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0 pointsYuriNiyazov10y ago0 comments

The call to action is the acknowledgment, not the beer or the guilt.

Getting white males, whether successful or not, to even say "yes, the system discriminates for us, regardless of outcomes" is such a huge barrier that their acknowledgment of the issue is the first thing that must happen before any kind of "fixing of the system" could happen.

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ElComradio10y ago· 2 in thread

Acknowledgement is useless and not actionable. The end goal of people who bring up privilege is to engender a sense of guilt over undeserved advantages, which then leads to resources flowing out of the guilty group.

So at our losers' table, you would ask the white winners to help you out over me, and over the other white guys at the losers' table, because we, the white losers, must have fucked up more to get here. The underprivileged losers are entitled to disproportionate aid from the winners.

YuriNiyazovOP10y ago

Let's assume that this whole discussion really is about resource redistribution. I don't actually think so, but we can take that as a hypothetical.

A winner comes over to the losers bar, and you want him to give every loser, white or black, the same number of chips.

The problem is that after you all get your re-up, you get to go play at the white table again, and they go back to play at the black table again, which means that you have a way greater chance to not come back to the losers' bar.

Ideally, you'd make both games have the same probability distributions, and that might happen eventually, but until then, the underprivileged losers should get more resources to have similar outcomes.

Expected value is everything.

ElComradio10y ago

What is the conversation about if not resource redistribution? Simple acknowledgment gets you what, exactly? Nothing.. There's obviously some desired action. That action is what, if not some kind of favoritism or balancing of scales?

In this simplistic example, it comes down to one party using guilt tactics to convince the other party to provide an advantage or a leg up, which necessitates working against their own interests. Guilt tactics are required because it's a social engineering goal; the total number of people at the losers' bar remains the same.

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