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Forum nameGeneral Discussion
Topic subjectFor what it's worth
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12695053&mesg_id=12695448
12695448, For what it's worth
Posted by Stringer Bell, Sun Jan-11-15 12:06 PM
A few thoughts that are maybe just stating the obvious on the defensive posture of discourse on "community deficiencies" that being black seems to necessitate:

As a white man, if I think about "our issues" I'm often thinking about issues that I really don't consider specific to whites; their universality is a given to me and I may just not have experienced them among non whites due to lack of knowledge on my part, or the current social structure not allowing them to be embodied by other races. The fact for example that there is white privilege and certain behaviors accompanying it doesn't mean that demonstrations of privilege by a similar dominant class of non whites would be radically different. They might be different in surface ways to do with culture, etc. but for a dominant class to take privileges is human nature in my view.

The same is true for an underclass. The issues of the black community aren't issues that would be intrinsic to black people in absolutely any circumstances. This is obvious unless you are a racist. You transplant people with white skin into the same circumstance you have the same outcome.

However, there are certain circumstances of the black predicament that reflect the operation of bad universal human impulses, in this case within black people, which are due to black circumstance more harmful in their outcomes. Think about the universal human trait of adolescent irresponsibility. A white adolescent person experiencing the same negative moment will have a better outcome. This is among other things what it means to be privileged.

When it comes to public discourse about our mistakes, I see the defensive posture of statements like, "don't make proper corrective prescriptions to billboard" as perfectly understandable (though possibly not optimal). If a white person laments some trait of young people in general, there is nobody to exploit this info; therefore the message if accurate is entirely constructive.



This is a really tough problem to solve; it's not easy.