This comment section: "Actually I'm pretty sure the bike fell over for reasons unrelated to the stick"
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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What I mean is that if I am a white unemployed, poor, knowing that 90% of rich people are white and male doesn't make me any richer or privileged.
based on what you think so?
But this is the problem. Class is not tied with demography in itself, class has to do with relationship to wealth. White people don't belong to a privileged class, the privileged class is mostly composed by white people. They are not the same thing. I would take it personally if you defined policy that worked on the assumption that "San Francisco" is rich, if I am one of the thousands of homeless people, indeed.
Women and other minorities today have that representation. Mainstream discourse involves a lot these topics. Unfortunately not intersectional feminism, because that's way too threatening.
That's the thing, being a man doesn't make you on top. Thinking this way, with airtight categories is indicative of the kind of idea that as long as "a proportionate amount of women" are going to be "on top" (i.e., in position of power), we are fine. We are not. This always leave a significant amount of people oppressed. That's why I think feminism should be (and partly is!) a transformative movement, and why I think it's a problem that it has been swallowed by the status quo. This, to me, is the wrong battle. If someone told me that since I am man I am "on top", and therefore I should just be an ally, I would feel alienated, because this fails completely to capture the mechanism of the system that oppresses both me and women.
Would that person be claiming that young white men are the most disadvantaged class?
Remember, I didn't claim that all white people were privileged. Only that if you were to for some reason break class down to race and gender, young white men would not more discriminated against than anyone else.
I mean we are talking about people who are claiming that young white males are being ignored or specifically discriminated against. So they're already drawing conclusions based on race. In America a common trope is to blame minorities for economic disparity. Going back prior to the civil war, where poor white farmers blamed the slaves for ruining the labor market.
Again, the original context was about a group who already specified their demography. The premise was that young white men were specifically disadvantaged.
My rebuttal was that specifying young white men, instead of just young people was problematic. But if we were to examine this demographic as a class, it would be hard to say they were disadvantaged. I did not define the structure of class in this argument, the person I was originally responding to did.
And white men do not?
When I said the top, I meant in policy. If we are talking about political equality, there are not a lot of reasons for men to justifiably advance their own rights.
And if they told you they were progressive about mens rights?
I don't think so, and I don't see why it's relevant. Young white men are not a class, also, and I don't see why they should think in those terms. The fact is, if you are told that you are on top due to the population you belong to, but you effectively are not, you are alienated by that movement. I think it's fairly straightforward, no? A movement that considers "young white men" a class (a privileged one), is alienating because it fails to capture the reality of class structure.
And I agree with this.
Yeah but we are not talking about the people of this article specifically, are we? I am talking about generally poor men. Why these people should think that they should be more privileged based on race? I think that the majority of people would simply want to have more, exactly like everyone else. The idea that people should deserve more based on their race seems closer to white suprematism which is a minoritarian ideology. Also this is very unlikely in countries that don't have the same racial divide as the US.
And this - to some extent - is also my argument. Specifically, they are because their oppression is not acknowledged nor part of the agenda for the progressive movements. They are alienated as oppressed and they are not member of the upper class by virtue of their population, hence they are as oppressed as others, without anybody representing their problems. So they are specifically disadvantaged from this perspective as there is not even a movement that they can support in which they recognize themselves. Some of them, turn to reactionary ideologies/people (like the ones in this article) that capture their problems.
Not in the same way. Again, the mainstream cultural discourse lost a lot of the political connotation and flattened purely on gender/racial issues, so no, white oppressed men don't have a political outlet that capture their struggle in the same way, right now. This to me explains the growth of the Jordan Peterson & co., which act as representation for those people's issues, and are the exact reflection of the progressive movement who -failing to put class struggle at the center, and focusing on individual populations- pushes the idea that oppressed populations are actually in competition with each other for vital space (sorry, nothing to do for white men, you are already on top, now we need to support [POPULATION]).
Well this in my opinion is an extremely limited perspective, because oppression and inequality is not solved by policy.
I would answer the same I answered before, I don't care about mens right per se. I generally strongly oppose this idea that class should be divided in the different population, each with its own set of problems and demands. This to me seems like a perfect way to shatter class unity which becomes purely based on mutual support (being an ally) rather than on common interests and reciprocal recognition as members of the same class and victim of the same dynamics.
I think this has been our problem, yes I have been specifically talking about men who have already self identified as being more disadvantaged because they are young white men.
I don't believe that class has to do with race, but that was the specific claim I was originally negating. My arguments surrounding race were attempts to point out internal contradictions within this claim. If we do accept the framework of race specifying class, as the claim was stated, things don't really make sense.
It is only a minority view depending on what part of the country you are in. When I went to elementary school in South Carolina they taught that the civil war was about state rights, and that the majority of southerners didn't even like slavery, and that was because slaves made them poorer.
I think you are underestimating just how racist certain parts of this country are, and how important racial ideology is to their culture. And just how effectively it utilized race in class division. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Right, but that's namely because western politics is devoid of any actual class consciousness. It primarily is still focused on individual rights, of which white men aren't really disadvantaged.
See that's where I disagree, there are progressive political parties who engage in class consciousness. They just aren't popular, and don't tend to attract a lot of white young men, or at least in my area.
Fox News doesn't match that description? Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, a slew of other networks or anchors that specifically talk about this constantly? They have plenty of political outlets, just not a lot of healthy ones. But again, this is because those same networks are ran by the people who benefit from preserving the status quo.
Plus, i think the same problems are endemic to minority groups as well. It's not like this representation is really focusing on class politics, they're all based around individual rights. What exactly is the difference between the leaders of black lives matter and Jordan Peterson, other than one may have more legitimate complaints?
Yes, but that is typically what progressiveness looks like outside of class consciousness, and I don't really foresee us evolving past that any time soon.
Right, but this debate did not start in a vacuum. The original affirmation was that young white men were specifically disadvantaged.
I think there was a confusion where you thought my arguments within the framework of the original affirmation were taken as individual claims instead of rebuttals to claims. I think part of that is due to me responding to a slew of gish gallop made by the op.
I think we have essentially been in agreement, with maybe some differences in opinion about the scope of white supremacist ideology being practiced in America.
I also want to expand the perspective and not be US-centric. I am not from US, I don't live there. There are many other places that share similar situations. I can agree that perhaps in some parts of US what you are saying is true. I am saying that this is definitely not the case in many european countries where there is no such racial divide. Of course, right-wing parties still utilize race whenever they can (e.g., immigration).
Yeah, of course they exist, this is the same in Europe. They are not mainstream, they are not among the parties people vote to see their representative in parliament etc. This is why I stressed on the "mainstream" aspect.
You are right, and probably I did not specify well enough. I am talking about progressive (and leftist) political outlets. You quoted exactly the kind of people I was referring to when I mentioned those who end up capturing the problems for these people and then using them for their own interests. To simplify: if a poor white man sees in his interest the Carlson's agenda and not the one from a progressive movement, this is a failure first and foremost of that movement imho. To me it is a failure in building an analysis and making proposals that people from all races and genders can understand and recognize themselves into. This is why I mentioned that imho the Carlsons are just the flipside of the coin of a neutered progressive (mainstream!) movement.
Exactly my point! And yet BLM is the mainstream movement that reaches the news and essentially the only one that we know of from US on the other side of the ocean. I am sure that for locals things might be different, but that's exactly what I am referring to as the problem. The main political discourse is occupied by movements which lost all traits of class politics, therefore laying the ground for people to entrench themselves into movements based on characteristics which are (politically) irrelevant. If you are a poor (maybe relatively uneducated) white man, your political opinion is hardly shaped on niche analysis and research, and more based on what you see around you (TV, socials etc.). If all this person sees are movement who don't talk at all about problems they might be facing, then they will turn to those who do, Carlson and these other toxic guys.
Me neither, but this means that the struggle is completely neutered and within the boundaries of the system, and as such cannot address systemic issues. I think it's absolutely necessary to see past it, given the global political situation.
Very likely, and probably also because I live in a different world and I have a different background, so I did not want to dismiss but also did not want to focus solely on US issues/perspective. I also believe that the people the article talks about are -unfortunately- not only is US. I remember Peterson having a talk (or whatever you can call those) where I live and it was fully booked...