Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:What's insane to me is the argument that White PrivilegeTM exists systemically. In order for this stupid and redundant claim to be made one would have to believe that White People are homogeneous enough to actually find ways for the system to favor random White People based off their skin color alone.
That's patently absurd. What kind of White People are we talking about here? WAPs? Mics? Macs? Krauts? Jews? Limeys? Slavs? Spaniards (I don't know the ethnic term for them, my bad Other White People). Mormons? Burgers? Canucks? Ozzies? Sheep idiots? Rednecks? Carpetbaggers? Frogs?
Whoa, Doc. Back away from the RubySnaps. Too much sugar.
To your question above:
When I lived in Phoenix, I ran across an interesting bit of history about it. Turns out that up until the mid-Seventies, if you were a black family and trying to buy a home in that city you were pretty much shown properties in only one particular part of town. Any attempt to purchase elsewhere was met by realtors either not willing to show certain listings to the potential buyers or finding creative ways to make sure that a deal could not be completed for those properties that were otherwise stumbled upon accidentally by black clients.
This isn’t made up. It’s how things were, just barely 50 years ago.
There was no secret cabal of Whites who got together under the old oak tree in the local park, at midnite to discuss and strategize this reality. Yet, without any collaboration, it managed to happen for decades. How was that so?
An interesting side effect of such a practice is that there are a good number of non-white homeowners in the US (like, probably millions) out there who, by virtue of skin color alone, have been unable to build the same kind of equity and property wealth over time and through market appreciation, as their white peers, even though they did exactly all of the right things, in exactly all of the same ways. Yet, their futures, and that of their children for a generation or more, will be affected by this discriminatory practice.
It really doesn’t take a massive and secret conspiracy to create a reality in which the dominant demographic can create a social and financial landscape that favors that demographic, with impacts that can stretch across
generations. Nothing about that concept should be unfathomable, or sound fantastic.