Fuck yes.

[trinityvixen]

It doesn't have to be white privilege. Privilege is just as insidious in any form, but because our country's class imbalance skews along color lines (predominantly, though, of course, there are exceptions), it often manifests as racial.

Read the whole thing because it's brilliant.

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to agree with you, and a lot of things could be turned. (Is it "black privilege" that got Obama lecturing at UChicago law despite having no publications? That got Obama the nod for president over essentially his white, more experienced clone, John Edwards?) The pregnant daughter issue is probably one of white privilege--but then, no one's saying that it's a good thing for Bristol to be pregnant. Just that it doesn't reflect that much on Sarah.

Really, it's all about partisanship. My side can do no wrong, while your side can do no right. Happens on both sides.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The pregnant daughter issue is probably one of white privilege--but then, no one's saying that it's a good thing for Bristol to be pregnant. Just that it doesn't reflect that much on Sarah.

Except everyone is saying how brave she is and how admirable it is that she chose to have the baby. Whereas a black teenager would just be stupid and pregnant 'cause she was a slut and just wants welfare to pay for her everything. That's about as far as that story would go.

Also BS: it reflects so well on Sarah Palin because they're living their credo--no choice for anyone, babies for all. Except that they also want credit for not doing what they don't believe they should, would or could do otherwise. Obama's daughter got pregnant? National news coverage on how Michelle Obama's working outside the house let this happen. Obama is a terrible father. There wouldn't be any of this cheerleading and defensive cries for privacy. Chelsea Clinton never got them, and she was white.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

I still think it has more to do with the VP thing than the white thing. PLENTY of white girls who get knocked up are branded stupid sluts. Sometimes even if they don't get knocked up...now, if people had also been calling Paris Hilton "brave in the face of adversity" when her sex video was leaked a few years ago, you might have more of a case.

You say yourself that there was less outcry when Chelsea Clinton had negative attention - and in her case it was for no reason. But maybe you're just reading the wrong, uh, journalism...supermarket tabloids have been all over the Bristol Palin story.

Speculation about what might happen if Obama's daughter was pregnant isn't really valid. Both because it is speculation and because even if you're right it could have more to do with politics than race (if I may imply that one side is more about low blows than the other...)

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

As for what Chelsea Clinton got...

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/06/25newsb.html

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, they're also trying to blame it on the Clenis, what with those "immoral messages in the media" Bristol received growing up under the Clinton Presidency... but you know this.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

That got Obama the nod for president over essentially his white, more experienced clone, John Edwards?

Obama is far most charismatic than Edwards, and they do have (admittedly, not huge) policy differences. Also, Edwards had tried and failed in a Presidental race once before, making him much more of a known commodity. "White, more experienced clone" is not a fair description.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

(Is it "black privilege" that got Obama lecturing at UChicago law despite having no publications? That got Obama the nod for president over essentially his white, more experienced clone, John Edwards?)

See, your privilege is showing again. You assume that number of publications should be a big part of a job assignment. Some times it is, some times it is not. It's a historically white argument that the "better" (read: more statistically accomplished) candidate is ignored and that the affirmative action candidate is put in instead. That's white privilege right there--to assume that Obama didn't, through some other means, make himself the best candidate for the job.

Or, as the case may be, the best candidate who would take that job. The University of Chicago is not located in the best of neighborhoods. On top of that, most universities need to do significant neighborhood outreach to assure their neighbors that despite having the wealth of small nations, the university is part of the community at large. Someone with Obama's demonstrated community outreach background might have seemed just the person to genuinely (or not) reach out to the community.

The Edwards thing is more a consequence of history--you can put Adlai Stevenson forward as many times as you want, he won't win. That's why we have, for much of the latter half of last century and all of this one, tended to put forward new candidates to challenge incumbents. Because if Al Gore or John Kerry didn't win the first time, what hope have they the second time? Edwards, unfortunately, proved himself not so slick as shit when he went up against Cheney. So, he's done.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Guh? (on the publication thing--you've got a point on Edwards) That's not a white privilege thing, that's a "the way universities and law schools work" sort of thing. I don't think Obama got the job because he's black--he got it because he was a charismatic state senator who was editor of the Harvard Law Journal. Either way, I'm sure there were con law scholars far more qualified who could have taken the job. But when you start attributing everything to race or "racial privilege", then it gets hard to explain minority successes, doesn't it?

Chicago is the #6 law school in the country. They'd have no trouble finding candidates.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Were they #6 when Obama went? Where are the resumes of the other people considered that prove there were better candidates? Why isn't "charismatic state senator" a better explanation for why he got the job than "black privilege?

I'm not saying you don't have a point about the articles. But you just pointed out a very good reason to hire him that, again, had nothing to do with color. Yet you brought up the specter of color with the "black privilege" in the first place. I'm not attributing anything to racial privilege. I was saying there are probably plenty of reasons he got the job unrelated to race. You just proved my point: reverse racism is mostly not true.

However, white privilege is a demonstrative thing. You want to believe it's not true in McCain's case, fine, you cling to that. But to say it's not still in effect in the world today, America especially, is ignorance.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

They were probably higher than #6 at the time, actually; NYU's rise is relatively recent, and Chicago has been declining.

The point I'm trying to make isn't that Obama got the job due to "black privilege", but that it's as silly to say that a bunch of things in that article were due to "white privilege" as it is to say that Obama got his lawprof job due to "black privilege." Yeah, there's "white privilege" in America, but "Republicans don't hate Bristol Palin" has much more to do with her mom being a Republican than with her being white, as one example.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

At this point, you'd be hard pressed to separate the GOP from the white privilege. Because of its hostile policies towards minorities, the GOP is whiter than ever, and therefore more prone to fits over white, male privilege than ever.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Really, it's all about partisanship. My side can do no wrong, while your side can do no right. Happens on both sides.

I have to agree with edgehopper on this one. I think the article is an excellent example of people who have already made up their minds being hypocritical against the candidate they already decided not to support. I agree that these are all incredibly unfair points.

However, I only think a handful of them have anything to do with racism.

And I also think that declaring that every bias against Obama is due to race (when many are because he's a Democrat, a "celebrity", an "intellectual", what have you) weakens the arguments when genuine racism comes up. White privilege is a real problem; however, when you insist that every adversity faced by a single black individual is due to racism when there are a host of other, more plausible factors, it makes people stop listening when the real racism comes up.

...and it occurs to me part of what's been bothering me about Palin. She feels like affirmative action to me. I don't feel like she would have been chosen if she were a man - I really do think she's vastly underqualified, and there are plenty of other people with similar charisma but more useful experience. And so it makes me feel like she was chosen simply because "woman" was a useful quality to have on the ticket (whether or not that's justified). I don't want our first female VP/pres to have won just because she has a uterus. I want the first one to win because she's clearly the best for the job. It's one of the things that made me nervous about Hillary - if we elected a female president and she got tarred as a "bitch", then it would be another fifty years before we got another one. I'd like either a black president or a female VP because they were the right person, not just because they were a historic check in the box, so we could go back to electing white men for another half dozen decades.

Wow, that went off topic. Sorry.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Well, at least we can all take comfort in the knowledge that Sarah Palin won't be the first woman elected President...

I'm a little leery of the whole race issue here, because it would be so easy for any of the "I'm just uncomfortable" reasons (ahh, the complete lack of rationality that has become elevated as the American way) to be proxies for race. At the same time, assaulting his "celebrity" doesn't really seem to be race-sensitive, so much as nonsensical... but would they say the same thing about JFK?

(These days, they probably would...)