A few thoughts on the latest round of White Guilt discussions

[AFK]

It's not that you would have learned, necessarily, that Japanese people were going to bomb your boats (and that's a facile example), it's that you could have learned from him that the Japanese are bad, sneaky people.

But I didn't.  First Japanese person I met was my college roommate, and he was a very cool guy.  My only problem with him is that he still wasn't used to the time change and would stay up late playing video games.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It is truly ironic, that a bunch of Americans, whose lands, while much affected by it, were at least largely not visited by the funfair we call World War II, who abandoned us because we were not worth saving from the Soviet variety of fascism, as a little pawn in a large game, and did it again in 1956, insist that I am a "privileged white boy". But do carry on, or ignore me, as you wish.

That's what happens to pawns in international politics.  Hungary is a small and unimportant nation, with no irreplaceable resources.  Nobody was going to toss a nuclear war over your freedom or lack thereof.

Also, you are STILL stuck on the idea that privilege is a black & white issue, that it's all the same and that you either have it or you don't.  This isn't the case.

Yes. Privilege is entirely a shades of gray issue. I have a lot of privilege that others don't have. Others have a lot of privilege that I don't have. My privilege doesn't make me a bad person, it's just something for me to be conscious of when I try to understand where other people are coming from.

[Juana]

^^^ That. Far and away, most of us have some kind of it, but privilege intersects with so many parts of your life (where you're from, your race, gender, sex, religion, ability, sexuality, etc.) that it's to varying degrees. It's an incredibly complex issue.

It's a pointless issue.  We can spend our time in self-reflection and self-examination, measuring our prejudice and privilege, or we can just roll up our sleeves and actually try to fix shit.  Honestly, speaking from experience, someone who is underprivileged could give a fuck if you're privileged or not, as long as you walk the talk of trying to fix shit.

Fixing shit requires that the fixer looks at themselves, too. They're carrying the problematic memes, too, after all. ETA: as a member of a couple underprivileged groups, I do fucking care if my would-be ally is being problematic or maintaining shitty memes. I care because those memes mean they're treating me poorly BECAUSE of what I am. Which is kinda counterproductive, yes?

It's not that you would have learned, necessarily, that Japanese people were going to bomb your boats (and that's a facile example), it's that you could have learned from him that the Japanese are bad, sneaky people.

But I didn't.  First Japanese person I met was my college roommate, and he was a very cool guy.  My only problem with him is that he still wasn't used to the time change and would stay up late playing video games.

Congratulations? The point is that there are a million different memes that are really shitty that come from all sorts of sources, and 99.99+% of us have picked up at least some of them. And I highly, highly doubt you're Jesus v2.0/a unicorn.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the second coming of Jesus H Christ.   

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Here before us we have the perfect man; he carries no misconceptions, preconceptions, or misjudgment of his fellow men and women.

Hallelujah!

[AFK]

That's because it felt to me from some of your posts that you agreed with her opinion that everyone is tainted.  And I strongly disagree with that sentiment.

"Tainted" is a weird word to use, IMO. Everyone carries preconceptions, misconceptions, and cultural baggage that, if they examine it, is probably contrary to their personal ideals. Anyone who claims they don't is claiming to be a perfect person, which is something I don't believe is possible, and claiming to be a perfect person seems like a great big enormous warning sign of someone with some kind of massive delusional personality disorder.

Eh, I don't agree with that theory at all.  I'm far from a perfect person.  I mean, we've established I'm a condescending asshole for example.  


I'm also clearly not a very good husband.


But, anyway, prejudice, or lack thereof, is only one aspect of a person.  So I don't think that is correct.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Give me an example of an event you're totally unaware of.

[AFK]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the second coming of Jesus H Christ.   

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Here before us we have the perfect man; he carries no misconceptions, preconceptions, or misjudgment of his fellow men and women.

Hallelujah!

It doesn't take a perfect person to be a fair person.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's not that you would have learned, necessarily, that Japanese people were going to bomb your boats (and that's a facile example), it's that you could have learned from him that the Japanese are bad, sneaky people.

But I didn't.  First Japanese person I met was my college roommate, and he was a very cool guy.  My only problem with him is that he still wasn't used to the time change and would stay up late playing video games.

So, what I'm getting from this is that you are extremely sheltered, and you believe that being sheltered means that you have never picked up any misconceptions, preconceptions, or misjudgements of groups of people?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the second coming of Jesus H Christ.   

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Here before us we have the perfect man; he carries no misconceptions, preconceptions, or misjudgment of his fellow men and women.

Hallelujah!

It doesn't take a perfect person to be a fair person.

The danger of being convinced that you are perfectly fair and unprejudiced is that it means that if you do have prejudices, say toward potheads or rednecks or rich white women or people who don't wear helmets, you will never be able to see, acknowledge, and repair those aspects of your perception. I am very uncomfortable with people who claim to lack prejudice, because I've never found it to be true, and those people are the most incorrigible in terms of their prejudice because they, secure in their knowledge that they are unprejudiced, believe their prejudices to be objective truth.

[Cainad (dec.)]

That's because it felt to me from some of your posts that you agreed with her opinion that everyone is tainted.  And I strongly disagree with that sentiment.

"Tainted" is a weird word to use, IMO. Everyone carries preconceptions, misconceptions, and cultural baggage that, if they examine it, is probably contrary to their personal ideals. Anyone who claims they don't is claiming to be a perfect person, which is something I don't believe is possible, and claiming to be a perfect person seems like a great big enormous warning sign of someone with some kind of massive delusional personality disorder.

Eh, I don't agree with that theory at all.  I'm far from a perfect person.  I mean, we've established I'm a condescending asshole for example.  


I'm also clearly not a very good husband.


But, anyway, prejudice, or lack thereof, is only one aspect of a person.  So I don't think that is correct.

You are talking around the issue.

To be completely free of prejudice is, indeed, to claim a sort of perfection: A perfect ability to be completely uninfluenced by anything that might incline you to think or believe in a certain way, outside of your own rational, conscious mind.

[Elder Iptuous]

So...
i was thinking about the racism thing, and suddenly it struck me that racism appears to be self reinforcing due to a prisoners dilemma setup in any given encounter.  of course, with iterated prisoner's dilemma, then altruistic strategies prevail and you get to have your non race member friends, but with someone you've never met, it isn't iterated and so greedy strategy prevails. (which is exactly what we see)
thinking about it in these terms gives me little hope that racism will ever be overcome to any extent.

it seemed like such a clear description that i googled it looking for analysis of race relations in this context and was surprised not to get any results out of the hat.
perhaps i am overlooking something?

[AFK]

It's not that you would have learned, necessarily, that Japanese people were going to bomb your boats (and that's a facile example), it's that you could have learned from him that the Japanese are bad, sneaky people.

But I didn't.  First Japanese person I met was my college roommate, and he was a very cool guy.  My only problem with him is that he still wasn't used to the time change and would stay up late playing video games.

So, what I'm getting from this is that you are extremely sheltered, and you believe that being sheltered means that you have never picked up any misconceptions, preconceptions, or misjudgements of groups of people?

Err, well, not exactly.  I WAS fairly sheltered growing up in the respect that where I grew up was fairly monotone as far culture goes.  I didn't spend much time absorbing media because we didn't have much media.  We played outside.  Now, I have classmates who grew up in the same town who are massive judgmental pricks.  So maybe for me it was a lucky mixture of nature and nurture?  I dunno, I can't completely put my finger on it.


Now, in an odd twist, I did end up living a year in a suburb in So. Jersey.  So, by not much of a stretch, there were obviously many new cultures I hadn't interacted with before.  Was I apprehensive in my new surroundings?  Sure, but meeting new people can be scary when you are a kid.  But that was where it came from, the fact they were new, and I was a shy kid.  I didn't think they were going to jump me or anything.  In fact I found myself bonding with these three black kids in particular.  We'd have a great time talking on the bus.  It was a fun and exciting year.  I even ended up developing a close friendship with this exchange student from Thailand.  Good times.

[AFK]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the second coming of Jesus H Christ.   

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Here before us we have the perfect man; he carries no misconceptions, preconceptions, or misjudgment of his fellow men and women.

Hallelujah!

It doesn't take a perfect person to be a fair person.

The danger of being convinced that you are perfectly fair and unprejudiced is that it means that if you do have prejudices, say toward potheads or rednecks or rich white women or people who don't wear helmets, you will never be able to see, acknowledge, and repair those aspects of your perception. I am very uncomfortable with people who claim to lack prejudice, because I've never found it to be true, and those people are the most incorrigible in terms of their prejudice because they, secure in their knowledge that they are unprejudiced, believe their prejudices to be objective truth.

Again, I claim no perfection at all, and reject the idea that what I've been talking about infers perfection.  I can be perfectly unfair to people, individuals, but not because of what I think they are, but because of how I'm interpreting what they are doing or saying in front of me. 

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the second coming of Jesus H Christ.   

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Here before us we have the perfect man; he carries no misconceptions, preconceptions, or misjudgment of his fellow men and women.

Hallelujah!

It doesn't take a perfect person to be a fair person.

The danger of being convinced that you are perfectly fair and unprejudiced is that it means that if you do have prejudices, say toward potheads or rednecks or rich white women or people who don't wear helmets, you will never be able to see, acknowledge, and repair those aspects of your perception. I am very uncomfortable with people who claim to lack prejudice, because I've never found it to be true, and those people are the most incorrigible in terms of their prejudice because they, secure in their knowledge that they are unprejudiced, believe their prejudices to be objective truth.

Again, I claim no perfection at all, and reject the idea that what I've been talking about infers perfection.  I can be perfectly unfair to people, individuals, but not because of what I think they are, but because of how I'm interpreting what they are doing or saying in front of me. 

edit: RWHN's request.
edit 2: RWHN's paranoid request.

[Cainad (dec.)]

This thread is excruciating.

Don't ever change, PD.com.