>R writes:
> >it's difficult, indeed. you're expecting whites -- the people who benefit
> >from racism -- to see through their illusions?
>
>Uh, like the great benefits of having Bush installed as president? And those
>garnered by the gutting of the public schools... and the circumventing of the
>Constitution cause it's just "immigrants" that'll get the zap... and the
>dropping of everyone's wages cause welfare is a 'black thing' and can thus be
>destroyed as a floor ... (not even getting into the white women affected
>by the
>attacks on affirmative action or the white folks locked up in the drug war on
>the poor...)
>
>Let's just say the benefits are, at best, fleeting. Kind of like standing on
>the upper deck of a sinking ship.
>
>So, yes.
>
>Jenny Brown
The benefits of being white are huge and hardly fleeting. Do police pull white people over just for driving a Mercedes? Do employers, who hire people primarily based on their perception of the candidates ability to "get along" with the team see blacks as easily integrated into the "team" as whites. Do whites convicted of murdering blacks stand the same chance of receiving the death penalty as black who kill whites? Do banks routinely charge higher interest rates for home loans just because the borrower is white? Does every white guy who steps into an elevator with a woman immediately feel fear that "something bad may happen" just because of their skin color? Do white students get told their race dying out was a tragedy but was all for the best anyway like Native American children do? Are whites routinely referred to as inherently lazy and shiftless like blacks and Native Americans? How many books are on the market to "prove" that white people are inferior intellectually to blacks? Do any people of color have members of their race worthy of giant national monuments? Read markers at historic sites of white families ruthlessly massacred by indians even if there were only 5 people killed and they were, by the definition of whites, squatters. You have to kill at least 25 indians to get a marker on the site and even then they were killed in a dispute over hunting or grazing. They were not massacred. This of course teaches children that white lives count for more than the lives of others. Do white children get told their lives are worth less than the lives of people of color on a routine basis this way? Are there schools, towns, libraries, etc. named after mass murdering blacks or Native Americans? Why is the systematic murder of millions of Jews in Europe taught as a Holocaust of never before seen proportions but the deliberate genocidal murders of tens of millions indigenous North Americans persons taught as an inevitable conflict that was perpetrated out of an attempt to make the world a better place and however misguided you can't argue that the end results were good? Are Japanese children taught that white Americans refuse to apologize for dropping the Atomic bombs because their culture doesn't value peoples lives to the same high degree as Japanese people do? Whites teach the converse of that about Japans refusal to apologize for Pearl Harbor. When public schools are gutted are all white schools as quickly deprived of funds as schools that are all black or Native American? The ship may be sinking but most of the lifeboats are for sale to the highest bidder with the remainder being labeled "Whites Only". Bush isn't a benefit just for white people. We all have to suffer with him. If you truly see the benefits of being white as fleeting at best then you are not looking with your eyes fully opened. White folks locked up on drug charges? Would you rather be a poor white guy with a small amount of meth or a poor black guy with a small amount meth? Why is the predominantly white crime of cocaine possession not treated as harshly as the possession of crack, which is perceived as predominately a black crime? Sorry to run this list so long but the failure to see the benefits of being white when they are so obvious and numerous got my blood boiling. I wish it were true that white people were targeted with the same ferocity as people of color but it just isn't so. You are confusing the war on the poor as the same thing as racism which it is not.
John Thornton