If America were a game of Monopoly the rules would be a bit different. The following example considers race only to keep it simple. Adding class would be interesting too, but for now I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Rules:
1. There are four players: one white, one red, one black and one yellow.
2. The white player is the banker.
3. Starting amounts: Before play begins give each player the following amounts to start with:
- $1500 white
- $1085 yellow
- $105 black
- $75 red
(Based on median household net worth in 2000.)
4. When passing Go: Each player will get the following amounts when passing Go:
- $200 white
- $170 yellow
- $140 black
- $120 red
(Based on median personal income for 2000.)
5. Settling disputes: If there is a dispute between players, it is put to a vote. (See Voting below).
6. Changing rules: If a player asks for a rule change, it is put to a vote (See Voting below).
7. Voting: To win a vote a motion must get at least 5.1 votes. Each player gets the following number of votes:
- 8.2 white
- 1.3 black
- 0.4 yellow
- 0.1 red
(Based on those reporting one race on the 2000 census.)
8. Speaking: The white player can speak at any time. Other players speak only when spoken to. They are allowed to raise their hand to try to get the attention of the white player to ask a question.
(Based on media ownership.)
9. Jail:
- Going to jail: Red and black players go to jail if they land on any corner square except for the Just Visiting Jail square. (Blacks are three times more likely to be stopped by the police and have their car searched. Both blacks and Native Americans are way more likely to wind up in prison than whites.)
- Getting out of jail: To get out of a jail you must pay $1000 or wait five turns. (Prison is way more damaging than in Monopoly. Also, it is way easier for the rich to avoid prison altogether.)
10. The red player: Decisions to build or sell houses must be approved by the white player. The white player can build on any of the red player’s squares and keep all income for himself.
(Based on the government’s management of remaining Native lands.)
11. All other rules are the same.
Advice to white players:
If the other players complain that the rules are unfair, say “Get over it!” Point out that the game is fair and democratic: they can always ask for a rule change and put it to a vote. Also point out that the white player does not always win, so if they lose it is their own fault.
Personal observations:
Most white players act as if the same rules and conditions apply to everyone, as if everyone starts with $1500 and gets $200 for passing Go, etc. If anything, they think yellow players get more for passing Go, that black players get more turns and that red players are too noble to care about winning.
See also:
Nice way of looking at things, Abagond. This is one of your best posts.
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Very creative!
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LOL!
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This was great! 🙂
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I LOVE THIS. I use so many of your points! This is so interesting. Great post!
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This is pretty interesting, and quite possibly, true.
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“7. Voting: To win a vote a motion must get at least 5.1 votes. Each player gets the following number of votes:
8.2 white
1.3 black
0.4 yellow
0.1 red
(Based on those reporting one race on the 2000 census.)”
Actually, it should be like 6.5 white, if you don’t count the Hispanic/Latinos who put white as their race. It just depends on how people view Hispanics/Latinos.
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What about the brown player (Hispanic/Latino)?!!
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im with calculator.. latinos are too huge a part of the US, both historically and currently, to be left out.
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a good one! 😀
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That one is brilliant, man.
For the Community Chest stack, I would also add the “freedom of speech card” where the player who pulls it can say to another player whatever he wants, even the most ignorant slurs. However if you call a white player “incompetent w*nker”, he has the right to team up with the banker who will grant him a loan to buy up all your assets at half price. You’ll get no more money on passing Go, making sure you’ll end up in big debt.
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Great post, although I agree with the commentors who mentioned that Latin@s should be included.
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I feel many Latinos fall into the category which they are identified. In the south west many are Red, they were a part of the Native population when that area was Mexico. The Cubans are White, because of the dispensation they were given by opposing Castro.
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This is a great illustration of how POC need to work twice as hard to get half as far.
It really is true.
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Latinos are included (if they are fair enough skinned-they too consider themselves white or do they??) I am ignorant on this subject matter- just making a generalization. Abagond what say you?
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Not to derail this thread or anything, but Hispanics are not a race. No more than, say, “English-speaking” is a race.
Nearly all Hispanics in America report themselves as “white” on the census:
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Excellent post, and so very, very true…definitely sums up a lot of things that some of us have learned after being schooled in ‘the way things REALLY are’, and not the feel-good falsehoods our parents or schools drummed into our heads.
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@Abagond I agree with you that Hispanic is not a race, but I didn’t use that word. By latino I mean someone of latin-american heritage, which also isn’t a race, but most latinos here are mixed white and indigenous. Most latinos put white on the census because mestizo, or something meaning the same thing, isn’t there. Someone who is biracial black/white, or asian/white, or black/asian, can check both boxes yet latinos have nothing other than white to check. This last census caused a lot of confusion and anger because latinos were forced to identify as white. When my wife and I applied for a marriage license this year the lady asked us if we were latino, and then gave us the application to sign. It had us listed as white, and when my wife complained the lady said that was just how they (the government?) did it. Latino does not mean anything, but my wife and her family are mestizo.
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Awesome post, it’s a wonder that I use this site for a referral base whenever these things come up (Arab Slave Trader etc.). You have a poetic way of explaining white privilege that other sites tend to either miss the mark on altogether or get too long-winded in their attempt to explain. Everyone knows Monopoly and this is a solid explanation of the historical weight that makes pulling oneself up by the bootstraps a bit hard.
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Rimbambo says,
@Abagond I agree with you that Hispanic is not a race, but I didn’t use that word. By latino I mean someone of latin-american heritage, which also isn’t a race, but most latinos here are mixed white and indigenous. Most latinos put white on the census because mestizo, or something meaning the same thing, isn’t there. Someone who is biracial black/white, or asian/white, or black/asian, can check both boxes yet latinos have nothing other than white to check. This last census caused a lot of confusion and anger because latinos were forced to identify as white. When my wife and I applied for a marriage license this year the lady asked us if we were latino, and then gave us the application to sign. It had us listed as white, and when my wife complained the lady said that was just how they (the government?) did it. Latino does not mean anything, but my wife and her family are mestizo.
laromana says,
Why is it that, in North America, Latinos of NON MIXED RACE Indigenous descent or MIXED RACE Indigenous/Spanish/European descent (“mestizos”) are allowed to INCORRECTLY self identify as “White” or classify themselves as JUST Latinos/Hispanics but Latinos of MIXED RACE African/Spanish/Indigenous/European descent (“mulatos”)are EXPECTED to classify themselves as Afro-Latinos or “JUST BLACK” (or risk being accused of “not acknowledging their Black roots”)? This has always seemed like a RACIST double standard to me.
If MIXED RACE Afro-Latinos (“mulatos”) are “considered JUST BLACK” in America because of their PARTIAL AFRICAN ANCESTRY how is it that NON MIXED RACE Indigenous Latinos and MIXED RACE Indigenous/Spanish/European descent Latinos (“mestizos”) are NOT “considered JUST INDIGENOUS” based on their FULL/PARTIAL INDIGENOUS ANCESTRY?
If Afro-Latinos are NOT “allowed” to JUST call themselves Latinos or White (based on partial White ancestry) Indigenous/Mixed Indigenous Latinos should ALSO NOT be “allowed” to JUST call themselves Latinos or White.
Even though Latinos are comprised of similar racial backgrounds as NATIVE AMERICANS or AFRICAN AMERICANS, because of their UNIQUE LATINO CULTURE/CUSTOMS, they are NOT the SAME as NATIVE AMERICANS or AFRICAN AMERICANS and, it is in this context, that the Latino label matters most.
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Very clever.
I was just dropping by to note that I have another post up that you might be interested in.
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“8. Speaking: The white player can speak at any time. Other players speak only when spoken to. They are allowed to raise their hand to try to get the attention of the white player to ask a question.”
———————o———————
This morning I was watching a discussion on a breaking news story. Seems a journalist uncovered widespread steroid use among cops (200+) in a NJ city. Two white reporters and a former officer (all white) were discussing the ramifications of this. They pretty much covered every angle—effect on taxpayers shelling out $12K/yr per cop, the health question, corruption, police issue, message to youth, etc.—except one. The one that leaps out at every black person in the first 10 seconds: “WHAT! You mean in addition to bigoted, trigger-happy, sadistic white cops who racially profile, I now gotta worry that their roid-raging?!!
In passing one briefly mentioned that it may affect their performance in the field. (NS!) The shoe, the iron, the race car, they got nothing to say.
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One of the best things about Monopoly is the uniqueness of its playing pieces. The car, the dog, the shoe, the battleship, the thimble, the iron, the wheelbarrow, the hat, and the cannon are fascinating to children–but maybe also these pieces have a deeper meaning.
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@laromana: well, the so called afrolatinos are just people in those countries where they come from. If you come from a wealthy family nobody cares of your race. If you are a football (soccer) star, nobody cares about that.
Now when they come to race obsessed USA, they have to define themselves racially. And the main line here is your skin color, not your actual ethnicity or ethnical identity.
I do not know any other country where you are asked to give yourself your own racial profile and officially that is. In other countries they ask your nationality. In USA they want to know your race. That has always been little bit weird for me.
The racism in Latin America is mostly directed to the indians, native people of those countries. I remember when I was going out with this panamian girl in high school and we read some story from a news paper about Panama. They had a picture of a indian woman. My GF got mad because now everybody believed that there are just indians living in the country.
– We have almost no indians, she claimed and went on to tell me how dirty, untrustworthy drunks and drug addicts indians are in reality.
And this girl had a jet black hair, brown skin, and almost black eyes. Go figure.
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wow nice post, wat do u think of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghettopoly
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I still don’t understand! Where’s the brown player?!
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Excellent post! Sums things up perfectly. It’s so strange that almost anybody can see that this game is rigged to be extremely unfair, yet so few can grasp that the same rules in real life are unfair too. Strange and scary.
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Richard III said:
“The shoe, the iron, the race car, they got nothing to say.”
LOL. You got that right!
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Peanut said:
“wow nice post, wat do u think of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghettopoly “
A ghetto Monopoly is not a bad idea – if it were based on how ghettos work and not, like Ghettopoly, on Hollywood stereotypes.
I got the idea for this post from this:
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calculator said:
“I still don’t understand! Where’s the brown player?!”
I did not have a brown player because Hispanic is not a race.
If I had put them in from the start, then commenters would be telling me that Hispanic is not a race – which would put me in a position that is much harder to defend.
From what I remember of the numbers, they would be roughly the same as blacks in terms of wealth, income and police profiling. That last one tells you that they are nowhere near as white as the census would lead you to believe, that many of them are being racialized.
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aeigfc said:
“Excellent post! Sums things up perfectly. It’s so strange that almost anybody can see that this game is rigged to be extremely unfair, yet so few can grasp that the same rules in real life are unfair too. Strange and scary.”
Right. Whites think America is way more fair and just than it is, which leads them to conclude there must be something wrong with blacks and so on.
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When I point out to white people how unfair Race Monopoly is, they like to point out that the older versions of the game were much worse, so I should be grateful for how much better it is now!
It is true, the older versions were worse:
Before 1865, the black player could not even own property and had to give over all his money to the white player.
In the 1921 edition, the white player could remove any of the houses the black player put up (the Tulsa riots) or just kick out the black player altogether without so much as a vote (lynching).
They also like to point out all the star black players, like Obama and Oprah. Proof that the game is fair!
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Is the original from “The Educated Field Negro” making an anti-racist point (that society wants to put black people in jail) or a white supremacist point (that black people are essentially criminal)?
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I assumed it was anti-racist.
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Interesting analogy, but here players are treated as automatons, neither credited for their success or responsible for any of their challenges.
For example, it doesn’t effectively address that each player’s actions determine how much they collect when they pass “Go”. Also, you’re using outdated figures that discount the growing success of asians, who now have both personal and household earnings that exceed whites.
Another issue is crime. I was talking with a friend of mine who works as a cop in NYC about the alleged “racial profiling” in traffic stops. He told me that they don’t do it enough compared to the actual crime rate.
Journalist Jonathan Capehart (who is black) wrote:
In short, 95.1 percent of all murder victims and 95.9 percent of all shooting victims in New York City are black or Hispanic. And 90.2 percent of those arrested for murder and 96.7 percent of those arrested for shooting someone are black and Hispanic. I don’t even know where to begin to describe the horror I still feel looking at those numbers. But the word “hunted” comes to mind.
In other words, the non-white racial “stop rate” is lower than the “non-white” racial violent crime rate.
This article can be found here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/11/post_9.html
The underlying data report can be found here:
Click to access EnforcementReportFirst6Months2010.pdf
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“Interesting analogy, but here players are treated as automatons, neither credited for their success or responsible for any of their challenges. ”
bla bla bla bla bla.
Nice try but this right here is about the way the game is set up for the players FROM THE BEGINNING not their actions during the game.
You can suck at monopoly, or be good at it, or be just OK and get by. But the rules should be the same for everyone no? I don’t care how awesome at monopoly you are if you Randy sat down to play this game and someone handed you the black piece would you play? Would you enjoy the game if you were forced to play? Would these unfair rules BRING OUT YOUR BEST? ENCOURAGE YOU TO SUCCEED? no.
This is a good analogy for one simple reason. Being born is a lot like being assigned a monopoly piece. You start off fresh right then and there with no history. No successes or your euphemistic “challanges” (failures) Only here the color of your piece, (your skin) is going to determine the rules of the game for you. This is precisely the point where your precious bootstrapping falls short.
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The problem is that some are “equaller” than others.
When I worked in the USA I’ve seen first hand about a dozen cases where utterly incompetent numbnuts arse-kissed, smooth-talked or inherited their way up on the ladder. Guess what – they were all white males.
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it is sad that first generation latinos have to give up the social construct of race that they were raised with because it doesnt fit the social construct here in the US. Black Latinos usually identify as black, even if they’re trigueno, and white latinos identify as white, yet latinos who are mixed with indigenous, or are completely indigenous, have nothing to identify with because the US doesnt see native american as a race, but rather as a set number of tribes to identify with. it would have been better if latinos could give up an oppressive racial classification system for something more just, but how it is I think its going from the frying pan and into the fire.
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jas0nburns,
Nice try but this right here is about the way the game is set up for the players FROM THE BEGINNING not their actions during the game.
You can suck at monopoly, or be good at it, or be just OK and get by. But the rules should be the same for everyone no?
I think your logic has a fundamental flaw, which probably has to do with this Monopoly model and its limited applicability to real life.
The “rules” can indeed be the same for everyone without requiring that every person begins with the same amount of money.
Plenty of immigrants of all races come to this country with the equivalence of just a few monopoly dollars in their pockets and yet are able to provide a fine living for their families.
I don’t care how awesome at monopoly you are if you Randy sat down to play this game and someone handed you the black piece would you play? Would you enjoy the game if you were forced to play? Would these unfair rules BRING OUT YOUR BEST? ENCOURAGE YOU TO SUCCEED? no.
I’m not black, but if I were, I might be insulted by your comment.
I “play the game” to put a roof over my head and feed my family. I suspect most others do as well. That there are many folks who are far richer than I doesn’t demotivate me, but rather has the opposite effect.
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Rimbambo says,
it is sad that first generation latinos have to give up the social construct of race that they were raised with because it doesnt fit the social construct here in the US. Black Latinos usually identify as black, even if they’re trigueno, and white latinos identify as white, yet latinos who are mixed with indigenous, or are completely indigenous, have nothing to identify with because the US doesnt see native american as a race, but rather as a set number of tribes to identify with. it would have been better if latinos could give up an oppressive racial classification system for something more just, but how it is I think its going from the frying pan and into the fire
laromana says,
All Afrolatinos do NOT “usually identify themselves as Black”.
American racial classifications are FUNDAMENTALLY RACIST/ANTI-BLACK and that’s why they don’t make room for the RACIAL/CULTURAL DIVERSITY that DEFINE ACTUAL DIFFERENT groups within/between races.
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@laromana I agree. In many parts of latin america, especially mexico, central america and the Caribbean where most US latinos are from, there is more diversity and the social construct of race that exists there is very different from the one we have here in the US. Because of this, the mainstream doesnt know exactly where to put latinos on the american racial map. Latinos who are of mixed heritage, between european, amerindian and african, do not fit well into any category and its unfortunate that the way we see race here will not change to accomodate 15% (according to abagond’s picture*) of the US. the last census and its refusal to include something for mexicans of indigenous heritage to identify with is the biggest example recently.
*http://themediamademecrazy.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/time-demogrpahics.jpg
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“Plenty of immigrants of all races come to this country with the equivalence of just a few monopoly dollars in their pockets and yet are able to provide a fine living for their families.”
So your essentially saying that yes the game is stacked against certain groups. Your Ok with that because if they work hard they can get up to an equal level.
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Oh, i really despise when people self congratulate themselves on the immigrant’s natural inclination to reach success or attain a relative fluency in a country language as if their country were some really special place on the Earth.
But that is beside the point. The point is that particular monopoly game is about well established components of a nation with well documented trajectories through time and space.
So it’s not a game about your fresh-of-the-boat wanabee Rockfeller.
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i’m sorry but i want know i don’t know if i’m correct doesn’t latino falls under hispanics.
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a game should be fun. but there is cheating before it even begin. i don’t want to play. this game is too real.
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“I’m not black, but if I were, I might be insulted by your comment.”
I was talking about YOU! if YOU as you are today (white i assume) were forced to play Abagond’s version of monopoly would you be happy to play as the black piece? Would you perhaps point out that maybe things seemed to be a bit unfair? You seem to think pointing out the imbalances amounts to whining.
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“In many parts of latin america, especially mexico, central america and the Caribbean where most US latinos are from, there is more diversity and the social construct of race that exists there is very different from the one we have here in the US.”
First, what exactly is “more diversity”?
Second, while I agree that the social construct of race that exists in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean is different than what we see here in the United States, I would argue that it is not VERY different. Those who are of more African or indigenous descent face significantly more discrimination than their more white counterparts. The discrimination, while perhaps not legal, was and still is, social. Furthermore, money can only buy so much whiteness in Latin America, even in Brazil. The more European one is in actual ancestry and appearance – the better. And please – save me the “mulatto escape hatch” arguments.
Third, giving up the racial classification system is not necessarily the answer. Latin American countries (particularly in Central America and the Southern cone) have a long history of NOT using racial classification in order to officially erase people of African and indigenous heritage and make the country appear whiter, if the governments did not committ outright acts of genocide just like the United States. These populations then face the silencing of their history and contributions to their respective nations, have been stripped of the right to vote and hold land, and are poo-poo-ed IF they ask, “Ummm, why is that most of the black and brown-skinned people here are poor?” (I say IF because sometimes they do not have this identity or are hesitant to vocalize this question because of the reactions’ of their fellow countrymen.)
I believe that some point in the future the U.S. may find a better way to deal with the “Hispanic/Latino” category on the census. One way might be to allow people to include their ethnic desgination – Mexican, Colombian, etc. However, when that happens, I do not imagine we will see as signifcant a shift as some people might like to think. Plently of latinos will opt for this new category, however, many will also continue to identify as white even if they are of mixed and indigenous heritage.
However, should this census shift happen, you will likely see an even greater diversity in classification because so many people in the U.S. are of mixed racial and cultural heritage. In the past, the U.S. decided with African Americans that all this counting of people’s mixture was too much of a hassle and consolidated all the categories that recognized African Americans’ diverse racial and cultural ancestry as just black or negro. I identify as black African American, however, my father’s side of the family has documented an extensive family tree that records our Native American and European heritage. So do others’. What if a nice 10% to 20% of African Americans started checking three boxes, destablizing the racial classification the U.S. isn’t giving up anytime soon, because they want to represent all of their heritage? Plently of latinos (and others) would have a fit because they also are prejudice/racist just like others.
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jas0nburns: So your essentially saying that yes the game is stacked against certain groups. Your Ok with that because if they work hard they can get up to an equal level.
You seem to be implying that just by knowing the average wealth of a certain collection of people, you’re able to determine if the game is “stacked” against them. I disagree with this premise for a variety of reasons.
For one thing, real life differs from monopoly in that one person “winning” doesn’t imply that everyone else is “losing”. Economies aren’t a zero-sum game. Everyone can potentially create an amount of wealth which makes them feel content and/or successful.
I was talking about YOU! if YOU as you are today (white i assume) were forced to play Abagond’s version of monopoly would you be happy to play as the black piece? Would you perhaps point out that maybe things seemed to be a bit unfair?
I would hope that I’d be happy to be whichever piece I was born as. Asians earn more than whites, and I do not envy them or feel like I’d be happier if I were born as that piece.
You seem to think pointing out the imbalances amounts to whining.
Actually demonstrating that imbalances exist, and the degree that they do, is extremely hard. Income stats are just one data point of a complex function.
Fixating on such beliefs, regardless of how true or not, does nothing to improve one’s lot in life. If one internalizes the idea that they’re doomed to failure due to endemic circumstances, they’re far more likely to fail than if someone internalizes the idea that they can succeed if they work hard.
Furthermore, hard work does work. There are examples from all races which prove this.
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Randy Garver:
Hard work matters, but so does skin colour, class, education, luck and how good your English is. There are people who beat the odds, sure, but most die in the same class they were born in.
White people in America have this self-serving fantasy of Asians coming to their shores with nothing and working their way up, passing even whites. Are there Asians like that? Sure. But are most Asians like that? No way. Most Asians, like most Americans in general, rarely move up to another class.
Asian “success” is a side effect of American immigration policy and the Pacific Ocean: unlike with Mexicans, America can pretty much control who gets in and it is mainly just those with good educations, much better educations than most white people have.
In cases where America let in thousands of poor Asians without good educations, like after the Vietnam War, most of them are doing worse than blacks.
So, unfortunately, the Monopoly example is way more true than you seem prepared to admit.
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@ Randy
me:
I was talking about YOU! if YOU as you are today (white i assume) were forced to play Abagond’s version of monopoly would you be happy to play as the black piece? Would you perhaps point out that maybe things seemed to be a bit unfair?
you:
I would hope that I’d be happy to be whichever piece I was born as. Asians earn more than whites, and I do not envy them or feel like I’d be happier if I were born as that piece.
————————
Seriously? Let’s try again. Go ahead and read my question a few times through if you need to. You can do it!
key elements are “You as you are today” and “play Abagonds unfair version of monopoly”
would you play? You. Randy the white guy. As the black piece in the GAME. yes or no? How about if it were with real money?
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“Fixating on such beliefs, regardless of how true or not, does nothing to improve one’s lot in life. If one internalizes the idea that they’re doomed to failure due to endemic circumstances, they’re far more likely to fail than if someone internalizes the idea that they can succeed if they work hard.”
Yes I agree, and that has absolutely NO BEARING on whether or not things are fair to begin with. I mean seriously where is the disconnect here. Why not just admit that it’s not fair? Is your head going to explode? If you admit that you have privileges, are all the POC going to take that as their cue to storm the suburbs and steal your stuff?
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@LDub512 By diverse I was trying to say less white.
mexico 60-80% mestizo, amerindian 10-30%, white 9-17%, other 1-3%
el salvador mestizo 85%, amerindian 1%, 12% white
dominican republic, 73% multiracial, 16% white, 11% black
I agree that the more white you are, or the more light skinned, the more privilege you have. Also the demographics of those in the government would be more heavily weighted towards white.
However notice that most people in these three countries identify as mestizo/mulatto/multiracial, yet when immigrants from these countries come here, all mestizos must identify as white, even if they dont want to (like my wifes family), except for afro-latinos who can identify as black if they choose, but if theyre light enough can identify as white (like my grandpa does)
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Hard work is only one factor out of many. And not a particularly significant one. The higher you go, the less it has any measurable significance. A day only has 24 hours and there’s only a limited amount of things you can accomplish on your own, even the most productive minds.
I know people who work 50-60 hours a week on several jobs (extremely draining ones) and hardly get by due to the low wage. Then there are those who spend 50-60 hours a week on the telephone, in the backseat of their limo proofreading documents anybody with average intelligence could write, in BS meetings and in airplanes, making millions. That is, without really being indispensable. In case they fall ill or they just don’t feel like working (well, they can afford to), they just delegate downwards to someone who is usually even more competent in crucial details than themselves.
The economic disasters of recent times speak volumes. It baffles me how people quickly switch to oblivion mode when it comes to those subjects. The ones on top are always right, right?
On the other hand, “hard work” is not necessarily an indicator for its quality, its benefits and usefulness or its intended purpose. I bet the architects and think tanks of the Iraq war worked their arses off. So did the ones who made the financial markets crash.
I also know people who are able to accomplish in 20-30 hours a week what others need 40 for. What usually happens in those cases is that, instead of getting appreciation or recognition, they get swamped with even more work. All the work the others don’t accomplish is thrown at them. And as a special “thank you” from management and the staff they are avoided or even bullied but certainly not promoted, especially and foremost, when they’re not white male.
The “hard work” argument is always brought forward by those who already have a certain number of advantages to begin with. It’s so easy to say that there’s enough honey for everybody when your finger is already in the pot.
Something reminds me now of this satirical sketch by a stand-up comedian “I hate poor people”…
Hard work is actually the bottom line. A few factors that outrun “hard work” by several lengths –
* looks (the more “non-foreign” the better)
* personality
* rhetorical skills
* presentability or “commercial viability” in general
* family background
* memberships to clubs, associations etc
* personal connections, direct and indirect
* a fair amount of ruthlessness and opportunism
* last but certainly not least…. plenty of luck
None of the above are acquired through “hard work”, not even through untapped potential.
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@randy: you really believe this?
“Furthermore, hard work does work. There are examples from all races which prove this.”
We could start with slaves in the roman times and ask from them if hard work was working for them, or we can ask those mexicans working in american factories in Ciudad Juarez for 60 bucks a week without any job security (if a woman gets pregnant she’ll be fored at once) or any other security 12 hrs a day six/seven days a week.
Or, since they are too costly work force and the majority of production is transferred to cheaper countries like China, we can ask workers there is hard work working for them. We could ask the guys in concentration camps is their hard work paying off. When they are forced to manufacture jeans and such for free, is their hard work working for them or for somebody else?
Or we can ask from those indian and pakistani children who are living behind locked doors and/or chained to the floor of the factories where they work and live and sleep is hard work working for them.
Only a rich western (american) guy can make such universal simplistic claim like you did.
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@ sam
Absolutely!
If you look at it in a worldwide context with all the developing countries, hard work is a default setting on a horizontal flat line until death for the vast majority.
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Do you guys watch Mad Men? There’s a character named Pete Campbell who embodies this concept perfectly.
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Abagond,
Hard work matters, but so does skin colour, class, education, luck and how good your English is. There are people who beat the odds, sure, but most die in the same class they were born in.
There is no doubt that class mobility is difficult to achieve, but this discussion is primarily about race-specific barriers. Identifying the extent to which these exist is extremely difficult because you have factor out all the other characteristics which can be present, such as family and community attitudes towards education.
I happen to believe that educational attitudes are at the very top of this list, which I seems to explain why so many immigrant children of all races perform well academically.
White people in America have this self-serving fantasy of Asians coming to their shores with nothing and working their way up, passing even whites. Are there Asians like that? Sure. But are most Asians like that? No way. Most Asians, like most Americans in general, rarely move up to another class.
My wife comes from that exact scenario, as do most of her friends and many of her co-workers. She literally grew up in a grass-thatched hut with no plumbing. I don’t have specific numbers regarding mobility, but consider the following: asian folks in general are more likely to be recent immigrants than white folks, so the fact that both personal and household income for asians exceeds that of whites does seem to suggest there is significant relative mobility in that group.
But again, the main challenge in these analyses is figuring out what portion of a person’s opportunities in life are impacted solely by race, a extremely difficult if not impossible task.
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Randy said:
“asian folks in general are more likely to be recent immigrants than white folks, so the fact that both personal and household income for asians exceeds that of whites does seem to suggest there is significant relative mobility in that group.”
No it does not. Most come to America with MORE education than most whites.
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“There is no doubt that class mobility is difficult to achieve, but this discussion is primarily about race-specific barriers. Identifying the extent to which these exist is extremely difficult because you have factor out all the other characteristics which can be present, such as family and community attitudes towards education. ”
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Randy your hilarious.
You might as well have said….
“There is no doubt that class mobility is hard to achieve, it’s a lot harder if your a lazy ass good for nothing ni**er who dropped out of high school.”
Please go away now. Your stinking up the place.
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jas0nburns,
key elements are “You as you are today” and “play Abagonds unfair version of monopoly”
would you play? You. Randy the white guy. As the black piece in the GAME. yes or no? How about if it were with real money?
Would me as a white guy want to play “the game” as Abagond the black guy? No. But keep in mind the limitations of extrapolating this game to real life. The higher average income of white folks doesn’t put a single extra dollar in my pocket, nor does the average lower average income of black folks take one from Abagond’s pocket.
Yes I agree, and that has absolutely NO BEARING on whether or not things are fair to begin with. I mean seriously where is the disconnect here. Why not just admit that it’s not fair?
How much of this “unfairness of average starting wealth and average income” is due exclusively to skin color / race? I don’t think that anyone can really answer that question accurately. Trying to understand these conditions is why I cite the performance of African immigrants. If they outperform US-born black folks academically, can you really say that it’s racial bias which holds the latter back?
Anecdotally, I’ve had discussions with African-immigrant coworkers, and they’ve said that educational attitude was a difference they’ve tended to notice between the 2 groups. One work buddy of mine from Nigeria said, “my dad would have killed me if I didn’t get good grades.”
So here’s my revised theory: any kid whose parents will “kill them if they don’t get good grades” is much more likely to succeed than their peers, regardless of race and family wealth.
Sam and Femi: Abagond is specifically discussing present-day America. Clearly, people in other places and other times lacked educational and career opportunities which would have enabled them to migrate out of poverty.
Femi: The factors you list certainly do impact a person’s earning potential. I have no doubt that the child of a rich person is much more likely to become rich due to connections, background, etc than a poor or middle-class child. But I don’t think that this is as important as whether someone can get out of poverty, if not for themselves then for their children.
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me
“would you play? You. Randy the white guy. As the black piece in the GAME. yes or no? How about if it were with real money?
Randy
Would me as a white guy want to play “the game” as Abagond the black guy? No.
LOL I didn’t ask if you would play as Abagond. Jesus H Christ! Can you read? seriously.
try again.
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Abagond:
No it does not. Most come to America with MORE education than most whites.
You may have a point. This bears further investigation.
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“However notice that most people in these three countries identify as mestizo/mulatto/multiracial, yet when immigrants from these countries come here, all mestizos must identify as white, even if they dont want to (like my wifes family), except for afro-latinos who can identify as black if they choose, but if theyre light enough can identify as white (like my grandpa does).”
“mexico 60-80% mestizo, amerindian 10-30%, white 9-17%, other 1-3%
el salvador mestizo 85%, amerindian 1%, 12% white
dominican republic, 73% multiracial, 16% white, 11% black”
Based on the options on the 2010 Census, Mexicans and Mexican Americans can select that they are Hispanic of Mexican origin. Then for the race specific question, they can check white and write in Mexican Indian or whatever they might like to use to describe their indigenous heritage. This is based on the popular definition of mestizo in Mexico, which is problematic in itself because it erases the long history of the African presence in Mexico which is not covered by that 1 to 3% and the ways in which mestizo does not even necessarily mean one is not amerindian or mostly amerindian. Moreover, while many Mexicans and Mexican Americans might wish to present a more diverse racial heritage (including your wife and many of my friends), there are plently who do not. They are hoping to whiten themselves and the overall image of latinos as quickly as possible. Just like many Latin American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries, including Mexico, did by trying encourage white immigration.
Those from El Salvador can do something similar to Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
Dominicans can speficify they are of Hispanic origin, write in Dominican, and check black and white.
In the Dominican case specifically, the Dominican government has a long history of NOT allowing its citizens to identify as black or mulatto even if they wanted to (this has begun to shift because of Dominican contact with African Americans in the U.S.). The majority of Dominicans and I have the same amount of racial mixture, but our governments had different national projects. The U.S. government segregated, while the Dominican government came up with the designation indio/india, when most Dominicans have little indigenous ancestry, to explain away the dark skin of most of the people. Moreover, the Dominican state historically has compared itself to Argentina and Uruguay in terms of whiteness. Black is only for Haitian people. Until I open my mouth, most Dominicans think I’m Dominican (when my naturally kinky-curly hair is flat-ironed depending on where I am I also get Brazilian, half black and half Mexican, Cuban, Panamanian, and Puerto Rican). The government and many regular folks scoff at my self-definition as black. When you go to another country, the nation state and people expect you to define yourself within the existing structures of the country. This isn’t something exclusive to the United States.
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@ Randy
Well, Monopoly is not exactly about how to get out of poverty. It’s about building wealth mainly through luck and certain tactics. It’s not about getting rich through hard work either, which is a naive illusion anyway.
If Abagond’s version contained a card saying “the currently wealthiest player has been busted for shady activities and incompetence. All his assets and cash are confiscated. He will not receive any money passing Go for the next 10 rounds.”, it *might* give the game an interesting twist…
In reality however it would read more like “executive x will move on to new challenges and receives a golden parachute of XX.5 million $.” You know, that executive x who ran a whole company into the ground.
The Monopoly that involves sustainable tactics how to pull people out of poverty into a life (at least) without permanently worrying about how to pay the next meal and the bills is yet to be invented.
I don’t think such a game would sell much (to those who could afford it). Poverty is a stigma, not just a life condition.
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LDub512 says,
Dominicans can speficify they are of Hispanic origin, write in Dominican, and check black and white.
In the Dominican case specifically, the Dominican government has a long history of NOT allowing its citizens to identify as black or mulatto even if they wanted to (this has begun to shift because of Dominican contact with African Americans in the U.S.). The majority of Dominicans and I have the same amount of racial mixture, but our governments had different national projects. The U.S. government segregated, while the Dominican government came up with the designation indio/india, when most Dominicans have little indigenous ancestry, to explain away the dark skin of most of the people. Moreover, the Dominican state historically has compared itself to Argentina and Uruguay in terms of whiteness. Black is only for Haitian people. Until I open my mouth, most Dominicans think I’m Dominican (when my naturally kinky-curly hair is flat-ironed depending on where I am I also get Brazilian, half black and half Mexican, Cuban, Panamanian, and Puerto Rican). The government and many regular folks scoff at my self-definition as black. When you go to another country, the nation state and people expect you to define yourself within the existing structures of the country. This isn’t something exclusive to the United States.
laromana says,
Although MANY Dominicans have a problem acknowledging their Black ancestry NOT ALL Dominicans do.
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@laromana
they need to start making that ancestry test cheaper
many people will be shocked
its also a good thing
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U did a fantastic job with this Analogy Abagond! Ur a very intelligent man.
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[…] If America Were a Game of Monopoly | Abagond "Most white players act as if the same rules and conditions apply to everyone, as if everyone starts with $1500 and gets $200 for passing Go, etc. If anything, they think yellow players get more for passing Go, that black players get more turns and that red players are too noble to care about winning." (tags: via:molecularshyness racism whiteprivilege economics) […]
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Randy is trying his best here to ignore the point of this exercise. His POV is quite simply: I have made it by virtue of my work ethic. If you’re in America and aren’t making it, it has nothing to do with how the game is rigged in my favor (for being white and male) but how everyone NOT white and NOt male is not working as hard as me!
Don’t feed the troll. He is not invested in learning, and he’s too stupid to know his argument is flimsy and transparently racist.
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When it comes to the achievement gap, I just don’t understand why people think it’s got to be only one or the other. Either it’s “it’s racism” or “POC aren’t working hard enough/smart enough.”
Clearly there is more than one factor at work here. I think that white people and POC need to take responsibility for their respective roles both in creating the achievement gap and closing it.
White people need to stop pointing the finger and focus on dismantling and challenging our own racism because that’s all we can do anything about anyway. And that’s why peeps like Randy need to STFU.
I’ve heard tons of POC leaders and activists talking about what they need to do within their own communities to change things. I have never heard the same from WP. We are the ones doing the finger pointing and it needs to stop.
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Wow! I have no words because it’s been well-said.
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when someone talks about hard work like that’s all that matters, it betrays something about the speaker. Namely, that they haven’t made any kind of upward transition in life.
I have. And I can honestly say that hard work was only part of it. A much, much bigger part is controlling how you are perceived by others. How you are viewed by the people around you. I would say that’s the number one element when determining success or failure.
There are lot’s of ways to manage how you are perceived in various situations but…Being white, I have WAY MORE CONTROL over how I am perceived than POC do. I think this is a major, major, major factor.
For example if you are black and you are in a mostly white environment, WP will see your blackness as a factor in everything you do. As if it informs every action and thought in your head. In effect making it the single most important thing about you. What that does is limit a persons ability to control how they are perceived. I’ve heard this voiced time and again in the form of the statements like “it doesn’t matter what I do i’ll still be a _____”
What people don’t talk about is what a barrier this actually is. How important personal control of ones own image is. it’s crucial to success in life.
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Btw I know that sounded arrogant. But I meant it in a matter of fact way.
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There’s something particularly poetic about the fact that Monopoly has been used here. Monopoly was developed from The Landlord’s Game – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game – which was initially made to demonstrate how the system is rigged from the start, though in that case relating to rentier capitalism rather than white supremacy.
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This is a really awesome post. Thanks for writing it!
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Glossolalia Black,
His POV is quite simply: I have made it by virtue of my work ethic. If you’re in America and aren’t making it, it has nothing to do with how the game is rigged in my favor (for being white and male) but how everyone NOT white and NOt male is not working as hard as me!
That is not what I’m saying.
The fact that black folks earn, on average, less than white folks does not explain “why” this is the case. Correlation does not imply causation.
Also, it seems unconscionable to me that some people might inoculate their children with a fatalistic outlook, when in reality it has been demonstrated that kids who study hard and have parents who demand academic excellence have a great chance of success.
jas0nburns: when someone talks about hard work like that’s all that matters, it betrays something about the speaker. Namely, that they haven’t made any kind of upward transition in life.
Or, because at the end of the day, that is the only way up.
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“Or, because at the end of the day, that is the only way up.”
say what now? I don’t understand.
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@jason: he just doesn’t get it. Believers never do.
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Randy said:
“Also, it seems unconscionable to me that some people might inoculate their children with a fatalistic outlook, when in reality it has been demonstrated that kids who study hard and have parents who demand academic excellence have a great chance of success.”
Sure, but if you are black you have to have two years more education to get paid the same as a white person. From the numbers I have seen, Asians also have to stay in school longer.
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jas0nburns: when someone talks about hard work like that’s all that matters, it betrays something about the speaker. Namely, that they haven’t made any kind of upward transition in life.
Very true. Reminds me of the motto above the gate at Dachau (I think?): “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes [one] free) – I’m sure that the irony of that statement wasn’t lost on the unfortunate souls who had to see it, every day, until they died…
Apparently, the only freedom they could hope for was after death!
Typical nazi thinking, eh?
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Abagond,
Sure, but if you are black you have to have two years more education to get paid the same as a white person. From the numbers I have seen, Asians also have to stay in school longer.
The challenge with such comparisons is that they’d take giant volumes of data to compare apples to apples (controlling for factors such as language proficiency, geography, years of experience, career choice, etc).
But if we simply accept for the sake of discussion that this is true, then the advice becomes even more appropriate.
To jas0nburns, sam, and sepultura13: what alternative course of action would you suggest?
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Randy said:
“The challenge with such comparisons is that they’d take giant volumes of data to compare apples to apples (controlling for factors such as language proficiency, geography, years of experience, career choice, etc).”
Unfortunately it is not that simple. Most white people would not believe it was racism even if you did all that. Because to admit that would admit that their lives are a fraud.
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[…] If America were a game of Monopoly – Abagond […]
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@sepultra: it was on the iron gates of Auschwitz: Arbeit macht frei, Work liberates you! Yes indeed, after you died while doing it.
@ randy: alternative action to what?
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Abagond,
Unfortunately it is not that simple. Most white people would not believe it was racism even if you did all that. Because to admit that would admit that their lives are a fraud.
I’m not sure I understand your meaning. How would the demonstrable existence of racism cause white people to think that their lives are fraud?
Sam,
If you wouldn’t recommend to folks that hard work is the only reliable pathway to success, what would you suggest instead?
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[…] Abagond had a fascinating post recently imagining what the rules would be ”If America were a game of Monopoly.” Read some of the rules below and be sure to check out the rest of the post here. […]
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“If you wouldn’t recommend to folks that hard work is the only reliable pathway to success, what would you suggest instead? ”
The problem with your question is that it assumes that one’s success or failure in life is completely under one’s own control.
I already addressed this.
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jas0nburns,
The problem with your question is that it assumes that one’s success or failure in life is completely under one’s own control.
No, it doesn’t.
Nobody’s life is ever completely under their control, nor does it need to be for hard work and diligence to be effective at improving one’s lot. Perhaps this is the fundamental disconnect between our belief systems.
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“Nobody’s life is ever completely under their control, nor does it need to be for hard work and diligence to be effective at improving one’s lot. ”
I think I admitted as much upthread. Let me put it this way.
let’s assume for arguments sake that everyone on planet earth works exactly the same amount. Pretend everyone is equally as diligent and hardworking ok? I firmly believe that even if that were the case there would still be vast inequality. Racism would count for a good portion of that “leftover” inequality. That’s the portion of inequality that I and others are concerned with. Not the hard work part.
Also, whites and Asians don’t have the market cornered when it comes to hard work. Your basically saying over and over again that black people don’t work hard. That is patently false.
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Randy said:
“How would the demonstrable existence of racism cause white people to think that their lives are fraud?”
Because it would show that they did not get to where they are fair and square, through hard work and all that, but that they got there through fraudulent means.
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Randy:
Why on earth do you think whites in America are so much richer than blacks and Native Americans? Why does the white player starts with $1500 while the black player starts with $105 and the red player starts with $75? Where did that added $1400 or so come from?
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Abagond,
Because it would show that they did not get to where they are fair and square, through hard work and all that, but that they got there through fraudulent means.
I think it’s important to distinguish between the “availability of opportunity” and the efforts required to successfully exploit an opportunity.
Otherwise, you’re saying that every minority person is a fraud who ever benefited from affirmative action policies for university admissions, affirmative action hiring at state, federal, and local level, racial and gender preferences for bidding on federal, state, and municipal contracts, and the less quantifiable population of the “diversity hires”.
While I personally feel that affirmative action is corrosively racist (and ultimately works to the detriment of minorities), I wouldn’t suggest that its beneficiaries are fraudulent, nor would it be fair to say that none of them have worked hard.
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jas0nburns
Also, whites and Asians don’t have the market cornered when it comes to hard work. Your basically saying over and over again that black people don’t work hard. That is patently false.
I’m not saying any such thing. Rather, my proposition is that regardless of a person’s race or status, the only way to improve one’s lot in life is to work hard and demand academic excellence from your children.
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“the only way to improve one’s lot in life is to work hard and demand academic excellence from your children.”
… and that if your lot isn’t improving it’s because you aren’t working hard enough. Right? That is what you are saying why not admit it?
You could have said the same thing in 1910 btw.
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@randy: vote and change the system completely
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WOW brilliant!!! I would have NEVER thought up this monopoly game!
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Although white privilege goes way further than economics, It does make for a fun analogy. Although one thing you can do in monopoly is work with other players to ensure a more equitable balance of power. It’s so imaginative and many thanks to whoever came up with this Idea.
BTW; Go team yellow….
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[…] See the whole piece here at abagond’s blog. 6. Changing rules: If a player asks for a rule change, it is put to a vote (See voting below). […]
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[…] As the author states, “If America were a game of Monopoly the rules would be a bit different.” See the “racial rules” for Monopoly in this thought-provoking piece by clicking here. […]
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This is BS because people don’t make more or less because of their color. This is racist. People make more because of their choices and the education they pursue. It is now easier for a person of color to get into med school or other schools than a white 4.0 student. These are the days of reverse discrimination. Color or ethnics should have nothing to do with anything. Everyone application should be read without anyone disclosing their race. Schools get more GOVERNMENT FUNDING for accepting people of color. So someone who had worked hard and is white stands less of a chance getting in. I know my son, a gifted student who scored higher on the MCap Test than probably 90% of the students that took the test and is now teaching it hasn’t been able to get in.A female girl that my son tutored of a different nationality was accepted! I don’t feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t put forth the effort. I feel sorry for people of any race who put forth the effort and can’t get in!
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@ Diane
And yet somehow, there are substantially more White graduates of medical school than ALL OTHER ETHNICITIES COMBINED. Heavens to Murgatroid… what are things coming to in these days of reverse discrimination???
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparetable.jsp?ind=454&cat=9
I’m confused. You’re saying that your son scored above the 90th percentile of MCap testers, yet he can’t get into a U.S. medical school, even though 65% to 70% of med school graduates are White?
I know that you probably think that admittance to prestigious medical schools is some kind of a reward that should be given out, strictly based on GPAs and Test results—the admission process should essentially be mathematical.
But how about if you are mistaken, and admittance is not a just some kind of reward? How about if part of the educational process is for higher scoring doctors to learn to work,—not in a bubble of genius—but in an environment that more closely simulates the real world of medical practice, where everyone they work with is not going to come from Harvard Medical School?
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Sorry my comment is so much later than the others! This is a very interesting way of looking at things, and very creative! Bravo! But I have a couple things to point out.
1) Not all of us whites have a great deal of money. My husband and I are fairly newly wed and have just enough to get by. We stay out of debt by spending and saving our money carefully and not using credit cards, not by virtue of skin color. We do plan to, one day, be fairly well off; but through hard work, not handouts, just like anyone else.
2) Whites may be a majority in this country(though Hispanics are fast approaching the same numbers) but that is not a reason to judge all whites the same. I may be a rare breed, but I don’t look at those from other races or cultures and judge them based on skin color. I don’t consider any of them less or more that myself, they are simply people. Until that is accepted BY ALL RACES racism will still be alive and well. We are all people. People are represented in the government, people run businesses and teach in our schools(often wrong information….but that’s another conversation). People work in a that bakery down the street and in the big corporations around the world. Not blacks, Asians, and whites – people; nothing more nothing less. When black or white are litterally nothing more than a way of differentiating between people in a group, then racism wil be dead. It has to go both ways though. As long as any race brings it up, racism has a fighting chance of survival.
3) The definition of racism is “a belief that some races are superior to others; also: discrimination based on those beliefs” from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. There is no mention of what color you must be for racism to apply to you. EVERYONE can be racist, but not everyone is. Many people look at me and assume that, as a white person born and raised in a southern state, I must be a racist. They assume that my birthplace and skin color determine my values. I assure you, they do not. My birthplace has given me a love of history and I am proud to be a resident of my state, but I do not hold the values of racism so often pinned on me for no reason other than the color of my skin. I have met just as many people of Hispanic, Asian, or African descent who believe that their race is superior to others as I have whites(in fact, probably more), which is the exact definition of racism.
4) You didn’t put in the handouts that people of races other than white can get, like government funding to open a business or extra financial aid for college. I guess that would be a Chance card – “If you are the black, yellow, or red player, you may recieve a grant to open a business and add $X to your salary each time you pass Go.”
5) Finally, a little problem I had with a comment. Hathor said Cubans should be considered white because of dispensation for opposing Castro. I’d like to point out that not all Cubans take advantage of that. My husband’s grandparents and their children came from Cuba. They fought hard and managed to get permission to move to Spain. They lived in Spain for years while trying to get permission to move here. When they arrived, they worked hard to move up from new immigrants with very little to middle class Americans with a nice house and nice things. All through hard work, never taking advantage of anything they were offered.
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^^^
LMFAO – wow, another one? Comments that are so obviously scripted make me laugh…
“You didn’t put in the handouts that people of races other than white can get, like government funding to open a business or extra financial aid for college.”
🙄
Yeah, I’ve gotten ALL of these handouts – that’s why I own a business in every freaking state in the USA, and my walls are plastered with degrees from all of the colleges I attended by getting all of these HANDOUTS!! 😆
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I meant 🙄
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@ merianrose
Thank you for your long and thoughtful comment. The post is still up, so you are not late. Sometimes threads burst back into life after being dormant for a long time.
Reducing all of America to four playing pieces will necessarily be based on the AVERAGES of millions of people. But those averages do tell a tale and a very important one that is rooted in the racism that the country was built on.
Whatever your particular circumstances, beliefs or actions, ON AVERAGE the country functions in a racist way. As hard as life is for most white people these days (this post needs a 2010 edition for the 2010 Census figures and the Great Recession), it is far worse for blacks and Latinos. WORSE than this post would lead you to believe since the Great Recession has hit blacks and Latinos twice as hard as whites. Despite all the handouts and so on. They help but they do not begin to make up for how massively rigged the American system is. They function almost like fig leaves: they are more there for white consciences than the good of others.
I do not see how any of that is going to change through a campaign of silence.
Blacks are not keeping racism alive through talking about it because most of what they say is in reaction to what they experience and, as it is, most of what they do experience never reaches the ears of white people. Because blacks need to feed their families in a society that is mostly white; because talking to white people about racism is largely a wasted effort.
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merianrose said:
“I may be a rare breed…”
Mmm… not so much a rare breed, but you are an example of another white person raised In and under the SYSTEM of racism white supremacy, to see yourself and your opinions as “rare,” “unique,” “individual,” and unlike any other white person. Although you sounds like all the other white people especially when you say this:
“…but I don’t look at those from other races or cultures and judge them based on skin color.”
merianrose the individual doesn’t HAVE judge others based on skin color. White people have created a whole SYSTEM to do that for you.
So merianrose, has no skin (color) in the game! But…oh yes you do. Those of us who are not white, see you, and the OTHERS like you.
“…I don’t consider any of them less or more that myself, they are simply people.”
Personally, I can’t disagree with you. WE are all people. Yet, something about your use of the word “THEY” in context seems to suggest merianrose’ (possibly subconscious) awareness of the “differences”.
“Until that is accepted BY ALL RACES racism will still be alive and well.”
no merianrose, the elimination of the system of racism white supremacy won’t be dismantled by adopting YOUR way of thinking. Like Monopoly, There’s too much money invested in keeping the system on life support.
I don’t know if merianrose is a sincere or not. She reads like she is. There are quite a few white people who read this blog, and consider themselves an “ally” and an “anti-racist”. Where are the white anti-racist when one of their members is in need of accurate information? In my opinion, until white people who know the truth, tell the truth, racism will still be alive and well.
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@ MinnieB:
Excellent statement, and well-said! 😎
“Reads as sincere” is one thing…BEING sincere is quite another! merianrose’s statement: “Not all of us whites have a great deal of money. My husband and I are fairly newly wed and have just enough to get by. We stay out of debt by spending and saving our money carefully and not using credit cards, not by virtue of skin color. We do plan to, one day, be fairly well off; but through hard work, not handouts, just like anyone else.”
That is anything BUT sincere. The implication, as usual, is that only WP have to work hard for what they have; the rest of us get ahead by being on the government dole, get exclusive access to all EEOC and civil rights ‘benefits’, and of course we have a black president who is only looking out for the best interests of black people, which gives us an extra step up!
From the way a lot of WP talk, it seems that they think that every black person in the USA got a check and some secret phone number when Obama was sworn into office… 🙄
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All this talk about “handouts” got me looking into this subject;
I remembered that a real peek at “WELFARE & HANDOUTS” was summerized on a site that’s very similar to this one. I think it’s worth re-posting here:
“There are many types of welfare: Social Security, AFDC, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. The majority of Americans who receive welfare checks are not Black. The majority of those who receive welfare checks are White people:
-Whites receive the lion’s share of welfare benefits. What millions of Black Americans pay into the system ends up going to Whites who retire (Social Security, if you are not intelligent enough to realize it, is welfare). Some 61 percent of welfare recipients (the word recipients means those who receive, in case you don’t know that), are White, while 33 percent are Black, according to 2000 Census Bureau statistics:
http://www.census.gov/
Social Security is the nation’s largest welfare program, although many Whites prefer to call it a retirement plan. The government writes retirement and disability benefit checks to 35.4 million recipients of whom 88.7 percent are White and 9.6 percent are Black. The reason behind this shocking disparity is perhaps the most lamentable of all: The life expectancy rate for Blacks is six times shorter than that of Whites, meaning Black workers spend years paying into a retirement system only to have White retirees reap the benefits for a longer time; Black Americans do not even get to receive so much from what they have worked hard to pay into the system of welfare; even there they are stomped on and gutted by this society/country/government. Black Americans outnumber Whites on welfare, but, are Blacks getting what they paid into the system? No. The federal government defines welfare as all entitlement programs funded through taxes. These programs, listed as “direct benefit payments for individuals” by the Office of Management and Budget, make up approximately $730 billion or 43 percent of the $1.47 trillion the government will spend this fiscal year. Welfare critics rarely search the Social Security rolls for “welfare cheats,” but train their sights on people getting Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Medicaid and food stamps, the relief programs with the most Black clients. Yet government figures show that Whites not Blacks make up the bulk of clients on these public aid programs; a fact that dispels the notion that Blacks are scheming for a free lunch courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Many people…cry about the numbers of Black people who receive some types of welfare, with Blacks receiving 33% welfare types in relation to their 12% of the U.S.population. But racism is at the heart of the standard-of-living gap between Blacks and Whites. Still unlawful race-based hiring practices, keep many Blacks from getting jobs that pay enough to lift them out of poverty. Until more blue-collar (and white collar jobs), open up to Black workers, Blacks will continue to battle poverty and the freeloader misconception will continue to lodge as residue in the non-Black American mind. As long as Blacks continue to face substandard education, systematic racism, urban warfare and limited paths leading up and out of poverty, the rest of America will find it easy to hate on Black’s suffering in this country——until it hits home.
With the dying and sputtering economy, with more Whites losing ground in the failing recession/depression economy, with more Whites losing jobs and finding themselves on the unemployment lines, this society is going to have to find another scapegoat to blame the failing economy on, as opposed to the constant need to blame innercity people for this nation’s savage policies of economic destruction.
People (with intelligent, lucid brains) only need to look at the White families streaming into welfare offices in rural New Hampshire for proof that poverty has more to do with economics than race.
The once thriving state has seen an 88 percent jump in welfare cases since 1989, yet the states Black population is a meager 0.6 percent.
http://www.census.gov/
Now, how do you explain all those hard-working Whites ending up on welfare …?
All across America, there is proof that you can have the best job in the world: but, get cut from a company looking to keep its profits up at the expense of its employees, a company with its eye on the bottom line—-, then YOU will find yourself out of a job, living a paycheck away from homelessness, falling behind on the mortgage, falling behind on car payments, unable to feed/clothe your children, having to decide between medicine, hospitalization, OR food—–or worse, having to get on WELFARE—-no matter what race you hail from.
But, don’t worry. . . .
. . . .millions of Whites will soon be where so many Blacks are now.
Millions of them are already there.
That’s what those of us all get for blind obedience to a government that cares nothing for us all, as well as practicing race hatred instead of communal help towards each other.
Oops! Almost forgot. Mustn’t forget the BIGGEST welfare cheats in America:
Corporate Welfare Queens!
-Corporations (such as the BIG 3, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, CitGo, etc.) who despite their millions of bonuses, and high salaries, still manage to pig-suck billions of dollars from a government that only slaps them on the hand for company mismanagement and pathetic business procedures, while that same country/government runs into the ground its citizens who are just barely getting by on subsistence poverty wages.
-Wal-Mart, a big beneficiary of welfare:
http://www.progress.org/2004/corpw37.htm
Welfare payments to timber corporations:
http://www.progress.org/2005/tcs180.htm
Even when they are losing millions, America still keeps shoveling subsidy monies out to inept companies.
Corporate welfare TIF (tax increment financing) allows governments to give money, in the form of property tax exemptions, to whatever private corporations they choose. Now, how many citizens can say that they have received such breaks from their government?
http://www.progress.org/banneker/cw.html
Welfare reform never succeeded in reducing poverty and unemployment, something welfare reform was never intended to do. You want to see less Americans on any type of welfare, call out your state and local representatives to institute better education curriculums in schools; better education, better jobs; better jobs, better skills; better skills, more opportunities in life, therefore, less dependency on any kind of welfare. For anyone.
The poverty rate has more to do with the economy than the availability of assistance for poor people. No matter what race those poor people come in.
[end of excerpt]
The above commentary comes from: http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/sundown-towns/#comment-11153
Thank you very much Ann!
As lengthy as Ann’s summary is, it’s by no means a complete listing of government handouts whites receive in greater proportions than non-whites.
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@ sepultura13-
Good catch. I hope merianrose reads it. I particularly like your observation regarding having a black president. So if WP think President Obama is only looking out for BP, then logic and evidence would have us believe that white presidents only look out for WP interest…would I be correct or racist?
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Ann is great. I love her.
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The true reverse racism version:
1. The red player owns all the squares.
2. When the white player passes Go, the BLACK player collects $200 and calls the white player lazy.
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[…] (Image Source) […]
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If America were a game of Monopoly the rules would be a bit different. … gboardm.wordpress.com
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