For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

Somehow you proposed a "double meaning" of racism and missed the actual meaning that's being addressed by our society. Racism isn't about personal prejudice, although it's certainly a participation trophy for them. Racism is not about who is burning crosses, or about who is born into privilege. Racism is a system, a set of rules, rites, privileges and laws that puts 100% of POC at a disadvantage, and 100% of white people at an advantage, regardless of the rest of their social status. The advantage can range from "more likely to be taken seriously in a board meeting" to "more likely to end up dead for no reason at all", with a ridiculous amount of "more likely to end up prison labor" in the middle. Not everyone experiences the system exactly the same way, but even the most privileged POC are likely to point it out, and even the most unprivileged white people are likely to dismiss it as nonexistent.

It doesn't take a single prejudiced person to enact it. It's built into the laws and the systems and considered "neutral".

>Racism is a system, a set of rules, rites, privileges and laws that puts 100% of POC at a disadvantage, and 100% of white people at an advantage, regardless of the rest of their social status.

Can you give any specific examples of these rules and laws? I assume you mean rules and laws that are actually written down.

I'm interested because while it's easy to find rules and laws that are explicitly 100% to the advantage of non-whites over whites (affirmative action, Gladue in Canada, etc), I've not been able to find any that work the other way around.

(Also worth noting "more likely to end up dead for no reason at all" isn't actually true[0]; there's no statistical evidence that cops kill blacks more than whites in comparable situations.)

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evi...

> Racism isn't about personal prejudice, although it's certainly a participation trophy for them. Racism is not about who is burning crosses, or about who is born into privilege. Racism is a system, a set of rules, rites, privileges and laws that puts 100% of POC at a disadvantage, and 100% of white people at an advantage, regardless of the rest of their social status.

Nope. Alot of people keep attempting to change a definition that is older than any of us alive, and nope. You have to make up a new word. I don't mind "Institutional racism" or "systemic racism" so much, because they're more descriptive expressions, and lead to useful discussion, but to infantilize whole groups of people by making them incapable of a part of the human experience (to be personally racist towards people whose skin is a different color than theirs) is simply absurd.

You can identify the problem without making your language a personal attack on every individual. And attempting to accuse every individual, DOESN'T solve the problem does it? It doesn't unmake the laws. It doesn't unbuild the institutions. It doesn't drive people to talk about how laws unfairly target blacks, like the "war on drugs". But it most certainly makes enemies. It's a useless and impractical approach.

There is NO statement you can make that is true of all humans, nor even any particular "group" of humans, for whatever that means, because NO "group" of humans is remotely meaningfully homogeneous. Except for very broad strokes like "humans must breathe to live", no universal statements are true.

> Nope. Alot of people keep attempting to change a definition that is older than any of us alive, and nope. You have to make up a new word. I don't mind "Institutional racism" or "systemic racism" so much, because they're more descriptive expressions, and lead to useful discussion, but to infantilize whole groups of people by making them incapable of a part of the human experience (to be personally racist towards people whose skin is a different color than theirs) is simply absurd.

It's not a change of definition. It has always been systemic. Slavery abolitionists and civil rights activists were not fighting to get white people to stop calling black people the n-word, they were fighting to end institutions that treated black people as subhuman. Black Lives Matter isn't trying to end people's personal prejudices, it's trying to end an endless stream of black lives being taken.

Racism is, and always has been, about power and control. It certainly intersects with, and is bolstered by, individual feelings of racial prejudice. We can certainly call those individuals racists. But they are invariably helping to reinforce a system, not atomically expressing personal hate in a vacuum.

> You can identify the problem without making your language a personal attack on every individual. And attempting to accuse every individual, DOESN'T solve the problem does it? It doesn't unmake the laws. It doesn't unbuild the institutions. It doesn't drive people to talk about how laws unfairly target blacks, like the "war on drugs". But it most certainly makes enemies. It's a useless and impractical approach.

> There is NO statement you can make that is true of all humans, nor even any particular "group" of humans, for whatever that means, because NO "group" of humans is remotely meaningfully homogeneous. Except for very broad strokes like "humans must breathe to live", no universal statements are true.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it sounds like you were predisposed to treat me as an enemy already. I didn't personally attack any individual. Describing a system, and who is disadvantaged or advantaged by it, is not a statement about any of the people affected by it.

> Can you give any specific examples of these rules and laws? I assume you mean rules and laws that are actually written down.

The 13th Amendment is a pretty big one, worth starting there.

> I'm interested because while it's easy to find rules and laws that are explicitly 100% to the advantage of non-whites over whites (affirmative action, Gladue in Canada, etc), I've not been able to find any that work the other way around.

If your criteria is that it must be "explicit", you're dismissing the entire concept without considering it. These laws and rules take advantage of context and produce predictable outcomes without needing to put on a white robe and state their intent.

> (Also worth noting "more likely to end up dead for no reason at all" isn't actually true[0]; there's no statistical evidence that cops kill blacks more than whites in comparable situations.)

> [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evi....

I can't get past the paywall, but it is actually true. What I can see above the paywall fold doesn't even represent your claim. And even if it did, "in comparable situations" isn't the criteria. Cops can (hypothetically) behave equally violently in all situations, and still be more likely to kill black people because they police black people and communities more.

What you write is generally true. You're taking it to an unjustified extreme, though, and glossing over the fact that the advantages diminish rapidly as one descends the socioeconomic ladder, to the point where the "white advantage" for impoverished folks looks more like regular fluctuations in the noise than it does a clear above-the-noise signal. That is to say: the poorest whites might on average have some advantage over their peers in some contexts, but as a matter of practice day-to-day living isn't that different.

I know there is a lot of well-deserved focus on the ways our racist systems do more damage to blacks. That doesn't mean we should exaggerate, simply because the ground truth is horrific enough.

Hi. My extremely poor white brother in Appalachia told me today about his most recent encounter with a cop. The scenario was disturbingly similar to scenarios where traffic stops have ended with black people dead. My brother got cut slack, allowed to leave with his car out of compliance with state law. Advised by the cop to take back roads to avoid further scrutiny.

YOU might not see white privilege, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If my brother had been black, in his words... “I HOPE I would have been treated the same way”. But he knew that’s a false hope. If my brother had been black, would he be just one more statistic to debate here?

By the way “blacks” is a dead giveaway you’re either very ignorant or not sincere. Just by the way.

Your brother's anecdote doesn't erase my lived experience, okay? You have an extremely poor white brother; I grew up an extremely poor white guy in a mixed-race neighborhood. I know, better than most, what privilege being white buys me in this society. It exists. But existence is far from universal, or uniform.

You're off the mark. Way off.

My brother and I grew up in a world that sounds similar to yours. I’m not negating your experience. The fact that you and I have privilege doesn’t negate our own hardships.

You’re playing a bit loose, here. When you write that 100% of whites are advantaged, you are engaged in exaggeration that erases the practical reality. It is true that our system is structured to advantage whites. It does not necessarily follow that all whites are equally advantaged (other things being equal) or that all whites live a life in which they experience these advantages.

How so? I’ve engaged in numerous conversations about race and its suffusing everything in this country with non-white close friends and casual acquaintances alike who’ve never made the suggestion you make. This isn’t an issue of them being hesitant to challenge me (lawd knows they don’t show any hesitation to challenge in other areas of race-related conversation we engage in: I’d be surprised if this were the one issue that weren’t true for).

On the contrary, I'm choosing my words and considering their meaning very carefully. This topic is too important to "play loose".

100% of white people are advantaged by racism. I didn't claim that all experience that advantage equally, and I didn't claim that the advantage negates any other disadvantages each individual white person experiences due to the specifics of their lives, their class or social status, any number of other systems of identity-based power, or even countervailing individual prejudices.

You may find it hard to notice the advantage it gives you, but it certainly exists.

"100% of white people are advantaged by racism." No, this is an extraordinary claim without evidence that you are asserting.

"You may find it hard to notice the advantage it gives you, but it certainly exists," isn't carefully worded, and it's designed to effectively squash any sort of disagreement with the assertion in the first place.

> No, this is an extraordinary claim without evidence that you are asserting.

There are libraries worth of literature on the subject. I encourage you to spend some time seeking it out and understanding it better.

> isn't carefully worded, and it's designed to effectively squash any sort of disagreement with the assertion in the first place.

It was carefully worded, but you don't seem to be interested in coming to the discussion to understand. You seem determined to fight. The wording was intended to give you the grace that maybe other challenges in your life make it difficult to see this particular advantage. The words chosen were intentionally placed in the same comment with other words giving that grace explicitly.

Have you considered that you are making assumptions (e.g. that I have not done reading on this subject) or that you are making personal accusations (e.g. that I may not recognize advantages) based also on assumptions? That perhaps my interest isn’t in fighting but merely challenging your assertion and assumptions?

It appears to me you take the position that you are correct, and that any challenge is necessarily one coming from a position of ignorance or malice. I invite you to re-think your approach to this sort of conversation.

> Have you considered that you are making assumptions

Always, and always open to reconsidering my position or approach.

> (e.g. that I have not done reading on this subject)

You're not demonstrating familiarity with the subject. Your questions have come from a perspective that is addressed in the subject matter.

> or that you are making personal accusations (e.g. that I may not recognize advantages)

That wasn't an accusation. It was a fig leaf. Your positions have rejected your advantages as a white person. "You're off the mark. Way off."

> That perhaps my interest isn’t in fighting but merely challenging your assertion and assumptions?

Your interest increasingly seems to be defensive.

Edit:

> I invite you to re-think your approach to this sort of conversation.

Thank you, but no thank you. You don't seem to be interested in actually discussing the topic, or reconsidering your own positions. I'm 99% certain that I won't make any headway with you regardless of my approach.