Kemi Badenoch appointed new Minister for Women and Equalities

[Manteiga]

And International Trade Secretary. I'd have preferred to see her as Secretary of State for Education in addition to Minister for Women and Equalities, but this is good news.

twitter.com/Conservatives/status/1584957913059454976

So the phrase "white privilege" doesn't do justice to the complexity of life as it is experienced for many people.

Agreed. In NZ, because of colonisation, Maori come in different shades. White passing Maori don’t always pass, and will experience discrimination based on ethnicity in areas of their life but not say, walking down the street. Are they privileged? I don’t think so. They also experience other white people telling them they don’t count as Maori because they’re too light, which I’m sure most can see how damaging and horrible that is ( it was also the point of policies of assimilation to breed out ‘natives’ ). To have your ethnicity and family/whanau dismissed like this, or because if your views, is just as awful as someone making a racist comment on the street. White privilege for me, is simplistic and misused.

Now it could be that it is anti-black racism from a proportion of white and black officers, but maybe "white-privilege" is a better way of looking at the benefit of being white when stopped.

The problem is that there's this weird inversion where there's an assumption that such a thing must have happened to someone - it's this systemic thing that exists, so they must have experienced it. While people totally ignore the impact of "anti-racist" policies and fail to net them off.

Now, I was similarly resistant to "male privilege", but in this fight, you can clearly see it happening - even people like Douglas Murray have been forced to concede that. Even if it's not an all-pervasive thing that happens in all circumstances, it's happening here. Women are far less able to safely talk on this subject than men, due to the social expectation of "being kind", and the way that's leveraged on this subject. But a woman who's not encountered the trans issue may have never hit this in quite the same way.

So in your example, if someone has never been stopped by the police, then that instance of "white privilege" would never have occurred. Whereas they may have very definitely been hit by a "white penalty", such as explicit race-based discrimination in job/university applications.

I think you have to look at the actual impact of privilege, not just it theoretically existing. Non-colour-blind people have the privilege of being able to be pilots, for example, and this must be a huge deal to some people, but for the vast majority this "able to be a pilot" privilege really isn't relevant. Penalising non-colour-blind people generally in non-aviation circumstances for their pilot-privilege would be daft.

It's perverse to insist that someone must have a privilege when you don't know how many circumstances they've encountered where it would have occurred, AND you know you have in place concrete policies to disadvantage them.

It's perfectly possible that someone may have received far more disadvantages from systemic "anti-racism" than they've ever received relative advantages from purported societal racism. Some of this systemic discrimination is incredibly high-impact. Getting blocked from a job or university is possibly a much bigger deal than being treated better by some police once.

So "white privilege" is not a fair concept in a systemically "anti-racist" racially-discriminating environment where you hand out "black privilege". Your "anti-racism" is more concrete and measurable than the racism.

Now, fortunately that doesn't occur so much here, but in the US where a lot of this comes from, it blows my mind seeing explicitly race-discriminating organisations continue to talk as if their policies had no impact, and they weren't creating "black privilege".

As an aside one example of white privilege. My understanding is that in the USA black people are very often subject to bad treatment compared to white people when being stopped / arrested. And this happens whether the arresting officer is black or white. Now it could be that it is anti-black racism from a proportion of white and black officers, but maybe "white-privilege" is a better way of looking at the benefit of being white when stopped.

But more unarmed white people are killed by the police in the US than any other demographic. So what does that mean for their 'white privilege'?

Trans women can and do use women’s loos perfectly legally. You want that to stop, yes?

Define 'trans woman' for the purposes of law here please. What point of transition does one need to be at to be defined as a 'transwoman' in law?

What about refuges, hospital wards, prisons - what is the legal framework for those, please could you explain that to us all?

As far as I understand, there are no laws around who uses what public toilet anyway.

Is that not just because there are more white people in America though? What are the statistics on a population percentage level? (Genuine question).

White privilege is such an easy concept to understand, I don't know why people have such difficulty with it?

beastlyslumber · Today 09:58
As an aside one example of white privilege. My understanding is that in the USA black people are very often subject to bad treatment compared to white people when being stopped / arrested. And this happens whether the arresting officer is black or white. Now it could be that it is anti-black racism from a proportion of white and black officers, but maybe "white-privilege" is a better way of looking at the benefit of being white when stopped.

But more unarmed white people are killed by the police in the US than any other demographic. So what does that mean for their 'white privilege'?

I had no idea if that, Beastly. If possible please do you have a link based on the proportion of the population? (Not questioning you, just interested.)

@YouSirNeighMmmm Coleman Hughes is worth a listen on the US policing issue.

I think this is his most recent long form interview but he’s done a previous one with Triggernometry and has been on Joe Rogan.

2022: m.youtube.com/watch?v=mpxxBCCQaks

If you are interested it might be best to start with the older stuff which is more focused on police procedure and statistics and less about political policy failure…

2020: m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtjuf_RxsLA

2022: open.spotify.com/episode/34gutw3EZaaHAZWBiX6cno?si=RRo_uU19Qtm6n-xYBFzE4w

perfectly legally. You want that to stop, yes?

It’s not ‘perfectly legally’. This poster is trying to trap others by asking a question where he inserts a falsehood and then demands you answer if you want to stop this falsehood happening, so as to paint you as someone who wants to take away rights.

The actual question is:

Single sex exemptions exist to provide women and girls with spaces that no male can enter, like toilets, changing rooms and single sex wards. You want that to stop? Or do you want to protect the rights of women and girls to get changed and use toilets with privacy away from males?

My answer: I want to continue to protect women and girls and uphold their legal and socially accepted right to single sex spaces.

I have no idea. If I were to guess I would suspect that having white privilege makes white people more likely to do stupid shit like reach for their glove box when stopped, whereas black people, fearing a trigger happy racist police (because their parents taught them to), take much more care. White privilege leads some white people into a false sense of security. Just a guess.

Now, fortunately that doesn't occur so much here, but in the US where a lot of this comes from, it blows my mind seeing explicitly race-discriminating organisations continue to talk as if their policies had no impact, and they weren't creating "black privilege".

Yes. When universities relax entry criteria for black students (while simultaneously raising criteria for Asian students, as at Harvard) or candidates are given preference on the basis of being black, it's hard to believe that 'white privilege' is the problem. It doesn't seem to be happening in the UK yet, which I'm grateful for. But we are beginning to hear about situations here where white kids in schools are being told they are racist and problematic, or white staff in an organisation are excluded or outside speakers come in and harangue them for being white.

Ibram X Kendi, one of the foremost proponents of CRT, claims that the only answer to discrimination is more discrimation. He thinks that the answer to anti-black racism is to institute anti-white racism. He explicitly says this.

I don't. I don't find it at all odd that overall people with white skin could be advantaged in society, whilst small sub-groups are disadvantged because (some in) society views their traveller background or jewishness as big negatives that outweigh the white positive.

I am increasingly coming to the view that the concept of white privilege is of limited value.

The stupidity of people comparing the racist situation in Britain to that in America was exemplified by the BLM protests when a black man was killed by a cop in America thousands of miles away. Nothing to do with the situation in Britain but was seized on by activists and of course now it has come out how it was used. The fact is the situation in Britain is very very different.

As I understand things, there are no actual laws around which toilet or changing room people can use (refuges, prisons, hospitals are different and the EA can be applied here).

But single sex toilets etc always existed fairly well on the basis that a) males generally stayed out of them and b) because everyone knew that only women should be in the female toilets, women felt empowered enough to be able to challenge males who did enter the toilets, or go and report them to the manager of the facility etc.

Obviously both of these things are becoming less true by the day.

Okay wow. Maybe don't make guesses, because that's fucked up.

Here's a news article about Tony Timpa. He's a white man who died after police pinned him down for 14 minutes, while they laughed and joked. Sounds familiar, I know. But apparently we don't care about what happened to him, for some reason. www.cbsnews.com/news/tony-timpa-disturbing-video-shows-dallas-officers-joking-as-they-restrain-man-who-died/

I note that, based on very limited anecdotal evidence, young white people who believe themselves to be great allies to the black community seem to be much more in favour of positive discrimination than black people do. That doesn't encourage me to support the likes of Kendi!

Quite.

The question to DadJoke is men, including those who identify as women, can be legally excluded from women's toilets - do you want that to stop?

I agree completely that the perception of public is completely fucked because the media highlights certain stories and not others.

I don't see an obvious flaw in the theory that entitled white people would be much less careful around the police than black people who have had it drummed into them since birth to take massive care because half of the police are racist and just itching to shoot you.

I had no idea if that, Beastly. If possible please do you have a link based on the proportion of the population? (Not questioning you, just interested.)

Cloglady above has some good links. I got this information from Glen Loury and John McWhorter's podcast. Also Coleman Hughes is another good source of information.

Is that not just because there are more white people in America though? What are the statistics on a population percentage level? (Genuine question).

There are more white people, indeed. However, black people are way more likely to have an interaction with the police than white people are, so you need that number too.

The question to DadJoke is men, including those who identify as women, can be legally excluded from women's toilets - do you want that to stop?

Yes an even better way to word it :)

I don't see an obvious flaw in the theory that entitled white people would be much less careful around the police

You don't see a flaw in saying that white people are more likely to get killed because they're "entitled"? And they're not "careful"?

So if a black person is killed by the police, is that because he wasn't careful enough, or acted too entitled?

Are you seeing the flaw yet?

I get your point. What is your solution, black parents stop giving their kids advice on how to avoid getting killed by the police? Pretend that behaving like an arsehole when stopped by the police in the US doesn't increase the chances of a bad outcome?

Are you seeing the flaw yet?

Sam Harris does a really careful analysis of the statistics around black and white people's interactions with the police in the USA.

#207 — Can We Pull Back From The Brink? on Podbean, check it out! www.podbean.com/ea/dir-ws6t4-92b8749

Black men have a much higher proportion of interactions with police as they commit a higher proportion of violent crime.

They are also more likely to experience police brutality than white men during interactions with the police (from black and white officers) but less likely to be killed than white men during interactions.

It's not clear at all what's going on within these statistics but it's clear it's not as straight forward as just racism.

It's also clear that the number of unarmed innocent black people murdered by the police is very rare, which is not the narrative BLM were promoting.

They actively wanted law abiding black people to feel in mortal danger from the police on a daily basis, and they succeeded in getting many people to believe this.

It's such dangerous decisive manipulation.

@beastlyslumber [To draw a parallel] I genuinely don 't know what is worse.

The absolute misogynists who accuse the drunk teen in a mini skirt of asking for it.

Or the people who should know better who focus 100% on how women should have a right to roll around in the gutter drunk at 2 am on a Sunday morning whilst not coming to any harm, ever.

Of course the drunk teen was not asking for it. Of course sexual assault is always wrong. But in between those things is something called the real world that needs navigating by reference to how things are not how they should be.

Young black people in the US have police racism (true or otherwise) drummed into them, and I am sure that plenty of black kids are alive today because they bit their lip, did what they were told, however innocent they were and however much of an arsehole the cop was. Meanwhile I suspect that there are some dead white kids whose parents did not teach the same lessons as their black neighbours.

Just a theory, maybe I am wrong.

Spot on.

The flaw is you are using a scenario you’ve made up in your own head to fit your chosen theory, rather than look at statistical evidence or actual case studies (including evidence presented by black men living in the USA)