Thanks

>>>>> "roy" == Roy Brock <[email protected]> writes:

  roy> How could you not consider your site racially charged? 

Because I don't know what "a racially charged web site" *means*.

       The very
  roy> name of the site implies that whites have some built-in
  roy> advantage. 

And the content of the site *argues* for the claim that White people *as a
group* have an historically and socially constructed set of privileges,
resulting from both formal and substantive systems of oppression, starting
with chattel slavery and running to the present day (with modifications
along the way, to be sure). Further, the site argues that this set of
privileges is unjust and, thus, immoral.

*That's* what the site says; if you consider that to be "racially
charged", bully for you.

       I do not see this from my position. I see other races
  roy> openly campaigning for group advantage while many whites cower or
  roy> join anti-racist circles in search of acceptance. 

That you don't see it may well be a function of your socialization and
your social position, as I have argued on the site. It is in the best
interests of White people *as a group* (just like it's in the best
interests of *men as a group*) to see their advantages and privileges as
resulting from natural endowments, dumb luck, or some other cause to which
it's difficult, if not altogether impossible, to attach moral
culpability.

In short, that you don't see your privilege is no kind of evidence that
you don't enjoy it.

As for White people cowering or searching for acceptance, I suspect that's
just too vague for me to comment usefully on.

       And how
  roy> convenient that on your site (and in your response), you state that
  roy> this so-called white advantage is, to paraphrase, set up so that is
  roy> it not seen even by those who benefit. A similar argument was made
  roy> for ether some years back. :)

Hmm, no, you're confused. My claim isn't that White privileges cannot be
seen, in principle, by White people; my claim is a bit more subtle than
that, namely, that White people are socialized not to see their privilege
as privilege (or the concomitant harm as harm) and, further, that it is in
their best (psychological, if nothing else) interests not to challenge or
probe the boundaries of that socialization. (And this is a particular
inference from a more general claim, namely, that most people don't
challenge most aspects of their socialization.)

That's hardly the same *kind* of claim as claims which are empirically
unverifiable, which is what I take the intended force of your analogy to
have been. Sorry, but it's a really bad analogy.

Just because *you* can't see your White privilege, that doesn't mean other
people (including some White folks) can't either. In fact, once you can
see it, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

  roy> It is well known that many sites such as yours (and from the
  roy> opposing side) are set up just to counter other sites, with the
  roy> author not bothering to respond to queries. 

This is well known by whom? I don't know that to be the case. I suspect
most people on this list don't know that to be the case. I doubt very much
that it's even true. But, what the hell, let's test your claim: so, what
site was WhitePrivilege.com "set up just to counter"? I have said many
times publicly *why* WhitePrivilege.com exists and why it was established,
but you apparently know better than I do.

Don't be shy: which site is WhitePrivilege.com the antidote to?

       I sent my message with
  roy> acknowledgement of this realization. 

More like you ran a very high risk of *provoking and deserving* a
non-response with your hostile, out-of-the-blue message. I guess I'm just
more generous to complete strangers than you are.

       I am pleased that you did
  roy> respond, but surely you know that most emails to such sites go
  roy> unanswered. By the way, just how does one "earn" a response from
  roy> you? :)

Again, I *don't* know that to be the case. I rarely send emails which go
unanswered; but perhaps that's because I work hard to obey conversational
laws and social mores: relevance, suspension of judgment, common courtesy,
etc.

  roy> All of the answers to my questions that you gave are
  roy> generalizations; any college or high school writing class tells one
  roy> to avoid such sweeping statements. 

This is *such* a stupid point. First, the rhetorical advice given in
writing classes doesn't constrain (in any sense) the structure of
arguments or the content of their premisses and conclusions. You asked
general questions (though I see that I did *slightly* and harmlessly
misread one of them, about which more below) and I gave appropriate
answers.

But they weren't "sweeping statements"; rather, they were concrete
examples of *patterns of actions*, which necessarily lack the concreteness
of anecdotal material. In case you missed it, here's the paragraph I'm
referring to:

    But there are dozens and dozens of posts on WhitePrivilege.com which
    point out *ongoing*, contemporary instances of racial privilege,
    including "exemption from racial profiling", "exemption from racial
    bias in hiring practices", "being judged by a jury of one's racial
    peers only", "having representative government unfairly represent
    one's interests to the detriment of the interests of others", and so
    on.

That's at least four substantive, significant aspects of white privilege,
none of which you even peripherally address or dispute. That's
interesting.

       I asked a specific question, but
  roy> you were unwilling to give a specific answer. 

Again, despite my generosity in giving you much more time than your
inquiries merit, you assume the absolute worst, on the basis of very
little evidence.

No, I wasn't *unwilling* to give a specific answer, I simply didn't read
your question as asking about *my biography* -- probably because my
biography is very boring and not of much interest to me, much less to
anyone else.

       The question, of
  roy> course, still stands: what examples of white privelege can you
  roy> personally cite? Have you been hired and told that it was because
  roy> you were white? Has a cop said he was going to let you go because
  roy> you were white? Please be specific.

Let me answer this really weird question by asking you what it would
demonstrate if I said "yes" or "no". You're trying to setup a double bind:
if I say, "yes, that has happened to me", you've shifted the debate from
its proper place -- systems and patterns of oppression and benefit, meted
out by *large social structures* (constituted, of course, by individuals
and institutions) -- to what's happened *to me*, which is irrelevant. And
if I answer "no", then you'll take that as some kind of disconfirmation of
my claims.

So let me answer you this way: I have as a White person benefited in seen
an unseen ways, merely by virtue of being White. And so has every other
White person, to one degree or another (and I've never said that other
factors don't intervene, including gender and class).

Even worse, of course, is the precise way you phrase your question -- and
since you've accused me of not being specific enough, let's get
specific. You don't *really* ask about personal experiences of mine
related to racial privilege; rather, you ask about self-marking
experiences of racial privilege, ones in which I received some benefit
(though you don't ask about cases where I was exempt from some harm --
also a privilege) *explicitly marked* as a racial benefit.

But if my invisibility claim is even remotely correct, we wouldn't expect
White people to act this way in the common case. That they often *do* mete
out benefits and harms explicitly as the pomps of privilege speaks more to
their confidence (or coarseness or tactical clumsiness) than it does to
the underlying facts.

  roy> I will not argue the drivel about "other kinds of activity..". All
  roy> things can be thought of either as a right or a privilege. 

God, that's so amazingly stupid... *All things*? Like the atomic weight of
helium? And my cat's longest whisker? And the number 5? In fact, not even
all social relations are partitionable into such a bifurcated space. (What
you may be trying to say is that everything is either a privilege or not,
which is certainly true, trivial, and not very useful.)

The most obvious defeater of your claim is my obligation under the law,
which is neither a right nor a privilege.

       Many
  roy> people have the right to vote in this country, but it is also an
  roy> obligation (SOME people MUST vote for a republic or a democracy to
  roy> function). 

Some specific people have a person-specific *right* to vote; *no specific
person* is obliged to exercise that right -- do I really need to explain
8th grade civics to you?

If there is some general obligation to exercise the franchise (and I'm not
at all sure that there is), it's precisely that: a general obligation and
neither a right nor a privilege. So much for your claim that "All things
can be thought of either as a right or a privilege" -- that's just utter
nonsense.

       However, I do wish to respond to your implication that I
  roy> was trying to "willy nilly define away this issue by trying to
  roy> distinguish between rights and privileges this way." 

Well, I didn't imply you were doing that; I claimed that one *cannot* do
that.

       The entire
  roy> pretext of your site is that one race has privileges that others do
  roy> not; please refer to the name of the site for additional
  roy> information...:)

That's not quite right (I talk about racially identified groups, not
'races' -- there's an important difference, but let's set it aside for
now)...Yes, I obviously claim that White people enjoy privileges as a
group which others do not enjoy (and which are won at the expense of
others). What does that have to do with your silly rights-privilege
bifurcation? You've lost me -- in fact, I didn't really follow your
original claims in this regard, I was simply *working hard to make what
you say make *some* sense* -- another conversational obligation,
"interpretive charity", which you would do well to adopt.

  roy> I wish to address the exception you take to an attempt to narrow
  roy> down what I was sure would be an obtuse answer. I asked that you
  roy> give your answers such that a white person in todays political
  roy> climate would understand. White people are being attacked on every
  roy> social and political front: 
       [snip]
  roy>I could go on and on. 

Yes, I believe you could go on and on and on and on and on... Please
don't. In case it's not obvious, I don't have time or energy to refute
each claim in your Mighty Whitey's Big List of Gripes paragraph; you can
sleep well at night simply assuming that I disagree with each point you
made. Well, except the bit about being able to "go on and on" -- I agreed
with that.

      As a specific,
  roy> close to home example, a Bossier City (Louisiana) Times article
  roy> (living section, front page, April 25 2003 edition) described how a
  roy> government grant has just been awarded to purchase computers for
  roy> black students. 

And that's problematic because...? Oh, never mind, I find that I don't
really care why this bothers you.

       (Isn't it funny how no one ever thinks that there
  roy> are poor white people who could use a hand?) 

*No one ever thinks* to help poor white people? Huh? That's clearly false.

       Perhaps most
  roy> interesting of all is the attacks on white culture being launched
  roy> by other whites who clearly have too much time on their hands.

I can't even imagine what you're talking about here.

  roy> Lastly, I would like to say that yes, slavery existed and it was a
  roy> terrible injustice. 

Wow -- that's really huge of you, Roy. I'm half serious. Most White people
who write to me and say the same kinds of things you've said won't even go
*this far*. They tend to take the "they're better off than the ones left
in Africa" and "serves them right for being so easy to enslave" lines.

       But many whites of that period did not own
  roy> slaves; indeed many worked to free them. 

I don't know that *many* White people were abolitionists; I've seen
estimates that no more than 5% of Whites were abolitionists. But no
matter, it's true that some Whites worked to free slaves. But you'll agree
that most didn't.

The more important question is the one about who *benefited* from racial
oppression and who continues to benefit today. So your history detour
isn't very helpful.

       And let's not forget that
  roy> there were black slave owners in this country at that time. 

Yes? So? What does this show or suggest?

       Slavery
  roy> continues today in many less-developed countries, but there is no
  roy> outcry. 

That's not true at all. But I see you've made up your mind already.

       No, the target is clear, even in your mind. Ironically,
  roy> most whites have never discriminated in their lives, myself
  roy> included, but many are targets of vicious attacks and harassment.

I don't say much about discrimination, Roy. It's mostly a red herring. If
you *really* care about this issue, you need to think seriously about
whether you've benefited from your membership in the "White race".

Kendall Clark
-- 
Jazz is only what you are. -- Louis Armstrong
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