Douchebags - An article everyone should read :)

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But I thought the whole point was not to have a strict set of social rules to follow and dislike of modern mainstream 'culture'....not that I know anything about such topics.

got a little tiring when it started talking about white privilege. I'm sorry, but white privilege only exists in the places it's meant to, right in the middle of white dominated cultures. Our place in the world basically. Im sorry but thats just a reality of existence. English speaking whites dominate english speaking white cultures. Everyone needs their place in the world where their ethnic group comes first and gets special treatment, and equality comes from the fact that we all have something like that, all of us, providing we werent silly enough to move to some other cultures special place in the world.

The reason why white insults dont work is because he's using them smack in the middle of a white country. The whole country is at their back and it makes the insult meaningless.

Call someone something to do with being white when you're right in the middle of a non white country and the effect is completely different. There's menace to the word gringo when you're in the middle of mexico. Call a white a gaijin when he's in japan and the word hurts.

Then try and stand in mexico or japan and call either a mexican or a japanese person some name connected with their ethnicity. It falls completely flat.

The power of words change as your location changes. And that's the simple reason why white insults dont work on american soil but can be just as offensive when you're in a different country and you really are the outsider and considered inferior because you're not one of the locals.

It's the same as how you can get laughed at when you're in the company of a load of rednecks for saying something intelligent, but then you're in the company of intelligent types and theres a lone redneck getting insulted and the red neck is the one that stands out.

That's the point - many hipster types are posers only trying to appear counter cultural, and so only listen to particular types of music, watch particular types of movies, wear a particular type of clothing (more likely from Urban Outfitters than from Value Village). Not that there isn't the real thing among hipster, though.

I had my friend refer to me as one......lol, guess its my combination of thrift store clothes and skinny jeans usually with some kind of pattern (never have found any that fit at a thrift store). Then of course that I listen to vinyls/cassette tapes, the collection of those is growing, listen to music that the majority of people have no idea exists and apparently hats I like to wear....maybe there where a couple other things, but can't remember. Though the only thing I have referred to myself as as far as any subculture/social group or whatever would be a metalhead since I am pretty obsessed with metal.

"White privilege is the right of whites, and only whites, to be judged as individuals, to be treated as a unique self, possessed of all the rights and protections of citizenship. (quoted from the article). I could not help but re-read that sentence, replacing "white" with "neurotypical"... both groups extend to themselves a self-respect that they deny others. I am white, so I'm not exempt from that part of it.

But white men are just people. Normal. Basic Humanity. We carry the absent mark which grants us the invisible power of white privilege. Everyone else gets some form of discrimination.

Oh, and before anyone tries to tell me that I don't understand, that I'm missing the point or that I'm somehow blinded by my "privilege", I pre-emptively call ad hominem.

White privilege: The notion that it's okay to judge people based on their ethnicity, as long as they're white.

Every individual, no matter their genetic background, has advantages and disadvantages. Picking out white men for denigration in no way levels the playing field, and constitutes a brand new form of bigotry. If you wish for equality, fight for equality instead of scapegoating based on gender and ethnicity. If you wish to help the underprivileged, spend some time feeding the poor and homeless. If you wish to promote segregation, intolerance and bigotry, practice the politics of division.

See I read the sentence as being logically inconsistent. How can you categorise an entire demographic as unique?

Of course he shifts from "whites" to "white men" a paragraph later, demonstrating further inconsistency, as well as the sexism inherent in his ideology.



White privilege: The notion that it's okay to judge people based on their ethnicity, as long as they're white.

Every individual, no matter their genetic background, has advantages and disadvantages. Picking out white men for denigration in no way levels the playing field, and constitutes a brand new form of bigotry. If you wish for equality, fight for equality instead of scapegoating based on gender and ethnicity. If you wish to help the underprivileged, spend some time feeding the poor and homeless. If you wish to promote segregation, intolerance and bigotry, practice the politics of division.

Seriously, at this point the notion of white privilege comes across as a decades late counter-movement to white supremacy. More redundant yet, it further comes across as a centuries late apology for crimes that nobody alive today is responsible for.

Oh, and before anyone tries to tell me that I don't understand, that I'm missing the point or that I'm somehow blinded by my "privilege", I pre-emptively call ad hominem.

See I read the sentence as being logically inconsistent. How can you categorise an entire demographic as unique?

-The author misses out that their are "white slurs" among the different white groups because of perceived differences.

No he doesn't. This is how the article starts.

He says they don't exist.

We can usually get to ?Hillbilly? or ?Trailer Trash? or ?White Trash,? possibly even ?Peckerwood,? before folks recognize the ?Cletus the slack-jawed yokel? pattern of class discrimination here. And being that we are at a top ranked west coast university, not only do we all share basic middle class aspirations, but we can feel pretty safe in the fact that there are no ?Red Necks? here to insult.
...

Hispanic students find their way to ?Gringo,? just as a student perhaps from Atlanta or Houston offers ?Yankee.? Still other students give their own regional variant insult for white imperialists and tourists ? such as ?Haole.? From this we learn that race is defined by place, and that where you are white matters.

This is how he comes to the conclusion that white people are not categorized into groups, and are actually seen as "individuals". If he acknowledges this, then he would have to admit that white people are categorized. Assuming I understand his vague logic to why categorization deprives someone of their individuality.

Somehow he argues that calling a black man - a black man - categorizes someone and deprives this person of their individuality. Perhaps someone can explain how categorization takes away a person's individuality?

In the United States, we classify northern Africans as "white". However, it is not uncommon to hear people express their disdain for "Arabs" .. ".... " ... and such slurs against these white people. This would upset his logic, because it is a clear categorization of white people.