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> I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich

Then the comment does not apply to you.

I don't think you quite understand how deep the rabbit hole of this form of "whiteness" goes; as a social construct it implies people from Western Europe or North America. Surely you have experienced how there are people from there who treat Eastern Europe people as less "civilized? Similarly for, say, Mediterranean ethnicities.

White male privilege might not (fully) extend to you, but that does not disprove its existence.



This sort of response is typical for someone from NY(yes, this is also racist).

I'm white in the US. There is so much ignorance and illiteracy in the way white male racism is portrayed in the USA. It's a beautiful display of how you preach openness and then completely disregard all nuanced world views. You may not have known them then, but you sure as hell don't listen when someone is trying to explain it aaron.

A huge portion of people that are on the receiving end of racist systems are white male by your definition.

The thing that's so offensive about your kind and the authors kind of attitude is very similar to when some spoiled american female brat who's parents can just easily lash out tens of thousands a year for an ivy league school tells me how would i know anything about discrimination because i'm too white.

Theres even a funny 1974s movie about the miserable life of an italian immigrant in switzerland? Pane e cioccolata. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Chocolate

But if you really care how about you take a look at interview invites in Germany/Central Europe.


> This sort of response is typical for someone from NY(yes, this is also racist).

Gee, assumptions much? I'm a mixed race straight male from the Netherlands. I have definitely been on the receiving end of racism plenty of times in his life, and even then there's still plenty of privileges that I got to enjoy and that I wasn't aware of until my late twenties.

These are not binary mutually exclusive concepts.

Pointing out privileges is not an accusation, or at least it shouldn't be. It's just saying: you take <x> for granted like a right, but not everyone get's to enjoy that, and the reason they don't is a lack of being male/white/straight or combination of such. Let's put in an effort to make <x> equal for everyone.

> tells me how would i know anything about discrimination because i'm too white.

Except that this is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that privileges exist at many levels, and there's gradations of privilege.

GP is a white Eastern European man. This brings a number of societal privileges. It also means he missed the boat on a number of others, and had to endure racism against certain stereotypes.

The point is that "whiteness" as a race is a exclusionary social construct that exists in gradations, and not as a yes/no binary thing based on skin.

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHct5IHxrA&list=PL6orzhPfnu...


I didn't know this movie, interesting


This must be satire. Color of skin as a proxy for some form of "cultural original sin" is bad enough. Now we have the self-anointed determining degree of whiteness.

What happened to just trying to be a decent human being and helping out those in need of a hand, regardless of race?


> Now we have the self-anointed determining degree of whiteness.

What do you mean, "now"? I'm not making shit up, this has been going on for ages. Look up how Irish were considered inferior to Brits because they supposedly descended from black people, Italian immigrants being treated even worse, then the Poles... I mean "latino" as a race does not exist outside of the US, it was invented there to single out the Spanish population. It's all a social construct and it's all bullshit

Here, let me make things easy for you, Kat Blaque's "white history month" series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHct5IHxrA&list=PL6orzhPfnu...


>> I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich

>Then the comment does not apply to you.

It does, I'm white. The author specifically mentions "white male".


In the context it was not meant literally as people who are white and male in the same way that blue collar worker does not refer to all workers wearing blue shirts.


then "white male" has no meaning, unless you mean "white male and privileged" in which case it's redundant and racist to have the "white male" part


Did you actually mean 'redundant'? If so, you first said 'white male' has no meaning. For it to be redundant in the 'white male and privileged' then it must also mean 'privileged.'

I certainly agree on the racist point.


He said, unless you mean...privileged. In THAT case, it's redundant.


The problem is that lots of people don't get that nuance, and then carry the thought along thinking it really does literally mean people who are white and male. Memes morph as they're passed along, and a complex sociological understanding of abstract "whiteness" has no chance of surviving into the popular understanding.

So for each person like you who means "white male in the abstract sense", there are ten people in the movement who literally hate white males for running the world.

When we want to talk about privilege we should say just that: "privileged people". Don't shit on arbitrary subsections of the population.


Really, just use words that describe the concept. "White male" has a very specific inherent meaning. Don't use it to describe something completely different, like racism or sexism.


lots of people don't get that nuance, because that nuance doesn't generally exist and was just made up now to win the argument. "white male in the abstract sense" ffs!


Oh, definitely. I don't believe in the religion myself. I have heard that cop-out before though: "but we're only talking about the successful white males". I think the term for the argument technique / fallacy is motte-and-bailey (you might be aware but for the benefit of anyone reading):

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...


upboat for a brilliant article there!


Race in the United States has a very particular history

I know minstrel shows made it to England, but I don't think they ever made it to the Adriatic Sea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show?wprov=sfla1


But it doesn't. He may not have specified "from North America", but that's what he meant.


He's not from North America, is he? So why do you think that's what he meant?


you, my friend, are a crazy person.

privelage is more a factor of socio economics than race when did we start this ridiculous fight against merit and this arbitrary oppression quota system.


It started some time about 25-30 years ago as the Cold War was winding down -- and it is a genius move by the upper socioeconomic class to divert our attention from the real issue (it's all about the Benjamins).

You see, it is true that in the US the privileged are often white. But that's just noise in the data. Because most of the disadvantaged are also white, and male.

But by building up racial tensions in the lower classes with a fundamental attribution error -- those lower classes are divided -- and therefore, not much of a threat to those who are actually privileged.

This is the same tactic the ruling class has used for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

Divide and conquer.


if i take a look at the data, by most measures asians and jews are much more privileged in america than other europeans.

but of course if people started talking about asians and jews the way they talk about white males the racist nature of their argument becomes all too apparent.

your useful idiot argument very well may be correct though.


> Then the comment does not apply to you.

It might. It's possible that even though the path for him was difficult, it may still have been more difficult if he were black.


"White Power"/"White Pride" is racist and "Black power"/"Black Pride" isn't... Minorities can't be racist and everything white people does is automatically racist.

"White privilege"... Brought to you by "Black Privilege".




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