Have you seen this BS? A self-described “middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background” wrote an article for Forbes called “If I Was a Poor Black Kid.” [sic]
If you haven’t seen it yet, first of all, bless you for not spending all your time on the internet!
And second of all, I’ll save you the trouble and give you the short version: “If this middle class white guy was somehow transformed into a poor black kid, he’d pull himself up by the virtual bootstraps, mostly with Google Scholar, to rise above his circumstances.”
*SERIOUS MEAN MUG*
This from the same guy who devoted an entire column to giving reasons why most women will never become CEO. (A few gems: Because his teenage daughter and her friends weren’t feeling chatty when he picked them up from the movies. Also, because he is “an ass”- his words not mine- and makes his wife do all the work in child-rearing.)
The central fallacy of this guy’s argument isn’t that he thinks white male privilege doesn’t exist. It’s that he seems to believe privilege is something to be named, talked about, given lip-service, but doesn’t get how it actually operates in the Real World. He doesn’t get that poverty, racism, structural inequality, actually exist in real life, in real PEOPLE’s lives, and he certainly doesn’t get how ignorance like his own help perpetuate them.
Ok so I ’ll admit, I was all heated about it on Monday, but I was NOT looking forward to having to write another explanatory post on white male privilege, or another infuriated post on white male privilege, or for that matter ANY MORE POSTS on white male privilege!!
That’s why I’m so thankful to my Internet Friends for taking care of this one for me. Maybe the only upside of another middle class white dude showing his ignorance is that it inspires a lot of smart people to say a lot of smart things about privilege, poverty, and progress. Check out a roundup of the best responses to this inane column after the jump.
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More on why victim blaming is not a good way to prevent binge drinking
Yesterday was a wake up call for me about the pervasiveness of rape culture. Victim blaming is so ingrained it shows up in the views of well meaning people, like Keli Goff, who are trying to prevent rape. The “avoid risky behaviors” meme was called out twice, first with the original PA Liquor Board ad and then with Goff’s response. Yet folks continue restating the same line in comments, tweets – all over the internet.
Is this conversation really necessary? Does anyone think women aren’t constantly afraid we might be the victim of a sexual assault? That we aren’t always on edge anyway? The threat of stranger rape is a constant topic of conversation among my female friends (especially the ones who aren’t feminist organizers). This is what it’s like to live in a rape culture.
Arguing that the focus should be on not drinking so we don’t get raped is called perpetuating rape culture. It’s saying hey, if you avoided these behaviors you could have avoided being raped. When anyone, including feminists, puts their focus on preventing rape by avoiding risky behaviors they are putting the responsibility for avoiding rape on the shoulders of the victim.
And it doesn’t work. You can’t prevent rape by not drinking. You might be able to prevent alcoholism by not drinking, alcohol poisoning, drunk driving. But you can’t prevent rape by not drinking, just like you can’t prevent rape by not wearing a short skirt. You can probably prevent rape by not being in the world at all and never interacting with other people. Which is what rape culture wants to do – take away your humanity.
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