Otherwise, no serious modern Presidential candidate, Clinton, Obama, or otherwise, have claimed that their political qualifications stem simply from the color of their skin, or gender. — Maw

So political qualifications don't stem simply from skin color or gender, but the latter can contribute to it? Is that what you mean by the use of the word "simply"?

what would be worrying is if America voted for a white male president regardless of qualifications and competency. — Maw

That would be worrying, yes. As worrying as voting for a woman President or a black president regardless of qualifications and competency.

the most unqualified Presidential candidate in modern American history to capture the White House. — Maw

Why do you think a successful businessman is unqualified to be President?

It is impossible to imagine Obama or Clinton acting even remotely similar to Trump, and get anywhere near the candidacy. Otherwise, no serious modern Presidential candidate, Clinton, Obama, or otherwise, have claimed that their political qualifications stem simply from the color of their skin, or gender. — Maw

Sure, but you know why that is? Because much of the left media has been hypocritical for many years, and the voters are just sick of it.

Yes, being a Black American can provide unique experiences that help better qualify someone to discuss and debate political issues related to Black/minority America than a White American who has not had similar experiences. It is no different than saying one candidate for, say, a restaurant management position, is more experienced and qualified when she has previous experience managing a kitchen and cooks, against one who has had no such experience whatsoever. That is, of course, not to say that this experience alone makes them the best candidate, or provides the sole qualifying factor, which is what you are implying. No one is claiming or has claimed the latter. It is a chimera.

Otherwise, both Hilary and Obama were imminently qualified, so, again, I'm not sure why you are angry at imaginary issues, when, in reality, a qualified woman lost to a racist, misogynistic, and repeatedly failed businessman, whose biggest success was beguiling the American public into thinking he was a competent business owner.

Yes, being a Black American can provide unique experiences that help better qualify someone to discuss and debate political issues related to Black/minority America than a White American who has not had similar experiences. — Maw

Okay, I see. That's reasonable, but then it's a double-edged thing, since every demographic has its own problems. So even white people would confront problems that other demographic groups don't, etc.

racist, misogynistic, and repeatedly failed businessman — Maw

I don't think Trump is racist or misogynistic or a failed businessman. Out of those three, the most disputable one is the racist one. That one is debatable because it is plausible to say that at minimum he disconsiders African nations, though probably many US Presidents did that, whether they openly said so or not. For example, Obama called Libya a "shit show", very similar to Trump's "shithole" remarks.

But I don't think he disconsiders black Americans though. I have not seen evidence for that. So I would say even in that case Trump is more nationalist than racist.

The misogynistic - I don't really buy that. Trump has a view of women that is typically portrayed in popular culture. He doesn't see women as inferior, but he does buy into the popular image of the rich man being successful with women, and just the popular and ubiquitous way of viewing sexual issues. I don't think Trump has sexual morality though, and that's probably the biggest negative about him for me.

As for being a failed businessman, I find that one to be definitely and indisputably false. A lot of people say this, but many are not aware of just how difficult it is even to maintain one's wealth while actively investing it and managing it yourself. So if all Trump did was keep up with the S&P500 and beat inflation over his life while actively being engaged in the management of his fortune (which he did), he would be classified as successful, though not incredibly successful.

I apologise unreservedly, wholeheartedly and ashamedly for mentioning the placard on the lectern of Jordan Peterson (remember him?). It seems to have derailed the thread for the last two pages, which was not my intention.

racist, misogynistic, and repeatedly failed businessman — Maw

Fire and Fury the book about Trump's campaign and arrival in the White House, elaborated on 3 characteristics which are alarming:

1. Trump doesn't, and apparently hasn't, read much.
2. He watches a lot of television.
3. He has a short attention span.

Thee are worrisome flaws; in my mind they are worse than being racist, misogynistic, and failed in business (that last? don't know. ) Watching a lot of television (particularly, commercial cable shows) and not reading widely leaves one's knowledge about many national and world issues either impoverished or invisible.

He doesn't seem to have surrounded himself by people who can step in as competent content providers when content is needed.

Having a short attention span is obviously troubling, because there are so many problems which any national executive has to deal with which require sustained thought.

Trump isn't uneducated. but he wasn't recently educated. Maintaining intellectual vigor requires ongoing wide study, reading, engagement, and so on. He doesn't seem to have done that. Now, a lot of people fail to remain intellectually vigorous, but they aren't The President, either. Ronald Reagan suffered from this condition as well, in addition to sliding into dementia.

His abrupt withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords and withdrawal from some important trade negotiations suggest the sort of thing that happens when "uninformed impatience" guides the ship of state.

I apologise unreservedly, wholeheartedly and ashamedly for mentioning the placard on the lectern of Jordan Peterson (remember him?). It seems to have derailed the thread for the last two pages, which was not my intention. — andrewk

I hope you didn't miss fdrake's brilliant interlude to the interlude.

No I didn't (Well spotted!). I was going to heap special praise on him for that valiant attempt, but decided not to because I didn't want to embarrass him.

I am not sure I agree with him regarding the post-modernists. For one thing he says that Postmodernism does not agree with the "Great Narrative" and yet what is Marxs' Narrative if not grand? Not sure I understand how he explains their apparent complicity/duplicity.

I like Deleuze's adventure, what he has to say about the structure of reality. He is not really into arborescent heiarchies as far I can see, he is contends that it is more a rhizomatic structure, like a map with interacting points. He seems very biologically orientated.

Postmodernism is really post structuralism. Where structuralism develops interpretations out of narratives (many statements) by suggesting meaningful structure, postmodernism deconstructs these same narratives utilizing their own concepts as well as those of the structuralist to determine new meanings.

If anything, postmodernism is simply nihilism fitted to the 20th and 21st centuries.

I don't mean to pick on just you here with my rambling, Crankus, but what bothers me the most about the idea of white privilege, and indeed privilege in itself, is the tendency of those who believe in it to focus almost entirely on macro examples. Leftist sociologists and political scientists will gaze at the ratios of men and women in political power throughout history, the degree to which white skinned males sit atop the social pyramid, or how much economic power is dominated by the same sorts of people, thus concluding that it is one's maleness, or whiteness, or their "Europeanness" that supplies them their power - their privilege. This characterization is one I'm not fond of, and for as much as modern academia is obsessed with culture and all that may emanate from it, there seems a great deal of ignoring going on with regard to "micro culture." What I mean by that is this: I went to a 95% black elementary school when I lived in South Carolina. I was only one of two white students in my class of about a hundred or so and I found it mightily difficult to translate my life living in Florida to this new one in the deep, deep American South. In the beginning my family was certainly more well off economically than the rest of my black classmates, but as years went by that stopped being the case as my family fell apart in more ways than one.

So, where was our white privilege then? Why didn't our whiteness or my father's maleness save us from bankruptcy, the inability to pay bills, me going to bed hungry, my being bullied for being being shy and not from there? Where was my father's white privilege when he himself grew up in relative squalor, when he went to bed hungry, when he had to degrade himself to such a pitiable level just to get the simplest of jobs? When I was a little white boy among an army of black classmates I didn't feel welcome, I didn't feel like my skin color or my genitalia did me any favors. But, what did do me wonders? My willingness to be kind, to be loving and compassionate, to be patient with those who hurt me. That was my attitude from the beginning and that's what I credit as being the catalyst for me fitting in. It wasn't the color of my skin or whether I was a male.

I suppose the basic truth I'm getting at is that correlation mustn't always entail causation. It isn't as simple as, "Oh, that guy is white, he must be privileged." If anything, my whiteness and maleness has become an immense detriment to me and my future, just as it was to my parents. I've seen black slums, white slums, Latino slums, whites doing good and bad, blacks doing good and bad, everyone doing good and bad. Does ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation play a part in one's treatment in the world? Of fucking course it does. But is that all there is when looking into a person's life and how they got to where they are? Absolutely not. To me, one's gender, skin color, whatever are among the least compelling aspects of a person when I meet them and begin to know them. I'd much rather know where they've lived, what they like to do for fun, what their thoughts on morality are, if they're religious, what their thinking is about truth, what they think about peanut butter on waffles, and so on and so forth. That's how I treated my classmates in South Carolina and it's how I treat people around me now and I do so not because I'm white or that I've got a cock and balls - it's because I strive to be a more moral person every day. If people want to view me and what I've accomplished through some intensely cynical and envious lens like many leftist folks do, so be it. I can't stop them. If that view keeps me out of a job, fine. It won't stop me, being the white male that I am, just as rejection and prejudice of the same kind didn't stop a black male like Frederick Douglas.

You aren't seriously suggesting that left sociologists and political scientists have ignored poverty or consider it a "micro-culture" or an exclusively minority experience?

I think you are largely misrepresenting the idea of privilege in this case. Just as a first point, you take aim at "leftist sociologists and political scientists", and it seems to me that such people (especially sociologists) are precisely in the business of analyzing society at a broader level for its properties, tendencies, distributions of various kinds, and so on. Comparing that, as you repeatedly did, to a personal example of your own (which doesn't reflect the tendencies in, say, American society as a whole) is just a poor comparison.

People who make use of the concept of privilege don't argue that people of some specified privileged class don't face issues, or that particular members of that class don't have bad circumstances (even bad circumstances rooted in their (broadly) advantageous class membership). Rather, they're pointing out a general advantage and preference society gives to certain members, even before they could have ever demonstrated their superior competency or whatever (think: job offer preferences depending on perceived ethnicity or race of the applicants name, for example)


And what makes Peterson's argument hilarious (and where I think your point has some merit) is that being poor can negate much of one's privilege, and conversely, being wealthy or rich can overturn much of one's lack of it. This is a point I often see Marxists make, which is why this thread's OP (and linked video) is so stupid in its insistence in lumping together "the left" and the various ideas and beliefs held by those within various different ideologies that make up the left. Modern feminism is not an off-shoot of Marxism, Marxists are not "3rd-wave feminists". Oh feminists do make some of the same points as Marxists (and vice-versa), but what they believe and why they believe it are largely distinct. Anita Sarkeesian is a favorite complaint among those who despise 3rd-wave feminists, and she has asserted that capitalism plays a role in these issues. But many other such feminists never assert this, they just talk about these other sociological issues but do not connect them to the economic system of the day.

Does this mean you're a republican?

You aren't seriously suggesting that left sociologists and political scientists have ignored poverty or consider it a "micro-culture" or an exclusively minority experience? — Maw

Not quite, only that they've largely ignored what matters most which is the human condition, not the white, black, tan condition.

I think you are largely misrepresenting the idea of privilege in this case. Just as a first point, you take aim at "leftist sociologists and political scientists", and it seems to me that such people (especially sociologists) are precisely in the business of analyzing society at a broader level for its properties, tendencies, distributions of various kinds, and so on. Comparing that, as you repeatedly did, to a personal example of your own (which doesn't reflect the tendencies in, say, American society as a whole) is just a poor comparison. — MindForged

I said that there was a great deal of ignoring going on, which I stand by. I didn't say that there was no micro analysis of poverty and the like.

As for the validity of my anecdotal evidence, I only shared a fraction of my thoughts, which ended up being a rather long ramble. I don't pretend that my experience is set in stone, but having lived a life, they're antithetical to the accusatory and mean spirited derision that I think underpins ideas like white privilege in the academic world.

People who make use of the concept of privilege don't argue that people of some specified privileged class don't face issues, or that particular members of that class don't have bad circumstances (even bad circumstances rooted in their (broadly) advantageous class membership). Rather, they're pointing out a general advantage and preference society gives to certain members, even before they could have ever demonstrated their superior competency or whatever (think: job offer preferences depending on perceived ethnicity or race of the applicants name, for example) — MindForged

This is a description of privilege, plain and simple. White privilege is the assumption that there exists some monopoly on power by white males in particular and that their dealings in the world are first and foremost because of their skin color and genitalia. Are there other factors? Yes. But the genesis of power seen through the lens of the concept of white privilege is skin color and sex. My use of anecdote was my attempt at being more human in my dealing with an often inhuman and vague position, showing that whiteness or maleness is not always the mover of suffering or achievement.

Peterson's argument — MindForged

I didn't really get far into his video, to be honest. My comment was more left field than a reply to the OP. Besides, Peterson tends to sound like Kermit the Frog, so I can't listen to him for very long.

White privilege is simply not having to wonder whether a stranger will suddenly start to abuse you on the bus, just because of what you look like. In the US it is also not having to fear a police officer every time one comes near, that they may stop and search you, or even shoot you, because of what you look like. — andrewk

Bullshit on stilts. I can't believe people write this stuff with an apparent straight face.

To believe in and invoke white privilege is the polite, academic way to be a racist against white people. I haven't watched the video, but inasmuch as Peterson makes this claim, which I have heard him make in other videos, he is absolutely right.

I watched quite a bit of the film somewhat horrified.

One of the arguments presented was that the fragmented partisans in identity politics cannot talk to each other.

But I participate in conversations between these supposedly incompatible interest groups regularly - disability, sexual preference, wealth, race...

Who is it that is not participating in the discussion?

Middle age middle class white men in suits?

But hey, that's me.

So I'm left to conclude that it must be Peterson and his audience that are having trouble participating in the discussion.

Bullshit on stilts. I can't believe people write this stuff with an apparent straight face. — Thorongil

Your cool eloquence, the dazzling logic of your shining prose, has persuaded me. What can I have been thinking to say what I did?

To believe in and invoke white privilege is the polite, academic way to be a racist against white people. I haven't watched the video, but inasmuch as Peterson makes this claim, which I have heard him make in other videos, he is absolutely right.

To echo you, that is bullshit on stilts. How can you say that with a straight face?

Saying "Group X generally has certain advantages (often even when measurable competencies are taken into account) and are given preferences at least in part because of what makes them a member of Group X" is not politely or in any other way being racist to white people.

You nailed it, lol.

I'm glad, because your examples were the most ludicrous things I've read in some time.

Saying "Group X generally has certain advantages (often even when measurable competencies are taken into account) and are given preferences at least in part because of what makes them a member of Group X" is not politely or in any other way being racist to white people. — MindForged

How naive. Naturally, when challenged, the claim is asserted by proponents to be innocently descriptive, but not a single person who uses it fails to either implicitly or explicitly advance various prescriptions.

How naive. Naturally, when challenged, the claim is asserted by proponents to be innocently descriptive, but not a single person who uses it fails to either implicitly or explicitly advance various prescriptive claims.

-Yawn- OK. It's a great way to insulate your position from falsity by impugning the motives and declare what they actually intend beforehand. Neat.

not a single person who uses it fails to either implicitly or explicitly advance various prescriptions.

really? You were witness to every single time it was used, and knew exactly what each person that used it was thinking were you?

Right, so provide me a counter-example. Find me someone who genuinely believes in white privilege who doesn't think it's "problematic," to use another postmodernist buzzword. When one asks why they think it's "problematic," the prescriptions and racism start to pour forth like a raging torrent.

Disputing the claim would be easier by means of a counter-example, and yet I see you have chosen to go for the pedantic retort instead, which I think we both know is much less interesting. Shame.

One counter-example is me. I used the phrase a few posts ago. I know that white privilege exists but, sadly, I have no prescriptions to offer to eradicate it, so I'm not advancing any ( not even 'implicitly'!).

Also, noted that when caught out making a ridiculous, insulting assertion, your response was not to apologise and correct yourself but to instead claim pedantry/

That you want to eradicate it is prescriptive enough. It's actually a rather horrific thought.

Really? You think we should be glad that racial abuse of Asians, and police harassment and shooting of blacks occurs regularly? OK.

To be clear, do you really want us to understand that you believe that wishing something was different is 'prescriptive'? Does that also apply to when you wish recovery of a friend or family member from a horrible illness?

[Delete] @Baden

You think we should be glad that racial abuse of Asians — andrewk

Does this link up with the buses? Asians are being racially abused on buses at epidemic levels?

police harassment and shooting of blacks occurs regularly — andrewk

Sorry, but racism isn't anywhere near the most significant factor in why police shoot some black people. It's noteworthy, however, that you attribute the mere fact of a black man being shot by a police officer to racism. Do you realize how insane that is?

To be clear, do you really want us to understand that you believe that wishing something was different is 'prescriptive'. — andrewk

I said you were prescriptive enough. Your position with respect to white privilege is normative, not merely descriptive. A merely descriptive claim would be that the sky is blue. You don't wish to eradicate the blueness of the sky, so there is no normative or prescriptive content to your advancing the claim that the sky is blue like there is in your advancing the claim of white privilege.

Now you're just making things up:

Asians are being racially abused on buses at epidemic levels?

Nobody but you said anything about epidemic levels.

Sorry, but racism isn't anywhere near the most significant factor in why police shoot some black people

Nobody but you said that racism was a factor, let alone the most significant one. FWIW I think the major factors are fear, poor training and lack of psychological screening.

you attribute the mere fact of a black man being shot by a police officer to racism.

Find where I said that and quote it back to me, with link. You won't be able to find it, because I didn't say it. In fact I don't think I have used the word 'racism' at all in this thread, prior to this post (where I mention, but do not use it).

You are not listening to anything anybody says. You project onto their posts what you think somebody that disagrees with you might have said, and attack that instead.