A history of white privilege

[True Dough]

[StarfishSaver]

1. Perfect!

Thanks for posting it!

[Aristus]

2. !!! - 100% THIS - !!!

[wasupaloopa]

3. You know a privilege is something given to you right?

privilege noun
priv·​i·​lege | ˈpriv-lij
, ˈpri-və-
Definition of privilege

(Entry 1 of 2)
: a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor : prerogative especially : such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office

privilege verb
privileged; privileging

Definition of privilege (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb
1 : to grant a privilege to
2 : to accord a higher value or superior position to privilege one mode of discourse over another


Being proud is not a privilege since no one made you proud or made you what you are.

[Hoyt]

4. Plus, the white wingers that believe such junk, probably have a confederate flag, MAGA

hat, or something similar, among their racist paraphernalia.

[OnDoutside]

5. I can't speak for the other nationalities but if you are of Irish and Catholic heritage, your

history doesn't go back much before the 1830. If you're lucky that an ancestor worked for the British state, there might be some record. Because of the Penal laws, Catholics were of no consequence to the conquering English, so few records exist until the final repeal of the Penal Laws.

Penal Laws, laws passed against Roman Catholics in Britain and Ireland after the Reformation that penalized the practice of the Roman Catholic religion and imposed civil disabilities on Catholics. Various acts passed in the 16th and 17th centuries prescribed fines and imprisonment for participation in Catholic worship and severe penalties, including death, for Catholic priests who practiced their ministry in Britain or Ireland. Other laws barred Catholics from voting, holding public office, owning land, bringing religious items from Rome into Britain, publishing or selling Catholic primers, or teaching.

Sporadically enforced in the 17th century and largely ignored in the 18th, the Penal Laws were almost completely nullified by the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1791), the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), the Roman Catholic Charities Act (1832), and the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1926).

[wasupaloopa]

9. My ancestors came from Paisley Scotland.

Their decedents most likely persecuted Irish. I am not proud of that nor am I ashamed of tracing ancestry back to Scotland.

Neither is white privege.

[mgardener]

16. Wasn't great to be an Irish Catholic

In NY in the early 1900's.
My grandmother would tell me stories about the way Irish and Irish Catholics were treated.

My father emigrated with his parents from England in the mid 1920's. They were Catholics of Irish descent also came for the opportunity to better themselves and for their kids.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. That's not what privilege is about. It is, however, a great explanation about why we have things

like "black history month" and not a "white history month."

[wasupaloopa]

8. I agree. There should be black history month and other

months dedicated to the people we do not learn about in history class.

I have always objected to the idea that history begins when Europeans migrated to a place. European history is taught in school so an aware person would want to know the history of other people.

For a while I was a docent at a place where there were Native American pictographs. I had to learn the culture of the people who could trace their ancestry back 3,000 years. It gives you perspective

[plimsoll]

13. Absolutely!

The privilege is about having advanced ourselves on their backs and refusing to acknowledge that the head start still matters.

Henry Louis Gates has done a fairly good job focusing on African Americans. I've found the DNA testing that can tell you what part of Europe your ancestry came from, but not where in Africa your ancestors came from extremely offensive. We took that history, we can at least acknowledge that. These are still celebrities.

Until a white person can understand that the slave schedules were a permanent and deliberate tool to erase ancestry the notion of a "white history month" should automatically mark that person as an avowed and open white supremacist. Why allow the BS?

[malaise]

7. Extend that thinking to Western foreign policy based on the

so called superiority of the white man and you'll begin to understand the mess created on this planet

[Iggo]

10. Wish I could rec this a million times.

[yonder]

11. Excellent.

[ProudLib72]

12. Wouldn't it be better to be proud of who you are rather than where you're from?

Just because your great, great, great, great, whatever, was a somebody doesn't mean you are too.

[StarfishSaver]

14. Another aspect of this

is some white Americans proudly touting the deeds of their forefathers as if they instilled in them some special nobility and goodness - but as soon as we start talking about the evil they did, suddenly they don't know them anymore.

"George Washington, this and that ... MY ancestors came over on the Mayflower ... our Founding Fathers blah blah blah."

And then...

"Why do we have to talk about SLAVERY?! That was a long time ago and *I* never owned any slaves!"

[EffieBlack]

15. BINGO!!!

[customerserviceguy]

17. Ok, this guy lost me at

"French even". Like people of French ancestry are somehow lesser beings than Irish or Polish people.