Things just keep getting worse.
So apparently we are at a stage in society where you can have a major conference at a publicly funded university in a major city to address the problem of white people. Yes folks, this will be an opportunity for the taxpayer supported, self-appointed arbiters of all that is moral and righteous… the ‘thought leaders’ who occupy the ‘social justice’ departments of our elite academic institutions… to tackle the scourge of racism by singling out a particular racial group and assigning blame to them for everything they don’t like about society.
What a great approach to changing things for the better! Why has no one tried it before?
If there is one thing that our moral and intellectual betters in academia absolutely excel at it’s the ability to pack a busload of self-confirming circular reasoning into catchy, two-word phrases. Terms like ‘social justice’ and ‘white privilege’ simply assume the truth of their own claim: Of course what we do is “social justice!” Of course what they do is “white privilege”! Weirdly, the specific metrics used to determine what makes something objectively ‘social justice’ and objectively ‘white privilege’ are always left pretty vague. My suspicion is that they rely on a rather simple formula: “If it is perceived to benefit anyone who thinks and/or looks like them it’s social justice. If it is perceived to benefit anyone who disagrees or doesn’t look like them it’s ‘white privilege’.
“Uncomfortable truths“ is another one of those slippery slogans that streamlines the fallacy of ‘begging the question’ to bumper-sticker efficiency. The ‘truth’ of whatever the slogan is referring to is simply proclaimed by the use of the slogan. No need to prove or demonstrate it. The slogan has already taken care of that for you.
Frankly, I don’t think it would ever occur to anyone who genuinely values “truth” or even understands what the word means to attach the adjective “uncomfortable” to it. “Uncomfortable” is a purely subjective experience arising from a negative emotional reaction. “Truth” is simply what is. Your personal preferences and emotions are irrelevant to recognizing ‘truth’. That is to say… you don’t judge ‘truth’. You merely recognize it. So I find it very revealing that ‘progressive’ social-justicey types instinctively equate ‘truth’ with subjective preference.
Personally, I only care about true truth. All of your other qualifications and categories… good truth, bad truth, red truth, blue truth…. are a reflection of the inherent narcissism of the ‘progressive’ Left as far as I’m concerned.
My interaction with Shirley, below, illustrates how for some people truth is whatever justifies the satisfaction they feel from seeing someone they resent getting screwed. With my first comment to her I confront the blatant, glaring, neon-supernova of principle-free double standards that her support, as a person of colour, for the ‘Everything That’s Wrong With White People’ conference so self-evidently represents.
I conclude by demonstrating how the premise of ‘white privilege’ is intellectually and ethically indefensible… and how anyone who endorses it is deserving of nothing but contempt from people of character, principle and good will.
Shirley: When the subject of one’s race is left open for discussion the results are a great research study. The replies to this post if not in Canada many would say this was America. Canada may me multicultural but not inclusive.
Going to Getugly: Would you be happy to hear about a conference being held to discuss the inherent problem that people of your racial background pose to the proper functioning of society Shirley?
Shirley: It’s done every day a black man is arrested. The term White Privilege was created by a white man remember that know your history
Going to Getugly: Are you telling me you don’t know the difference between an arrest and a conference Shirley? Or is that merely the transparent attempt to avoid honestly answering the question that it appears to be? The term and fallacious construct ‘white privilege’ was invented by academic and Leftist activist Peggy McIntosh… a woman… in 1989. You should practice a little more humility next time you feel the impulse to lecture someone else about ‘history’.
Shirley Davis: that’s class privilege.
White privilege means that you are born into the racial ‘norm’, another kind of privilege. A privilege where you can;
Turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of your race widely represented. If you wish, you can arrange to be in the company of people of your race most of the time. If you buy “flesh” coloured items like band-aids or stockings, they will more or less match your skin tone. If you were able to use the original suite of emoji’s, the ‘thumbs up’ or ‘peace sign’ hand gestures represented your race. You can easily can find picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and magazines featuring people of your race.
Going to Getugly: The “thumbs up” and “peace sign” is represented in my ‘race’. That’s the kind of inane issues that you need to reach for in order to justify your conclusion. I think you are doing a fine job proving just how devoid of merit and shallow this whole thing is.
So let’s review this… Our interaction started with me asking if you would be happy to hear about a conference being held to discuss the inherent problem people of your racial background pose to the proper functioning of society…. and you went out of your way to not provide an authentic response. And we both know why you avoided responding… it’s because if it was a conference addressing the problem presented by black people in society… you would instantly recognize the racist, intellectually and ethically despicable nature of such a conference. And we both know that if you were to be honest and acknowledged that… it would put you in the awkward position of being against it when the target is YOUR race but in favour of it when the target is someone else’s race. The double standard is self-evident.
And you and I both know that this would not only reveal you to be a hypocrite and devoid of principles… but someone who is actually perfectly comfortable with racial bigotry as long as it’s directed at people who you are happy to see targeted.
The fact that you know you are doing this and that, in fact, the only way anyone can possibly justify this is to lie about their real intentions and to pretend they are not indulging in a blatant double standard is itself proof positive that the premise does not stand up to objective intellectual or ethical scrutiny.
In other words, this is nothing but a means for people to indulge in their own bigotry by attempting to cloak it in pseudo intellectual gobbledygook.
You write: “that’s class privilege.”
No. Peggy McIntosh invented ‘white privilege’ in 1989. “Class privilege” was the earlier iteration of the same ideological stream… and that was Karl Marx who came up with that.
In other words… you don’t know what you’re talking about but you don’t have the intellectual integrity to acknowledge it… so you just make something up to try to get away with it.
No one should take your ideas seriously. Least of all you.
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