I think perhaps you aren't looking at this through a long enough lens.
You can tell America's history in terms of decreasing inequality of opportunity. We started with only well-off white men having the vote; black people were chattel and women were pretty close. We have sporadically worked ever since to repair that. One civil war, assorted constitutional amendments, and 8 civil rights acts so far. We try something, see if that's enough, and then try again when it isn't.
Each time people hope that we've done the last thing. The post-Civil War period, the Reconstruction, was supposed to fix things. But then we had the Lilly White Movement. And Jim Crow. And the Nadir, which involved violent ethnic cleansing across the US (mostly but not entirely anti-black).
We certainly aren't there yet. Marital rape wasn't fully outlawed in the US until 1992. Redlining wasn't illegal until the 70s, and the effects on wealth distribution persist to this day. Men and women reached parity in law and medicine degrees a decade ago, but as far as people practicing it's still 2:1. Employment discrimination, as documented by a number of studies, still persists.
So yeah, if some particular solution doesn't fix the problem, then people will definitely keep pushing. Because that's our 200-year history of fighting discrimination: it keeps not getting fixed.
That's itself a very biased telling of how things are.
The USA along with many other western nations now discriminates against men in favour of women, in many concrete and very specific ways:
- Family courts
- Rape shield laws
- In the private sector, tech sector programmes handing out money but only to women
- Laws that mandate gender ratios in certain situations, like bidding on government contracts
Society has bent over backwards to try and create equality of outcome for women, thereby simultaneously eliminating equality of opportunity for men. This is not actually progress. Progress would be equal opportunity for all.
> Society has bent over backwards to try and create equality of outcome for women, thereby simultaneously eliminating equality of opportunity for men
No, it's bent over backwards to address a pre-existing inequality of opportunity that disfavors women.
But what both sides find uncomfortable and avoid is the inconvenient fact that in a continued series of interactions over time (like life in the real world) rather than an isolated event disconnected from past and future, every opportunity is a product of outcomes at an earlier time, and every outcome effects opportunities at a later time.
Equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes are different concerns, but not at all orthogonal concerns. Any attempt to durably effect changes to inequality of opportunity will necessarily effect inequality of outcomes not only as an effect of opportunity, but as a key mechanism.
And, conversely, every attempt to safeguard existing inequality of outcome safeguards (whether it is the conscious intent or not) durable inequalities of opportunity.
Loss of privilege feels like a loss. If you have no historical perspective and are currently favored by discrimination, programs attempting to undo historical discrimination seem like they're biased against you. They aren't.
As an example, consider the common practice of scholarships that are awarded based on both merit and economic need. A rich dude could be mad that he is being discriminated against. After all, they won't even consider giving him those scholarships! What jerks people are! He worked hard, and should be eligible for everything!
He's wrong, of course. His feelings are real, but his perspective is severely limited. If you're used to things being tilted in your favor, a level playing field is going to seem unfair.
Modern men are not "privileged". This is corruption-of-blood level stuff. Men alive today unless perhaps very old have not benefited from discrimination against women and have no reason to accept being discriminated against as a result.
Trying to blame bad things done by historical figures for bad actions taken today is the result of much wrongness in the world. Please don't try to justify it.
Oh, and your analogy to the rich dude is deeply flawed. Rich people can become poor and poor can become rich; it happens all the time. Putting gender re-assignment surgery to one side, gender is generally fixed. If you get discriminated against because you're a man, you aren't going to be mollified by an argument of the form "one day you might be a woman and it may work in your favour". Whereas "one day you may be rich" or "one day you may be poor" is used as a reasonable justification for all sorts of things, like progressive taxation and a social safety net.
> Men alive today unless perhaps very old have not benefited from discrimination against women
Yes, they have, because discrimination against women is still widely practiced. It's true that the scope and extent of discrimination in law has been almost entirely eliminated (one of the last major elements to fall being the military combat exclusion policy, lifting of which was fully implemented less than two years ago; given the significance of combat assignments in military career progression and the practical impacts of military careers on both elected and certain other high-level government positions, there are a lot of men in the military and government office today that are, now, benefitting from the effects of that direct, legally-mandated discrimination.)
For real? Women were excluded from combat because they are physically weaker than men and weak soldiers tend to get each other killed. That rule had a very concrete physical, medical and military justification.
I think if that's the best example you can find, it says a lot about my point. There are dozens of ways men are discriminated against in law. As you yourself admit, discrimination against women in law has been eliminated. This is not progress!
That article doesn't list one concrete example of how being a straight white male actually made life easier for him. I can and have listed several major, specific ways in which it's the opposite.
I hate to use the T-word but this sort of non-argument you've just presented is exactly why Trump won. It's just racist, sexist self-loathing based on nothing whatsoever. If there was something, that guy would have listed a variety of specific grievances, as would every feminist article in every newspaper (of which there are huge quantity every single day).
You know what the last specific complaint in a feminist opinion piece I read was? An article a few days ago that was upset because the only female shoes in emoji are high heels.
Don't tell people white male privilege exists when you can't back it up.
It's not my job to argue you into understanding something. It is not every writer's job to prove everything to the satisfaction of somebody deeply invested in the opposite being true.
This stuff is pretty easy to look up. There are books, blogs, studies, and memoirs that I found very useful. If you actually care, you could find things, too. That's how I went from ignorant to having basic knowledge. Maybe you could try that.
No. Trump won through the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, rampant GOP gerrymandering, a terrifyingly complicit and supine media, an institutionally racist and sexist country backlashing to Obama, and an electoral system that vastly overpowers the majority white (and racist) Southern states.
The supine and complicit media came out near 100% in support of Hillary, perhaps due to her massive campaign spending.
Regardless, I think when your explanation is "the entire USA is racist and sexist" you are - again - making my point for me. I know lots of Americans and I've never seen a shred of racism or sexism in any of them. But if you constantly tell ordinary, hard working and honest people that their whole life is a fraud, that their success isn't really success, it's just "white male privilege", and you can't point out a single reason why ... guess what? They're going to get mad and start quietly voting for someone who fights back against that culture. That's what I meant and I'm sure you know it.
> The supine and complicit media came out near 100% in support of Hillary
Yes, that explains the overwhelming concentration on the email "scandal" whilst ignoring literally everything that Trump said.
> I know lots of Americans and I've never seen a shred of racism or sexism in any of them.
That's ... not how it works.
> and you can't point out a single reason why ... guess what?
But the reasons are pointed out. They just get ignored because the kind of people who refuse to believe that "white male privilege" exists aren't the kind of people who listen to rational arguments.
> Yes, that explains the overwhelming concentration on the email "scandal" whilst ignoring literally everything that Trump said.
It was not entirely undeserved though - the scandal was certainly newsworthy and had many unprecedented events. The Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch tarmac meeting was highly inappropriate, leading to the eventual decision falling to James Comey. James Comey had earlier, much to the dismay of Republicans, chosen not to pursue Bill Clinton's incredibly dubious pardon of Marc Rich. When he announced that they would not seek prosecution, his reasoning was that there was plenty of negligence but no intent - an interpretation of the statute that had not been used in previous cases for which many have been convicted.
To make matters worse, Secretary Clinton fainted on September 11 at a memorial service for 9/11 and the press was nowhere to be found when it happened. A random bystander managed to get footage of her security detail awkwardly putting her into a van. This is less than 2 months before the election. The campaign response started with "overheating" and then went to pneumonia.
Over the weeks prior to this, there was an all-out media blitzkrieg dismissing rumors of her ill health as a conspiracy theory. She herself lied straight into the camera about her health, to the extent that she went on the Jimmy Kimmel show and opened a pickle jar as a gag. This was a mere 2 weeks before she passed out. Around the same time, John Podesta's leaked emails had revealed the tremendous influence the campaign seemed to have with the press, and the media in general. One could argue that this is simply "how the sausage is made" when it comes to political campaigns, but to much of the general public, this sort of insight was unprecedented. This kind of story is severely damaging to any candidate.
When the footage of her collapsing came out, it served to validate what the right leaning media had been saying all along, plus reinforced fears of mainstream media collusion revealed in the emails were not unfounded, since the left leaning media had gone to bat for her when the health stories came out, and had no cameras present during a major development in the campaign which would have hurt her perception with the voting public. This significantly undermined the perception of integrity in the media. As damage control, the media did more negative stories in the months leading up to the election.
> They just get ignored because the kind of people who refuse to believe that "white male privilege" exists aren't the kind of people who listen to rational arguments.
There is no evidence to suggest that they are being willfully ignored, nor that people are being irrational in their refusal to believe, nor does it flow logically. This privilege certainly exists in several contexts, but to generalize across an entire demographic of people is easily defeated with a large number of counter-examples. The point that the comment you replied to was trying to make, is that people like me (i.e. who have white friends who have struggled against tremendous odds to make it to where they are in life, such as people from Kosovo who escaped a warzone, as one relevant personal example of many) do not appreciate it when the success and hard work of many of the white folks whom we know in our lives, are reduced to mere privilege, when their individual stories and struggles are often unique and heartbreaking. While there may certainly be a significant proportion of cases where "white privilege" plays a huge role, to condemn an entire demographic of people by dismissing their success to be a consequence of privilege, is an insult to their individual struggles, which in many cases, are anything but privileged. There are plenty of people who are quick to dismiss someone because of the color of their skin, than listen to their individual story.
> Wow, you really bought into the Trump campaign, huh.
Secretary Clinton fainted on 9/11 after a long and coordinated media campaign effort to suggest she was in perfect health.
The Wikileaks emails of John Podesta (I have read them individually) show clear evidence of the relationship between the campaign and the press, and that the press routinely sought vetos and approvals on stories they were going to run. I'll be happy to share links to the individual emails.
The Trump campaign has very little access to reach me - I don't get to watch their ads on TV or receive any of their messaging because I live in Mumbai. My knowledge of the details of the election is from the data I have been motivated to find on the basis of my own interest in this subject during 2016.
Me:
> This privilege certainly exists in several contexts,
You:
> You seem to be suggesting that because some white people have struggles, there must be no white privilege. Which is bollocks as you well know.
I think we should re-evaluate what I am suggesting because perhaps I have not articulated other parts of my comment properly, but I am confident in the part quoted above which is fairly explicit.
> Check any analysis of the coverage - Trump's was overwhelmingly "oh, this guy!" whilst ignoring his racism, sexism, misogyny, etc.
This is 100% true of the Republican Primary, but not true of the General Election campaign that followed thereafter. During the Republican Primary - in early 2015, Marissa Astor (Hillary for America) emailed the DNC with the following quote:
"We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to take them seriously"
The Clinton Campaign and the DNC believed the best way to strategize was to legitimize these candidates, as indicated below:
"The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more 'Pied Piper' candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party."
During the final stages general election, coverage of both candidates was overwhelmingly negative as per an analysis conducted by the Harvard Kennedy Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy.
The biggest victim of the media was Senator Bernie Sanders, who received virtually no coverage during the Primary season, which was largely the result of an orchestrated effort on the part of the DNC under Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, to favour coverage of Secretary Clinton over Senator Sanders. This is a view shared by former senate minority leader Harry Reid, as well as Senator Sanders himself. This view was further the subject of a court proceeding wherein the court dismissed the matter as the question of its legality did not arise since the DNC was entitled to name its own candidate if it wanted to.
Aside from the Harvard Kennedy research, there is ample evidence to disprove the claim that media "ignored" candidate Trump's racism, misogyny, sexism, etc. Here are a few:
- Online outlets like Vox had articles that outright declared in the first sentence "Donald Trump is a bigot".
- A CNN headline from August 2016: "We're Shocked, Donald Trump is a sexist"
- Another CNN headline from August 2016: "Paul Ryan rips Donald Trump remarks as 'textbook definition of a racist comment'". Note that this includes the speaker of the house attacking his own party candidate - at this point the media, the DNC and the speaker of the house are condemning him for racism.
- MSNBC June 2016: "Donald Trump’s overt racism takes 2016 race in a new direction"
- Fox News' Shepard Smith in August 2016: "Donald Trump ‘Trades in Racism’"
To suggest that this was downplayed in any way would also be a bit misleading, since the language here is fairly strong and explicit. There are no subtle allusions to racism, bigotry or sexism of any kind. The media is not using soft language or tip-toeing around these claims in the slightest.
Even if one were to concede that the media was ruthless in its persecution of Hillary Clinton over the private email server, it would simply even up their existing persecution of Candidate Trump as a liar, which was a regular feature of media coverage, particularly surrounding the debates. To the public, the choice would then be two liar candidates, of which one is a sexist, racist, misogynist - as per the media's coverage.
While I would have thought that these would weigh in favor of women, in my experience I have actually seen the opposite. There are many family judges and lawyers that are incredibly sexist and will screw over women in favor of men. And in fact, that is mostly what I have seen in my county.
> ...try and create equality of outcome for women, thereby simultaneously eliminating equality of opportunity for men.
I understand the emotional argument here but I don't think it's valid. Opportunity isn't zero-sum.
I wonder where you live. I have heard many reported family courts cases over the years and they have always been resolved in favour of the woman, sometimes grossly so.
For instance, I have one friend whose wife went literally mad (post-partum psychosis). Total psycho breakdown level mad when she was off her meds, which happened a lot. Fortunately the courts awarded him custody of the kids. Unfortunately they are still, years later, dragging their heels over the divorce and he his still not yet divorced. There is no reason for this beyond the fact that family law in his (western) country is designed to benefit the woman to the cost of the man, to a nearly absurd degree.
Re: opportunity. Yes, opportunity is very often zero sum. Most obviously hiring and firing at the company level are zero sum games - if a woman got the job because she's a woman, it means you didn't. Whilst the economy in general may not be zero sum over the long run, it sure is at the moment you're applying for a job. Likewise for cases like this:
where tickets to a very expensive conference were reserved only for women. Limited number of places at the conference = zero sum game and therefore, very much unequal opportunity. Note that there's a female only version of Code Jam because women couldn't compete with the men in the mixed gender version.
I wasn't talking about the competition. Success in the female only codejam led to tickets to Google I/O. It's a conference and a very popular one at that - the sort of conference where the organisers routinely give attendees free phones. Do you really think in previous years there were hundreds of seats sitting empty, hundreds of tickets that could have been sold sitting around unsold?
I can tell you what happened. Conference seats that were previously gender neutral got reserved for women, by the creation of another mechanism that was also reserved for women. Zero sum games.
Well written, thanks for that. I'm usually on the more conservative end of things but this has definitely helped me think of the issue differently, I love having my opinion changed or at least nudged in a different direction, confirms that I'm not sitting in an echo chamber all day.
What would be in your opinion a reasonable way to support the opinion of the poster you replied to? Could you steel man his position? Curious what the counter-arguments would be.
Thanks. I'm dispositionally conservative. In another era would have ended up a Rockefeller Republican; in another timeline, a libertarian. But when I honestly look at America's history in this timeline and the lived experience of a lot of people, I don't think we are yet living up to America's promise. That has made me pretty energetic in pushing against racism and sexism.
If you get interested, I'd strongly recommend "Sundown Towns", which looks at a conveniently unexamined phenomenon that a) did a lot to shape America's racial history, and b) helped me to see forces in play today. It's been a giant eye-opener for me.
Sorry, but I didn't quite follow your last paragraph. Which particular opinion of the poster were you thinking of?
You can tell America's history in terms of decreasing inequality of opportunity. We started with only well-off white men having the vote; black people were chattel and women were pretty close. We have sporadically worked ever since to repair that. One civil war, assorted constitutional amendments, and 8 civil rights acts so far. We try something, see if that's enough, and then try again when it isn't.
Each time people hope that we've done the last thing. The post-Civil War period, the Reconstruction, was supposed to fix things. But then we had the Lilly White Movement. And Jim Crow. And the Nadir, which involved violent ethnic cleansing across the US (mostly but not entirely anti-black).
We certainly aren't there yet. Marital rape wasn't fully outlawed in the US until 1992. Redlining wasn't illegal until the 70s, and the effects on wealth distribution persist to this day. Men and women reached parity in law and medicine degrees a decade ago, but as far as people practicing it's still 2:1. Employment discrimination, as documented by a number of studies, still persists.
So yeah, if some particular solution doesn't fix the problem, then people will definitely keep pushing. Because that's our 200-year history of fighting discrimination: it keeps not getting fixed.