White Skin Privilege
 

let's weigh in on this

does anyone think it doesn't really exist?

if it does, how does it manifest itself in our society?

is it necessarily good or bad?

is there a way to eliminate it from our society?

this is meant to be an honest intellectual discussion; no personal attacks- keep it clean but keep it honest

When you put things in black and white, gray doesn't exist.

-Rudey
--That is all.

I think you have to be pretty stupid to say it doesn't exist in America.

But like Rudey said, I think it's a more complicated issue than some people make it out to be. You know, with the people who "look white" but aren't and vice versa -- which is why I assume the topic of this thread is "white skin privilege" rather than "white privilege." ;) And then among people of color, what do the variations in skin color signify -- is somebody who is clearly black but of lighter skin color going to have more privilege than someone who is darker? And I think that Asian-Americans and the whole "model minority" myth bring up another twist.

Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black
 

I haven't had the chance to read Gregory H. Williams book, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black, but I believe that it addresses this question in a unique way.

The current President of CCNY, Dr. Williams, grew up thinking that he was white. When he was 10 or so, his father came back into his life, as his father. His father is black. They moved to Indiana, to be near his dad's family. He then lived life on the other side of the racial divide of that time.

The book sounds fascinating, and I'll probably read it before the year is out.


ETA QuickTime interview with Dr. Williams is here

Re: Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black
 

That does sound like an interesting book.:cool:

Sure it exists. So does reverse discrimination. So does age discrimination. And a lot of other stuff that are wrong in a perfect world.

Except to run it's course, I have no idea what to do about it.

Define reverse discrimination??????

Losing a position (or whatever) to an equally or less qualified applicant entirely because she/he is a minority.

I have had it happen, but as I said to a friend at the time, "That's life. It's not like it hasn't happened the other way many, many times."

Unfortunally reverse discrimantion does happen, poeple do not want some one screaming saying they did not get the job becuase they are _______. That is bad PR. So it is easier to high a lest qualified minority and fire them then hire an qualified person....

Don't get me wrong, just becuase they are a minority does not make them less qualified or becuase they are white makes them qualified.

My dad is native american, and that was on all my school records that I am Native American (thanks mom) I would get into they best programs when i knew there were more qualified person for the club/school/sport and then they would see me (I am very pale with green eyes, but I do have the thick hair and very high cheek bones of Native Americans) they would be shocked and then look at my Indian father and my Irish mother. I always wondered if I go in to the school I wanted to go to (private) if it was becuase of me or was was marked on the registar. They would look at applications and then narrow down and have interviews. I remeber the people waiting to be interviewed were mostly minorities, very full white people. That made me lost alot of self-esteem when I was younger.

Chris

How many people in charge of hiring REALLY have the time to hire and then fire a minority, just to avoid litigation? They could be opening themselves up to litigation for wrongful termination.


In today's job market, some people just need to realize that it's really competitive, and there are probably lots of reasons you didn't get the job, not just b/c you're white and they're looking for minorities :rolleyes: I'm willing to best that most people never find out why they weren't hired for a job.

Numerous newsmagazine shows [20/20, etc] have done experiments that show that minorities are still discriminated against in the US, along w/ fat people and short people, and gays.


What if someone is hired instead of you b/c they're a GDI and you're Greek, and the person doing the hiring is threatened by Greeks? Have you experienced "anti-Greek discrimination?".


When I hear "reverse discrimination", I hear the whines of spoiled white kids who for the first time in their lives didn't get what they wanted. Get over it. :) In life you don't always get what you want, and your skin is not always the reason. Maybe they didn't like the way you spoke, or carried yourself. Or, perhaps the other candidates had better credentials. Or, perhaps, the person who got the job was just like you - what then???????

huh?
 

What does that mean?

I always heard the cry of "reverse discrimination" at the mouths of mediocre white males; never from anyone who was very succesful in their fields, and in turned blamed it on affirmative action. It used to be that if you were just an white male of average intelligence/social standing/income, that you were set for life. Due to the women's and civil rights movements, that's not so true anymore. It just so happens that white males today have to prove themselves just as much as women and persons of color did in the past and still have to.

To answer the original question, I think there is white privilege AS WELL AS white skin privilege (in some ways, I have benefitted from that myself). There is a whole exercise, "Unpacking the knapsack of white privilege," that addresses the issue. I had to do it plenty of times during undergrad, I'm sure some people here have heard of it.

Um wow...I agree with you that most places that hire minorities don't hire them with the intention of firing them later. I also agree that there are people who just can't admit that there was someone more qualified....BUT THOSE PEOPLE ARE BOTH MINORITIES AND NON MINORITIES.
You say that "your skin is not always the reason...." How can you realize that other options exist but say that to you, all reverse descrimination 'complainers' are spoiled??? Money has nothing to do with it.....if you really did suck, you can suck regardless if you have money or not. That's just called bitching.
Sorry I just get pissed when people are quick to paint all white people as spoiled and always getting their way. Discrimination definitely exists, and to a much lesser extent, so does reverse discrimination.

Re: huh?
 

It means that the terms black and white are artificial. Hispanics are the largest minority group. There are lots of other groups and cultures and none gets accounted for when you decide to do you black vs. white discussion.

-Rudey

Good point. Especially considering here in the US, we lump Hispanics all into one category - even though there are "white" and "black" Hispanics, including those that are a "mixed" (not mixed as in one parent is this and the other parent is that, but from years of continuous "race mixing" so to speak).

I would be curious to know what the case mix is though.


Good point as well and since I agree with you, I'll just piggyback off your post.:cool:

I agree that (obviously) not all white people are spoiled whiners. But I think that reverse discrimination is very very rare as compared to the amount of times that people think it goes on.

And of course that depends what your definition of reverse discrimination is. If a company's 90 percent white and they're looking to hire a minority, if they narrow their field of candidates down to the qualified ones and then pick the minority, is that reverse discrimination? I would say no. Some people would say yes.




Because somebody mentioned it, here's the "Unpacking the knapsack of white privilege" article, which I've posted a couple times before:

http://www.utoronto.ca/acc/events/peggy1.htm

If you've (a general you, not an AXJules you or a PM Mama you or whoever) read that and still don't feel like you've ever felt privileged simply by being white, then either (a) people don't think you're white or (b) you aren't paying enough attention.

I went to discussion tonight about issues at my old high school and one of the things we discussed was race. One of the women there said that she doesn't think that many white people can even imagine -- and I would tend to add don't even try to imagine -- what people of color in this country face. Way too many white people immediately go into defensive mode whenever a topic like racism is brought up, and that's not conducive to discussion.

Why can't we have a discussion about discrimination on this board that doesn't involve a discussion on reverse discrimination?

I think reverse discrimination is more likely to occur in civil service type jobs . . government jobs, teaching positions stuff like that . . . places that are not purely merit driven and are also heavily beauracratic and responsive to political pressures.

Thats just an opinion though I don't have data.

I love the "unpacking the knapsack"...we explored it in my cultures class last year, and it really opened my eyes to privileges I never realized I had because of my skin color. When I first started reading this post, I was going to go dig it out and post it - thanks for beating me to the punch Sugar and Spice.

The thing is, "white privilege" or "white skin privilege" isn't an issue of black and white. It's white vs. non-white.

The fairest member of a Latino family, who gets more attention from her aunts and uncles than her darker cousins benefits from "white skin privilege."

A white woman who can walk through a nice boutique without being scrutinized for possibly being a thief benefits from her "white privilege."

A mulatto or quadroon slave who was able to escape to the North by passing, or who worked in the house instead of the fields benefitted (in a perverse way, to be sure) from his/her "white skin privilege."

To be sure, all racial groups experience discrimination. For the majority group to deny that they receive privileges from being a member of that group is simply naive.

Re: Re: huh?
 

You are very correct. That's why I didn't say Black vs. White. That's not the question I asked. I am talking about white skin privilege, which is not about Black vs. White. It's about people who are racially classified as White and/or have more Eurocentric features, such as lighter skin, straighter hair, etc. etc. having inherent advantages and privileges in our society that others do not. My apologies for not specifying.

ah, I should have read your post first. you said it better than I.

Ummmm kind of off topic, but lighter skin isn't necessarily European based. In Asia (China and Japan, anyway), light skin has long been associated with upper class privilege, maybe even longer than in Europe. Like European culture (at least European culture before Coco Chanel made it cool to be darker), having light skin means that one doesn't work outside and thus, isn't tanned. I'm just a little tired to hear people say that it is based out of Europe.

How you dress your posture and the way you speak has an enormous impact on the way you are perceived . . .. maybe as much as your skin color.

Unless we are talking about a photo comparison of naked people.

Well, consider this one. It happened in about 1972.

There was this young hotshot television director who was directing 6 and 11 news is a top forty market TV station, trying to move up in market size -- and thus in salary. He was considered by most to be the hottest director in the market.

He heard about a directing job in a top ten market -again directing 6 and 11 PM News -- and applied, was asked to come for an interview, did so and did not get the job. It went to a woman associate director with no directing experience. The hiring manager, who was embarassed, told him that he was told he had to hire a woman.

Of course that manager wouldn't dare say that today, because he would be in court in a heartbeat.

Anyway, later that same year, another job opened at the same top ten market station, and the same director was again invited up for an interview, and again, didn't get the job. This time it went to a young black assistant director with no directing experience. Again, the hiring manager explained the situation. He was told to hire a black director.

Two jobs. Two interviews. Two minority members with NO directing experience hired.

I think that's reverse discrimination.

I thought so then when I didn't get either of the jobs, too.

Interestingly enough, the discrimination isn't what made me unhappy -- there had been enough plain anti-minority discrimination in my industry for years and I figured what goes around comes around. What ticked me off is that the hiring manager knew before he invited me for the interviews that he couldn't hire me, and wasted two days of my life.

Now, it may be possible that I was a "mediocre white male," but I don't think so, and neither did the other stations (including top ten markets) who hired me later to direct everything from news to live sports to talk shows. Or the folks who offered jobs in Los Angeles and San Francisco which I didn't accept. I ended up directing everything from a Papal Mass to NFL Football on NBC to the opening ceremonies for the US Olympic Opening Ceremony. I have eight EMMY Awards. I also taught diversity classes (as a Native American) for NBC and was a hiring manager for over twenty years -- fifteen of them at an NBC owned TV station. I taught TV production at the college level.

So, my point is that to say that only "mediocre white males" are the victims of reverse discrimination is an insult to a lot of people.

Fortunately, I don't insult easily. I only tell the story to make a point. Reverse discrimination is real.

Don't even ask me about trying to find a meaningful job past 50 years old...

I was simply referring to my own experiences. I'm sure that there are people who have legitimate claims, but the complaints about reverse discrimination AS FAR AS I HAVE BEEN CONCERNED (ie, college admissions, scholarships, etc) have been from white males who were far from qualified. That is all. Unless you attended high school, college, graduate school, or worked with me, the statement does not apply to you. :)

Seriously, I don't even think about it. I do remember it, though. However, my point is simply this -- it is dangerous to make blanket statements without either a pretty fair background or a pretty obvious and healthy disclaimer.

There is certainly some truth in what you say -- however the areas that you talk about are hardly the total of mainstream America.

In the end, a lot of very qualified white men (and women for that matter) were discriminated against. However, when compared to the number of minorities in the same position, it pales in comparison. Being a victim, it probably makes me stupid in that I don't have a big problem with Afirmative Action or even blatant quotas. Maybe it's some vague, blurry sense of fairness somewhere.

Someone else, I forget who, said he/she couldn't believe a hiring manager would waste their time hiring someone unqualified because then they would have to fire that person and hire someone else, as well as facing possible suits. Sorry, but it does happen. I was a hiring manager for over twenty years. To be blunt, top management doesn't really care in many cases what kind of burden they put on the middle managers, as long as the numbers look good on company reports. Efficient? No. Fair? No. Real? Yes.

In some ways, I think that's why HR Departments have sprung into more prominance in the past few years. They are the clearinghouse, and in some cases the buffer, between levels of management. Depending on how they are run, they can be a tool of top management, or a foil to them. In the best case, they are both.

Now, those are my opinions. But they have been built over forty years of business and college.

Re: Re: Re: huh?
 

So blacks vs everyone else?

And call it what you want but minorities do get a boost from getting in and if it's a zero sum game then the majority (whites, asians, middle easterners, indians, etc.) lose a bit.

-Rudey

Who cares really if you think about it...most of your jobs are going to be shipped overseas anyway.

-Rudey

...and those that are left will go to the newly LEGAL immigrants.

I feel a lot of the barriers have come down only to see new ones go up. If everyone took a long look, you would see that the real discrimination is based on looks, and what people deem attractive. This covers age, weight, facial features-an overall composite of what we have been TOLD is attractive. It doesn't matter what color you are-if you aren't attractive-you are penalized.

That's funny, all of the immigrants that have come into New York City over the last 30 years, have brought economic vibrancy to the city, rather than subplanting existing jobs. So many of these people from Costa Rica, Jamaica, Nigeria, Russia, and well over a hundred other nations, have brought an entrepreneurial spirit that has created many new businesses. Including businesses that deal in international trade.

The economic wealth of a nation is roughly equal to the quantity of its people times the quality (economic) of its people. Thats why nations with little natural resources, like Japan, are wealthy. I say, bring these people in. We are jockeying for position on the international stage of the future, and we need all of the people that we can get. Especially from those from areas where we have not had a strong trading relationship. That ties into the color thing, a little bit anyway. We need people from Sub-Saharan Africa, and from Central Asia, and South Asia, and so on.

Whether you realize it or not, the Russian immigrants in the US have helped to foster a level of trade, between the US and Russia, that is helping both nations to move past the Cold War. The Nigerian immigrants offer the best chance, from a US perspective, to help integrate Nigeria into a mutually beneficial international trade relationship.

The US is so wondeful because, more than any other nation, our culture is adaptive. This gives us a real economic advantage, and its why the current internationmal hegemonic structure is centered around the US (i.e. the TriLateral Commission.)

We need more imigrants, and from a more diverse array of nations. If we are too "white" and if we have too few people, America will beging to fall behind others.

Well, of course you wouldn't have to think about it. You're a white man in America. That's part of white privilege, dear suh.

Also, can you please make a point without mentioning how you're so much older and experienced? My parents don't mention that all the time--they're secure enough in their age and wisdom they don't need to.

Couldn't this then be applied to non-whites who didn't get what they want? The next time somebody complains to me that I'm being racist, should I call them a spoiled <insert color> kid who didn't get what they wanted?

You guys, can we get off the reverse discrimination topic? We've discussed it before and we've said all of this stuff before and, well, there are more interesting things to talk about.

Yes, reverse discrimination happens. Regular discrimination happens a lot more, so if you're keeping score you're probably benefitting a lot more than you lose out. So let go and move on.



So anyway, white skin privilege?

thanks sugar and spice

Here is a link to an article about white privilege courtesy of the prejudism thread.

Now, now, let's be nice...unfortunately, I've found that experience does tend to come with age. ;)

Back to the topic...I haven't had any personal experiences or known anyone who has, but I do know that historically society has tended to favor lighter-skinned persons. Even though now everyone wants to be tan because pale is considered yucky, I'm sure there's still the white skin privilege...it just depends on the situation. There's all kinds of discrimination, as many people have said.

Well, it's like this. I don't consider myself to be particularly bright in relation to some on this board, so age and experience are all that I have to offer as proof of what I think.

I don't think you need to stop talking about your age. She keeps talking about her neighborhood in Florida, etc. etc. I talk about how I'm a super genius. Everyone has one thing they think describes them.

-Rudey
--Have fun with it.