Complicity is only with those willfully ignorant, I imagine. Colonialism ~is~ a malevolent mass. "Rich white persons" tend to be the force behind colonialism, but theoretically it could be anyone.
People can migrate without being colonists. Certainly a lot of historical migration was due to colonialism, but someone who moved to a developed country last year (from either a developed or undeveloped country) clearly isn't guilty of it.
Second, even if the parent commenter's ancestors were colonists of some stripe, people aren't bound in any way to say that the actions taken by their ancestors were the right ones.
I'm not pretending to claim some sort of native ancestry, and being the result of colonialism doesn't preclude me from disapproving of policies and interests beyond my control.
I've always found concepts of privilege to be lacking explanatory power. A European-derived culture is dominant in America, but east-Asian Americans still manage to do better than whites in education and in earnings. If racial privilege is powerful, it is not all-powerful.
At the same time, I find the focus on race and class privilege to be incomplete. A poor white boy growing up in Appalachia has less privilege than a member of any race or gender growing up in a California suburb. But if he manages to get to college (statistically unlikely), he will learn from his professors how his success is all because of his skin and his genitals.
I think it's important to note the concept of privilege in this sense is a bit nebulous, is distinct from the common usage, and based on context. I'm partially at fault for the confusion here for talking about "privilege" as an absolute.
Privilege is something that basically everyone has. It's about talking about the advantages one has due to factors like sex, race, geography etc over others when all other things are equal. It's not a concept that is focused on race or gender; but any sort of difference. The reason that I think it often focuses on race and gender is because those are areas where people are particularly unaware of their own privilege and where the issues are most crucial.
As you point out, you could have a young black women who grows up wealthy and this would imbue her with some privilege related to that compared to a poor white male.
However,
> A poor white boy growing up in Appalachia has less privilege than a member of any race or gender growing up in a California suburb.
As a general statement this is wrong; it needs to be qualified as above in terms of who exactly is being compared and on what sort of privilege. In this example both have some privilege and I'm not sure being wealthy would always out weigh being black and female (or vice versa).
What I do think is reasonable to say is that if you look at large groups, white males do have a bit more privilege than many other groups. Again, in particular instances this can be completely turned around, so context is important to keep in mind.
So why focus on white males in the general sense as a group with a lot of privilege? Because it's a converging of many types. They don't deal with many issues women and minorities do and even if you take a color/gender-blind issue like wealth; as a group white men are doing much better in that regard than others.
I agree though that it would be beneficial to consider it more widely, and it's important to try and do that in discussions.
I am fairly certain that a black woman going to a high school where 90%+ of graduates are going to university will have many more advantages in life than a white boy attending a high school where ~10% of graduates go to university. I don't think people understand just how dismal such places are. And yet, geographic prejudice abounds, people say things about "ignorant hicks" that they would never say about a class based on race or gender.
> "as a group white men are doing much better in that regard than others."
Whites do worse in America in a host of ways compared to Asians, such as educational attainment, average income, criminality, and etc. For almost every documented white/black achievement gap, there is a corresponding asian/white achievement gap.
As far as gender goes, males earn fewer college degrees than women do. I expect this will cause the earnings gap to reverse in the long run. It already has in urban areas.
Whites are the majority race in America and men have traditionally been in charge of things. But to truly look at privilege, you have to look at the present, not the past. Academic concepts of privilege are rooted in the 1960s and they don't fit well with the modern world.
I hope you get to read this comment, my last account I used in race/gender discussions was hell-banned. These discussions come too close to things you can't say.
I think you are not entirely understanding the concept of privilege in this context, or it's purpose. It's a common problem. You seem to regard it as some sort of insult or badge of shame, which is understandable. As I said before, privilege is something basically everyone has. In any situation it's likely that both sides have some privilege.
>
I am fairly certain that a black woman going to a high school where 90%+ of graduates are going to university will have many more advantages in life than a white boy attending a high school where ~10% of graduates go to university.
Of course she would, but she would also have many disadvantages. In this example it's important to look at BOTH sides and see what sort of privilege they have.
> Whites do worse in America in a host of ways compared to Asians, such as educational attainment, average income, criminality, and etc
The reality is more complicated than that.
Remember privilege is about relative advantages. White men overall are doing better because not only do better than many (but not all) demographics purely in terms of group-to-group comparisons, if you take a white man versus a comparable member of another demographic they will almost always do better.
A white male compared to an asian male with similar educational and professional histories will earn more on average for the same job...just as men tend to earn more than women all things being equal.
That's why I feel comfortable making the heavily qualified statement that as a group white males are doing better. This is also why there is often a focus on white males in these discussions.
That said, it's important to understand that all sides will have generally have some privilege, and it's important to discuss. I'd also note this has diverged a bit from my original point, which was merely that race enters such discussions because it's relevant to the amount and type of privilege someone has.
So to summarize: in many ways it's meaningless and counterproductive to talk about which group has "more" privilege"....however I think in some comparisons and contexts it is possible and useful, and in those cases when talking in a general sense I think you'd have a hard time coming up with a group besides white males.
Disparate impact is certainly a component of systematic bias. It may be true that a white American with a prestigious college degree has advantages in life compared to an Asian American with a prestigious college degree. But the fact that a far higher proportion of Asian Americans receive prestigious college degrees in the first place points to biases earlier in the educational system (Asians are 8x more likely than non-Jewish whites to attend Harvard, for example, compared to their proportion in the population).
This isn't the first time that I've seen anti-white racism on Hacker News[1]. The emotion behind theories of class privilege gets separated from its intellectual content, and people think it is okay to say things like this to their fellow hackers. It isn't.
[1] For example, a previous comment thread blamed Elon Musk's success on the fact that he is a white male (as if every white male were a billionaire). I didn't comment at the time because I was logged-in to my main account, and defending white people against racism is un-PC. But I do worry that this kind of attack is accepted here and goes uncommented.
repeat after me.
there is no such thing as reverse racism.
By comparing this (oh no, someone called me white on a blog, and said I was successful)
to the experiences of oppressed minorities, belittles history, it belittles their experiences. and it makes you look like a spoiled privileged white boy.
"reverse racism" is what it is called when someone claims that someone is being "racist" against the privileged majority. It's nonsense. It doesn't make sense that there is systematic oppression against ... the cohort that is undeniably and unshakably in power. If you insult someone for being white, yes it might hurt their feelings. Do the same to an unprivileged minority and it is potentially life threatening. There is no comparison.
> Do the same to an unprivileged minority and it is potentially life threatening. There is no comparison.
Racism must be systematic in order to be 'real' racism?
Instances of racism must be comparable to one another in severity in order to be 'real' racism?
These implications of severity and comparability are entirely your own invention. anewguy99 was not suggesting anything of the sort, you have assumed that he was because your pet definition of 'racism' requires that those implications be present when the word is used.
If you want to use another definition than the casual/traditional one, that is fine. But don't expect others to take your pet definition seriously, and don't expect to extract legitimate meaning from what others are saying when those others are using the common meaning of the word.
See: Derailing.
When instances of oppression occur, the most important thing to do is not point out the hypocrisies of the victim. It's not to whine about the oppression that YOU have to deal with yourself. It's not to compare your minor suffering to their systematic bullying. Everyone suffers, everyone has their own battles. Now is not the time to dredge it up as if it's more important, or just as important as what is happening here.
No, name calling is not racism. not on its own. It must indeed be backed by a system of oppression. A system of belief about the inherent qualities of a particular race. You apparently believe that all you need to do is call someone a name to be racist. It is your definition of racism that is skewed and uncommon, not mine.
I'm seriously not trying to undermine you here, but there's a massive empathy failure across this entire thread and I think this needs to be pointed out.
What you mean when you say "racism" is not what the parent means. The dictionary definition[1] of racism is actually quite broad and basically says that you're both right - the word "racism" can be used to describe a systematic system of oppression of racial minorities, but it can also be used to describe any instance where race is used as a discriminating factor.
You're not going to persuade very many people by simply asserting that the word means what you think it means, when other reasonable people could disagree about that meaning. You'll end up in pointless semantic arguments, and if you're doing this on HN then you'll be arguing with people who can make some very nuanced arguments about semantics.
There is a whole discourse about race, privilege, oppression, gender and so on which has acquired its own vocabulary, often by applying very specific meanings to words which have historically broader meanings, and which places emphasis on systematic or aggregate effects of oppression/privilege. Communities which are not steeped in this tradition do not share these word usages or these emphases; the average HN user is going to see a reference to "...white dudes..." as "racist" because it's a phrase that invokes race and gender when these factors are otherwise irrelevant, and they're going to focus on the individual case rather than where this fits in the aggregate sum of all racism/sexism across humanity.
In other words, your average HNer is probably follows deontological ethics[2] and is likely to evaluate individual instances of behaviour according to general rules. If invoking race is bad, invoking race in relation to white people is therefore bad, and therefore the "white dudes" comment is bad. You can't easily argue (to a deontologist) that it's "not racism" because this means that sometimes the "rules" don't apply.
Now, I'm not saying who is right or wrong, only that it's something that reasonable people can disagree about. I doubt that there is a right or wrong. My belief is that it should not be impossible to agree on how to tackle discrimination, but in order to engage everyone in doing so we'll need to appeal to a range of different ethical viewpoints, and trying to argue that the other person's ethics are simply wrong is unlikely to be persuasive.
Dehumanizing individuals by identifying them with some genetically defined class is always wrong, even if the individual is a member of a class that it is PC to hate on.
