Privilege and right are defined and supported by laws, rules, customs, conventions and individual strength. Laws and rules are the instruments used by government to determine the social structure, the right to sell or gift property supports the privilege of the propertied class. Customs and convention are social determinants of structure, the privilege based on caste, religion or economic class. Individual capacity and personality strength also define social privilege the rights accruing to the strongest, wisest most skillful or most courageous individual.
Privilege is a good first step to start thinking about our nation’s structural inequalities — if one can’t understand one’s own privileges, how can one combat structural problems such as poverty, racism and sexism? Even though these problems manifest themselves through institutions and laws, they are deeply personal and require acute awareness to be fixed. Although I may cringe at the conservative ideal of “taking personal responsibility” for righting the wrongs of structural inequality, I believe that a deep conversation must take place with one’s self in order to deal with the problems of privilege.
The "Black Girl Dangerous" blog in my opinion just reading it is Reverse Racism. I don't care if you are white, purple, black, green, yellow or any colored person talking about a race is racism. It works both ways. It makes me so mad that people with color get so mad when a white person talks about a person with color. And its okay for a colored person to talk about a white person. NO!! NO its not okay! More often than not, reverse racism is in the form of giving special benefits or opportunities to people who belong to a group which has been under privaleged in the past. In effect, you are essentially committing a racist act by giving preference to one person over another because of their race, religion, or ethnicity, rather than their personal merit, skills, or knowledge. In my opinion if people everyone wants to be treated the same then they should act like it. People with color shouldn't be pulling the "oh you racist card." Its not okay!! Being racist works both ways.
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Hi Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteI first wanted to commend you on taking a stance different than we discuss in class. I understand (and remember!) that it can be intimidating to disagree with the teacher, so I greatly appreciate you doing that in this post. Reading your response, it seems to me that one of the reasons for the disagreement is that we are using different concepts of racism to frame our responses. I agree with you that people of color can say discriminatory and hurtful things to each other and to white people and this is problematic. However, it seems that our disagreement comes from the place that I, and the authors of this week, understand racism as involving both a structural and personal component. Tim Wise provides a good example: During Jim Crow in the Southern United States, racial epithets towards people of African descent (and Latinos) was coupled with the real threat of state-sanctioned lynchings and violence. In this way, white people had the ability to pair their epithets with condoned violence, as people of color have never had the option to be violent towards white people without reprimand. That being said, there a lot of people (including my thesis advisor!) who would disagree with me, so the point is not to convince you of this, but rather to ensure that you understand one of the many theories regarding racism in the field of Ethnic Studies. We will be engaging more with these issues this upcoming week, and I look forward to hearing your responses to the reading. --eas
also: I know this extra reading but if you are interested, here is the link to Tim Wise's piece: http://www.timwise.org/2002/06/honky-wanna-cracker-examining-the-myth-of-reverse-racism/
ReplyDeleteand, as stated in the assignment, the blog postings need to be at least 400 words so while you don't get credit for this one, I still enjoyed reading it.