The future of DEI

[Anonymous]

I hope it changes. I won't go into detail but it feels very performative to me. I saw way too many white men grow "interested" in these programs just to get brownie points. I also think - as a minority - that some of these initiatives fuel impostor syndrome. It would be better to empower disadvantaged groups earlier on and give them the resources to succeed from the beginning. No one wants to do that because it's hard.

I still think racism is alive and well, especially now that I've lived in Europe. (It's actually worse here than what I've seen in the states.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hope it changes. I won't go into detail but it feels very performative to me. I saw way too many white men grow "interested" in these programs just to get brownie points. I also think - as a minority - that some of these initiatives fuel impostor syndrome. It would be better to empower disadvantaged groups earlier on and give them the resources to succeed from the beginning. No one wants to do that because it's hard.

I still think racism is alive and well, especially now that I've lived in Europe. (It's actually worse here than what I've seen in the states.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you will not believe me, but I served in a very high level detail in the federal gov't during 2022-23. As the detail was ending, I had a private exit conversation with a senate-confirmed agency head. When they asked what I was doing next, I replied that I had applied several times over the last few years for an SES role in their agency (and others) and this person said that although I was highly qualified, well known and liked etc., it was "highly likely" that I wasn't invited to interview because I am a white male. I couldn't believe they would actually say this aloud.

FWIW - I was literally abandoned as a teenager, finished high school while living on my own, and put myself through 5 years of undergrad (because I worked full time) and 6 years to get a PhD, also while working outside jobs. Sometimes, there were months on end where I didn't have a day off, but it's because of my skin color and the associated privilege that I was successful. Whatevs.

The response to your story from someone in the DEI field would be that throughout this you still benefitted from white privilege, which you did.

I get it though. I'm a similar story of low-income white person who improved myself, etc.

You’ve been brainwashed. No one is immune from privilege. If you are an American. Can walk. Are healthy. Have food. A family who loves you, you have something someone else does not. It is NOT limited to race, but these stupid programs aren’t nuanced enough for that kind of reflection.

Stop expecting people to feel bad. Society should not be encouraged to mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. Probably explains the growing number of people offing themselves.

Just try to be nice and decent. And no, not as a mandate.

Ha. I'm not brainwashed. I am smart enough to know this country was built on the backs of free black labor and for generations the systems were set up to hoard wealth and opportunity with white people and the impacts of that are still in place all around us. Why is that hard to understand. Basic history. Implying all Americans have the same level of privilege makes you sound super dumb.

However, I do not think people should mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. I'm a white person with a great life and let's see... zero of the white people I know are doing that so you seem to be worrying about something that's not actually happening.

Life is more complex than you're making it out to be.

It's a funny claim and historically wrong because for much of American history blacks were predominately concentrated in the South and in agriculture. They didn't build the railroads, work in the coal mines, staff the factories of the north until well into the 20th century, clear the vast forests of the midwest, break the sod on the prairies, etc cetera.

Black labor definitely played a role in helping create American prosperity but blacks did not "build" the country. If anything, how could they build the country when they effectively weren't allowed to be anything more than the most basic field hand and housemaid for much of American history? Ultimately, America really was built by white people for white people, which ironically is also what a lot of CRT people like to say too without realizing the full extent of their message when they focus about the hostility towards black people (which is also true, white Americans have historically not wanted black people around and resented their presence).

As it is, life is definitely way more complicated than DEI proponents like you want to believe in your delusional woe is me mindset. I'm a historical realist. Not a cherry picker of facts to explain away your personal failures.

But I'll tell you who the real privileged people are these days. The young urban black men who get to run red lights while the police do nothing.

The average black slave lived a similar life as a poor white sharecropper. Many people focus on a slave owner versus a slave, and don’t consider that slave owners were in the minority. There are numerous studies and papers about average calories, work hours etc and slaves truly had a very similar lifestyle as a poor white sharecropper. Of course slaves were owned and didn’t have their freedom but did the average poor white person in the south have a lot of freedom? But you’re not allowed to say any of this.

I think DEI has done more harm than good which is a shame.

Are you serious? Was the average white a slave? Yes the average white person in the south had a lot of freedom. They weren’t in chains. They could move west, north if they didn’t find opportunities south.
Maybe you don’t know what freedom is.

Freedom is a funny word. What does it really mean? We largely define it nowadays as the freedom to make decisions and to own the outcomes of our free will. At the same time, historically there have also been other understanding of what freedom must mean. To take the case of the antebellum South, one of the weird and little mentioned ironies is that most slaves on the plantations were in some aspect physically better off than many poor whites because they had a better diet and better access to medical care. Shocking, perhaps, but slaves were extremely valuable, a single slave was the equivalent of owning a car today in terms of expense and cost. While there were certainly some exceptions, slaveowners still had a distinct financial interest in ensuring that their slaves survived and were healthy enough to be productive in the fields. Slaveowners were also the better off segment of Southern society and often had a moral, if paternalistic, attitude towards the welfare of their slaves. By contrast, many poor whites in the South lived lives of abject poverty and malnutrition due to poor diets and lack of nutrients. People today may like to look at photos of the old slave cabins and be appalled at how basic they are, while ignoring that poor whites had similar type housing and sometimes even worse. The South outside the plantations was really very, very poor, much poorer than the North, an economic factor that had some Southerners like Hinton Helper writing a book about it in the 1850s and blaming it on the existence of slavery.

Still, that doesn't preclude the point you made and which is absolutely right, at least poor whites had ownership of their actions and could make decisions that slaves could not, and poor whites were also not in danger of seeing families split up against their will and children and/or spouses sold away. The latter factor was probably the one slaves cared about the most, and was one of the greatest prizes of freedom.

But with freedom, the ex-slaves suddenly also had the freedom to take care of themselves, which didn't always work out so well. So it's not surprising that a popular theme in the interviews with the ex-slaves in the 1920s and 1930s was of how the old masters and mistresses "took care" of them and they didn't have to worry about food etc. Mind you, it was against the backdrop of the Depression and the South was severely affected by it, both black and white. But it does show how in modern times, when the basic staples of existence are effectively guaranteed or easily obtainable one way or another - decent enough housing, plenty of food etc, then the concept of freedom becomes defined less by the ability to act on your decisions than the difference in outcomes between your decisions and others. And therein lies the bitterness of today's struggles over the meaning of freedom.

I don’t think white sharecroppers and indentured servants were treated as badly as black slaves - though they were not treated well and from a practical perspective were treated so badly that the differences may not matter except in an academic discussion.

Not all whites, and certainly not all whites in the south, benefitted from slavery. Imagine what would happen now to labor prices if those with the capital and means of production began importing free labor?

Slavery was bad for everyone except slave owners (and Wall Street/commodity traders/industrialists, but that’s for another time). It was exceptionally good for slave owners. That’s why they were so bent out of shape at the idea of slavery ending.

You can't possibly be saying this with a straight face. It's like, would you rather just be poor, or would you rather be poor and be kidnapped, separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped? I guess it only matters from an academic perspective

I don’t think you have a great perspective on the plight of the poor in the west from the fall of the Roman Empire until after WWII. There were many periods of time that “separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped” was exactly the situation. The distinction is that actually not being paid and being bought and sold is worse than being paid basically nothing and having no freedom due to circumstances. But, if you’re actually in the situation it would seem hard to find one situation “preferable”. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for the dirt poor white southerner to support the institution of slavery and the confederacy was the existential fear that freed blacks would then be “above” them in society. So an ideology of white supremacy was advanced. Ultimately it was the southern landowners who owned both the slaves, the contracts for indentured servants, and the leases for land the sharecroppers worked. They essentially created this exploitative caste system which they dominated and it served their interests for everyone essentially to be subjugated (and fighting) within it. So, slavery was worse because of the violation of natural right to be free - but rape, abuse, forced eviction, coercive labor, etc were all faced by the bottom rung of society for much of human history.

[Anonymous]

I have a relative who was sold and made to marry an older man in her early teens. This was the 1920s in America. Not black. Just poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you will not believe me, but I served in a very high level detail in the federal gov't during 2022-23. As the detail was ending, I had a private exit conversation with a senate-confirmed agency head. When they asked what I was doing next, I replied that I had applied several times over the last few years for an SES role in their agency (and others) and this person said that although I was highly qualified, well known and liked etc., it was "highly likely" that I wasn't invited to interview because I am a white male. I couldn't believe they would actually say this aloud.

FWIW - I was literally abandoned as a teenager, finished high school while living on my own, and put myself through 5 years of undergrad (because I worked full time) and 6 years to get a PhD, also while working outside jobs. Sometimes, there were months on end where I didn't have a day off, but it's because of my skin color and the associated privilege that I was successful. Whatevs.

The response to your story from someone in the DEI field would be that throughout this you still benefitted from white privilege, which you did.

I get it though. I'm a similar story of low-income white person who improved myself, etc.

You’ve been brainwashed. No one is immune from privilege. If you are an American. Can walk. Are healthy. Have food. A family who loves you, you have something someone else does not. It is NOT limited to race, but these stupid programs aren’t nuanced enough for that kind of reflection.

Stop expecting people to feel bad. Society should not be encouraged to mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. Probably explains the growing number of people offing themselves.

Just try to be nice and decent. And no, not as a mandate.

Ha. I'm not brainwashed. I am smart enough to know this country was built on the backs of free black labor and for generations the systems were set up to hoard wealth and opportunity with white people and the impacts of that are still in place all around us. Why is that hard to understand. Basic history. Implying all Americans have the same level of privilege makes you sound super dumb.

However, I do not think people should mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. I'm a white person with a great life and let's see... zero of the white people I know are doing that so you seem to be worrying about something that's not actually happening.

Life is more complex than you're making it out to be.

It's a funny claim and historically wrong because for much of American history blacks were predominately concentrated in the South and in agriculture. They didn't build the railroads, work in the coal mines, staff the factories of the north until well into the 20th century, clear the vast forests of the midwest, break the sod on the prairies, etc cetera.

Black labor definitely played a role in helping create American prosperity but blacks did not "build" the country. If anything, how could they build the country when they effectively weren't allowed to be anything more than the most basic field hand and housemaid for much of American history? Ultimately, America really was built by white people for white people, which ironically is also what a lot of CRT people like to say too without realizing the full extent of their message when they focus about the hostility towards black people (which is also true, white Americans have historically not wanted black people around and resented their presence).

As it is, life is definitely way more complicated than DEI proponents like you want to believe in your delusional woe is me mindset. I'm a historical realist. Not a cherry picker of facts to explain away your personal failures.

But I'll tell you who the real privileged people are these days. The young urban black men who get to run red lights while the police do nothing.

The average black slave lived a similar life as a poor white sharecropper. Many people focus on a slave owner versus a slave, and don’t consider that slave owners were in the minority. There are numerous studies and papers about average calories, work hours etc and slaves truly had a very similar lifestyle as a poor white sharecropper. Of course slaves were owned and didn’t have their freedom but did the average poor white person in the south have a lot of freedom? But you’re not allowed to say any of this.

I think DEI has done more harm than good which is a shame.

Are you serious? Was the average white a slave? Yes the average white person in the south had a lot of freedom. They weren’t in chains. They could move west, north if they didn’t find opportunities south.
Maybe you don’t know what freedom is.

Freedom is a funny word. What does it really mean? We largely define it nowadays as the freedom to make decisions and to own the outcomes of our free will. At the same time, historically there have also been other understanding of what freedom must mean. To take the case of the antebellum South, one of the weird and little mentioned ironies is that most slaves on the plantations were in some aspect physically better off than many poor whites because they had a better diet and better access to medical care. Shocking, perhaps, but slaves were extremely valuable, a single slave was the equivalent of owning a car today in terms of expense and cost. While there were certainly some exceptions, slaveowners still had a distinct financial interest in ensuring that their slaves survived and were healthy enough to be productive in the fields. Slaveowners were also the better off segment of Southern society and often had a moral, if paternalistic, attitude towards the welfare of their slaves. By contrast, many poor whites in the South lived lives of abject poverty and malnutrition due to poor diets and lack of nutrients. People today may like to look at photos of the old slave cabins and be appalled at how basic they are, while ignoring that poor whites had similar type housing and sometimes even worse. The South outside the plantations was really very, very poor, much poorer than the North, an economic factor that had some Southerners like Hinton Helper writing a book about it in the 1850s and blaming it on the existence of slavery.

Still, that doesn't preclude the point you made and which is absolutely right, at least poor whites had ownership of their actions and could make decisions that slaves could not, and poor whites were also not in danger of seeing families split up against their will and children and/or spouses sold away. The latter factor was probably the one slaves cared about the most, and was one of the greatest prizes of freedom.

But with freedom, the ex-slaves suddenly also had the freedom to take care of themselves, which didn't always work out so well. So it's not surprising that a popular theme in the interviews with the ex-slaves in the 1920s and 1930s was of how the old masters and mistresses "took care" of them and they didn't have to worry about food etc. Mind you, it was against the backdrop of the Depression and the South was severely affected by it, both black and white. But it does show how in modern times, when the basic staples of existence are effectively guaranteed or easily obtainable one way or another - decent enough housing, plenty of food etc, then the concept of freedom becomes defined less by the ability to act on your decisions than the difference in outcomes between your decisions and others. And therein lies the bitterness of today's struggles over the meaning of freedom.

I don’t think white sharecroppers and indentured servants were treated as badly as black slaves - though they were not treated well and from a practical perspective were treated so badly that the differences may not matter except in an academic discussion.

Not all whites, and certainly not all whites in the south, benefitted from slavery. Imagine what would happen now to labor prices if those with the capital and means of production began importing free labor?

Slavery was bad for everyone except slave owners (and Wall Street/commodity traders/industrialists, but that’s for another time). It was exceptionally good for slave owners. That’s why they were so bent out of shape at the idea of slavery ending.

You can't possibly be saying this with a straight face. It's like, would you rather just be poor, or would you rather be poor and be kidnapped, separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped? I guess it only matters from an academic perspective

I don’t think you have a great perspective on the plight of the poor in the west from the fall of the Roman Empire until after WWII. There were many periods of time that “separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped” was exactly the situation. The distinction is that actually not being paid and being bought and sold is worse than being paid basically nothing and having no freedom due to circumstances. But, if you’re actually in the situation it would seem hard to find one situation “preferable”. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for the dirt poor white southerner to support the institution of slavery and the confederacy was the existential fear that freed blacks would then be “above” them in society. So an ideology of white supremacy was advanced. Ultimately it was the southern landowners who owned both the slaves, the contracts for indentured servants, and the leases for land the sharecroppers worked. They essentially created this exploitative caste system which they dominated and it served their interests for everyone essentially to be subjugated (and fighting) within it. So, slavery was worse because of the violation of natural right to be free - but rape, abuse, forced eviction, coercive labor, etc were all faced by the bottom rung of society for much of human history.

The notion that the experience of white indentured servants was the same as that of black enslaved people is a white nationalist myth. It's true that the experience of poor whites was really bad, but for so many reasons, the oppression of black enslaved people was so much worse.

"Irish historians widely agree that the treatment of indentured servants was extremely violent and unjust. That said, they also agree it is a distortion of the stories of the thousands of servants to inaccurately equate their conditions with those of Africans subjected to chattel slavery."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/18/fact-check-irish-were-indentured-servants-not-slaves/3198590001/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a relative who was sold and made to marry an older man in her early teens. This was the 1920s in America. Not black. Just poor.

Modern day slavery continues today and is really bad. But it's not the same as chattel slavery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you will not believe me, but I served in a very high level detail in the federal gov't during 2022-23. As the detail was ending, I had a private exit conversation with a senate-confirmed agency head. When they asked what I was doing next, I replied that I had applied several times over the last few years for an SES role in their agency (and others) and this person said that although I was highly qualified, well known and liked etc., it was "highly likely" that I wasn't invited to interview because I am a white male. I couldn't believe they would actually say this aloud.

FWIW - I was literally abandoned as a teenager, finished high school while living on my own, and put myself through 5 years of undergrad (because I worked full time) and 6 years to get a PhD, also while working outside jobs. Sometimes, there were months on end where I didn't have a day off, but it's because of my skin color and the associated privilege that I was successful. Whatevs.

The response to your story from someone in the DEI field would be that throughout this you still benefitted from white privilege, which you did.

I get it though. I'm a similar story of low-income white person who improved myself, etc.

You’ve been brainwashed. No one is immune from privilege. If you are an American. Can walk. Are healthy. Have food. A family who loves you, you have something someone else does not. It is NOT limited to race, but these stupid programs aren’t nuanced enough for that kind of reflection.

Stop expecting people to feel bad. Society should not be encouraged to mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. Probably explains the growing number of people offing themselves.

Just try to be nice and decent. And no, not as a mandate.

Ha. I'm not brainwashed. I am smart enough to know this country was built on the backs of free black labor and for generations the systems were set up to hoard wealth and opportunity with white people and the impacts of that are still in place all around us. Why is that hard to understand. Basic history. Implying all Americans have the same level of privilege makes you sound super dumb.

However, I do not think people should mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. I'm a white person with a great life and let's see... zero of the white people I know are doing that so you seem to be worrying about something that's not actually happening.

Life is more complex than you're making it out to be.

It's a funny claim and historically wrong because for much of American history blacks were predominately concentrated in the South and in agriculture. They didn't build the railroads, work in the coal mines, staff the factories of the north until well into the 20th century, clear the vast forests of the midwest, break the sod on the prairies, etc cetera.

Black labor definitely played a role in helping create American prosperity but blacks did not "build" the country. If anything, how could they build the country when they effectively weren't allowed to be anything more than the most basic field hand and housemaid for much of American history? Ultimately, America really was built by white people for white people, which ironically is also what a lot of CRT people like to say too without realizing the full extent of their message when they focus about the hostility towards black people (which is also true, white Americans have historically not wanted black people around and resented their presence).

As it is, life is definitely way more complicated than DEI proponents like you want to believe in your delusional woe is me mindset. I'm a historical realist. Not a cherry picker of facts to explain away your personal failures.

But I'll tell you who the real privileged people are these days. The young urban black men who get to run red lights while the police do nothing.

The average black slave lived a similar life as a poor white sharecropper. Many people focus on a slave owner versus a slave, and don’t consider that slave owners were in the minority. There are numerous studies and papers about average calories, work hours etc and slaves truly had a very similar lifestyle as a poor white sharecropper. Of course slaves were owned and didn’t have their freedom but did the average poor white person in the south have a lot of freedom? But you’re not allowed to say any of this.

I think DEI has done more harm than good which is a shame.

Are you serious? Was the average white a slave? Yes the average white person in the south had a lot of freedom. They weren’t in chains. They could move west, north if they didn’t find opportunities south.
Maybe you don’t know what freedom is.

Freedom is a funny word. What does it really mean? We largely define it nowadays as the freedom to make decisions and to own the outcomes of our free will. At the same time, historically there have also been other understanding of what freedom must mean. To take the case of the antebellum South, one of the weird and little mentioned ironies is that most slaves on the plantations were in some aspect physically better off than many poor whites because they had a better diet and better access to medical care. Shocking, perhaps, but slaves were extremely valuable, a single slave was the equivalent of owning a car today in terms of expense and cost. While there were certainly some exceptions, slaveowners still had a distinct financial interest in ensuring that their slaves survived and were healthy enough to be productive in the fields. Slaveowners were also the better off segment of Southern society and often had a moral, if paternalistic, attitude towards the welfare of their slaves. By contrast, many poor whites in the South lived lives of abject poverty and malnutrition due to poor diets and lack of nutrients. People today may like to look at photos of the old slave cabins and be appalled at how basic they are, while ignoring that poor whites had similar type housing and sometimes even worse. The South outside the plantations was really very, very poor, much poorer than the North, an economic factor that had some Southerners like Hinton Helper writing a book about it in the 1850s and blaming it on the existence of slavery.

Still, that doesn't preclude the point you made and which is absolutely right, at least poor whites had ownership of their actions and could make decisions that slaves could not, and poor whites were also not in danger of seeing families split up against their will and children and/or spouses sold away. The latter factor was probably the one slaves cared about the most, and was one of the greatest prizes of freedom.

But with freedom, the ex-slaves suddenly also had the freedom to take care of themselves, which didn't always work out so well. So it's not surprising that a popular theme in the interviews with the ex-slaves in the 1920s and 1930s was of how the old masters and mistresses "took care" of them and they didn't have to worry about food etc. Mind you, it was against the backdrop of the Depression and the South was severely affected by it, both black and white. But it does show how in modern times, when the basic staples of existence are effectively guaranteed or easily obtainable one way or another - decent enough housing, plenty of food etc, then the concept of freedom becomes defined less by the ability to act on your decisions than the difference in outcomes between your decisions and others. And therein lies the bitterness of today's struggles over the meaning of freedom.

I don’t think white sharecroppers and indentured servants were treated as badly as black slaves - though they were not treated well and from a practical perspective were treated so badly that the differences may not matter except in an academic discussion.

Not all whites, and certainly not all whites in the south, benefitted from slavery. Imagine what would happen now to labor prices if those with the capital and means of production began importing free labor?

Slavery was bad for everyone except slave owners (and Wall Street/commodity traders/industrialists, but that’s for another time). It was exceptionally good for slave owners. That’s why they were so bent out of shape at the idea of slavery ending.

You can't possibly be saying this with a straight face. It's like, would you rather just be poor, or would you rather be poor and be kidnapped, separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped? I guess it only matters from an academic perspective

I don’t think you have a great perspective on the plight of the poor in the west from the fall of the Roman Empire until after WWII. There were many periods of time that “separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped” was exactly the situation. The distinction is that actually not being paid and being bought and sold is worse than being paid basically nothing and having no freedom due to circumstances. But, if you’re actually in the situation it would seem hard to find one situation “preferable”. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for the dirt poor white southerner to support the institution of slavery and the confederacy was the existential fear that freed blacks would then be “above” them in society. So an ideology of white supremacy was advanced. Ultimately it was the southern landowners who owned both the slaves, the contracts for indentured servants, and the leases for land the sharecroppers worked. They essentially created this exploitative caste system which they dominated and it served their interests for everyone essentially to be subjugated (and fighting) within it. So, slavery was worse because of the violation of natural right to be free - but rape, abuse, forced eviction, coercive labor, etc were all faced by the bottom rung of society for much of human history.

The notion that the experience of white indentured servants was the same as that of black enslaved people is a white nationalist myth. It's true that the experience of poor whites was really bad, but for so many reasons, the oppression of black enslaved people was so much worse.

"Irish historians widely agree that the treatment of indentured servants was extremely violent and unjust. That said, they also agree it is a distortion of the stories of the thousands of servants to inaccurately equate their conditions with those of Africans subjected to chattel slavery."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/18/fact-check-irish-were-indentured-servants-not-slaves/3198590001/
[/quote

Why should an experience need to be identical to garner empathy for severe mistreatment?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a relative who was sold and made to marry an older man in her early teens. This was the 1920s in America. Not black. Just poor.

Modern day slavery continues today and is really bad. But it's not the same as chattel slavery.

Why should an experience need to be identical to garner empathy for severe mistreatment?

America limits conversation to one group only and they’ve been dead for over 100 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a relative who was sold and made to marry an older man in her early teens. This was the 1920s in America. Not black. Just poor.

Modern day slavery continues today and is really bad. But it's not the same as chattel slavery.

Why should an experience need to be identical to garner empathy for severe mistreatment?

America limits conversation to one group only and they’ve been dead for over 100 years.

You are one of those people who gets offended when people say Black Lives Matter, as though it means white lives don't matter. But you and I both know that expressing support for a population that has been systematically oppressed not just during slavery but long after that, does not mean we can't care about other people too. But anti racism is threatening to you for other reasons - because you benefit from racism itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you will not believe me, but I served in a very high level detail in the federal gov't during 2022-23. As the detail was ending, I had a private exit conversation with a senate-confirmed agency head. When they asked what I was doing next, I replied that I had applied several times over the last few years for an SES role in their agency (and others) and this person said that although I was highly qualified, well known and liked etc., it was "highly likely" that I wasn't invited to interview because I am a white male. I couldn't believe they would actually say this aloud.

FWIW - I was literally abandoned as a teenager, finished high school while living on my own, and put myself through 5 years of undergrad (because I worked full time) and 6 years to get a PhD, also while working outside jobs. Sometimes, there were months on end where I didn't have a day off, but it's because of my skin color and the associated privilege that I was successful. Whatevs.

The response to your story from someone in the DEI field would be that throughout this you still benefitted from white privilege, which you did.

I get it though. I'm a similar story of low-income white person who improved myself, etc.

You’ve been brainwashed. No one is immune from privilege. If you are an American. Can walk. Are healthy. Have food. A family who loves you, you have something someone else does not. It is NOT limited to race, but these stupid programs aren’t nuanced enough for that kind of reflection.

Stop expecting people to feel bad. Society should not be encouraged to mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. Probably explains the growing number of people offing themselves.

Just try to be nice and decent. And no, not as a mandate.

Ha. I'm not brainwashed. I am smart enough to know this country was built on the backs of free black labor and for generations the systems were set up to hoard wealth and opportunity with white people and the impacts of that are still in place all around us. Why is that hard to understand. Basic history. Implying all Americans have the same level of privilege makes you sound super dumb.

However, I do not think people should mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. I'm a white person with a great life and let's see... zero of the white people I know are doing that so you seem to be worrying about something that's not actually happening.

Life is more complex than you're making it out to be.

It's a funny claim and historically wrong because for much of American history blacks were predominately concentrated in the South and in agriculture. They didn't build the railroads, work in the coal mines, staff the factories of the north until well into the 20th century, clear the vast forests of the midwest, break the sod on the prairies, etc cetera.

Black labor definitely played a role in helping create American prosperity but blacks did not "build" the country. If anything, how could they build the country when they effectively weren't allowed to be anything more than the most basic field hand and housemaid for much of American history? Ultimately, America really was built by white people for white people, which ironically is also what a lot of CRT people like to say too without realizing the full extent of their message when they focus about the hostility towards black people (which is also true, white Americans have historically not wanted black people around and resented their presence).

As it is, life is definitely way more complicated than DEI proponents like you want to believe in your delusional woe is me mindset. I'm a historical realist. Not a cherry picker of facts to explain away your personal failures.

But I'll tell you who the real privileged people are these days. The young urban black men who get to run red lights while the police do nothing.

The average black slave lived a similar life as a poor white sharecropper. Many people focus on a slave owner versus a slave, and don’t consider that slave owners were in the minority. There are numerous studies and papers about average calories, work hours etc and slaves truly had a very similar lifestyle as a poor white sharecropper. Of course slaves were owned and didn’t have their freedom but did the average poor white person in the south have a lot of freedom? But you’re not allowed to say any of this.

I think DEI has done more harm than good which is a shame.

Are you serious? Was the average white a slave? Yes the average white person in the south had a lot of freedom. They weren’t in chains. They could move west, north if they didn’t find opportunities south.
Maybe you don’t know what freedom is.

Freedom is a funny word. What does it really mean? We largely define it nowadays as the freedom to make decisions and to own the outcomes of our free will. At the same time, historically there have also been other understanding of what freedom must mean. To take the case of the antebellum South, one of the weird and little mentioned ironies is that most slaves on the plantations were in some aspect physically better off than many poor whites because they had a better diet and better access to medical care. Shocking, perhaps, but slaves were extremely valuable, a single slave was the equivalent of owning a car today in terms of expense and cost. While there were certainly some exceptions, slaveowners still had a distinct financial interest in ensuring that their slaves survived and were healthy enough to be productive in the fields. Slaveowners were also the better off segment of Southern society and often had a moral, if paternalistic, attitude towards the welfare of their slaves. By contrast, many poor whites in the South lived lives of abject poverty and malnutrition due to poor diets and lack of nutrients. People today may like to look at photos of the old slave cabins and be appalled at how basic they are, while ignoring that poor whites had similar type housing and sometimes even worse. The South outside the plantations was really very, very poor, much poorer than the North, an economic factor that had some Southerners like Hinton Helper writing a book about it in the 1850s and blaming it on the existence of slavery.

Still, that doesn't preclude the point you made and which is absolutely right, at least poor whites had ownership of their actions and could make decisions that slaves could not, and poor whites were also not in danger of seeing families split up against their will and children and/or spouses sold away. The latter factor was probably the one slaves cared about the most, and was one of the greatest prizes of freedom.

But with freedom, the ex-slaves suddenly also had the freedom to take care of themselves, which didn't always work out so well. So it's not surprising that a popular theme in the interviews with the ex-slaves in the 1920s and 1930s was of how the old masters and mistresses "took care" of them and they didn't have to worry about food etc. Mind you, it was against the backdrop of the Depression and the South was severely affected by it, both black and white. But it does show how in modern times, when the basic staples of existence are effectively guaranteed or easily obtainable one way or another - decent enough housing, plenty of food etc, then the concept of freedom becomes defined less by the ability to act on your decisions than the difference in outcomes between your decisions and others. And therein lies the bitterness of today's struggles over the meaning of freedom.

I don’t think white sharecroppers and indentured servants were treated as badly as black slaves - though they were not treated well and from a practical perspective were treated so badly that the differences may not matter except in an academic discussion.

Not all whites, and certainly not all whites in the south, benefitted from slavery. Imagine what would happen now to labor prices if those with the capital and means of production began importing free labor?

Slavery was bad for everyone except slave owners (and Wall Street/commodity traders/industrialists, but that’s for another time). It was exceptionally good for slave owners. That’s why they were so bent out of shape at the idea of slavery ending.

You can't possibly be saying this with a straight face. It's like, would you rather just be poor, or would you rather be poor and be kidnapped, separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped? I guess it only matters from an academic perspective

I don’t think you have a great perspective on the plight of the poor in the west from the fall of the Roman Empire until after WWII. There were many periods of time that “separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped” was exactly the situation. The distinction is that actually not being paid and being bought and sold is worse than being paid basically nothing and having no freedom due to circumstances. But, if you’re actually in the situation it would seem hard to find one situation “preferable”. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for the dirt poor white southerner to support the institution of slavery and the confederacy was the existential fear that freed blacks would then be “above” them in society. So an ideology of white supremacy was advanced. Ultimately it was the southern landowners who owned both the slaves, the contracts for indentured servants, and the leases for land the sharecroppers worked. They essentially created this exploitative caste system which they dominated and it served their interests for everyone essentially to be subjugated (and fighting) within it. So, slavery was worse because of the violation of natural right to be free - but rape, abuse, forced eviction, coercive labor, etc were all faced by the bottom rung of society for much of human history.

The notion that the experience of white indentured servants was the same as that of black enslaved people is a white nationalist myth. It's true that the experience of poor whites was really bad, but for so many reasons, the oppression of black enslaved people was so much worse.

"Irish historians widely agree that the treatment of indentured servants was extremely violent and unjust. That said, they also agree it is a distortion of the stories of the thousands of servants to inaccurately equate their conditions with those of Africans subjected to chattel slavery."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/18/fact-check-irish-were-indentured-servants-not-slaves/3198590001/

It’s not a white nationalist myth that the plight of the dirt poor whites and slaves were both so bad, actually debating the differences is a foolish exercise. Yea, obviously being owned is a worse plight - but that fact doesn’t really matter unless you are fixated on slavery without the contributory context of the entirety of human history. Getting the toe nails ripped off 10 toes is worse than getting them ripped off 9 toes, but who cares? It certainly wasn’t a “privilege” to have 9 toe nails ripped off.

The retrospective victim Olympics is the problem. It’s obfuscating contemporary discussions of how to improve society and leads to a ridiculous circus like DEI.

Historically speaking, life was cruel for a massive portion of the population. The owners of capital and means of production were brutal. The end of this dynamic was within our parents and grandparents lifetimes.

If you want to look at how this brutality manifests itself in the inequities of today, you can draw straight lines between those who were on the winning side of the Norman Conquest of GB, or any of the various civil wars of the British isles, and hold the wealth and power today and those who were on the losing side of those conflicts and ended up poor in America.

Yes, Slavery also created this dynamic but looking at the history of America and its embedded inequities by only looking at the legacy of slavery is a woefully narrow aperture to analyze the complexities of American history and its relationship with the colonial powers.

No one looks at the white factory worker in Baltimore as having a “privilege” over the white share cropper in the Deep South… but is quick to point out a privilege that exists between the white sharecropper and the slave. It is an incredibly myopic view of history.

The current movement has basically looked at it and said “well slavery was worst so that’s all we will focus on”. And it’s just foolish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a relative who was sold and made to marry an older man in her early teens. This was the 1920s in America. Not black. Just poor.

Modern day slavery continues today and is really bad. But it's not the same as chattel slavery.

Why should an experience need to be identical to garner empathy for severe mistreatment?

America limits conversation to one group only and they’ve been dead for over 100 years.

You are one of those people who gets offended when people say Black Lives Matter, as though it means white lives don't matter. But you and I both know that expressing support for a population that has been systematically oppressed not just during slavery but long after that, does not mean we can't care about other people too. But anti racism is threatening to you for other reasons - because you benefit from racism itself.

I'm not offended. Black lives do matter. Any disagreements I have with anti-racism has to do with its racist, dehumanizing policies. I don't believe you can end racism by plying people with racism. The only possible outcome is that it creates more of the thing you're trying to end. Would you recommend losing weight by eating more cake? Incredibly dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you will not believe me, but I served in a very high level detail in the federal gov't during 2022-23. As the detail was ending, I had a private exit conversation with a senate-confirmed agency head. When they asked what I was doing next, I replied that I had applied several times over the last few years for an SES role in their agency (and others) and this person said that although I was highly qualified, well known and liked etc., it was "highly likely" that I wasn't invited to interview because I am a white male. I couldn't believe they would actually say this aloud.

FWIW - I was literally abandoned as a teenager, finished high school while living on my own, and put myself through 5 years of undergrad (because I worked full time) and 6 years to get a PhD, also while working outside jobs. Sometimes, there were months on end where I didn't have a day off, but it's because of my skin color and the associated privilege that I was successful. Whatevs.

The response to your story from someone in the DEI field would be that throughout this you still benefitted from white privilege, which you did.

I get it though. I'm a similar story of low-income white person who improved myself, etc.

You’ve been brainwashed. No one is immune from privilege. If you are an American. Can walk. Are healthy. Have food. A family who loves you, you have something someone else does not. It is NOT limited to race, but these stupid programs aren’t nuanced enough for that kind of reflection.

Stop expecting people to feel bad. Society should not be encouraged to mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. Probably explains the growing number of people offing themselves.

Just try to be nice and decent. And no, not as a mandate.

Ha. I'm not brainwashed. I am smart enough to know this country was built on the backs of free black labor and for generations the systems were set up to hoard wealth and opportunity with white people and the impacts of that are still in place all around us. Why is that hard to understand. Basic history. Implying all Americans have the same level of privilege makes you sound super dumb.

However, I do not think people should mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. I'm a white person with a great life and let's see... zero of the white people I know are doing that so you seem to be worrying about something that's not actually happening.

Life is more complex than you're making it out to be.

It's a funny claim and historically wrong because for much of American history blacks were predominately concentrated in the South and in agriculture. They didn't build the railroads, work in the coal mines, staff the factories of the north until well into the 20th century, clear the vast forests of the midwest, break the sod on the prairies, etc cetera.

Black labor definitely played a role in helping create American prosperity but blacks did not "build" the country. If anything, how could they build the country when they effectively weren't allowed to be anything more than the most basic field hand and housemaid for much of American history? Ultimately, America really was built by white people for white people, which ironically is also what a lot of CRT people like to say too without realizing the full extent of their message when they focus about the hostility towards black people (which is also true, white Americans have historically not wanted black people around and resented their presence).

As it is, life is definitely way more complicated than DEI proponents like you want to believe in your delusional woe is me mindset. I'm a historical realist. Not a cherry picker of facts to explain away your personal failures.

But I'll tell you who the real privileged people are these days. The young urban black men who get to run red lights while the police do nothing.

The average black slave lived a similar life as a poor white sharecropper. Many people focus on a slave owner versus a slave, and don’t consider that slave owners were in the minority. There are numerous studies and papers about average calories, work hours etc and slaves truly had a very similar lifestyle as a poor white sharecropper. Of course slaves were owned and didn’t have their freedom but did the average poor white person in the south have a lot of freedom? But you’re not allowed to say any of this.

I think DEI has done more harm than good which is a shame.

Are you serious? Was the average white a slave? Yes the average white person in the south had a lot of freedom. They weren’t in chains. They could move west, north if they didn’t find opportunities south.
Maybe you don’t know what freedom is.

Freedom is a funny word. What does it really mean? We largely define it nowadays as the freedom to make decisions and to own the outcomes of our free will. At the same time, historically there have also been other understanding of what freedom must mean. To take the case of the antebellum South, one of the weird and little mentioned ironies is that most slaves on the plantations were in some aspect physically better off than many poor whites because they had a better diet and better access to medical care. Shocking, perhaps, but slaves were extremely valuable, a single slave was the equivalent of owning a car today in terms of expense and cost. While there were certainly some exceptions, slaveowners still had a distinct financial interest in ensuring that their slaves survived and were healthy enough to be productive in the fields. Slaveowners were also the better off segment of Southern society and often had a moral, if paternalistic, attitude towards the welfare of their slaves. By contrast, many poor whites in the South lived lives of abject poverty and malnutrition due to poor diets and lack of nutrients. People today may like to look at photos of the old slave cabins and be appalled at how basic they are, while ignoring that poor whites had similar type housing and sometimes even worse. The South outside the plantations was really very, very poor, much poorer than the North, an economic factor that had some Southerners like Hinton Helper writing a book about it in the 1850s and blaming it on the existence of slavery.

Still, that doesn't preclude the point you made and which is absolutely right, at least poor whites had ownership of their actions and could make decisions that slaves could not, and poor whites were also not in danger of seeing families split up against their will and children and/or spouses sold away. The latter factor was probably the one slaves cared about the most, and was one of the greatest prizes of freedom.

But with freedom, the ex-slaves suddenly also had the freedom to take care of themselves, which didn't always work out so well. So it's not surprising that a popular theme in the interviews with the ex-slaves in the 1920s and 1930s was of how the old masters and mistresses "took care" of them and they didn't have to worry about food etc. Mind you, it was against the backdrop of the Depression and the South was severely affected by it, both black and white. But it does show how in modern times, when the basic staples of existence are effectively guaranteed or easily obtainable one way or another - decent enough housing, plenty of food etc, then the concept of freedom becomes defined less by the ability to act on your decisions than the difference in outcomes between your decisions and others. And therein lies the bitterness of today's struggles over the meaning of freedom.

I don’t think white sharecroppers and indentured servants were treated as badly as black slaves - though they were not treated well and from a practical perspective were treated so badly that the differences may not matter except in an academic discussion.

Not all whites, and certainly not all whites in the south, benefitted from slavery. Imagine what would happen now to labor prices if those with the capital and means of production began importing free labor?

Slavery was bad for everyone except slave owners (and Wall Street/commodity traders/industrialists, but that’s for another time). It was exceptionally good for slave owners. That’s why they were so bent out of shape at the idea of slavery ending.

You can't possibly be saying this with a straight face. It's like, would you rather just be poor, or would you rather be poor and be kidnapped, separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped? I guess it only matters from an academic perspective

I don’t think you have a great perspective on the plight of the poor in the west from the fall of the Roman Empire until after WWII. There were many periods of time that “separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped” was exactly the situation. The distinction is that actually not being paid and being bought and sold is worse than being paid basically nothing and having no freedom due to circumstances. But, if you’re actually in the situation it would seem hard to find one situation “preferable”. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for the dirt poor white southerner to support the institution of slavery and the confederacy was the existential fear that freed blacks would then be “above” them in society. So an ideology of white supremacy was advanced. Ultimately it was the southern landowners who owned both the slaves, the contracts for indentured servants, and the leases for land the sharecroppers worked. They essentially created this exploitative caste system which they dominated and it served their interests for everyone essentially to be subjugated (and fighting) within it. So, slavery was worse because of the violation of natural right to be free - but rape, abuse, forced eviction, coercive labor, etc were all faced by the bottom rung of society for much of human history.

The notion that the experience of white indentured servants was the same as that of black enslaved people is a white nationalist myth. It's true that the experience of poor whites was really bad, but for so many reasons, the oppression of black enslaved people was so much worse.

"Irish historians widely agree that the treatment of indentured servants was extremely violent and unjust. That said, they also agree it is a distortion of the stories of the thousands of servants to inaccurately equate their conditions with those of Africans subjected to chattel slavery."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/18/fact-check-irish-were-indentured-servants-not-slaves/3198590001/

It’s not a white nationalist myth that the plight of the dirt poor whites and slaves were both so bad, actually debating the differences is a foolish exercise. Yea, obviously being owned is a worse plight - but that fact doesn’t really matter unless you are fixated on slavery without the contributory context of the entirety of human history. Getting the toe nails ripped off 10 toes is worse than getting them ripped off 9 toes, but who cares? It certainly wasn’t a “privilege” to have 9 toe nails ripped off.

The retrospective victim Olympics is the problem. It’s obfuscating contemporary discussions of how to improve society and leads to a ridiculous circus like DEI.

Historically speaking, life was cruel for a massive portion of the population. The owners of capital and means of production were brutal. The end of this dynamic was within our parents and grandparents lifetimes.

If you want to look at how this brutality manifests itself in the inequities of today, you can draw straight lines between those who were on the winning side of the Norman Conquest of GB, or any of the various civil wars of the British isles, and hold the wealth and power today and those who were on the losing side of those conflicts and ended up poor in America.

Yes, Slavery also created this dynamic but looking at the history of America and its embedded inequities by only looking at the legacy of slavery is a woefully narrow aperture to analyze the complexities of American history and its relationship with the colonial powers.

No one looks at the white factory worker in Baltimore as having a “privilege” over the white share cropper in the Deep South… but is quick to point out a privilege that exists between the white sharecropper and the slave. It is an incredibly myopic view of history.

The current movement has basically looked at it and said “well slavery was worst so that’s all we will focus on”. And it’s just foolish.

+1 You're right. Unfortunately, this requires reading and thinking. The attention span of the average American is shrinking by the minute. There's a reason short catchphrases are so successful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you will not believe me, but I served in a very high level detail in the federal gov't during 2022-23. As the detail was ending, I had a private exit conversation with a senate-confirmed agency head. When they asked what I was doing next, I replied that I had applied several times over the last few years for an SES role in their agency (and others) and this person said that although I was highly qualified, well known and liked etc., it was "highly likely" that I wasn't invited to interview because I am a white male. I couldn't believe they would actually say this aloud.

FWIW - I was literally abandoned as a teenager, finished high school while living on my own, and put myself through 5 years of undergrad (because I worked full time) and 6 years to get a PhD, also while working outside jobs. Sometimes, there were months on end where I didn't have a day off, but it's because of my skin color and the associated privilege that I was successful. Whatevs.

The response to your story from someone in the DEI field would be that throughout this you still benefitted from white privilege, which you did.

I get it though. I'm a similar story of low-income white person who improved myself, etc.

You’ve been brainwashed. No one is immune from privilege. If you are an American. Can walk. Are healthy. Have food. A family who loves you, you have something someone else does not. It is NOT limited to race, but these stupid programs aren’t nuanced enough for that kind of reflection.

Stop expecting people to feel bad. Society should not be encouraged to mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. Probably explains the growing number of people offing themselves.

Just try to be nice and decent. And no, not as a mandate.

Ha. I'm not brainwashed. I am smart enough to know this country was built on the backs of free black labor and for generations the systems were set up to hoard wealth and opportunity with white people and the impacts of that are still in place all around us. Why is that hard to understand. Basic history. Implying all Americans have the same level of privilege makes you sound super dumb.

However, I do not think people should mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. I'm a white person with a great life and let's see... zero of the white people I know are doing that so you seem to be worrying about something that's not actually happening.

Life is more complex than you're making it out to be.

It's a funny claim and historically wrong because for much of American history blacks were predominately concentrated in the South and in agriculture. They didn't build the railroads, work in the coal mines, staff the factories of the north until well into the 20th century, clear the vast forests of the midwest, break the sod on the prairies, etc cetera.

Black labor definitely played a role in helping create American prosperity but blacks did not "build" the country. If anything, how could they build the country when they effectively weren't allowed to be anything more than the most basic field hand and housemaid for much of American history? Ultimately, America really was built by white people for white people, which ironically is also what a lot of CRT people like to say too without realizing the full extent of their message when they focus about the hostility towards black people (which is also true, white Americans have historically not wanted black people around and resented their presence).

As it is, life is definitely way more complicated than DEI proponents like you want to believe in your delusional woe is me mindset. I'm a historical realist. Not a cherry picker of facts to explain away your personal failures.

But I'll tell you who the real privileged people are these days. The young urban black men who get to run red lights while the police do nothing.

The average black slave lived a similar life as a poor white sharecropper. Many people focus on a slave owner versus a slave, and don’t consider that slave owners were in the minority. There are numerous studies and papers about average calories, work hours etc and slaves truly had a very similar lifestyle as a poor white sharecropper. Of course slaves were owned and didn’t have their freedom but did the average poor white person in the south have a lot of freedom? But you’re not allowed to say any of this.

I think DEI has done more harm than good which is a shame.

Are you serious? Was the average white a slave? Yes the average white person in the south had a lot of freedom. They weren’t in chains. They could move west, north if they didn’t find opportunities south.
Maybe you don’t know what freedom is.

Freedom is a funny word. What does it really mean? We largely define it nowadays as the freedom to make decisions and to own the outcomes of our free will. At the same time, historically there have also been other understanding of what freedom must mean. To take the case of the antebellum South, one of the weird and little mentioned ironies is that most slaves on the plantations were in some aspect physically better off than many poor whites because they had a better diet and better access to medical care. Shocking, perhaps, but slaves were extremely valuable, a single slave was the equivalent of owning a car today in terms of expense and cost. While there were certainly some exceptions, slaveowners still had a distinct financial interest in ensuring that their slaves survived and were healthy enough to be productive in the fields. Slaveowners were also the better off segment of Southern society and often had a moral, if paternalistic, attitude towards the welfare of their slaves. By contrast, many poor whites in the South lived lives of abject poverty and malnutrition due to poor diets and lack of nutrients. People today may like to look at photos of the old slave cabins and be appalled at how basic they are, while ignoring that poor whites had similar type housing and sometimes even worse. The South outside the plantations was really very, very poor, much poorer than the North, an economic factor that had some Southerners like Hinton Helper writing a book about it in the 1850s and blaming it on the existence of slavery.

Still, that doesn't preclude the point you made and which is absolutely right, at least poor whites had ownership of their actions and could make decisions that slaves could not, and poor whites were also not in danger of seeing families split up against their will and children and/or spouses sold away. The latter factor was probably the one slaves cared about the most, and was one of the greatest prizes of freedom.

But with freedom, the ex-slaves suddenly also had the freedom to take care of themselves, which didn't always work out so well. So it's not surprising that a popular theme in the interviews with the ex-slaves in the 1920s and 1930s was of how the old masters and mistresses "took care" of them and they didn't have to worry about food etc. Mind you, it was against the backdrop of the Depression and the South was severely affected by it, both black and white. But it does show how in modern times, when the basic staples of existence are effectively guaranteed or easily obtainable one way or another - decent enough housing, plenty of food etc, then the concept of freedom becomes defined less by the ability to act on your decisions than the difference in outcomes between your decisions and others. And therein lies the bitterness of today's struggles over the meaning of freedom.

I don’t think white sharecroppers and indentured servants were treated as badly as black slaves - though they were not treated well and from a practical perspective were treated so badly that the differences may not matter except in an academic discussion.

Not all whites, and certainly not all whites in the south, benefitted from slavery. Imagine what would happen now to labor prices if those with the capital and means of production began importing free labor?

Slavery was bad for everyone except slave owners (and Wall Street/commodity traders/industrialists, but that’s for another time). It was exceptionally good for slave owners. That’s why they were so bent out of shape at the idea of slavery ending.

You can't possibly be saying this with a straight face. It's like, would you rather just be poor, or would you rather be poor and be kidnapped, separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped? I guess it only matters from an academic perspective

I don’t think you have a great perspective on the plight of the poor in the west from the fall of the Roman Empire until after WWII. There were many periods of time that “separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped” was exactly the situation. The distinction is that actually not being paid and being bought and sold is worse than being paid basically nothing and having no freedom due to circumstances. But, if you’re actually in the situation it would seem hard to find one situation “preferable”. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for the dirt poor white southerner to support the institution of slavery and the confederacy was the existential fear that freed blacks would then be “above” them in society. So an ideology of white supremacy was advanced. Ultimately it was the southern landowners who owned both the slaves, the contracts for indentured servants, and the leases for land the sharecroppers worked. They essentially created this exploitative caste system which they dominated and it served their interests for everyone essentially to be subjugated (and fighting) within it. So, slavery was worse because of the violation of natural right to be free - but rape, abuse, forced eviction, coercive labor, etc were all faced by the bottom rung of society for much of human history.

The notion that the experience of white indentured servants was the same as that of black enslaved people is a white nationalist myth. It's true that the experience of poor whites was really bad, but for so many reasons, the oppression of black enslaved people was so much worse.

"Irish historians widely agree that the treatment of indentured servants was extremely violent and unjust. That said, they also agree it is a distortion of the stories of the thousands of servants to inaccurately equate their conditions with those of Africans subjected to chattel slavery."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/18/fact-check-irish-were-indentured-servants-not-slaves/3198590001/

It’s not a white nationalist myth that the plight of the dirt poor whites and slaves were both so bad, actually debating the differences is a foolish exercise. Yea, obviously being owned is a worse plight - but that fact doesn’t really matter unless you are fixated on slavery without the contributory context of the entirety of human history. Getting the toe nails ripped off 10 toes is worse than getting them ripped off 9 toes, but who cares? It certainly wasn’t a “privilege” to have 9 toe nails ripped off.

The retrospective victim Olympics is the problem. It’s obfuscating contemporary discussions of how to improve society and leads to a ridiculous circus like DEI.

Historically speaking, life was cruel for a massive portion of the population. The owners of capital and means of production were brutal. The end of this dynamic was within our parents and grandparents lifetimes.

If you want to look at how this brutality manifests itself in the inequities of today, you can draw straight lines between those who were on the winning side of the Norman Conquest of GB, or any of the various civil wars of the British isles, and hold the wealth and power today and those who were on the losing side of those conflicts and ended up poor in America.

Yes, Slavery also created this dynamic but looking at the history of America and its embedded inequities by only looking at the legacy of slavery is a woefully narrow aperture to analyze the complexities of American history and its relationship with the colonial powers.

No one looks at the white factory worker in Baltimore as having a “privilege” over the white share cropper in the Deep South… but is quick to point out a privilege that exists between the white sharecropper and the slave. It is an incredibly myopic view of history.

The current movement has basically looked at it and said “well slavery was worst so that’s all we will focus on”. And it’s just foolish.

+1 You're right. Unfortunately, this requires reading and thinking. The attention span of the average American is shrinking by the minute. There's a reason short catchphrases are so successful.

The arguments you're making are exclusively made by people opposing anti-racism. Not by historians, who overwhelmingly disagree with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you will not believe me, but I served in a very high level detail in the federal gov't during 2022-23. As the detail was ending, I had a private exit conversation with a senate-confirmed agency head. When they asked what I was doing next, I replied that I had applied several times over the last few years for an SES role in their agency (and others) and this person said that although I was highly qualified, well known and liked etc., it was "highly likely" that I wasn't invited to interview because I am a white male. I couldn't believe they would actually say this aloud.

FWIW - I was literally abandoned as a teenager, finished high school while living on my own, and put myself through 5 years of undergrad (because I worked full time) and 6 years to get a PhD, also while working outside jobs. Sometimes, there were months on end where I didn't have a day off, but it's because of my skin color and the associated privilege that I was successful. Whatevs.

The response to your story from someone in the DEI field would be that throughout this you still benefitted from white privilege, which you did.

I get it though. I'm a similar story of low-income white person who improved myself, etc.

You’ve been brainwashed. No one is immune from privilege. If you are an American. Can walk. Are healthy. Have food. A family who loves you, you have something someone else does not. It is NOT limited to race, but these stupid programs aren’t nuanced enough for that kind of reflection.

Stop expecting people to feel bad. Society should not be encouraged to mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. Probably explains the growing number of people offing themselves.

Just try to be nice and decent. And no, not as a mandate.

Ha. I'm not brainwashed. I am smart enough to know this country was built on the backs of free black labor and for generations the systems were set up to hoard wealth and opportunity with white people and the impacts of that are still in place all around us. Why is that hard to understand. Basic history. Implying all Americans have the same level of privilege makes you sound super dumb.

However, I do not think people should mope around full of guilt and whipping themselves all day. I'm a white person with a great life and let's see... zero of the white people I know are doing that so you seem to be worrying about something that's not actually happening.

Life is more complex than you're making it out to be.

It's a funny claim and historically wrong because for much of American history blacks were predominately concentrated in the South and in agriculture. They didn't build the railroads, work in the coal mines, staff the factories of the north until well into the 20th century, clear the vast forests of the midwest, break the sod on the prairies, etc cetera.

Black labor definitely played a role in helping create American prosperity but blacks did not "build" the country. If anything, how could they build the country when they effectively weren't allowed to be anything more than the most basic field hand and housemaid for much of American history? Ultimately, America really was built by white people for white people, which ironically is also what a lot of CRT people like to say too without realizing the full extent of their message when they focus about the hostility towards black people (which is also true, white Americans have historically not wanted black people around and resented their presence).

As it is, life is definitely way more complicated than DEI proponents like you want to believe in your delusional woe is me mindset. I'm a historical realist. Not a cherry picker of facts to explain away your personal failures.

But I'll tell you who the real privileged people are these days. The young urban black men who get to run red lights while the police do nothing.

The average black slave lived a similar life as a poor white sharecropper. Many people focus on a slave owner versus a slave, and don’t consider that slave owners were in the minority. There are numerous studies and papers about average calories, work hours etc and slaves truly had a very similar lifestyle as a poor white sharecropper. Of course slaves were owned and didn’t have their freedom but did the average poor white person in the south have a lot of freedom? But you’re not allowed to say any of this.

I think DEI has done more harm than good which is a shame.

Are you serious? Was the average white a slave? Yes the average white person in the south had a lot of freedom. They weren’t in chains. They could move west, north if they didn’t find opportunities south.
Maybe you don’t know what freedom is.

Freedom is a funny word. What does it really mean? We largely define it nowadays as the freedom to make decisions and to own the outcomes of our free will. At the same time, historically there have also been other understanding of what freedom must mean. To take the case of the antebellum South, one of the weird and little mentioned ironies is that most slaves on the plantations were in some aspect physically better off than many poor whites because they had a better diet and better access to medical care. Shocking, perhaps, but slaves were extremely valuable, a single slave was the equivalent of owning a car today in terms of expense and cost. While there were certainly some exceptions, slaveowners still had a distinct financial interest in ensuring that their slaves survived and were healthy enough to be productive in the fields. Slaveowners were also the better off segment of Southern society and often had a moral, if paternalistic, attitude towards the welfare of their slaves. By contrast, many poor whites in the South lived lives of abject poverty and malnutrition due to poor diets and lack of nutrients. People today may like to look at photos of the old slave cabins and be appalled at how basic they are, while ignoring that poor whites had similar type housing and sometimes even worse. The South outside the plantations was really very, very poor, much poorer than the North, an economic factor that had some Southerners like Hinton Helper writing a book about it in the 1850s and blaming it on the existence of slavery.

Still, that doesn't preclude the point you made and which is absolutely right, at least poor whites had ownership of their actions and could make decisions that slaves could not, and poor whites were also not in danger of seeing families split up against their will and children and/or spouses sold away. The latter factor was probably the one slaves cared about the most, and was one of the greatest prizes of freedom.

But with freedom, the ex-slaves suddenly also had the freedom to take care of themselves, which didn't always work out so well. So it's not surprising that a popular theme in the interviews with the ex-slaves in the 1920s and 1930s was of how the old masters and mistresses "took care" of them and they didn't have to worry about food etc. Mind you, it was against the backdrop of the Depression and the South was severely affected by it, both black and white. But it does show how in modern times, when the basic staples of existence are effectively guaranteed or easily obtainable one way or another - decent enough housing, plenty of food etc, then the concept of freedom becomes defined less by the ability to act on your decisions than the difference in outcomes between your decisions and others. And therein lies the bitterness of today's struggles over the meaning of freedom.

I don’t think white sharecroppers and indentured servants were treated as badly as black slaves - though they were not treated well and from a practical perspective were treated so badly that the differences may not matter except in an academic discussion.

Not all whites, and certainly not all whites in the south, benefitted from slavery. Imagine what would happen now to labor prices if those with the capital and means of production began importing free labor?

Slavery was bad for everyone except slave owners (and Wall Street/commodity traders/industrialists, but that’s for another time). It was exceptionally good for slave owners. That’s why they were so bent out of shape at the idea of slavery ending.

You can't possibly be saying this with a straight face. It's like, would you rather just be poor, or would you rather be poor and be kidnapped, separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped? I guess it only matters from an academic perspective

I don’t think you have a great perspective on the plight of the poor in the west from the fall of the Roman Empire until after WWII. There were many periods of time that “separated from your family and repeatedly brutalized and raped” was exactly the situation. The distinction is that actually not being paid and being bought and sold is worse than being paid basically nothing and having no freedom due to circumstances. But, if you’re actually in the situation it would seem hard to find one situation “preferable”. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for the dirt poor white southerner to support the institution of slavery and the confederacy was the existential fear that freed blacks would then be “above” them in society. So an ideology of white supremacy was advanced. Ultimately it was the southern landowners who owned both the slaves, the contracts for indentured servants, and the leases for land the sharecroppers worked. They essentially created this exploitative caste system which they dominated and it served their interests for everyone essentially to be subjugated (and fighting) within it. So, slavery was worse because of the violation of natural right to be free - but rape, abuse, forced eviction, coercive labor, etc were all faced by the bottom rung of society for much of human history.

The notion that the experience of white indentured servants was the same as that of black enslaved people is a white nationalist myth. It's true that the experience of poor whites was really bad, but for so many reasons, the oppression of black enslaved people was so much worse.

"Irish historians widely agree that the treatment of indentured servants was extremely violent and unjust. That said, they also agree it is a distortion of the stories of the thousands of servants to inaccurately equate their conditions with those of Africans subjected to chattel slavery."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/18/fact-check-irish-were-indentured-servants-not-slaves/3198590001/

It’s not a white nationalist myth that the plight of the dirt poor whites and slaves were both so bad, actually debating the differences is a foolish exercise. Yea, obviously being owned is a worse plight - but that fact doesn’t really matter unless you are fixated on slavery without the contributory context of the entirety of human history. Getting the toe nails ripped off 10 toes is worse than getting them ripped off 9 toes, but who cares? It certainly wasn’t a “privilege” to have 9 toe nails ripped off.

The retrospective victim Olympics is the problem. It’s obfuscating contemporary discussions of how to improve society and leads to a ridiculous circus like DEI.

Historically speaking, life was cruel for a massive portion of the population. The owners of capital and means of production were brutal. The end of this dynamic was within our parents and grandparents lifetimes.

If you want to look at how this brutality manifests itself in the inequities of today, you can draw straight lines between those who were on the winning side of the Norman Conquest of GB, or any of the various civil wars of the British isles, and hold the wealth and power today and those who were on the losing side of those conflicts and ended up poor in America.

Yes, Slavery also created this dynamic but looking at the history of America and its embedded inequities by only looking at the legacy of slavery is a woefully narrow aperture to analyze the complexities of American history and its relationship with the colonial powers.

No one looks at the white factory worker in Baltimore as having a “privilege” over the white share cropper in the Deep South… but is quick to point out a privilege that exists between the white sharecropper and the slave. It is an incredibly myopic view of history.

The current movement has basically looked at it and said “well slavery was worst so that’s all we will focus on”. And it’s just foolish.

I find this reductive. DEI does not solely focus on "slavery" and "victim olympics." Throughout history, you can find atrocities committed in nearly all countries. The premise is simple, there still exists institutional racism and sexism. We can't change the past, so how can we make this better going forward. We have to make society less segregated somehow. It's not an easy problem to fix and a lot of DEI practices are a bandaid fix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DEI in large corporations can be misguided and suck AND systemic and structural racism can be real. Individuals definitely get negatively caught up in crappy DEI-led decisions just like individuals get negatively caught up in the downstream impacts of structural and systemic racism. And it feels not fair to all those people.

All the things can be true.

+1 OP here. I completely agree.

Is me as a White person being offended by a DEI training, or being passed over for a job because another candidate was similarly qualified and Black, the worst thing in the world? Of course not. The problems DEI is trying to address that mainly impact BIPOC people are much worse than that

But significant amounts of money and time, including taxpayer dollars, are being devoted to these initiatives, and it's all being made up on the fly and often alienating the people that need to buy into it while often putting BIPOC people in positions that become untenable because they are viewed as diversity hires and part of the DEI "stuff" that everyone already rolls their eyes at.

a white person being passed over for multiple jobs based purely on the fact that they are not diverse IS the worst thing in the world for that person, who may have a family to support, aside from dying or having a terminal illness.

I'm a staunch democrat but this is what the dems (and DEI initiatives) often get wrong. They assume a level of altruism that's wholly unrealistic and ridiculous to expect from any normal individual human. People are already struggling to handle their lives. You expect that if someone unemployed doesn't get a job they really want bc it went to a poc BECAUSE that person is a poc, they should just be ok with it? of course they aren't! They are devastated. They worked their whole lives to get to this point. they have kids maybe. And hence is born anger and resentment.
No matter what preceded today, today is today and individuals are alive and they deserve to be judged on merit.

It's not realistic to assume you are going to get offered every job you apply for. Getting jobs is hard. Lots of people have to spend a lot of time searching. No, it is not the worst thing in the world.

Look—another candidate for brain de-worming. The PP didn’t say they expect applicants to get every job. Also, you are wrong if you think that racial discrimination is okay in any form.

Beating down on the majority of a nation is a mathematically fraught approach. It’s the kind of behavior that WILL get Trump elected, and then what happens.

PP said, "You expect that if someone unemployed doesn't get a job they really want bc it went to a poc BECAUSE that person is a poc, they should just be ok with it?" Nobody is going to "just be ok" with not getting a job they really want. Sometimes it's because someone else was a better fit, sometimes it's because someone else knew the right people, sometimes it's because of racial discrimination, which has had a much larger effect on POC than on White people in the grand scheme of things. I can't tell you how many times I've seen my boss push for hiring someone despite red flags because that someone knew somebody higher up who was pulling for them. Those people with connections have always been White.

I suspect what is happening is that the PP's spouse is applying for jobs that have lots of qualified applicants. Getting those jobs is going to be really hard. I don't think anyone should be discriminated against because they are White, but if a workplace is predominantly White it absolutely looks bad to hire more White people when there are qualified POC candidates.

Who cares how it “looks” if the candidate is the best applicant? Businesses exist for profit, not so you can feel good. Many in-house applicants with invaluable institutional knowledge are being side-stepped because they don’t meet a racial quota. It’s a fact. These programs hurt good employees and they hurt business revenue.

The only goal of DEI was to promote and hire a disproportionate number POC to supposedly right to wrongs of yesterday.

The programs have NEVER promised to ensure the best candidate wins, which is why colleagues are right to question the capability of new diversity hires. And this really sucks because I’m sure many were the best candidate.

But policies like this can’t have it both ways.…which is why their time is extremely limited.

Actually companies who are diverse have higher profits so …

True, but context is important to avoid a false equivalency. A diverse company will be more successful if they truly chose the best candidate regardless of race. Outcomes are not the same for a company who places candidates for the sole purpose of meeting racial quotas. Ignoring white male candidates is a glaring example of this.

Look at any of major government agencies who have put national security at risk by lowering standards to fill subjective quotas.

Or, if you prefer, any of the top colleges who decided to throw out testing, sidelining objective scores to create more opportunity for POC. It didn’t work. The students they got were ill prepared and now the tests are back. MIT just dropped their formerly required DEI pact. Why? Because success follows natural diversity, NOT DEI.

The colleges are bringing back standardized tests because there is a clear financial incentive. Using standardized tests for admission decisions helps them justify admitting richer kids that can pay for prep classes.

Nobody is "ignoring white male candidates". They are getting interviews like they always have. The concern is that POC are getting the jobs that used to be held exclusively by White men.

100% gaslighting.

Who is being "ignored"? If I tell a candidate we can't hire them because they are White, that's not ignoring them. People who get ignored don't get interviewed and they certainly don't get feedback after the process is over.

Read the post on 5/6 at 15:23. That white male is being ignored.

I suspect that white male is doing just fine right now. Nobody is entitled to getting an offer for every job.

pp - he was unemployed for a year. this was at the height of covid when there was so much conversation about BLM and race was everywhere. He works in an industry which was facing a rough landscape overall, but accusations of racism were rife all over it at the time and no one wanted to hire a white male manager. I could actually understand given the tenor of the times, but it coincided with a major health problem of mine that I had to grind my way through because he was just freelancing and scrounging for work. It was hard. No one, but no one, sits around and thinks - oh well it's fair enough that i'm unemployed because x minority has been oppressed and therefore alan is more deserving of that role. They sit around thinking F*** i am poor and anxious.

I think we have too often approached this with a blunt tool. We needed to be much smarter. How can you increase diversity, increase equity, increase inclusion without it being a zero sum situation? DEI consultants were brought in to help panicking companies cover their *sses, and do performative stuff, rather than - for example - forge real robust relationships with HBCUs and integrate a talent pipeline for example

So he could get a job just not the one he wanted. Welcome to competition

the point is not whether he could or could not get a job.
the point is he was told he was not getting jobs bc they needed to prioritize diversity. not bc he was not the best candidate.