Equality

[Goddess]

45 minutes ago, Marocc said:

I was referring to the example you gave. You say the individual X was given a place to stay and a small income, but it is not clear what kind of support X received in practice. Are you implying X was definitely offered the chance to educate themselves, to aim for a particular profession and to receive medical care despite them not having much money?

Oh please. 

Person X may WANT to be an artist but if they have zero artistic ability, it won't matter how many opportunities or how much money you throw at them - they will never be an artist earning an income.

Person X may WANT to be a doctor, but if they do not have the intelligence to be one, they will never pass the courses no matter what.

Person X may be a person who for years has fried their brain on drugs.  It doesn't matter how many opportunities or how much money you throw at them, they will never be able to achieve much beyond their own individual abilities, which they have diminished by their own poor choices.

What you are implying has nothing to do with equality and you know it.  Offering a person who is homeless by choice or a person who has fried their brain on drugs an opportunity to go to med school or gifting them their own art gallery is not "equality".

If the point of this thread here is to say that Western countries do not have freedom, then at least choose some realistic points.  Stop beating around the bush and just say what you mean.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Goddess

[Goddess]

11 hours ago, Tdot said:

Oh yes, of course you can get all parties to agree.  It's happens very often each day.  

 

That's how agreements get signed ---even in criminal and civil court cases.

Usually in a case where parties want different things, an agreement comes about because each side compromises something and comes to a workable solution where both parties feel they are "mostly" getting what they want.

[Tdot]

2 hours ago, Goddess said:

Usually in a case where parties want different things, an agreement comes about because each side compromises something and comes to a workable solution where both parties feel they are "mostly" getting what they want.

Yes.  Exactly.  It's called fairness, when all parties did freely agree to the conditions ---and no party was forced to agree.

[Tdot]

4 hours ago, Argus said:

...The better off would say they already pay enough in taxes to support the poor ...
And the fact is that poverty is a comparative thing.

 

I think the Americans who stay in the trenches, fighting, would definitely disagree with you. Here are a few of them I mentioned in here: 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2020 by Tdot

[Tdot]

3 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

It's freedom. Freedom to succeed or freedom to not, based on your own choices. 

I think the Equality-minded Americans who stay in the trenches, fighting, would definitely disagree with you here. Check out a few of them I mentioned in here: 

 

[Tdot]

4 hours ago, Argus said:

Western societies have gone further than any societies on earth or in history at creating equality...between races...

 

No, not really.  Check out these exhibits in here:

 

[Goddess]

29 minutes ago, Tdot said:

No, not really.  Check out these exhibits in here:

 

So if you disagree that Western countries have a degree of freedoms, which countries DO?

Edited April 9, 2020 by Goddess

[Argus]

54 minutes ago, Tdot said:

No, not really.  Check out these exhibits in here

Yes, really, absolutely, and without any contradiction except from insane people.

[Argus]

1 hour ago, Tdot said:

I think the Americans who stay in the trenches, fighting, would definitely disagree with you. Here are a few of them I mentioned in here:

You can keep posting your videos from crazy people. I'm not interested in such drivel. If you can find equality is better somewhere else then go live there.

[Argus]

4 hours ago, Marocc said:

I was referring to the example you gave. You say the individual X was given a place to stay and a small income, but it is not clear what kind of support X received in practice. Are you implying X was definitely offered the chance to educate themselves, to aim for a particular profession and to receive medical care despite them not having much money?

Yes. You can get what education you want - to the limit of your ability and effort. Grants and loans are available to those without money. There is nothing government can do, however, for those without talent, skill, intelligence or drive.

[Tdot]

32 minutes ago, Goddess said:

So if you disagree that Western countries have a degree of freedoms, which countries DO?

I did not disagree with that. Because western countries do exactly have 'degrees' of freedom.

 

As in, some people are not free at all ---where our White Privilege gives us the ultimate freedom/allows us to ... Heartily pretend that everyone is living within the same degree of freedom ---and actually that is the denotative meaning of, Democracy, if you go to any democratic society which Caucasians control. 

[Argus]

2 minutes ago, Tdot said:

As in, some people are not free at all ---where our White Privilege gives us the ultimate freedom/allows us to

There is no such thing as 'white privilege'. The term is a racist construct invented by crazy people.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Argus

[Tdot]

19 minutes ago, Argus said:

There is no such thing as 'white privilege'. 

well then you might need to go dry clean your white sheet and that pointy hood  plus I think there's about 100-million Caucasian USA citizens who did not get your memo above. And I am sure he's one of them:

 

by Robert Jensen

Here's what white privilege sounds like:

I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.

The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.

So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.

He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."

That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.

That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.

White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.

I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.

My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.

Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.

I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.

But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.

All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.

There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.

Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships.

At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special.

I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be.

White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.

Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success.

 

[Tdot]

I'm not from N. Dakota, but I am coSigning Bob here!

[Argus]

2 minutes ago, Tdot said:

well then you might need to go dry clean your white sheet and that pointy hood  plus I think there's about 100-million Caucasian USA citizens who did not get your memo above. And I am sure he's one of them:

Jensen is a wack job who wrote his thesis on pornography. And only a degraded university system would offer anyone a doctorate for that.

And the accusation that only racists reject the ludicrous and totally unproven theory of 'white privilege' is brainless drool. Just like most of what you post.

[Tdot]

I have no control over your hallucinations here.

[Argus]

3 minutes ago, Tdot said:

I have no control over your hallucinations here.

The hallucinations are the twaddle you post. If you think life is more equal in other countries go live there.

[Tdot]

3 hours ago, Argus said:

The hallucinations are the twaddle you post. If you think life is more equal in other countries go live there.

Be gone!!

lol

The dry cleaners will be closing soon ---they are expecting your white sheet and pointy hood!

[Marocc]

21 hours ago, Argus said:

Yes. You can get what education you want - to the limit of your ability and effort. Grants and loans are available to those without money.

So they were definitely offered. What about health care and social support?

Edited April 10, 2020 by Marocc

[Argus]

7 minutes ago, Marocc said:

So they were definitely offered. What about health care and social support?

Are you new to this country? Why are you asking what every Canadian already knows?

[Marocc]

1 minute ago, Argus said:

Why are you asking what every Canadian already knows?

I've never lived on the streets. Never been picked up from there, but I know it's difficult. You have that friend who has told you of that one case, according to which you decided that one individual was a hopeless case, no? I want to find out exactly what support and help was offered (not just, happened to exist at the time if the individual goes looking for it) to them in order to decide whether your reaction is reasonable or merely prejudiced.

[Argus]

1 minute ago, Marocc said:

I've never lived on the streets. Never been picked up from there, but I know it's difficult. You have that friend who has told you of that one case, according to which you decided that one individual was a hopeless case, no? I want to find out exactly what support and help was offered (not just, happened to exist at the time if the individual goes looking for it) to them in order to decide whether your reaction is reasonable or merely prejudiced.

No, I don't think that's true. I think that, like the OP, all you want to do is attack western society. But the basis of that attack seems to me that western societies are imperfect, are flawed. No one has ever suggested otherwise, however, merely that they're better than any others. And unless you can demonstrate others which are better, which are more equal, which care for the down and out more, then you're argument, like that of the OP, is entirely spurious.

[Right To Left]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:49 PM, Moonlight Graham said:

I'm not sure, maybe, it can be taxed like any other form of income.  But not taxed by 80%.

IN what country are you paying inheritance taxes? We don't have/but should have an inheritance tax in Canada. 

And the US has been knocking back inheritance as well as earned income, business and investment taxes ever since Ronnie Rayguns came along in 1980...so who has an 80% inheritance tax today? 

[Right To Left]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:38 PM, Argus said:

None of these people are on the streets because welfare doesn't pay enough for a room. And they might at least find a place in the shelters if the shelters weren't jammed full of refugees the Left insists on bringing into the country by the tens of thousands, and if public housing wasn't jam packed with the refugees the Left brought into Canada last year and the year before and the year before and the year before...

Because of the high immigration levels the Left is absolutely fanatical about maintaining and increasing (rising to 390k this year), and the hundreds of thousands of foreign students coming into the country every year, and the hundreds of thousands of TFWs - along with the 50,000 refuges. All of them seeking cheap accommodation.

Besides, the market would build more homes if it weren't for policies like rent control and the red tape and regulations which make it such a long, complex and expensive effort to build housing of any kind.

 

Complete nonsense in an age when many working people with low-paying jobs can't afford rent in large cities like Vancouver and Toronto. And that has a spill over effect on smaller cities further away from the urban core. 

Many longterm homeless men and women have ended up out on the streets after living in rooming houses for years, and can no longer afford to do so because the rising tide of real estate prices have caused all accommodations...even slum dwellings, to increase in price. 

I'm neutral on immigration because I don't follow the subject close enough, except that over the years I've noticed that crime rates among immigrants is lower than the general population (contrary to conservative narratives) and unemployment is lower also! Seems immigrants make a convenient scapegoat for anyone looking for a target: "they're living off our taxes/they're stealing our jobs" somehow can be spoken by the same people!

Amazing how empty unsold condo units in NYC have been turned into homeless accommodations since the Covid crisis started; and the big solution for homelessness in my city lately is:

FirstOntario Centre will become a shelter for Hamilton's homeless during COVID-19

[Moonlight Graham]

2 hours ago, Right To Left said:

IN what country are you paying inheritance taxes? We don't have/but should have an inheritance tax in Canada.

Why?  Why do you want to steal other people's money?  I suggest getting off your lazy bum and making your own money.