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Well, it happened again--I was going to post a second message at your thread, "I'm a straight, white middle class American who can acknowledge my own privilege and latent bigotry," when--bam!--as before, it was locked. This was the message I was going to post, with eternal appreciation for all those who really want to think about things, and try to explain them. I had not thought up a title. The following is the message:
"You know omega, you have some of the goddamnedest threads--even when it might seem at first that there was nowhere really for the subject matter to go, it later starts branching out all over the place, and becomes many topics. It all starts with the question/distinction: Do they have privilege, and, Do they have bigotry? They do not have to go together.
"Who is oppressed, and what is oppression? Only certain things are called "oppression," even though other things not referred to that way, are too, so there is a preferential treatment even among who is referred to as abused by society, or oppressed. The older I get, and the more I also suffer economic loss, and hopelessness about it ever improving, the more I learn about all the different ways there are to live, the more my opinion of oppression and injustice expands. Who is more oppressed, the black family that has lost everything after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and a Republican regime that will never help them, deliberately, or a 70-year old poor, white schizophrenic who has no money for medication, doesn't know any people, and cannot reach for help? To claim that one of them is "on a higher social rung of the ladder" is a fantasy world. All equally, have unending desperation, and a life that leads nowhere; blocked. Did you read the latest Census report that came out about a half a year ago, showing that college-educated white women are now paid less than college-educated black women, and that both groups are paid less than college-educated black males, for the same types of jobs? All, of course, are paid much less than college-educated white males. Now what do you do? It doesn't help if you tell whites who are living in poverty to regard YOUR privileged life as THEIR benefit. There must be a better way.
"It is a verifiable fact that there is discrimination, that certain groups cause it and profit by it, and others are excluded. This is one set of facts to face and understand. It is another--and somewhat separate--to admit, in the privacy of your own mind, the kinds of bigoted, hateful, gleeful, pissy, thoughts we have about groups/"individuals" we have all learned to react to certain ways, and work to prove to ourselves that it was false, and to get rid of it. The mental world can be disconnected completely from the external, physical world of structures.
"Bigotry, on the other hand, is something we can all slip into, and have to admit and catch. It has no relation to whether someone is privileged. Some of the most vicious and hateful things I have ever heard said against women and gay people have come from black males, and it just happened again with this basketball player. I once heard with my own ears a black woman claim that gay people, "unlike blacks," were not really oppressed, because they are not a real group with its own culture, and because they could change or hide it if they wanted to. It was pure bigotry, and my brief attempt to reason with this person got ugly immediately, as I was then accused of being a "racist," when that was not even the topic. It was like a mind-game. We know just from this thread alone, (despite the periodic "I have a little penis" digressions), that many males try to get rid of the whole subject, and claim that there is no bigotry or unfairness, when they know in their own flinty hearts how they hate us when we win, and what words they use. I also know the value, painful though it might be, of having my own hypocrisy or "blind spots" called to my attention, as a white woman feminist, who thought of things from a white, middle class perspective, and not, for example, as poor black women might live it. Some of the best discussions on this issue I ever heard were from the '70s and '80s, from great people like Maya Angelou and bell hooks, both great feminists explaining things between black and white women, and even earlier, from the late and great Representative Shirley Chisholm. It can be an exhilirating thing, not always just hostile, to learn this way.
"When is it bigotry? If people say, "The police do not spend the time, money and effort to search for missing black women and girls--we are oppressed," they are right. When others "capitalize" like abusers on this situation, and ATTACK the raped and murdered white women and girls because they are NOW getting (exploitive, salacious) corporate male media attention, "who gives a fuck?" etc., it is a vicious bigoted attack. It is NOT an expression of the same topic at all. Many whites claimed to believe that James Earl Ray was "innocent" of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King; others supported Ray because they KNEW Ray was guilty. Many blacks claimed to believe that the battering murderer of women O. J. Simpson was "innocent," and others cheered and laughed because they KNEW that the "white bitch" had been murdered and gotten away with. Is only one side bigoted? I live in Michigan, where we are blessed to live right next to Canada; yet even here, you can sense every now and then a hypocritical attitude, of attacking us and our faults yet avoiding their own, (refusal to help battered women/stalking/murders of prostitutes; several famous cases here)--as if they are "good" and "egalitarian" so they will not be like us, whom they make a cartoonishly violent stereotype of. Is it bigotry, when it is among equals? What if a gay male hates women and always refers to them as "bitches," totally apart from being attracted to males? Do you call it bigotry, or let it go? If you make distinctions, are you bigoted, that some groups can get away with venting their hate?
"There was a really nice message on this thread, "I'm white," by sleebarker, that I think made a good point of something, and that is that I think a lot of the "rich liberal" types, on DU and elsewhere, do not actually have any real world contact with black people, as neighbors, etc., and therefore still believe it is a world of "Martin Luther King and the KKK." I can tell you from my own stressful experience, that some black people can be real assholes, and do shitty things deliberately to hurt you, then if you try to stop it, you are "a racist," "you wouldn't complain if you were white," etc. Maybe you are rich, maybe not, but for those of us with actual experience, the old "noble saints vs. power structure" stereotype itself falls away, and you live in the world with people. Blacks, like whites, can be full of shit. Can you not criticize black people with anything other than a racial attitude? Then that would be your attitude. Consider the difference between your reaction to "black people can be assholes," (suspect), and "white people can be assholes," (an obvious, ordinary fact).
"A simplified attitude also ignores all the other ways there are to oppress and make suffer. If a group is exterminated by the thousands or millions by genocide, is it "worse" or "more important" than if they are all tortured to death, one by one in their own homes, as women and girls are? Is one a "grand historical tragedy," and the other a "small personal drama"; and says who? If the supporters of Arabs or Palestinians are sick of hearing about the Holocaust of Jews, because they themselves are ignored, is that "all right," but if they are sick of hearing about it because they hate Jews, is that opinion "different"?
"There are people who do not want the oppression of women or black people, etc., mentioned, and who want everything converted to some other category of reference, to squelch the uncomfortable fact. On the other hand, what if the very basis of your attitude is not on that level at all, but, for example, you want to mobilize poor people to fight, en masse, as one unified group, for anti-capitalistic economic justice--then the references to race and sex of the poor people really does divide them, and change it from the mission of union. One is trying to silence their voices; the other is trying to get them all organized. Which is which? Also, only some bigotries are even considered important enough to refer to: remember when that prick Mel Gibson went on a drunken tirade, cursing and slandering against both Jewish people and women? The prick media censored the attacks against women--as they do them all themselves--and hyped the anti-Jewish remarks only. Some victims are more important than others, clearly.
"My main point on all this is that the world is too complicated to ignore the multiple ways of oppression and abuse, exploitation, and try to reduce it to one or two categories or perspectives. "This group is guilty--put the spotlight on," and "This is the excused never-judged victim." That is fake. Remember how John and Yoko used to talk about the oppression of women--that the male, often, is oppressed by the world, then comes home and beats the woman, who is an even lower slave, "Woman is the Nigger of the World," etc. There is on the one hand a hierarchy, even among the abused, and on the other, those who are cut off from the advances of society and who have nothing, equally have nothing."
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