White privilege isn't real - Jordan Peterson

Post Reply New Topic

I feel it's better to live one's life based upon actual experience with people----rather than basing one's life upon some academic theory or other.

If the white Amerikans have collective guilt for the sins of their forefathers/foremothers for having had slaves, and treating people like that is evil, then the son/daughter inherits the evil.

If the German people have collective guilt for what happened during the Holocaust, an evil deed, then the offspring have inherited this evil also.

There was a time when the Jews were seen as having collective guilt for the crucifixion of JC.
The ignorant ill-informed considered the Jews had inherited this evil and the Jews were treated badly.

All man/womankind have the collective guilt of original sin and were cast out of the garden of Eden as a punishment.


The fallacious concept:
"The sins of the father are inherited by the son."

If your forefathers engaged in slavery, you are evil.
If your forefathers engaged in genocide, you are evil.
If your forefather/mother engage in jiggy-jiggy, you are evil. [disingenuous]
The other example doesn't apply but 'connect the dots' yourself of the other three two.

Any idea why the bar is set higher for black individuals?
Is their work history less reliable?

Well that's my point. White people will say they are rich because of hard work. But they already had a head start. So now we come full circle and say JP might be wrong.

Ok some people might connect the dots as you posit. I have heard black people call all of us devils (actually anyone who is non-black). That attitude is a little extreme but doesn't invalidate the psychological evidence for white privilege.

Why is the bar set higher for black individuals?

It’s because there are those white folks who are viscerally irritated by people who look different. And are viscerally irritated at “black culture,” too.

They don’t want people of a “different appearance and culture” living amongst them. It upsets their sensibilities.

This, I believe, is still fairly common.

And this might also be the case with a few black folks vis a vis white folks.

Except the tribalism you speak of what codified as law for 400 years.

But not in the past 50 years or so. It isn’t “codified” any longer. But the stigmata remains.

De facto racism remains.

De jure racism doesn’t exist.

We have to now get rid of the de facto racism.

The way to do it...is to acknowledge black folks as equal citizens, and to encourage friendship and love between the races. And to apply equal standards to them. Some progress has already been made in this area—but not enough.

The way to NOT do it.....is to encourage separation of the races through lower standards for one race vis a vis the other race.

I haven't dismissed the concept of 'white privilege'.
I simply question the belief that it is ubiquitous these days.

Also, there are occurrences of 'black privilege' in evidence.

What you are saying does not make logical sense.

A bank manager over here in Australia doesn't live next door to the person he is giving the mortgage to. [sic for simplicity].
All he is interested in is to gain profits via responsible lending.
Your answer doesn't 'cut the mustard', unfortunately.

It doesn’t matter if what I say does, or doesn’t, make “logical sense.”

It’s what’s happening in real life amongst a minority of white folks....but enough for it to still have an impact these days.

I don’t care if my comment doesn’t “cut the mustard” with you, frankly...because it “cuts the mustard” with me.

You don’t have to get all petulant....

Note: there are other ways to make “minorities” feel unwelcome other than rejecting their applications for mortgages.

I just don't understand what you're going on about or why. In school at least we learn that 2+2=4, the earth is round, natural selection is uncontroversial, and black people bear the burden of a massive inherited bad luck due to what their ancestors were subjected to. Basic common sense agrees with all of those. We don't have Fox News here.

There are people who will deny those things, and it's alarming that their numbers are growing, but they do very much clash with well-established common sense.

And, sure, people will sometimes act defensive or fail to acknowledge when and how exactly that inherited bad luck (and the whole image problem that the race collectively suffers from because of it) is or isn't a factor and how much (that's the issue about "racism being properly acknowledged" that I mentioned earlier). But if you're talking broadly about stratification and where it comes from, then it's just couldn't be more obvious. It's not widely disputed or controversial in any way.


He "might" be wrong?... There's not a single word that comes out of that guy's mouth that can be taken at face value. He systematically misrepresents everything.

Last edited by toadsnail on 24 Feb 2021, 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

@Pepe

Racism doesn't follow logic or market economics. If it did, then it wouldn't be racism. People like to feel superior more than they like money.

You don’t seem to grasp that even though slavery is a thing of the past, systemic racism in the USA is not. Not in policing/prisons, healthcare, education, the job market, social scene etc etc etc - the evil is still VERY MUCH alive and well. It’s not guilt for ancestral evils, it’s evil still being perpetuated.

White Privilege is a group of white people deciding for themselves that white privilege isn't real, despite what anyone else says, cos they don't "feel" privileged, therefore it's not even worth discussing.

The funny part is when the people who say "white privilege isn't real" will bend over backwards into a loop to come up with theories of why it can't be real, but can't be bothered to explore a single reason why it could be real - "that's just silly, and not even worth exploring", say the people that insist on embracing new ideas, but only seem to embrace new ideas that support them, and never ones that dissent. Such open minded! But only to stuff that agrees. Funny that.

Privilege isn't a things that you have or don't, and if you don't life sucks. You can have a bad life, and still have privilege. You can have privilege in very specific ways.

All of us here are on the internet. We have that PRIVILEGE. The fact that you worked for the money to pay for the service and buy the equipment is irrelevant - you still have something that others don't. And given that some people don't even have internet access available to them where they live, compared to them, you have the PRIVILEGE of immediate access to even buy it in the first place.

Some people have to go to the library to use the computer. Compared to them, others with internet and a computer at home have the PRIVILEGE of being able to access the internet from home whenever they want. So how do you get to the library? Drive? Well, you have the PRIVILEGE of access to a car, and the ability to drive. Not all of us here can or do drive. Many rely on busses or taxis, IF they have access to the PRIVILEGE of money to pay for them.

Many if not most of us have autism on this site. Some are lower functioning, and don't have the PRIVILEGE of the benefits that a higher functioning individual might have, but at the same time may gain access to the PRIVILEGE of public support systems - inversely higher functioning individuals might have the PRIVILEGE of things like greater social or occupational success, but are also denied a lot of assistance as a result.

Privilege doesn't magically make your life great. Being white doesn't get you a mansion and a career just for walking thru the door. But it DOES make you LESS LIKELY to get shot just for having walked through the door. White guys with visible weapons get talked down unharmed, but black guys that *might* have a gun get shot 20 times in the back. Two white guys dressed in full tactical garb with visible open carried weapons walk into a police station, get yelled at, talked down, guns not even drawn. Yet, officer accidentally walks into some else's house, sees black man sitting and watching TV (in what was HIS OWN HOUSE), gets shot and killed.

If a mass shooting or bombing is committed by anyone who isn't white, they're labeled a "terrorist" without a pause. But when they ARE white, they're a "disturbed individual". Joking about minorities being lazy or stupid or dirty or violent or criminal is "just comedy", but making a joke about white people any more deep-cut than "boy, white people sure like mayonnaise and tom jones, and what's with them and avocado!", you've gone too far. Saying things like "black people are lazy violent thugs and mexicans are rapists selling drugs" is just "freedom of speech" and "voicing an opinion" - and the justification is little more than the fact that they can point to individuals who do fit that stereotype - but saying "some white people can be such lazy racists" is somehow "different", and doesn't get the same considerations as the other statements - and pointing to actual examples of white people being lazy racists doesn't incriminate white people the same way as pointing at minority individuals who fit the stereotypes they engaged in.

It's almost as if it's ok to criticize other races, but not white people. Cos "racism isn't real, but reverse racism is! Because white people aren't racist, but everyone else is!" - which is baloney, cos what makes white people so special that they're immune to expressing racism, but nobody else is. And that mindset, of itself, IS white privilege. The fact that "white people aren't racist, but everyone else is", is a common belief, despite not being true, IS white privilege. The system as a whole inherently grants more credibility to white people in general - in america - not with absolute certainty, but at least much more often than not.

Jordan Peterson has so much privilege, the idea of him denying any type of privilege is hilarious. The more privilege you have, the harder it is to recognize it. The less privilege you have, the easier it is to see it, but only in other people. Recognizing one's own privilege, cos its one's own life, and is taken for granted to be "normal", is typically fairly difficult.

Yes all I am talking about is stratification and the reasons for it. JP does misrepresent a concept his own discipline accepts but he doesn't.