Tag: Immigration

‘Why are white people hated but Jewish people aren’t?’

adavidjohnsonLeave a comment

HUMAN 0
They [Jewish people] benefit from the same institutional racism as white people, hold the same position of privilege, and—actually—look down on all gentiles, yet every time you mention this you’re instantly painted as anti-Semitic.

HUMAN 1
Jewish people are considered white people, but Jewish people can also experience anti-Semitism. Just as a white, gay man can be called white, he can also be harassed for being gay. The issue is entirely contextual.

I don’t think there are many Jews who would claim they have it worse in America than black people.

Adding to this, in the United States, ‘whiteness’ is a concept that expands and contracts as needed, always at the exclusion and in opposition to people identified as ‘black’. Italians and Greeks and Slavs are white now when, 100 years ago, to be white was explicitly in opposition to those groups.

Those groups have been allowed to escape from targeted discrimination and, in fact, now benefit from it.

Continue reading “‘Why are white people hated but Jewish people aren’t?’” →

‘What do you think of gentrification?’

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Gentrification is a problem because it flows from historical discrimination, and the power dynamics tend to fall along those lines.

If everyone had equal wealth, or if wealth really were distributed according to merit, gentrification might just be some unpleasant but necessary feature of changing economies, labor markets, and urban life.

But instead what we have in the United States is a society where some groups have been robbed of wealth generation after generation, and others have been gifted that wealth and allowed to inherit it instead. So even if most de jure racism either is no longer on the books or can’t be openly enforced, we still have the equivalent of grandfather clauses operating all over the place.

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The model makes the minority

adavidjohnsonLeave a comment

Continued from racism and inequality.

HUMAN 1:
I think there is a misunderstanding on what the inequality with college is. It isn’t the cost. There are scholarships and people of color have easier access and thanks to affirmative action often easier standards to get in. The money isn’t the problem. The problem is affirmative action, scholarships, whatever, don’t do anything because they don’t address the problem of why they need to curve downward to increase enrollment in the first place. Which is impoverished environment. It is that they started out poor that put them behind. By the time college rolls around it is already too late. If we legit want to help poor people and minorities we need to get them out of poverty. The current system is useless.

That’s part of it, sure. We agree. And attending schools with the materials and funding to provide quality education, and being in a socio-economic life situation where you even can focus on doing homework instead of other concerns. Yeah, this is an issue that’s over-determined, absolutely.

But specifically with wealth, there are not nearly enough scholarships available that will cover the cost of tuition, books, housing, and other living expenses at a quality university. Continue reading “The model makes the minority” →