I recently received a comment from an incoming Columbia student asking me to expand on my ideas about permeating and subsisting in oppressive systems, asking me to clarify a means by which I could (or I feel we should) go about correcting or addressing this privilege, and asking me to expand...
Okay so I'm trying to find photos of the 1967 film "Privilege" and all I find are rants about white privilege/black privilege/male privliege/female privilege.
It's obvious people maybe you, and most people including myself, relate to the world in the way that they experienced it. I really think "privilege" depends on where you grew up. I knew people who got into Cooper Union not only because they were talented but because they had money, and lived in LA where they could get incredible recommendations. meanwhile art students where I grew up in OC could NEVER get incredible recommendations because there's no art community in Orange County that's even comparable to that of major metropolitan areas. (I find it interesting that wealthy people are accepted into a institution for higher learning that offers free tuition. These people could easily afford 4 years at RISD full-price without financial aid yet are accepted at a school that is "free" pretty 'fair' isn't it?)
I'm considered or looked at as "white" by appearance because my skin is light when in actuality my mother is a full Ashkenazi Jew (and since our genetic history is pretty much homogenous and we have diseases (one of which that I have ^_^(sup IBS) that are common I'd pretty much consider "us" a "race") and my father is 1/2 English and 1/2 English-Argentine. I'm what...75% non-white?
Not all white folks experience privliege that many think and generalize them to have. I was ostracized my whole life, still am because I'm "different". My views are different, my opinions are different. It's not like I believe in Hitler or the KKK or something. When I was 12 I was pro-gay rights and pro-choice, everyone else wasn't. Needless to say I got a lot of crap for that. Now at age 21, I'm still pro-choice but I'm way more open-minded and see holes in P.Cers (political correct-try-hards) arguments. For example: I believe white is a race and should be respected just as much as every other race is. (Why is it regarded as rascist if one decides to take a class on caucasian studies and it's not if someone takes a class on asian studies). There shouldn't be exeptions to who should be respected and who should not be. To be honest, those arguements hold equal merit to the anti-race of whatever 50-60-70 years-ago. You're excluding a griup for ridicuoulus reasons and generalizing and scapegoating and entire population based upon a few idiots actions and bad examples.
I also believe that setting up LGBTA programmes and asian-american studies programmes promotes insecurities because it emphasize to people "you're different", same with math level placements etc.
I also don't understand why affirmative-action doesn't include Jews. I'm not of anglo-saxon/irish origin. Both of my father's parents' failies were kicked out of England because they were minorities. Yes white people experience oppression too OMGZ. My grandfather's family fled england because their side lost in the English Civil War...King Charles I was beheade...chaos erupted. My grandmother's family? They were kicked out for being catholic. They fled to Ireland then Argentina.
My father said to me a few weeks ago that her family often said to him, "being Catholic in England, is like being a Black person in the South" and it's STILL like that in the UK as well in the South. It's shocking and aggrivating that people are so FUCING closeed-minded to what other people (white folks yo) experience. Everyone experiences oppression/suppression/being an outcast, it's not just "racial minorities", it's religious minorities that compose "white pplz aka non-jews", political minorities etc.
Meh. Let's open our minds because this is becoming somewhat aggravating.
This country (USA) was settled by outcasts
