Protestors Shut Down Freeway; Ambulance Carrying Seriously Injured Forced To Detour

[Dbqgolfer]

The reason

 

 

Actually as long as terms like white privilege exist, this country will continue to fail

 

Explain.

 

And, just to be fair, I'll explain my rationale. Anytime we have to label add the qualifier liberal or conservative, left or right, dem or pub, and so on, we drive a stake between groups of people who should be working together to better the country. A country that thrives is good for everyone. The impoverished have more opportunity and yes even the wealthy benefit.

 

Qualifying statements creates an "us vs them" mentality that we know, due to the previous head man for the Huskers, produces a toxic, unsuccessful atmosphere.

 

First, the term "white privilege" creates an "us vs them" mentality. To the extent that I am successful (moderately, I might add), it is due to the fact that many weeks I put in 60 hours of work, not due to the fact that I happen to be white.

 

When people use the term "white privilege", it does two things. 1) It diminishes my efforts and 2) it gives people an excuse for their lack of success. It's much easier to blame someone or something else for their lack of success as opposed to not working harder, smarter, or doing something different.

 

And when a large segment of any nation's population has this mentality, and is promoted by one of the governing parties, that nation is destined to continue to fail.

 

As a side note, don't read into this that I don't think there shouldn't be a social safety net, that high income earners are currently over taxed etc.

[Landlord]

To the extent that I am successful (moderately, I might add), it is due to the fact that many weeks I put in 60 hours of work, not due to the fact that I happen to be white.

 

 

That's all it's due to huh? You're a 100% self made man?

 

What do you do for a living? You don't think it could have anything to do with the statistically proven fact that job applicants with black sounding names get 50% less call backs on identical resumes to people with common anglo-saxon names?

 

What do your parents do? Did they help pay for any of your college, a car, any phone bills? Did you follow their line of work at all? Receive any monetary inheritance from deceased grandparents? Have any property that has been passed down through your family that could have at one point belonged to Natives and was promised to be protected by the government but was sold off to whites anyways?

 

You don't think that African-American families could possibly be at a disadvantage because they don't have generations of wealthy ancestors passing down money and opportunity to their offspring?

 

Where did you attend school growing up? Do you think your success couldn't have at least a tiny bit to do with the significantly higher chance that you were placed with more effective teachers than your fellow Americans in poor or high-minority school districts?

 

 

 

You have no clue what the term actually represents. It doesn't diminish anything you have done; it only puts it in context that your skin color gives you certain advantages that others don't have. What white privilege means is that even if you have just pulled yourself up by the bootstraps to be successful, other people of other skin colors often don't even have the bootstraps to be able to pull themselves up by.

[Dbqgolfer]

 

To the extent that I am successful (moderately, I might add), it is due to the fact that many weeks I put in 60 hours of work, not due to the fact that I happen to be white.

 

 

That's all it's due to huh? You're a 100% self made man?

 

What do you do for a living? You don't think it could have anything to do with the statistically proven fact that job applicants with black sounding names get 50% less call backs on identical resumes to people with common anglo-saxon names?

 

What do your parents do? Did they help pay for any of your college, a car, any phone bills? Did you follow their line of work at all? Receive any monetary inheritance from deceased grandparents? Have any property that has been passed down through your family that could have at one point belonged to Natives and was promised to be protected by the government but was sold off to whites anyways?

 

You don't think that African-American families could possibly be at a disadvantage because they don't have generations of wealthy ancestors passing down money and opportunity to their offspring?

 

Where did you attend school growing up? Do you think your success couldn't have at least a tiny bit to do with the significantly higher chance that you were placed with more effective teachers than your fellow Americans in poor or high-minority school districts?

 

 

 

You have no clue what the term actually represents. It doesn't diminish anything you have done; it only puts it in context that your skin color gives you certain advantages that others don't have. What white privilege means is that even if you have just pulled yourself up by the bootstraps to be successful, other people of other skin colors often don't even have the bootstraps to be able to pull themselves up by.

 

OK, lets go through this line by line.

1) I don't have a common anglo sounding name, in fact, have been called "Tyrone" in the workplace by an idiot who couldn't remember my name, knew it sounded black, and Tyrone is the only name he could think of.

2) Am not in any line of work related to my parents. My dad was a laborer who was laid off many times and my mother worked on and off as an LPN. The reason she worked on and off is due to health issues. I remember my parents filing for bankruptcy two times. I Can honestly say that my parents contributed less than $1,000 towards my total education.

3) Sorry, no grandparents inheritance nor native lands passed down, nor wealthy ancestors, nor any wealth or land of any kind passed down. In fact, I helped pay for rent, medicine etc for may parents before they died.

4)One public high school in the town I grew up, we all went to the same one.

 

Just so we know what we're taking about, when I say Moderately successful, I make more than $50K but less than $100K a year and my wife makes roughly the same. I do know that for my boss to give me a raise that allows me to take home another $80 a month, it costs him roughly $200

 

Like I said earlier, I'm not opposed to a safety net (helping to provide bootstraps), nor do I think that, in general, the upper earners in our society are currently over taxed. But I do know that for my boss to give me a raise that allows me to take home another $80 a month, it costs him roughly $200 a month, but somehow according to those who espouse the "white privilege" crap, I'm supposed to be angry at "the man" for not paying me more, and thankful for the government that's taking the other $120.

[carlfense]

But I do know that for my boss to give me a raise that allows me to take home another $80 a month, it costs him roughly $200 a month, but somehow according to those who espouse the "white privilege" crap, I'm supposed to be angry at "the man" for not paying me more, and thankful for the government that's taking the other $120.

Eh?

[StPaulHusker]

So are the protesters getting charged with obstructing the ambulance? I mean, if I'm in a car and an ambulance heads my direction, I have to get to the side of the road to let them pass. Does the same rule apply to people sitting in the street?

[StPaulHusker]

 

But I do know that for my boss to give me a raise that allows me to take home another $80 a month, it costs him roughly $200 a month, but somehow according to those who espouse the "white privilege" crap, I'm supposed to be angry at "the man" for not paying me more, and thankful for the government that's taking the other $120.

Eh?

 

It's probably not quite $200.

[Dbqgolfer]

 

 

But I do know that for my boss to give me a raise that allows me to take home another $80 a month, it costs him roughly $200 a month, but somehow according to those who espouse the "white privilege" crap, I'm supposed to be angry at "the man" for not paying me more, and thankful for the government that's taking the other $120.

Eh?

 

It's probably not quite $200.

 

Marginal federal tax rate roughly 30%

Both sides of social security %15

Marginal state tax rate roughly 10 %

 

equals $90 (not $80) for me, $110 for gov't

[Dbqgolfer]

 

 

 

But I do know that for my boss to give me a raise that allows me to take home another $80 a month, it costs him roughly $200 a month, but somehow according to those who espouse the "white privilege" crap, I'm supposed to be angry at "the man" for not paying me more, and thankful for the government that's taking the other $120.

Eh?

 

It's probably not quite $200.

 

Marginal federal tax rate roughly 30%

Both sides of social security %15

Marginal state tax rate roughly 10 %

 

equals $90 (not $80) for me, $110 for gov't

 

Just got home and wanted to be accurate,

25% marginal federal tax rate

So for my boss to give me a raise it costs him $2 for every $1 I take home

[Landlord]

Dbq, all those points are good, but really, the idea of white privilege rarely has anything to do with individual specific people, because it will always be true that some people have greater benefits than others. It's about a collective macro-level scale view of the state of things.

 

 

 

 

 

For some whites, the share of benefits is greater or lesser than it is for others, depending on, among other things, the dynamics of social class. But one thing is certain: collectively, the white population of the United States now holds an enormous unearned advantage of wealth and power. And regardless of what kind of people we are as individuals or what we have or have not done ourselves, that advantage cannot be uncoupled from the history of race and racism in this country. The past is more than history. It is also present in structural distributions of wealth and power and cultural ideologies, laws, practices, beliefs, and attitudes whose effect is to justify, defend, and perpetuate the system of white privilege. And the past is present in the huge moral dilemmas that arise from such a history and the question of what to do about the unnecessary suffering and injustice that result from it.

[Abdullah the Butcher]

[Street Novelist]

Getting back on track, what if the person in the ambulance who was involved in the car crash ended up dying before he or she reached the hospital because they bled to death or had something that medical treatment could have cured? Could the protestors be held legally responsible at all?

[knapplc]

Getting back on track, what if the person in the ambulance who was involved in the car crash ended up dying before he or she reached the hospital because they bled to death or had something that medical treatment could have cured? Could the protestors be held legally responsible at all?

That would have been a tragedy. Thankfully, that didn't happen. It would have been the same tragedy if, in our 'what if' scenarios, someone in an ambulance had died as a result of Dr. Martin Luther King's marches blocking a highway. But I think, despite that unintended and tragic consequence, we can all agree that Dr. King's intentions were benign and the cultural change he accomplished in part through those marches would have been worth even a tragic, avoidable death like someone in an ambulance.

 

But that 'what if' is just a scenario, not an occurrence. They've shut down a bunch of highways across the country with little or no ramifications to the safety & health of Americans. I think it's a dumb way to protest and I'm on board with ticketing them, but I'm also on board with the message they're trying to put out there, and I think if they accomplish their ends in much the same way that Dr. King accomplished his, the consequences of such a tragedy would be mitigated by the result.

[Dbqgolfer]

 

Dbq, all those points are good, but really, the idea of white privilege rarely has anything to do with individual specific people, because it will always be true that some people have greater benefits than others. It's about a collective macro-level scale view of the state of things.

 

 

 

 

 

For some whites, the share of benefits is greater or lesser than it is for others, depending on, among other things, the dynamics of social class. But one thing is certain: collectively, the white population of the United States now holds an enormous unearned advantage of wealth and power. And regardless of what kind of people we are as individuals or what we have or have not done ourselves, that advantage cannot be uncoupled from the history of race and racism in this country. The past is more than history. It is also present in structural distributions of wealth and power and cultural ideologies, laws, practices, beliefs, and attitudes whose effect is to justify, defend, and perpetuate the system of white privilege. And the past is present in the huge moral dilemmas that arise from such a history and the question of what to do about the unnecessary suffering and injustice that result from it.

 

So, honest question. Those who agree with the message of the protesters, what's the answer.

[Landlord]

So, honest question. Those who agree with the message of the protesters, what's the answer.

 

 

 

Honest answer? The answer is incredibly complicated and full of a ton of nuance. There are a lot of tangible examples of laws that still exist that don't explicitly say "THIS IS MEANT TO OPPRESS PEOPLE OF COLOR" but in effect serve that purpose (voting registration policy, for example), that need to modified and reformed, to start. Think about it - our country was founded by white people for the prospering of white people from the very start, and every bit of progress since then has only been chipping away at that inequality. I think there's a lot more that can be done on the administrative side of things in areas that, again, aren't directly related to skin color, but have implications in regards to it, such as tackling the disparity in quality of schools and education, and minimum wage discussions (for whatever legitimate or not reason, minorities fill a huge portion of those types of jobs in the workforce).

 

But I think the biggest factor that could help right now is more respectable and capable civic leaders. Especially in the black community - you just don't have enough individuals rising up to lead the cause. You think of Ferguson and you don't see a face behind it - there's no leadership. The civil rights movement would never have achieved what it did without MLK Jr. leading the charge.

 

But really i don't know anything this is just my uneducated opinion.

[killer cacti]

My wife and I were just talking about what would happen if I were taking her to the hospital and she was in labor, and we came upon these idiots blocking the freeway.

 

My answer: some crushed mofos.