This the old trope that now-a-days the pendulum has swung too far and women, blacks etc. are now in a privileged position compared to white, straight, anglo men.
Nonsense. And spreads the idea that all black people shouldn't be where they are in the company and are all tricksters who are rubbish at their job.
Yeah, sucks that a supermajority of elected politicians, upper management, rich people, and influential cultural figures are all women of color who speak Spanish. Poor white anglo dude, his plight makes me weep.
It's not clear to me what the "privilege" of these few thousand people (who obviously achieved their positions by stealing them from worthy persons of color) has to do with the admissions odds of a million random Americans, black, white, purple or green.
But here, this might help you with your weeping problem:
Reported only overseas (with a helpful sidebar of tits) and in the local press. Nobody needs to weep for the kulak, the Jew, the enemy of the workers and peasants. But whoa - if some rapacious Jew defends himself against a good Aryan worker who's only trying to grind his head into the pavement, my gosh, well, that's an interplanetary sensation.
Affirmative action has and continues to be a problem, though. The vast majority of affirmative action has favored and continues to favor rich, connected white men. Famous example:
"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.
The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.'"
The vast majority of affirmative action has favored and continues to favor rich, connected white men. Famous example:
And the famous example is that... white men network. As do black lesbians, Papuan pearl divers, and for all I know the Turkish blue-ringed octopus (our only social octopus).
The leap from "vast majority" to "famous example" is great, too. I never cease to be fascinated by the bizarre pseudosequiturs that pass for logic in the orthodox mind. It's like tumor pathology - every case its own disease.
What's wonderful is how similar this general strain of disparate impact theory is to the classic logic of German anti-Semitism. Did you know that 80% of the lawyers in 1932 Berlin were Jews, even though only 1% of the population was Jewish? Ineluctable mathematical proof the Jews are conspiring against the Aryans - scratching each other's backs, while stabbing their good German competitors under the table.
Too bad Streicher and company never got a chance to read Cochran and Harpending 2005:
Think like a smart person - you obviously are one.
If you wanted to confirm or deny this "old trope," how would you do so? What evidence would prove or disprove it? If you wanted to identify such privileges, what would they look like? What about counter-privileges which offset them?
A fun thought-experiment, for instance, is imagining that "women, blacks etc." could sell whatever privileges they have to groups that I consider underprivileged, such as Asians. With some money changing hands, the Asian would become legally black and the black legally Asian, for all official purposes (educational, legal, etc).
What do you think the price of this transaction would be? And who would be paying whom?
And spreads the idea that all black people shouldn't be where they are in the company and are all tricksters who are rubbish at their job.
This is certainly the case for some black people, as it's certainly the case for some whites, Asians, Eskimos, etc. Perhaps we just differ in our estimated percentages.
Wonderful! What I want you to notice, now, is how abstract every item on that checklist is.
As compared to really concrete, obvious privileges like: 450 free points on your SAT. Could that be the first entry on our 'Black Privilege Checklist?' What would be the second?
Now, let's imagine you design a sociological experiment in which randomly selected individuals of each race can exchange their privileges (and/or handicaps) - along with a payment to equalize the exchange.
Once again: who would pay whom? Or if we look at just one side of the comparison - what would be the market value of being legally black? What would parents pay, for instance, to purchase this privilege for their children?
Let's say we could restrict it only to college admissions. What would American parents pay to change their sons' and daughters' acceptance letters from Chico State, to Harvard? Then you'll have a fairly good price floor on the value of "black privilege" - this is obviously not the only benefit.
I welcome any thoughts on how one might perform the opposite experiment - that is, assessing the market value of "white privilege." Do tell, critical race theorists.
What I want you to notice, now, is how abstract every item on that checklist is.
Abstract?! They aren't abstract, some are very very concrete. If you're straight, you can get married in just about every country in the world, and, in nearly every country. If you're a straight married man, you don't have to worry about saying "my wife" in a new place.
People don't sit men down in secondary school and tell them how to avoid being raped, men don't worry about their drink being spiked.
It's true that the mechanism and value of "(succesful group) privilege" are difficult to quantify in a way that explicitly engineered (counter-)measures aren't. Further, it would be impossible to reassign them via contract unless you're a most imaginative thought-experimenter.
It's true that the mechanism and value of "(succesful group) privilege" are difficult to quantify in a way that explicitly engineered (counter-)measures aren't.
That's exactly right! Moreover, there's a very important reason your N-rays are so hard to detect...
Look at it another way. You step into a time machine and emerge in 1938 Berlin - speaking German. Your task: to explain and convince, by pure reason alone, that there is actually no such thing as the international Jewish conspiracy. Expect some downvotes!
Or we could go all science-fiction. The Federation selects you as the first Federation Ambassador to the ice planet of Goth. The people of Goth come in two categories - Ostrogoth and Visigoth. Conventional wisdom among the Ostrogoths is that they are generally oppressed by the Visigoths - and vice versa.
They can't be right. It's your first task, as Federation Ambassador, to construct objective tests that accurately measure whether the Visigoths are sticking it to the Ostrogoths or vice versa.
For instance, you might ask: how many Visigoths are killed extralegally by Ostrogoths? And vice versa? Are young Visigoths, or young Ostrogoths, subjected to the numerus clausus? Etc, etc, etc.
You could build up a spreadsheet of these types of human-rights violations - which would greatly assist you in deciding, as a mere neutral observer, which faction of Goths is holding the whip and which taking it in the tail.
Of course, you're not the Federation Ambassador and neither am I. But even if you're a Goth yourself, why not think this way? Isn't it, at the very least, refreshingly different?
Nonsense. And spreads the idea that all black people shouldn't be where they are in the company and are all tricksters who are rubbish at their job.