Things that are acceptable and not acceptable in our society...for whatever reason

[Awesome]

In response to the privilege threads, it seems to me privilege is now reversing. As a straight white male I often feel part of some (I'm not going to say unprivileged, but not sure what word fits).

For instance, applying for a job

A white guy and a black guy apply for a job. All things being equal, the black guy will get the job because if he doesn't, its racist discrimination. Even if the white guy is slightly better qualified or experienced, the black guy still has a strong chance. The white guy has to be a lot better to get the job.

It's a lot easier for a woman to prove sexual harassment against a man than a man to prove it against a woman. In a lot of cases, if a man reports a woman for domestic violence, it isn't followed up. There are around 30 women's refuges in Edinburgh. There are 0 for men.

Even gay people have charities and groups and events and laws against discrimination, and all these things set up to make other people equal and doing it by dragging white people down. And I'm not saying that because white people are better, but because in the Western world they have tended to enjoy a higher place in society.

Equality should not be about dragging everyone down to the lowest common level, it should be about raising everyone to the highest.

And now for a true story.

A few years back a guy I knew, whilst still in school, get in an argument with another kid. The other kid said: "you're a white bastard." So the guy I know said "yeah, well, you're a black bastard." The school got the police involved, the police got the children's panel involved, the children's panel got social workers involved. The parents (I know them, too) at one point for their son was going to end up in care. He got expelled.

And a cop told him "you know, if you had said 'you brown bastard' none of this would have happened." Apparently its racist to call a black person black. But its fine to call a white person white? Even though we're really a weird creamy beige pasty colour?

[Flex Luthor]

Totally agree with you Awesome that you can basically say whatever the hell you want to your friends and it's fine. Most people generally know which areas are sensitive to their friends and will avoid it. I try to avoid any and all potentially offensive topics until I know someone well enough.

[Rostov]

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I think the ideal post-inequality situation will be one in which we can all laugh and joke at differences and stereotypes from a position where those stereotypes have lost all their destructive power. And I think among people who are friends and who like and trust each other, all kinds of banter might be acceptable. But even then, I'd agree with jpryan about being careful about knowing someone well enough first. I think there can also be issues around what other people outside the friendship group might think if they overhear - they don't have the context and so might misunderstand, especially if they're in the disadvantaged group.

In the UK, at least, I'm not aware of any evidence that minority ethnic groups have an advantage over white people in getting work, but there is plenty of evidence that it's the other way round. One research project (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/oct/18/racism-discrimination-employment-undercover) "found that an applicant who appeared to be white would send nine applications before receiving a positive response of either an invitation to an interview or an encouraging telephone call. Minority candidates with the same qualifications and experience had to send 16 applications before receiving a similar response." Now that article is from 2009 and I hope that things have changed since then, but I doubt that things have magically equalised. I also don't imagine (but again, hope to be wrong) that the UK is particularly different/worse than many other countries.

I'm not aware of any examples of gay people trying to drag white people down but perhaps that's a typing error or a cut and paste problem and 'straight' people was meant. If so, I still don't understand why that would be. I certainly don't feel threatened by gay people's perfectly reasonable requests for equal treatment. It demands very little (if anything) of me, other than a bit more awareness and sensitivity, and to make fewer assumptions about people. I guess it also requires that I accept that people don't assume that I'm heterosexual, but that doesn't bother me either.

The problem with the idea about levelling up to equality is that sometimes the higher position is precisely because others have a lower position. If I have an advantage, it's because someone else has a disadvantage. Remove that disadvantage, and my advantage goes. So perhaps it feels to me like I'm being levelled down, even if actually someone else is being levelled up.

[Timmy M]

another video that's kinda relevant and SFW this time