpler to educate people on how to do this correctly than to try to change things without it. That is why, despite the problems the system has with implementation, no one has come up with better that can be widely applied.
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IF done correctly, i see few ways it could be done to be fair though. In practice it is often just an unfair advantageOk, explain to me how it does work without racistly giving an unfair advantage to a black student over a white one.When applied properly, the program actually doesn't discriminate. The reason for that is that it encourages people to hire anyone... African American, caucasian, male, female, human, body snatcher... All would be considered equally based on merit, with considerations given based om likelihood of succeeding without help.
If it were done correctly, it would actually serve as an equalizer in that it would give opportunities outside of those otherwise available.
And not doing it leaves other unfair advantages in place and allows for even greater abuse.
It is far simpler to educate people on how to do this correctly than to try to change things without it. That is why, despite the problems the system has with implementation, no one has come up with better that can be widely applied.
Or they don't give a fig about a racist advantage being given to the right group. i still say aid to disadantaged based on economy does more good to fairly help those that truely need and deserve it
Or they don't give a fig about a racist advantage being given to the right group. i still say aid to disadantaged based on economy does more good to fairly help those that truely need and deserve itIF done correctly, i see few ways it could be done to be fair though. In practice it is often just an unfair advantageOk, explain to me how it does work without racistly giving an unfair advantage to a black student over a white one.When applied properly, the program actually doesn't discriminate. The reason for that is that it encourages people to hire anyone... African American, caucasian, male, female, human, body snatcher... All would be considered equally based on merit, with considerations given based om likelihood of succeeding without help.
If it were done correctly, it would actually serve as an equalizer in that it would give opportunities outside of those otherwise available.
And not doing it leaves other unfair advantages in place and allows for even greater abuse.
It is far simpler to educate people on how to do this correctly than to try to change things without it. That is why, despite the problems the system has with implementation, no one has come up with better that can be widely applied.
The issue isn't just to give aid to people. It is to lay down the foundations of a longterm shift on societal views as to gender and race roles, with the ideal being that the disparities are evened out. It's not intended to be accomplished in a short-term.
In the end, guys, I went with two landsharks.
Lessee, "When a man has emerged from slavery and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitant of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation where he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be a special favorite of the laws."
--Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley, 1883
I am out of touch with the current state of affairs, affirmative action-wise, but my understanding was that over the past couple of decades, AA has been pretty much rolled back in practice and in theory. It's rarely even about "redressing racial wrongs" anymore and instead about "promoting diversity."
But, although the Glorious People's Revolution calls for the defense of affirmative action in the face of racist rollback, it's a pretty shiznitty program, largely because it is inadequate to address the felt, pressing needs of the working class, particularly, but not only, its minority components.
For open admissions, free tuition and a living stipend for all students!
Nationalize the private universities!
For workers revolution!
Vive le Galt!
[Takes slogan back from Comrade Truth]
Another factor that is rarely discussed as to why giving privileges to certain groups is wrong: If the balance turns out wrong, which it will, it is no longer the fault of racism, but lies squarely on the state. When an asian student doesn't get enrolled at university despite having better grades and merits than his black competitors, it isn't due to racism in general, which would be deplorable, but he is in fact directly targeted by a state law because of his race.
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You seem to be taking as accepted fact that the balance will turn out wrong without offering evidence that it is the inevitable conclusion.
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You seem to be taking as accepted fact that the balance will turn out wrong without offering evidence that it is the inevitable conclusion.
I think that's a fairly inarguable fact. Can you think of any government policy that has ever struck a perfect balance on anything?
Here's my question: is the fact that we've spent 3 out of 4 pages debating the fairness of affirmative action make the entire thread an example of cisprivilege? (If that's even the term, it's still a bit new to me.)
Here's my question: is the fact that we've spent 3 out of 4 pages debating the fairness of affirmative action make the entire thread an example of cisprivilege? (If that's even the term, it's still a bit new to me.)
Hee hee!
It's totally my fault (commie goblin subversion for the win!), but in my defense:
The thread title is Cis/Privilege. Now I was skimming the old thread, and, even posted once, but I wasn't really following it. So maybe it was intended to be about the privileges of cishood. But to me, it said let's talk about the definition and intent of "cis" and "privilege".
As far as I know, privilege theory grew out of white skin privilege theory which, in my mind, leads inexorably to Critical Race theory and, I suppose although I didn't bring it up, affirmative action.
So, mea culpa. (I've kept the Latin thing going, though)
I'm still game to talk about drag queens and other trans issues, though.
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Oh, I wouldn't say it's totally your fault, I helped it along.
I was just kvetching 'cause every time we discuss privilege of any sort on these boards we have to work through several pages of people saying that privilege doesn't exist because affirmative action is the worst thing that has ever happened in american society.
Yeah, I know. But it's hard to corral the right group of people into the same thread, you know? And even when you get a group of people who can ignore, say, Citizen [X]., then you get people like Comrade [XXXXX] who's been a way for a while and in the meantime has lost his tolerance (as in, like, tolerance for alcohol, not like the PC value) for Citizen [X]. and has to build it up again.
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You seem to be taking as accepted fact that the balance will turn out wrong without offering evidence that it is the inevitable conclusion.I think that's a fairly inarguable fact. Can you think of any government policy that has ever struck a perfect balance on anything?
The eradication of smallpox
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The eradication of smallpoxYou seem to be taking as accepted fact that the balance will turn out wrong without offering evidence that it is the inevitable conclusion.I think that's a fairly inarguable fact. Can you think of any government policy that has ever struck a perfect balance on anything?
governments are indeed good at destroying things.
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You seem to be taking as accepted fact that the balance will turn out wrong without offering evidence that it is the inevitable conclusion.I think that's a fairly inarguable fact. Can you think of any government policy that has ever struck a perfect balance on anything?
I'm pretty sure you can replace "government" with "large groups of humans" in that sentence, which would tell us that it isn't the concept of government that is the problem, but rather humanity itself.
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I'm pretty sure you can replace "government" with "large groups of humans" in that sentence, which would tell us that it isn't the concept of government that is the problem, but rather humanity itself.You seem to be taking as accepted fact that the balance will turn out wrong without offering evidence that it is the inevitable conclusion.I think that's a fairly inarguable fact. Can you think of any government policy that has ever struck a perfect balance on anything?
And you don't really need "large groups of" in that phrase.
Grantland offers two sides on divisive article about transgender inventor who killed herself
“By any professional or ethical standard, [Vanderbilt’s gender identity] wasn’t merely irrelevant to the story, it wasn’t [Hannan’s] information to share,” Kahrl wrote. “Like gays or lesbians — or anyone else, for that matter — trans folk get to determine for themselves what they’re willing to divulge about their sexuality and gender identity. As in, it’s not your business unless or until the person tells you it is, and if it’s not germane to your story, you can safely forgo using it. Unfortunately, he indulged his discovery.”
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I'm just going to stand by my earlier comment.
When I hear the words 'Cis' 'Heteronormative' and 'privilege', I get the same sense of trepidation as when I hear the statement "I'm not a racist, BUT..."
I'm just going to stand by my earlier comment.
When I hear the words 'Cis' 'Heteronormative' and 'privilege', I get the same sense of trepidation as when I hear the statement "I'm not a racist, BUT..."
Shifty, I'm not being a jerk, I'm really asking: you're from Australia?
Yep.
Yeah, no insult, just localizing the culture, if you see what I mean. :)
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"Cis" doesn't bother me at all. Once "trans" became a category, "non-trans" also became a category, and "cis" is easier to say and write than "people who aren't trans."
"Heteronormative" is fun to say [says it aloud] but I've usually found that someone who uses the word probably has a different worldview and different interests than me. You want more depictions of homosexuals in popular culture? I'm not opposed to that, like, at all, but, uh, wouldn't you rather have a socialist revolution?
"Privilege" I could do without. I can totally understand why, in the late sixties, Maoists were running around telling white radicals they had to renounce their white skin privilege and unite with the NLF and the Black Panthers, but grad students and academics looking down from their ivory towers and telling the white working class that they're privileged? In 2014? Yeah, that rankles.
Yep.
has the term become insulting in Australia?
"Privilege" I could do without. I can totally understand why, in the late sixties, Maoists were running around telling white radicals they had to renounce their white skin privilege and unite with the NLF and the Black Panthers, but grad students and academics looking down from their ivory towers and telling the white working class that they're privileged? In 2014? Yeah, that rankles.
Is it because grad students and academics are the only people pointing out privilege? Or does their joining someone else talking about privilege automatically mean that it's now wrong?
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First, I am cis, hetero and white.
Cis is okay for me, even though I did not like it at first ("why not just non-trans ?"). I came to realize that its use was both easy AND important to trans people.
Also my sarcastic side is quite happy that I can be lumped with non-trans homosexual people in the cis category :-)
I do not like the idea of privilege though.
It is a very sensitive topic and word in France because we had a rather bloody Revolution that hanged on the abolition of privileges.
In my mind, a privilege is something that a few people unfairly benefit from. AND something that should be removed.
While I believe that discrimination should be removed.
So that everyone can enjoy the same "privileges", which are actually the same rights.
Which is why I definitely do not appreciate being called a privileged person just because of my beliefs, gender, sexuality, nationality, skin color or anything else on which I have absolutely zero control.
Also what the gob said last just above.
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So, because you don't like how it makes you feel, that means it's false?
I am all for extending privileges to everyone. That's what is called progress and improved living conditions in a country. In general, it's a very good thing. Of course... the most important such privileges are the ones that clearly delineate what the state is NOT allowed to do to the individual, and these are (in theory) cost-neutral, so why not start there?
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So, because you don't like how it makes you feel, that means it's false?
Hello, IT :-) I guess your post above is a comment on mine, likely on the "being called a privileged person" because of things I have zero control on.
I would not say that it is false if we take "privileged" as opposed to "discriminated", maybe as meaning "non-discriminated".
It is pretty obvious to me that I have life far easier in my home culture being cis, hetero, male, catholic and white than if I was trans, homosexual, female, muslim and/or non-white.
And even more obvious after living in Japan where I understood first hand what it meant to not have the "proper" color of skin.
Still, the word "privilege" has a very specific meaning in French (and in English I guess) and I think it is not appropriate at all to use it as "not suffering from discrimination". Simply because "not suffering from discrimination" is something I would like to see real for everybody. Not something to abolish or fight against.
Also, "privileged" is sometimes used as a sly insult by some people who are victims of discrimination. But insulting people for something they absolutely cannot be held accountable for is just being a big jerk IMO. Very much like discrimination actually.
Words have weight, just as the "cis" topic shows. Everyone should tread carefully when addressing these issues and falling back to respecting the other person is a good principle to follow IMO.
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Yep.has the term become insulting in Australia?
"Privilege" will start fights in the playground... It's classist, a large majority of Australians believe the myth that we are classless. Calling somebody posh, rich, and so on is a prelude to punching them in the face.
Cis is not a term I have heard applied to anybody by my family, friends, and colleagues in the Australian LBGQIT community. My work place is probably one of the most TIQLGB friendly companies in the world (not bad for a Bank).
"Unity is our LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex) community and allies network. It works to increase awareness and support the Group’s LGBTI employees and friends." From the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's diversity policy.
I also find the word harsh to the ear and aesthetically un-pleasing it looks like the t has been left off the end. I don't mind a term being used for my orientation and gender but can't they find something nicer.
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Time for some generalisations.
People from the US often see situations in black and white and have little room for shades of gray. There is a tendency to apply a one-size fits all to the rest of the world. Americans look at the world through there own experience and the only way to ressolve issues is the American way. This gives the rest of the world the s!&~s... We had to deal with kind of cultural imperialism from the British, not interested in doing it again.
Lets look at Australia
Australian Aboriginals make up about 2% of the population. Australias biggest sin is the attempted genocide of the Aboriginal people - No different to the genocide of Native Americans in the US. Its is something we are beginning to comprehend the implications and scale of and we are starting to try and make amends and apologise for. It is a stain that we have to wear and acknowledge.
Less than 1% of Australians are from Africa or of African descent.
Less than 1% of Australians are from the Americas.
76% are from Europe.
We did not have slavery. Although a number of pacific islanders were used as indentured labour in the state of Queensland.
The first Europeans to settle Australia were the dirt poor refuse of England, convicted for minor crimes and transported against their will to a alien land 12000 miles from home to work for the state and to be rented to free settlers as labor. Where the were starved and beaten and treated harshly in a harsh land.
We have to deal with a constant low level of racism from the English who make us the but of jokes and refer to us as the Convicts. That is why we do our best to be better at everything the English do, out of spite we just want the residents of that gray and miserable island to be envious.
Women got the vote in Australia decades before the rest of the world and a couple of years behind the New Zealand. The Feminist movement is strong but it has a different set of issues to deal with.
How do you apply the US concept of Privilege to Australia or Japanese privilege in relation to Koreans or Ainu because the Japanese are not indigenous to Japan. Or the Han Chinese to any other Chinese ethnic group, or any other place in the world when it doesn't fit?
Yep.has the term become insulting in Australia?
As above, throwing that word into a conversation would probably be a sign that bloody violence was only moments behind. Its worse than insulting someones mother, its one of those things you just don't put out there unless you are ready for a very likely physical confrontation.
It would be like going into a black community and throwing the N word about and then claiming it's just a word to describe people from Nigeria.
Oddly enough I worked in the same place 8th Dwarf mentioned, and am still friends with a lot of QUILTBAG activists, and they don't say Cis either.
Regardless of region though, the way the words are used and the manner in which they are used has (over time) left an impression upon me that they are indeed loaded more often than not, and that is pretty clear even on these boards alone - the terms have become offensive because they are used too often as labels and as gags.
So yeah, they are offensive. Just like the N word.
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The more I think about it the word privilege is demonstrative of academic elitism and intellectual snobbery. It's used either with a certain level of smugness to show the users moral superiority over others, especially those not university educated and to shut them down if they question the user or as self flagellation to assuage the guilt felt by being born in a class/gender/ or racial group with significant advantages over others in thier peer group.
Is it because grad students and academics are the only people pointing out privilege? Or does their joining someone else talking about privilege automatically mean that it's now wrong?"Privilege" I could do without. I can totally understand why, in the late sixties, Maoists were running around telling white radicals they had to renounce their white skin privilege and unite with the NLF and the Black Panthers, but grad students and academics looking down from their ivory towers and telling the white working class that they're privileged? In 2014? Yeah, that rankles.
White skin privilege theory, or so I've read, was invented by Noel Ignatiev (whose How the Irish Became White I highly recommend) and Theodore W. Allen (whose The Invention of the White Race I haven't read, but was recently reprinted by Verso Press and gets high praises from the Black Agenda Report crowd and my comrade Eljeer) as a body of argument to convince middle-class white student radicals that they needed to orient themselves towards winning over the black working class.
White skin privilege theory these days, well, I'm not sure what it's for. And neither does Andrea Smith.
"In my experience working with a multitude of anti-racist organizing projects over the years, I frequently found myself participating in various workshops in which participants were asked to reflect on their gender/race/sexuality/class/etc. privilege. These workshops had a bit of a self-help orientation to them: 'I am so and so, and I have x privilege.' It was never quite clear what the point of these confessions were. It was not as if other participants did not know the confessor in question had her/his proclaimed privilege. It did not appear that these individual confessions actually led to any political projects to dismantle the structures of domination that enabled their privilege. Rather, the confessions became the political project themselves. The benefits of these confessions seemed to be ephemeral. For the instant the confession took place, those who do not have that privilege in daily life would have a temporary position of power as the hearer of the confession who could grant absolution and forgiveness. The sayer of the confession could then be granted temporary forgiveness for her/his abuses of power and relief from white/male/heterosexual/etc guilt. Because of the perceived benefits of this ritual, there was generally little critique of the fact that in the end, it primarily served to reinstantiate the structures of domination it was supposed to resist....These rituals often substituted confession for political movement-building. And despite the cultural capital that was, at least temporarily, bestowed to those who seemed to be the most oppressed, these rituals ultimately reinstantiated the white majority subject as the subject capable of self-reflexivity and the colonized/racialized subject as the occasion for self-reflexivity."
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So if privilege is a bad word is there another that you'd find more acceptable for the same basic concept?
I mean, I suppose you could always phrase it as a negative, rather than "white privilege", we could say "haven't been discriminated against because of race" (in countries/regions where that would apply). Or "haven't been discriminated against because of my sexual orientation" instead of "heterosexual privilege".
But those are longer and clunkier and aren't likely to catch on. Plus someone will always point out some obscure case where people of the dominant whatever get discriminated against, so it probably would have to be something like "have faced less discrimination due to x".Further note on the concept we're no longer calling privilege. We Americans may tend to assume we're the focus of every discussion, call it American privilege if you will, but the basic concept applies pretty much everywhere. How that privilege is expressed will vary and which racial groups it applies to will change, but the basic idea that some (racial, ethnic, class, gender, orientation) groups have advantages over others is pretty universally applicable.
I'm not certain if you're talking to me or not. But if you are,
I don't think "privilege" is a bad word. I think, in Andrea Smith's words, there is some merit in the concept. I do, however, much prefer the language that the socialist movement has historically used: special oppression. Blacks (and others) suffer from the special oppression of racism; females from the special oppression of women; gays from the special oppression of homosexuals, etc., etc.
The majority of whites, whether they know it or not, whether they agree with it or not, suffer from the not-so-special oppression of class (which most blacks, women and gays also suffer from).
Advantaged is not bad, I have advantages that others never will.
Is it because grad students and academics are the only people pointing out privilege? Or does their joining someone else talking about privilege automatically mean that it's now wrong?"Privilege" I could do without. I can totally understand why, in the late sixties, Maoists were running around telling white radicals they had to renounce their white skin privilege and unite with the NLF and the Black Panthers, but grad students and academics looking down from their ivory towers and telling the white working class that they're privileged? In 2014? Yeah, that rankles.
Oh, I forgot...
Another reason that I can understand the Maoists' motivation but can't fathom the grad students' is the economic condition of the white working class in those two time periods. At the height of American Keynsianism and the power of the American unions, and the latter's miserable, pro-capitalist leadership, I can forgive (but don't agree with) the young radicals' belief that the white working class was fat, quiescent and bought off.
That's not so sustainable a position these days, I'm afraid. (Well, maybe the fat part.)
For fun, a lengthy quotation from a commie newspaper that I can't find on the internet:
"The wage, price and profit spiral originates in the part of the economy when firms with a strong (or oligopolistic) market position bargain with strong unions. These price movements work themselves through the economy with a highly diverse effect on different groups. Where firms are strong in their markets and unions are effective, no one is much hurt, if at all, by inflation....
"At the other extreme are those who experience the rising costs but whose own prices remain largely unaffected because they are fixed by law or custom or, at a minimum, by someone else. This is the position, during inflation, of the teacher, preacher, public servant of (in general) the salaried professional and white collar community and of those who, in effect, are reaping the reward of past services to society in the form of pensions or other such payments."--The Affluent Society (1958)
In other words, if a high-school teacher couldn't afford the new car he wanted, he should blame not only GM management but Walter Reuther's UAW as well. Indeed, in Galbraith's view there was little difference between the two. In American Capitalism, he wrote of "the full coalition between management and labor" which is "partly disguised by the conventional expressions of animosity."
Galbraith opposed the traditional right-wing program for combating inflation by depressing the economy through tight money policy, higher taxes and cuts in government spending, arguing: "Even though the unemployment necessary for price stability is not, as a national total, very great, it will never be uniformly distributed. Black and unskilled workers, often the same, lose their jobs first." Galbraith's alternative was "to combine fiscal policy with control over prices and wages." This prescription was followed in the early 1960s by Kennedy and his successor Lyndon B. Johnson, who sought to impose wage "guidelines" on the major labor unions, a policy finally broken by a strike of airline machinists in 1966.
Even more importantly, Galbraith was the first prominent intellectual to maintain that the interests of unionized workers in the strategic core of the economy were counterposed to those of the black poor. The position would be developed in a more leftist form during the 1960s by young radicals who embraced the then-fashionable doctrines of Maoism and Guevarism. In the New Left view, white workers were seen as "junior partners" of American imperialism, benefiting from the exploitation and degradation of the impoverished toilers of Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as of the black ghetto poor at home. In this way the radical left helped produce a political vacuum which allowed racist demagogues like George Wallace to appeal to white workers who felt neither affluent nor economically secure.
From Karl Marx Was Right: Capitalist Anarchy and the Immiseration of the Working Class--For Workers Revolution! For an International Planned Socialist Economy!
Liberalism: Helping to make it's own backlash since, oh, let's say, 1958
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I feel as I may be more attuned to racial privilege issues myself for two reasons:
1. I lived in the American South as a kid and was friends with black people in my school (it was a mostly white school with maybe <15% black kids). Its tough to be friends with people who are targeted by authority figures (administrators and teachers) completely on account of their perceived delinquency. (I.e., in a fight, the black kid almost always got worse punishment). Most black people I knew were stoic about it - drawing attention just drew more aggressive persecution.
2. My daughter is part African American. When I take her to the park, other kids have refused to play with her because of her skin color. Even when I overheard one kid tell their parent "I don't want to play with her because she's dirty" (i.e., has dark skin) the kid's parent refused to address this (this sort of thing has happened several times). I think that there is a human instinct - stronger in some of us than others - to exclude or avoid people who do not resemble our families. I'm pretty sure you have to pro-actively act to undercut this sort of childish racism before it becomes reflexive. Also, how one's parents react to people who are different tends model whether you act in a suspicious, uncaring, or fearful way to people who are different. It's partly this that suggests to me that the problem is white institutions and families not querying how they teach such reactions and not challenging the development of exclusionary affectionate patterns. After all, a major factor in the development of tolerance and even love for people who are queer, non-white, or disabled is actually have a real, non-aquaintence, friendship who is one of these things. But in fact, because children have a tendency to pick up on even slight non-verbal cues about our biases, it's quite easy to pass on low-level racism even if you don't intend to. Obviously I don't want to impart these prejudices to my daughter; and I wrestle with my own. I don't think we should be "satisfied" with human nature; we have to interrogate our biases. That's what privilege means to me: not having to ask one's self - did I not grant that person my regard and disinterested love for some irrational reason, and if it seems rational to me, is it in fact governed by fear?
PS.
3. Class privilege is very strong where I live, in California, and is almost entirely based on being white and rich. People whom I know who are otherwise quite fine will rattle off all sorts of Latino stereotypes at the drop of a hat. I used to be stupidly proud of being a penniless aristo and feel quite superior to all the bourgeoisie, but honestly, aside from my personal culture, my material culture is quite working class and bohemian (in the original sense). The problem with class in America, it seems to me is the perception that life is a zero-sum game. It's so frustrating.