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White supremacy wins again: Melissa Harris Perry and the racial false equivalence
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This faux-outrage on the right about MHP’s racism and insensitivity obscures exactly this set of truths about the right’s shoddy record on race. That both Mitt Romney and Phil Robertson have and love black grandbabies should remind us that racism is not primarily about individual attitudes. White folks can love individual black people and still build a world that is inhospitable to black folks. In fact, individual and exceptional black achievers are necessary to maintain the lie of racial progress. Their presence has very little to do with systemic change, though.
Two professors at Tufts released a recent study that found that white Americans believe they have replaced black people as the primary victims of racial discrimination. While both whites and black people agreed that anti-black bias was high in the 1950s and had decreased over time, white respondents to the study perceived a sharp increase in anti-white bias, while blacks perceived such bias to be nonexistent. The question is whether this perception of anti-white bias bears out in material terms.
White Americans currently have 19 times the wealth of African-Americans. That gap has increased, not decreased, since 1995 when it was at an all-time low of 7-to-1. A 2010 study from Brandeis University found that even among the wealthiest African-Americans, wealth has fallen from $25,000 to $18,000. Perhaps even more shocking is that the wealth of upper-middle-class whites “surged to $240K.” So not only is white wealth increasing, but among African-Americans being “wealthy” on average means you have $18K in assets. That is laughably absurd.
Yet 83 percent of white Americans believe that equality has been achieved or will be achieved in the foreseeable future. Are you crying yet? The rest of this study will make you weep.
....
This is the height of cultural delusion: blaming the person on whose neck you’re standing for twisting your ankle. And this delusion has led to a fervent belief in false equivalences that makes white people feel like one-to-one racial comparisons are fair. For instance, they see Melissa Harris-Perry’s misstep as akin to the perpetual misstep that is Rush Limbaugh’s daily commentary. But to quote the song Pia Glenn sang that caused all this brouhaha, “One of these things is not like the others.”
This faux-outrage on the right about MHP’s racism and insensitivity obscures exactly this set of truths about the right’s shoddy record on race. That both Mitt Romney and Phil Robertson have and love black grandbabies should remind us that racism is not primarily about individual attitudes. White folks can love individual black people and still build a world that is inhospitable to black folks. In fact, individual and exceptional black achievers are necessary to maintain the lie of racial progress. Their presence has very little to do with systemic change, though.
Two professors at Tufts released a recent study that found that white Americans believe they have replaced black people as the primary victims of racial discrimination. While both whites and black people agreed that anti-black bias was high in the 1950s and had decreased over time, white respondents to the study perceived a sharp increase in anti-white bias, while blacks perceived such bias to be nonexistent. The question is whether this perception of anti-white bias bears out in material terms.
White Americans currently have 19 times the wealth of African-Americans. That gap has increased, not decreased, since 1995 when it was at an all-time low of 7-to-1. A 2010 study from Brandeis University found that even among the wealthiest African-Americans, wealth has fallen from $25,000 to $18,000. Perhaps even more shocking is that the wealth of upper-middle-class whites “surged to $240K.” So not only is white wealth increasing, but among African-Americans being “wealthy” on average means you have $18K in assets. That is laughably absurd.
Yet 83 percent of white Americans believe that equality has been achieved or will be achieved in the foreseeable future. Are you crying yet? The rest of this study will make you weep.
....
This is the height of cultural delusion: blaming the person on whose neck you’re standing for twisting your ankle. And this delusion has led to a fervent belief in false equivalences that makes white people feel like one-to-one racial comparisons are fair. For instance, they see Melissa Harris-Perry’s misstep as akin to the perpetual misstep that is Rush Limbaugh’s daily commentary. But to quote the song Pia Glenn sang that caused all this brouhaha, “One of these things is not like the others.”
Read the whole piece here
I have a conservative coworker who insists racism doesn't exist and if anything it's white people that get the shaft. We've argued constantly over this and now he at least admits that there is still some racism against minorities but that it's on the way out and that white people have it worse. Straight, white Christians having it the worst of the worst.
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