http://www.siasaduni.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-is-white-privilege.html
An excerpt:
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
What do you all think of this?
3 comments:
Great point, Dan. Stemming from this, one might find that those most sensitive in racial change issues are "bleeding heart liberals". What are they called again....oh yeah, Democrats.
As for the excerpt, while I completely agree that minorities are most often unfairly judged for their reproductive behaviors, I feel that whites are not let off easily either. I feel like they experience a different type of white privilege; not only the idea that their reproductive freedom is a private matter, but that because they are white "society expects better of them because of their whiteness." This is why I feel it was so controversial when the story broke that Bristol Palin was preggers. If she had been a minority people would have immediately written her off as a "racial pattern," but because she is white, society sees it as worse because she is breaking the supposed "norm" of "white behavior."
I dont know about anyone else, but when I heard about Palin's daughter I thought she was irresponsible regardless of race. That is a stereotype too among whites more than other races of young girls getting pregnant which is why we created the label white trash. I cant say necessarily that if one of Obama's or McCains daughters had this same issue it would have been the same; the one comparison that can be made is George Bush's daughters. No one is looking anywhere except down on these people so I dont see where the privilege comes in. However I cant say whether or not it would have been worse or different if this had happened to Obama. I could imagine that it would but people probably feel stronger about that
Post a Comment