Trayvon Martin and the New Acknowledgement of White Privilege. If there is one hopeful note amid all the anguish and recrimination from the acquittal of George Zimmerman, it’s that growing numbers of white people have come to appreciate whiteness for what it is: an unearned set of privileges. And as a result of that dawning awareness, it’s become possible to imagine a day when that structure of privilege is dismantled — by white people. Recall that immediately after the killing of Trayvon Martin, people of every race took to the Internet to declare “I am Trayvon Martin.” They wore hoodies. They proclaimed solidarity. That was a well-meaning and earnest attempt to express empathy, but it also obscured the core issue, which is that Martin died not because he was wearing a hoodie but because he was wearing a hoodie while black.
(MORE: Maya Angelou Reacts to Zimmerman Trial, Evokes Civil Rights Era) And so now, postverdict, a more realistic meme has taken root. This isn’t about empathy or the posture of equivalency that empathy can tempt us to assume. How to Guarantee a Job for Every American | The Business Desk with Paul Solman. By William Darity 519233619836198Left by the Recovery, Inner City Teens Struggle to Find JobsThe jobs report for June 2013 found that among teens alone, the jobless rate was almost 25 percent -- more than three times the rate for the nation as a whole.
Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks to young people struggling in their search for work in his report on the bleak job picture for inner-city youth.2013-07-05 18:22:00disabled2365040741kZEVy_MCt3Ufalse In our Making Sen$e report on youth unemployment earlier this month, we examined obstacles inner-city youth face to finding jobs. Compiling our first Making Sen$e report on youth unemployment earlier this month, we were hit with the staggering statistic that 95 percent of black male teen dropouts are jobless. Each month, we calculate our “Solman Scale” — a more inclusive measurement of unemployment than the official unemployment rate, and we’ve been well aware of the rise in youth black unemployment. But those veterans are not alone. Money Turns People Into Jerks, Says Science. UC Berkeley social psychologist Paul Piff has run 30 studies on thousands of people around the United States. And time and time again, he finds that the wealthiest participants tend to act the most deplorably.
As this piece from PBS NewsHour explains, Piff has discovered findings like: Drivers of expensive cars were three to four times more likely to break the law, and not stop in a pedestrian intersection. Given the opportunity, wealthier participants took twice as much candy from children as poorer participants.
The wealthy cheated four times as often at dice games when money was on the line--a $50 voucher. Your first reaction might be like my own. Of course the wealthy broke the rules and played aggressively--that’s how and why they became wealthy! But Piff’s most interesting study shows money’s power to corrupt. At the end of the game, the wealthier subjects inevitably win. [Hat tip: The Dish] Untitled. By Rinku Sen Wednesday, July 31 2013, 12:30 PM EST.
This article is part of topic: Trayvon Martin The verdict in George Zimmerman’s trial caused in me the kind of existential crisis that my optimistic nature is usually able to fend off. In these weeks I have come to understand just how much light exists between the basic assumptions of the racial justice movement and those of most white Americans. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in the week after the verdict revealed a huge gap between black and white attitudes. Just 30 percent of white respondents said they were dissatisfied with the verdict, compared to 86 percent of blacks. Our legal frameworks are based on punishing explicit racism. In the best-selling book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman describes the brain as having two parts, which he calls Systems 1 and 2. System 1 is willing to give George Zimmerman’s snap judgements about Trayvon the benefit of the doubt.
That’s System 2 thinking. All In : When will moderate whites condemn dangerous White Culture? Collateral Damage: Poor Whites and the Unintended Consequences of Racial Privilege. Published as a ZNet Commentary, 10/05/03 A few years ago, a young woman who was an anti-poverty organizer in rural Kentucky asked me how she could infuse her work with an anti-racist analysis. She knew there was a need to address the link between institutional racism and white privilege on the one hand, and economic oppression on the other; yet, she was aware of the difficulty of relating these issues to the lived experiences of the mostly white poor with whom she was working.
After all, how does one explain — indeed is it even proper to bring up — the existence of white privilege among poor whites, for whom the idea of privilege must seem remote? And how could she make poor whites realize the need to fight racism against people of color when they have, to put it mildly, their own problems? I thought seriously about her questions and promised to get back to her with some ideas; then, as often happens, I got sidetracked and never got around to responding. Male Privilege and Transitioning From a Fat Woman to a Fat Man | The Rainbow Hub. By Michael Young I am a fat man. Once, I was perceived to be a fat woman. My transition has taught me a lot of things that I might not have otherwise engaged with if I had lived my life as a cis person. Transitioning really highlights male privilege and how society can treat you completely differently based on what gender it perceives a person to be.
Similarly, my body was no longer overtly criticised. Fat men are also at the mercy of some stereotypes – laziness being the most common. This imbalance, and the effect it has had on my life and the way that people perceive me, is one of the clearest and most startling examples of male privilege and sexism that I have encountered. When I was perceived to be a fat woman, there was a real sense of not just disgust, but a poisonous, malignant contempt.
Occasionally, I still face discrimination as a fat man, but it’s not as vehement, societally sanctioned nor pervasive as it once was. How Black Families Are Destroyed, In Two Simple Charts. Race relations have noticeably deteriorated since the Trayvon Martin murder case verdict. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that only 52% of Americans believe that things are going well between white and black people in America. It is going to be hard to get those numbers to rise unless white Americans come to the hard realization that racism still exists in America. White people are still largely the beneficiaries of racism, whether they know it or not. As The Nation’s Mychal Denzel Smith explains, “Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils. If you’re white, you can be completely oblivious, passively accepting the status quo, and reap the rewards.”
The racism of today is not the same kind that prevents one from drinking water from the store fountain but it exists nonetheless. The most blatant example of racism today is the criminal justice system, including the school-to-prison cycle. Philip N.