Racist Paul Congemi being racist. Told black people that President Barack Obama was their reparations AND to go back to Africa. Thank Putin puppet Illegitimate President Trump for this.
In 2010, white males outnumbered black males in the U.S. about 6 to 1, but per 100,000 people in each racial group, 2207 African Americans to 380 whites (nearly an inverse proportion of 6 to 1) constitute the prison population.
The incarceration rate of black men is more than six times higher than that of white men, slightly larger than the gap in 1960.
If incarceration was a function of class and not race, the prison population would be about 2 whites to 1 black person.
Black children make up 44 percent of youth prison inmates in the US.
In 1972, fewer than 350,000 people were being held in prisons and jails nationwide, compared with more than 2 million people today.
The US incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. The US has about 5% of the world’s population but about 25% of the world’s prisoners.
In Madison, WI, black adults are 8-11 times more likely to be arrested than white adults.
Black men receive prison sentences 19.5 percent longer than those of white men who commit similar crimes and have similar records.
In New York City, more black defendants are put in jail while awaiting trial than white defendants, even after controlling for seriousness of the charges and prior record.
Also in NYC, black defendants are 13 percent more likely to be offered plea deals including jail time than white defendants, after controlling for many factors.
Black people in North Carolina are 2.48 times more likely to be excluded from juries than white people, after controlling for factors like employment status, reservations about the death penalty, and knowing a trial participant.
One study found that an all-white jury was 16% more likely to convict a black defendant than a white one for similar crimes, but when a jury had one black member, it convicted both at the same rate.
All else equal, black arrestees are much more likely to initially face a charge carrying a mandatory minimum (7.5% white vs. 12.4% black) and to be convicted of such charges (4.5% white vs. 7.5% percent black).
Black defendants face significantly more severe federal charges than whites even after controlling for criminal behavior (arrest offense, multiple-defendant case structure, and criminal history), observed defendant characteristics (e.g., age, education), defense counsel type, district, county economic characteristics, and crime rates.
Unexplained racial disparities exist all across the charge-severity distribution, but especially at the high end. The most striking disparities are found in the use of charges that carry non-zero statutory minimum sentences.
White judges’ implicit racial bias influences their decisions in determining both whether to convict defendants and the sentence to impose in each case.
A recent study suggested that white people presented with the fact that far more black people are imprisoned than white people are more likely to support harsh criminal justice policies than if they were unaware.
Non-white juvenile offenders receive harsher sentences than their white peers for similar crimes.
In a 2001 analysis of 77,236 federal cases from 1991 to 1994, even when cases were controlled for the severity of the offense, the defendant’s prior criminal history, and the specific district court’s sentencing tendencies, black people received sentences 5.5 months longer than whites.
In New York prisons, Black inmates are 30 percent more likely to be disciplined than white inmates, even after accounting for imprisonment due to violent offenses and for age. They are also sent to solitary confinement 65 percent more frequently and for longer durations than whites.
The disparities in discipline are greatest for infractions that give discretion to officers, like disobeying an order, and smallest for infractions that require physical evidence.
An extensive 1998 study of Philadelphia death penalty cases found that black defendants were 38% more likely to be sentenced to death, even when the researches controlled for the severity of the homicide.
In 2012, more than 70% of public defender offices reported that obtaining adequate funding for their attorneys was extremely or very challenging. The poverty rate is roughly 25% for black Americans and 9% for white Americans. This means black defendants are often more likely than white defendants to rely on overworked, underpaid public defenders, increasing their chances of being convicted.
In 2004, the American Bar Association reviewed the public defender system, stating: “All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring…The fundamental right to a lawyer that America assumes applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the US.”
Black people constitute half of murder victims, but only 13% of persons executed since 1976 were convicted of killing black victims.
Since 1976, the United States has executed thirteen times more black defendants with white victims than white defendants with black victims.
White-on-black homicides in states with Stand Your Ground laws are 354% more likely to be ruled justifiable than white-on-white ones.
In New York, an average of 10-11% of stop-and-frisk searches are done on white people, while 53-56% are done on black people. Nearly nine in ten stopped-and-frisked people are innocent.
Blacks people were frisked 50% of the time, compared to 34% of the time for whites.
24% of black people had force used against them by the NYPD, compared to only 17% of whites.
Only 2.6% of all stops (1.6 million stops over 3.5 years) resulted in the discovery of contraband or a weapon. Whites were slightly more likely to be found with contraband or a weapon.
The stop rate for black people was 3,400 stops per 10,000 residents higher than the white stop rate in LA from 2003-2004.
Black people were 127% more likely to get frisked and 76% more likely to get searched than whites.
Frisked black people were 42% less likely to be found with a weapon than frisked whites.
Consensual searches of black people were 37 percent less likely to uncover weapons, 23.7 percent less likely to uncover drugs, and 25.4 percent less likely to uncover any other type of contraband, than consensual searches of whites.
State highway patrol in Arizona was 2.5x more likely to search a stopped black person than a white person. Whites who were searched were more likely than equally likely as all other racial groups to be transporting drugs, guns, or other contraband.
In West Virginia, black drivers were 1.64x more likely to be stopped than white drivers. Black drivers were also searched more frequently, but police obtained a significantly higher contraband hit rate for white drivers than minorities.
In Illinois, the number of consent searches of black people after stops was more than double that of whites. Officers were twice as likely to find contraband with white drivers as a result of these searches.
Studies in Minnesota and Texas have yielded the same results. Black people are stopped more often, white people are more likely to have contraband.
When researchers asked police officers directly, “Who looks criminal?”, they chose more black faces than white faces. The more stereotypically black a face appeared, the more likely officers were to report that the face looked criminal.
Black boys as young as 10 years old are viewed as older and less “innocent” than white boys the same age.
When participants in this study were told that the boys, both black and white, were suspected of crimes, the disparity in perceptions of age and innocence became more stark.
Black drivers nationwide are twice as likely to experience the use or threat of violent force at the hands of police officers than white drivers.
In one New Jersey lawsuit, black drivers were demonstrated to be both stopped and searched at starkly higher rates than white drivers, even though they violated traffic laws at almost identical rates.
Efforts by the state of New Jersey to suppress evidence obtained through race-based stops led to revelations that New Jersey State Police falsified information to hide pervasive racial profiling and the admission by the State that police engaged in profiling. Two state police supervisors said it was common practice for troopers on the turnpike to jot down the license plate number of white motorists who were not stopped and use them on the reports of blacks who were pulled over.
A subsequent study found that even after the revelations and lawsuit, black drivers were still more than twice as likely to be searched by police in New Jersey than white drivers.
In Volusia County, Florida, only five percent of drivers on the roads are racial minorities, but minorities constitute more than eighty percent of the people searched by police. Officers also detained black drivers for twice as long as they did white drivers.
The United States is one of few advanced nations where schools serving better-off children usually have more educational resources than those serving poor students.
The vast majority of O.E.C.D. countries either invest equally into every student or disproportionately more into disadvantaged students. The U.S. is one of the few countries doing the opposite.
Among the 34 O.E.C.D. nations, only in the United States, Israel and Turkey do disadvantaged schools have lower teacher/student ratios than in those serving more privileged students.
A 10 percent increase in the share of nonwhite students in a school is associated with a $75 decrease in per student spending.
Schools with 90 percent or more students of color spend a full $733 less per student per year than schools with 90 percent or more white students.
38 percent of black students attend schools with 90 percent or more students of color.
Counties in America that had a higher proportion of slaves in 1860 still suffer from higher rates of educational inequality today.
Only 57% of black students attend schools offering advanced math and science courses, compared to 71% of white students.
The average black student attends a school at the 37th percentile for test score results, whereas the average white student attends a school in the 60th percentile.
A national study finds that black students are about half as likely as white students to be put on a “gifted” track—even when they have comparable test scores.
Black students represent 18% of preschool enrollment but 42% of students suspended once and 48% of the students suspended more than once.
Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students.
Black students represent 16% of student enrollment, but they represent 27% of students referred to law enforcement and 31% of students subjected to a school-related arrest.
Black students represent 19% of students with disabilities served by IDEA, but 36% of these students who are restrained at school through the use of a mechanical device or equipment designed to restrict their freedom of movement.
Boys with imprisoned fathers are much less likely to possess the behavioral skills needed to succeed in school by the age of five.
Only 5.5% of undergrad students receive private scholarships. Of the private scholarships available, less than 5% of scholarship programs and less than 10% of the total number of individual scholarships take race into consideration.
White students are 40% more likely to receive scholarships than minority students.
Only 3.5% of students of color receive scholarships even partially based on race.
Ivy League and other top schools typically admit legacy students, who are overwhelmingly white, at two to five times their overall admission rates.
Emails sent to faculty members at universities, asking to talk about research opportunities, were more likely to get a reply if a stereotypically white name was used.
Black college students are more likely to graduate with more than $25,000 of student debt than white students.
White people who get the same college degrees as black people still earn more than black people with those degrees, accounting for 5% of the wealth gap.
A recent study found the unemployment rate for black college graduates was 12.4%, while the overall unemployment rate for college grads was 5.6%.
Between 1980 and 2000, the US black drug arrest rate rose from 6.5 to 29.1 per 1,000 persons; during the same period, the white drug arrest rate increased from 3.5 to 4.6 per 1,000 persons. A survey of drug usage among secondary school students in the United States from 1975-2011 found that white students were slightly more likely to report having abused an illegal substance within the past month than black students.
Yet from 1980- 2010, black youth were arrested for drug crimes at rates more than double those of white youth.
Black people are still 3.6 times as likely as whites to be arrested for drug possession.
One study in Seattle found black people constituted 15.6% of observed drug dealers for the five most dangerous drugs but 64% of drug dealing arrests for those drugs. (More about the methodology: [x])
Black drug offenders have a 20% greater chance of being sentenced to prison than white drug offenders.
Between 1994 and 2003, the average time served by African Americans for a drug offense increased by 77%, compared to an increase of 28% for white drug offenders.
Drug sentences for black men were 13.1 percent longer than drug sentences for white men between 2007 and 2009.
Black people use crack more than white people, and white people use cocaine more than black people.
Crack and cocaine are pharmacologically identical drugs, only varying in the immediacy, duration, and magnitude of the cocaine’s effect.
However, you must possess 18 times more cocaine than crack to get a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.
In 2003, black people served as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites did for a violent offense (61.7 months).
One study in 1990 found that black and white people had similar rates of drug use during pregnancy, but black people were 10 times more likely to be reported to child health authorities than white people for drug use during pregnancy.
Another study in 1996 found that black people were far more likely to be discharged to non-maternal care for cocaine use during pregnancy than white people.
From 1999-2005, black people were 36% of those arrested for drug offenses and 46% of those convicted for drug offenses.
As of 2011, drug crimes comprised 14 percent of all arrests and a miscellaneous category that includes “drug paraphernalia” possession comprised an additional 31 percent of all arrests.
In 2013, 82% of drug crime arrests were for drug possession.
Almost half of those in prison are there for drug offenses.
Arrests of black people since 1980 have fallen for violent and property crimes, but soared for drug related crimes.
Arrests for marijuana possession have more than tripled since 1991.
SWAT raids are much more common in black neighborhoods than white neighborhoods.
62 percent of SWAT raids are used for drug searches, and drug-related SWAT deployments primarily impact people of color.
An aide of President Nixon recently came out and said that the “war on drugs” was specifically designed to target black people.
The average black household earning more than $100,000 per year lives in a neighborhood with higher levels of disadvantage than the average white household earning less than $30,000 per year.
Residential segregation artificially lowers demand, placing a forced ceiling on home equity for black people who own homes in non-white neighborhoods.
Black people at every income level live in poorer neighborhoods than do whites with comparable incomes.
A 2007 study found that it is the presence of black people, not just neighborhood conditions often associated with black neighborhoods (e.g., bad schools, high crime), that accounts for white aversion to such areas.
In one survey, whites reported that they would be unlikely to purchase a home that met their requirements in terms of price, number of rooms, and other housing characteristics in a neighborhood with good schools and low crime rates if there was a substantial representation of black people.
In the 1920s–1948, restrictive covenants barred black people from purchasing homes all over the country. By 1940, 80% of property in Chicago and Los Angeles carried restrictive covenants barring black families.
In 1937, a leading magazine of nationwide circulation awarded 10 communities a “shield of honor” for an umbrella of restrictions against the “wrong kind of people.”
Black homebuyers in the 1950s-1960s were subject to a predatory practice known as “contract buying.” In a contract sale, the seller kept the deed until the contract was paid in full—and, unlike with a normal mortgage, black homeowners would acquire no equity in the meantime. If they missed a single payment, they would immediately forfeit their down payment, all their monthly payments, and the property itself, preventing black people from generating wealth through home ownership for much of the 20th century.
The Federal Housing Administration explicitly refused to back loans to black people or even other people who lived near black people in a practice called “redlining.” The FHA and other initiatives greatly expanded home ownership and the middle class but deliberately excluded black people.
Now, only 44 percent of black families own a home compared with 73 percent for white households.
Neighborhoods that black people were forced to buy homes in are still usually the poorest, with the highest levels of exposure to air pollution and environmental toxins.
Chronic asthma is twice as common among black children as the rest of the population.
So are childhood obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes.
Lead poisoning is more than twice as common among black children than it is among white children.
Number of years of home ownership explains 27% of the wealth gap between black people and whites.
Inheritance of family money accounts for another 5% of the wealth gap.
Because whites are far more able to give inheritances or family assistance for down payments due to historical wealth accumulation, white families buy homes and start acquiring equity an average eight years earlier than black families.
Because whites are far more able to give family financial assistance, larger up-front payments by white homeowners lower interest rates and lending costs.
Whites are five times more likely to inherit money than black people (36 percent to 7 percent, respectively).
In Toronto, emails with black-sounding names sent seeking apartments are less likely to get responses from landlords than emails with white-sounding names. (Draft with no paywall)
One study found black people report more difficulties during a housing search and are much more likely to feel they were taken advantage of.
In US experiments, home sellers told black people about 17 percent fewer available homes than white people, and black people were shown 18 percent fewer homes than whites.
Black people were also asked more questions about their finances and given fewer offers of help financing a loan.
Black renters also learned about 11 percent fewer rental units than whites.
Even when homeowners had similar incomes, black-owned homes were valued at 18% less than white-owned homes.
In Atlanta in the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by investigative-reporter Bill Dedman showed that banks would often lend well to lower-income whites but not to middle- or upper-income blacks.
Current mortgage denial rates from government-sponsored servicers are higher for black applicants with bad credit than for white applicants with bad credit.
In the years before the financial crisis, black people were much more likely to be targeted for subprime loans than white people, even after accounting for income and credit scores.
For many types of loans, black borrowers were more than 30 percent more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than white borrowers, even after accounting for differences in risk.
HUD data from 1998 also showed that predominantly black neighborhoods at every income level had a much greater share of subprime refinance mortgages than predominantly white neighborhoods.
Big banks sold black people subprime loans even when they qualified as high-income borrowers. 32.1 percent of high-income borrowers of high-interest loans were black, compared to 10.5 percent for whites. [x]
Many banks have been accused of neglecting foreclosed homes in black neighborhoods while maintaining foreclosed homes in white neighborhoods, depressing the value of the homes in the black neighborhoods.
In one study, 5,000 identical resumes sent to employers with openings. Some resumes had white-sounding names such as “Brendan,” and others with black-sounding names such as “Jamal.” Resumes with white-sounding names were 50% more likely to get calls for interviews than those with black-sounding names. “Based on our estimates,” the researchers wrote, “a white name yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience.”
Furthermore, the researchers found that the high-quality black résumés drew no more calls than the average black résumés, which was not true for white resumes.
Another study found that for low-wage jobs, white applicants with a felony conviction were 5% more likely to get a callback than black applicants with similar qualifications and no criminal record.
Black men make less money per dollar than white women. Black men make an average of 75 cents on the dollar that white men make. Black women make an average of 64 cents on the dollar a white man makes.
The wages of black ex-convicts grow at a 21% slower rate than those of white ex-convicts. (More info here: [x])
Drug testing increases black employment by 7-30% and relative wages by 1.4-13%, indicating that many black job seekers are turned down by the assumption that they use drugs.
White male college professors do the least service and mentoring, yet get promoted fastest.
Employers frequently favor having a “shared culture” with an employee over absolute productivity.
There have been only 15 black CEOs in the history of the Fortune 500, of whom five are current in the role.
News coverage of missing black women is more likely to focus on the victim’s baggage, such as abusive boyfriends or a troubled past, while coverage of missing white women tends to focus on their roles as mothers or daughters.
Black children comprise 33.2% of missing children cases, but only 19.5% of cases reported in the media.
One study found that people who regularly watch network news increased participants’ endorsement of stereotypes that black people are poor and intimidating. Only 9% of particpants said Fox News was their preferred network.
Other studies found black people are overrepresented as perpetrators and underrepresented as victims on TV news coverage compared to recorded crime stats.
Compared to the percentage of crimes they actually commit, black people are grossly overrepresented on local news broadcasts about criminal activity of every type.
In 2007, black, Latinx, Asian, and Native American people together made up only 13.52% of American newsrooms.
People of color only made up 5.5% of executive producers on TV shows during the 2013-2014 season.
A lot of people believe that the occupational roles and negative personality characteristics that black characters frequently display on TV are true to real life.
Only 12 of the top 100 grossing films of 2015 had a protagonist of color.
The gap between black and white voter turnout is 7.4 points higher in states with the strictest voter ID requirements, all else equal.
The rate of voter fraud is infinitesimal. Out of 2,068 alleged voter ID fraud cases, only 10 legitimate cases of voter impersonation, or 1 fraud per 15 million votes, have been discovered.
7.7% of all black people are disenfranchised from voting due to a felony conviction, versus 2.5% of all Americans.
In 2015, Alabama passed a new voter ID law, then closed DMVs in black counties, essentially reinstating the poll tax.
White legislators were found to be less likely to respond to constituents with black-sounding names. This was true of legislators in both political parties.
There are only 43 black representatives currently serving in the House of Representatives.
There are 2 black Senators currently serving, and there have only been 9 black Senators in the history of the United States.
There have only ever been 4 black state governors (not including US Virgin Islands).
Black people are less than 13% of the U.S. population, and yet they are 31% of all fatal police shooting victims.
39 percent of people arrested by police and not attacking when killed were black.
Half of all people killed by police are not counted in FBI statistics. Since the data is entirely based upon police officers’ non-compulsory self-reporting, the bias in these data must be assumed to favor police.
There was a 45 percent increase in killings by police between 1999 - 2013. Black men between ages 15-44 were three to five times more likely to be killed than their white counterparts.
18% of black people killed by police were under the age of 21, as opposed to just 8.7% of white people.
Police officers are hardly ever indicted for killing black people (or for anything else, for that matter).
In the UK, more than 500 of the 1,500 people who have died in police custody since 1990 are people of color, despite only making up 14% of the population.
Review of 15,000 protests between 1960-1990 found protests involving black people are more likely to attract police attention and the use of police force to disperse them.
SWAT teams are much more likely to be deployed against black suspects than white ones.
74 percent of black adults have health insurance versus 85 percent of white adults.
Multiple studies have shown that doctors are less likely to prescribe opioid painkillers to black people than whites, even young children, for the same ailments.
Even when they do get a prescription, black people in low-income neighborhoods can struggle to find a pharmacy that has the opioids on hand to fill it.
A study found that black children who are treated for acute appendicitis are less likely to receive painkillers than white children.
The average black American male lives five fewer years than the average white American male.
Black people in New York are eight times more likely to die in childbirth than white people.
Black people are more than three times more likely to die in childbirth nationwide than white people.
58 percent of white people from the general population believe black people have thicker skin than whites. 40 percent of first-year medical students also agreed, as well as 42 percent of second-year students, 22 percent of third-years, and 25 percent of residents.
When told that black people have less sensitive nerve endings than whites, 20 percent of white laypeople agreed, as did 8 percent of first-year med students, 14 percent of second-years, no third-years and 4 percent of residents.
When doctors were shown patient histories and asked to make judgments about heart disease, they were much less likely to recommend cardiac catheterization (a helpful procedure) to black patients—even when their medical files were statistically identical to those of white patients.
One study found white people have a significantly muted physiological reaction to seeing black people in pain compared to seeing white people in pain.
In another study, people, including medical personnel, rated how much pain they would feel in 18 common scenarios. They then rated how another randomly displayed person, sometimes white, sometimes black, would feel in the same situations. The researchers found that white participants, black participants, and nurses and nursing students assumed that black people felt less pain than whites.
About 40 percent of white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race, compared to 25 percent of nonwhite Americans.
There are 35 Neo-Confederate groups and 190 KKK groups still active in the US today. There are 892 total active hate groups, most of which are white supremacist or white nationalist.
Racially-motivated hate crimes are by far the most common hate crime. 48.3 percent of hate crimes are racially motivated, 62.7 percent of which are motivated specifically by anti-blackness.
Black players make up 65 percent of players in the NFL but get hit with 92 percent of unsportsmanlike penalties for “celebrating” after a touchdown.
In baseball, umpires are 10 percent less likely to expand the strike zone for black pitchers than for white pitchers.
iPods for sale online that show the iPod held by a black hand receive 13% fewer responses and 17% fewer offers than an iPod held by a white hand.
Conditional on receiving at least one offer, black sellers also receive 2–4% lower offers, and buyers corresponding with black sellers exhibit lower trust: They are 17% less likely to include their name in e-mails, 44% less likely to accept delivery by mail, and 56% more likely to express concern about making a long-distance payment.
When white and black people were sent to bargain for a used car, black people were offered initial prices roughly $700 higher, and they received far smaller concessions.
In one study, the first taxi stops for white travelers almost 60% of the time, but for black travelers less than 20% of the time. And while white travelers never had more than 4 taxis pass them, black travelers had 6 or 7 taxis pass them 20% of the time.
Black passengers using Uber have to wait an average of 30% longer for riders than white passengers. People with Black-sounding names are two times more likely to have their trip canceled than people with white-sounding names.
People with Black-sounding names are 16% less likely to be accepted by AirBnB hosts than people with white-sounding names.
Throughout the current election cycle, it has been striking to note the ways that privilege discourse has been deployed to demand loyalty to particular parties and candidates. “Either vote Clinton,” one widely-circulated tweet demands, “or admit you’re a privileged asshole.” Bernie Sanders refused to concede to Hillary Clinton because of privilege. Third party voters are privileged. “Ultraleftists” are privileged. Privilege has thus become central to a heavily moralizing language of civic responsibility which demands that the US electorate maintain a neoliberal bulwark against the far right for the putative good of the less fortunate. This use of the concept marks an appropriation, one which transforms privilege discourse fundamentally, from an analysis of white supremacy’s capillary and quotidian power into an individuating and deeply ideological mechanism of state discipline.
I always see so many social-justice type things that are like, reassuring people in the oppressor group that no, we’re not trying to take anything away from you! Your life will be pretty much the same but better if we achieve our goals!
Which, in a sense I guess that’s true, because a fairer world is better for us all – but honestly, yes, we are trying to take things away from you, and achieving our goals will mean your life is different. Because people in oppressor groups have not been pulling your/our own weight this entire time.
Men, abled people, cis people, white people, straight people, rich people, non-intersex people, etc., all benefit from oppression. As in, there are things we/you have that we/you literally only recieve as a direct result of oppression, and in a world without that oppression, we/you will not receive those benefits!
Privileged people will have to give up being centred more, trusted more and deemed more competent than anyone else; having emotional work performed for us/you quietly and without recipricocity; having our/your interests prioritized over everyone else’s; being treated as the default from which everyone else is a variation; and a million more unfair advantages.
Ending oppression will require people in oppressor groups to actively give up all kinds of benefits that stem directly from oppression. There will often be things that oppressors didn’t even notice was a benefit of oppression that will now have to be relinquished. It’s difficult work, and it absolutely will affect your life. But it’s necessary and important work.
If you’re only interested in ending oppression with the caveat that it not affect your life whatsoever and you’ll never be inconvenienced by people gaining back rights they should always have had – you’re not interested in ending oppression, and you should make an effort to cultivate that interest.
The piece originally published in a Conservative college paper The Princeton Tory went viral thanks to websites like the Conservative Upworthy clone Independent Journal Review and the right wing college rag The College Fix.
Ironically, the piece complaining about white privilege is pure white privilege in itself.
But, I think I’m being too nice. More accurately, the piece is utter bullshit. And to get why, let’s go through a few portions of the piece itself:
There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year.
It’s important to note here that the term “check your privilege” is often directed at a white male when they are saying something extremely, 100%, unequivocally RACIST.
The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung.
The nerve of this privileged boy to compare being told you are privileged to being killed by a drone strike is astounding. It is the very essence of white privilege to believe being told “check your privilege” is the same struggle that a Yemeni family who are blown off the face of the earth by a drone experience.
“Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.
Young, sophomoric Tal has it all wrong. White males, young and old, usually Conservative in political ideology love to play the victim. They love to be feel victimized so they can self-felate with the belief that they picked themselves up by their boot straps and got to wherever they are in life against all odds. Nobody wants a stupid apology. No one is even looking for you to feel a pinch of white guilt. White privilege is not your *fault*, the lack of awareness to your privilege *is*.
“Checking your privilege” is simply the understanding that others go through struggles that you, as a white person, can and will never experience. You don’t even have to DO anything to have white privilege. For example, it can be as simple as understanding that you will likely never be followed for something as innocent as walking down the street. The very act of you NOT being followed is thanks to your “white privilege.” For a young conservative like Tal, It is remembering that very true, undeniable reality the next time you decide to spout out a conservative talking point about “thugs,” “inner city males,” and “race hustlers.”
…I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.
Oh, good. Finally, after all this complaining, we’re going to be presented with the argument. Let’s hear Princeton boy out and learn of his own personal struggles…
I actually went and checked the origins of my privileged existence, to empathize with those whose underdog stories I can’t possibly comprehend…
Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland…
Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures…
Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other…
Perhaps it was my privilege that my own father worked hard enough in City College to earn a spot at a top graduate school, got a good job…
That’s the problem with calling someone out for the “privilege” which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are.
My god, the PRIVILEGE. Tal’s arguments are that his GRANDPARENTS struggled. Tal, in his own words, said he was going to lay out “everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life” and proceeds to present the struggles of his parents and their parents. UNBELIEVABLE.
…Assuming they’ve benefitted (sic) from “power systems” or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive. You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom.
“Black people need to get over slavery, it was so long ago and I had nothing to do with it. Also, don’t forget to thank my war veteran grandpappy who fought for your freedoms all those decades ago” - White Privilege
It has been my distinct privilege that my grandparents came to America. First, that there was a place at all that would take them from the ruins of Europe. And second, that such a place was one where they could legally enter, learn the language, and acclimate to a society that ultimately allowed them to flourish.
It was their privilege to come to a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.
We’re reaching levels of absurdity here that I did not even realize were reachable. Yes, what Tal’s grandfather, grandmother, and father went through to get to where they are is truly great, inspiring, admirable. I mean, his grandparents escaped the holocaust for god’s sake.
But they too experienced white privilege. Tal’s grandparents legally entered the country and acclimated to a society that, KEYWORDS, allowed them to flourish *BECAUSE* of white privilege. They were granted equal protection under the law *BECAUSE* of white privilege. While Tal’s grandparents entered the country legally from Europe, acclimated to a society that allowed them flourish, and were granted equal protection under the law, Japanese grandparents were being rounded up and put in internment camps. Black grandparents were being lynched, were banned from going to the same schools, receive the same education, drink out of the same fountains, patronize the same restaurants as whites.
Tal’s piece rambles on even further, at one point even attempting the old maybe you’re the racist for pointing out my whiteness, but he never addresses whatever work he claims to have accomplished that has absolutely nothing to do with him being a white male who attends Princeton.
Tal does, however, leave us with an internet presence full of privilege that can certainly be checked.
White Privilege.
More white privilege (with a nice side of racism.)
White privilege and overall shittiness.
Classism and welfare-shaming that can only come from one with immense white privilege.
The ultimate call of oppression from the white and privileged! “Why can’t *I* say the N-Word too?!”
And being that Tal brings up racism, he at least notes in his discussion with the NY Times that his article probably makes him a hero to white supremacists on his campus. That’s right, this crap made it to the NY Times(andTIMEtoo!)
Now, at least Tal is aware that his piece may be a hit with racists. He is wrong about the college campus thing though, because his piece has gone much further. And that’s what makes it so dangerous.
But Tal clarifies to the NY Times that “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” His tweets above and below do beg to differ.
“Settling the West Bank.”
Nothing says “no white privilege here” like calling for the genocide of an indigenous people for their land.
What Tal Fortgang thinks is unimportant. What is important is that his ideas via his piece are spreading and idiots and neanderthals and racists are affirming their already horrendous opinions.
When I first found out about this piece, it was via the Independent Journal Review, the conservative answer to Upworthy, the site that the right wingers in your life often share on Facebook. I posted a single tweet linking back to the Independent Journal Review’s copy of Tal’s white privilege piece. The site’s editor replied to me.
These are the people who refuse to “check their privilege.” They are terrible. They are often racist. They are white and privileged.
If you had a friend or family member share the “Checking My Privilege” article on Facebook and you enjoyed my post, be sure to post it on Facebook in response.
Note: This is based on the information I learned in high school based on my textbooks (which were written by white people), my teachers (who were white), and comments made by my classmate (who were mostly white).
1. First there were cavemen. They were white. 2. Europe was awesome! They had so much art and stuff! But for some reason they traded with Asian people?? But the only thing that Asian people had to offer was silk. 3. Knights! Knights are awesome!! All the knights are white people!! 4. The Black Plague killed white people. :( 5. We decided to go to North America, woohoo! Europeans were the first people there. They rightfully owned the land. But for some reason these savages thought they owned the land. We killed them all because they were on our land. For some reason a few of them still survived but we made them go away to reserves because we don’t want to deal with them. 6. We decided to bring over black people from Africa. Before slavery, all black people were savages who didn’t know how to speak civilized languages like English. Every day of their lives was like “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. (You think I’m joking, but we actually watched that movie to “give us an idea” of what “uncivilized Africa” would have been like.) 7. White people rule the world. People of colour did not exist before white people. White people rescued them because they were savage animals and then we made them better. 8. 9/11. Arab people exist??? This is news to us, but they are all evil terrorists so we must make them not exist.
White people always say that black people are being “racist” when they’re actually just upset that a white person intentionally entered and disrupted black people’s safe spaces.
The photo from the meeting, published by the French news agency Agence France-Presse went viral on Twitter Monday night. Why? Well, it showed Conway checking her phone, sitting casually on a sofa with her legs tucked under her. And she apparently was still wearing her shoes.
My brother has a criminal record because he participated in a senior prank at his high school at age 16. No one was hurt, no property was damaged. He was the youngest kid there by a year, and the only one charged with a crime.He’s Romani.
In this op-ed, Teen Vogue wellness editor Brittney McNamara explains why a confrontation between the teens in MAGA hats and a Native elder is just a symptom of a larger problem.
When unarmed teen Mike Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson, he was called “no angel.”Tamir Rice was 12 years old when police shot and killed him as he played in a park; it took police only two seconds to make a judgment and pull the trigger because they thought he was carrying a gun. These two young people were essentially indicted and sentenced to death without any court involvement, not because they had committed a crime, but because police made snap decisions about who they were. Countless other boys and men of color have died this way, and rather than getting a fair trial, they are often posthumously vilified in the court of public opinion.
But when a white teenager does something bad, he seems more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.
We’re seeing this racist double standard play out in real time, thanks to Nicholas Sandmann, who has been given the chance to explain viral images and videos of him and his classmates laughing and chanting face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder, who stood beating a drum in prayer. The combination of Nicholas’s physical stance, his smirk, and the group wearing MAGA attire sent the story into a viral tailspin, and a he-said-he-said debate ensued. No matter which video you watch — the longer one, or the shorter viral clip — the teens appear to be disrespectful, at the very least, taunting and harassing at worst.
“We often want it so badly that we ruin it before it begins. Overthinking. Fantasizing. Imagining. Expecting. Worrying. Doubting. Just let it naturally evolve.”
