White Fragility.

This is an excellent observation. The subject of racism is a stacked deck in much the same way that Jews were regarded in Germany in 1933. Any defensive opposing opinions voiced by the accused were automatically categorized as an attack on the German government and groups of people represented by the government. The very existence of Jewish culture was regarded as a systemic threat to greater Germany. The Jews then and whites now are boxed into a circumstance where nothing can absolve individuals from the perceived and propagandized sins of the group. If a German citizen had secret Jewish friends it had to be on the sly lest accusations of enemy collusion were launched. You see how history repeats itself?

 

If you accept that your whiteness gives you privileges in society, and that talking about them means you're vulnerable you can upgrade your church membership to platinum which gives you lots of benefits.

Close. If you can talk about how being white gives you power over others who are not, then you can accept how fragile and vulnerable you are.

 

How many more people would have empathy and even open their wallets to help if the media held up and honored people like this man who has spent his life in Harlem improving black education and healing issues within the poorest communities...



https://www.gse.harvard.edu/hgse100...k&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hgse_organic

....and downplayed this man, who blames slavery and the white man for everything wrong in the poor black communities and whose "hope" for change is covered in blood through violent revolution?...



https://www.vox.com/2017/10/9/16430390/ta-nehisi-coates-podcast-hope-book

The wrong people are getting the attention and I fear we will regress and destroy 60 years of progress. We have been mending the fabric torn between black and white races and a lot of people, the majority, have had needles and thread since the 60's. Burning the fabric to ashes is not the right answer.

 

Try walking through Chicago's infamous "west side", or South Jamaica in New York. Or the primarily black areas in most larger cities, where you will be seen as trespassing where you don't belong, you will be watched, be suspected.... and you WILL feel threatened, and it will not be irrational.

Which street you walk down matters a lot. WHO is also on that street matters a lot. Statistics prove that a black person is almost 5 times as likely to kill you as a white person. That's not prejudice, that's FBI stats. If a white dog was 5 times more likely to attack you than a brown dog- you would be on high alert when a white dog was in your vicinity. The same would be true if the identifying factor is breed- you are a lot more cautious of a Doberman or Pit Bull than a Labrador or a poodle. It would be true if people named Smith were 5 times more violent than people named Jones. Any member of a group will experience some of the impact of the group image.

Those statistics aren't made by the non-white community, but by the actions of part of the black community. It's unfortunate that it will reflect on all of them, but if does reflect the composite picture- and both the worst and the best of them are part of it. That does not prevent any of us from acting respectably. It should not prevent us from acting wisely, either.

 

Again what privilege did I have? What privilege did my kids have over the black kids they went to school with? Are you saying the black community bears no responsibility for the state in which a large part of it finds itself?

 

For those that don’t understand the concept of white fragility, this poster has exhibited a textbook example of it. Defensive response, directing problems towards others, not introspecting. All examples of white fragility when faced with the prospect they benefited from a racist system.

 

Usually you will hear this when someone blames present day whites for slavery. When you blame someone for something then yeah...they get defensive. Duh.

That 12 year old boy's (Tamir Rice was his name btw) toy gun looked just like a real gun. This is what the toy gun looked like next to a real gun.



So yeah, the cop got off scot free. As well he should have. He had no idea Tamir Rice had a toy gun. There's a reason that the federal government required all toy gun manufacturers to put a bright colored orange tip on all toy guns so many years ago. That was so that cops wouldn't shoot kids with toy guns. That law was put into place for a reason. It was put into place to try to avoid exactly what happened to Tamir Rice.

BS. Slavery, Jim Crow and the oppression that happened under them have been acknowledged multiple times and is even taught in school. Hell, I learned about it in 3rd grade. No white person denies that any of those things happened. Hell, even a white supremacist acknowledges that those happened, and then touts wanting it again...idiots. All of that is acknowledged and has been for decades. Since its been acknowledged then why continually bring up slavery and Jim Crow? Because those blacks that fail use it as a crutch. A reason to explain why they have failed because they don't want to take responsibility for their failures. You won't find most successful blacks, you know, the regular doctors, scientists etc etc complaining about oppression or slavery or Jim Crow. And then you have the race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who just reinforce those beliefs because it gives them power and money.

 

Ta'Nehisi Coates is a brilliant intellectual. I've read several of his books and I believe he understands the racial politics of the USA very well. He grew up in the inner city and experienced the things he writes about.

 

You're not the only one to make the comparison. There is an entire community which is particularly sensitive to this type of dangerous collectivism.

 

THANK YOU!

 

My pleasure, hopefully this helps get the point across.

 

Nope. Because all you did was attack someone for asking questions. Questions you failed to answer. Seems to me that avoiding answering questions is more of a sign of fragility than asking the questions.

 

Cool. Did you realize my position on this thread is pointing out white fragility where I see it? That would mean my response is analyzing behavior.

 

In other words you're not in the thread to discuss the topic of the thread. Got it. Perhaps you should analyze your own behavior? Why are you avoiding discussing what's being said? Are you... fragile?

 

Dont mistake tolerance for fragility. White people are currently tolerating a lot of BS. There will be a time when that stops. For many white people it already has stopped for them personally and they simply quietly avoid all interactions with black people.

 

Yes, he has a good understanding of radical racial politics today, but no reasonable solution. Destroying everything and rebuilding from scratch is not a good solution. Coates did grow up in an inner-city ghetto. He did not have a single white friend until he was 20 years old. His views are heavily biased and bigoted due to that lack of multicultural experience in his childhood.

Glenn Loury (about Coates): "I have a different complaint [about Coates]. He's a good writer but he's not a deep thinker, and he's being taken seriously as a deep thinker."

The true deep thinkers in the black community are not having a voice. For every Coates, there are dozens of black thinkers who offer better solutions to eradicating the last vestiges of racism today.

 

For those who don't understand the concept of fallacious white fragility this poster has exhibited a textbook example of the claim. A defensive dodge and divert and attack the poster refusing to address the issues raised not introspecting or offering an intellectual response.

Again what privilege did I have? What privilege did my kids have over the black kids they went to school with? Are you saying the black community bears no responsibility for the state in which a large part of it finds itself?

 

And you continue to dodge

Again what privilege did I have? What privilege did my kids have over the black kids they went to school with? Are you saying the black community bears no responsibility for the state in which a large part of it finds itself?

 

ROFL no it was a total fail.

 

White fragility is not something easily overcome, even when pointingit our it will trigger more defensive reactions. As seen above the poster attempts to communicate in the language of a “reasonable debate”. This is done as a means of cooping and attempting to have the defensive reaction validated. By validating the defensive reaction they can learn to rely on it in the future.

 

The thread is about white fragility. Posters argue it doesn’t exist. What better counter argument then using their posts against them?

 

No i think they are actually so irrational they believe this kind of stuff.

 

It appears they would rather make up terms like white fragility and white privilege and blame white people for all their problems rather than address the very real issues that are actually destroying them.

 

Why the third party addressing? The defensiveness of your post, and inability to engage directly, is blaring in all it's obtuseness. When you can't defend your argument on it's merits you have no argument as has been the case with "systemic racism" and "white privilege".

 

Yes THEY get defensive and have to dodge and weave when someone tries to engage them in a reasonable discussion.