We also have about six flashlights in the house.
They take D batteries and all you bought at the store were AAs.
I'm an out of body night walker.
I had a weird experience....fact: when I have my hair down and am out on the town, I am occasionally mistaken for a woman. Not too long ago, a waitress got so freaked out by mistaking me for a woman, she ran away and sent the male manager to handle our order....I couldn't have cared less myself....is this a reaction to perceived male privilege? I was just confused....
edgar, Just stay out of our bedroom. Don't want you to swear off sex for the rest of your life.
I really dont want to go into this. As a brown person in a UK, there are several times when I feel that a white man gets more preferance - be at a bar, be a resteraunt (why can I never spell it properly) shops, you name it...
But I really enjoy seeing the expression on the faces of some of these insurance agents, bank managers, credit card agents when I tell them my salary
Sofia- I do agree with you that the way a person is dressed makes a big difference in how a person is perceived. Also, the age of a person has a bearing on how people react to them.
Some time ago, on A2K, I related an incident that happened to my granddaughter. She was about 15 at the time, and was shopping in a small department store with her girlfriend. An employee of the store actually stopped her, and accused her of shoplifting, although she had done no such thing.
Ultimately, my son went to the store, spoke with the manager, who subsequently issued an apology. My granddaughter was terribly upset.
Uh . . . Phoenix, could you provide some detail which explains why your granddaughter was stopped? What would you say was the factor which lead to the incident? Simply her youth?
Phoenix, I recall when I lived in San Francisco. Each day I passed the same doors along certain streets, generally wearing my knock-a-bout jeans and sports shirts. When I got a job I began to pass these same places now wearing a suit. Where in the past I had been shunned or at least ignored, I now began to garner smiles and friendly remarks from all the same people.
Setanta- Yup. She was just going around.........probably picking things up and looking at them. The manager later admitted that his employee had no basis for stopping the girls. In fact, I believe that before my son learned of this, she had been searched, and they had found nothing.
Very interesting points of view! I grew up white in one of those families which had an off-the-scale share of economic and social "privilege." And it happened also to have played a role of leadership over 150 years in the abolition movement, the Underground Railroad, and the founding of the Urban League. Having those genes didn't mean that my parents (for example) were personally unprejudiced in actual life -- they reflected their generation's close-knit avoidance of mixing... Contrarily, my generation became vehement and active anti-segregationists, anti-prejudice, marchers and protesters, and our kids are no less committed.
I also had one small, significant experience which opened my eyes to the actual fear and discomfort experienced daily by many blacks and Latinos in this country. It had the effect of instilling down-dirty-and-personal fear in me of injustice -- which is probably why the current politics in this country frighten the hell out of me. The rich, sheltered little white girl that I was became an adult who knows from deep in her gut that we live in a schizo nation where terrible, terminal injustice is a confronted daily by many of us. There is certainly an economic component to this -- "how you dress" makes a difference, slightly blurring the racial divide. Whether we treat it as an economic and social problem or whether we treat it as a racial problem, the problem is there -- sometimes right out in the open and often more dangerously under a cosmetic layer of studied politeness.
Probably the answer is to redefine, in our own minds, the word "privilege." We think of it as "good luck" where we should probably think of it as "responsibility."
Is the reason you shared that Phoenix, because you're relating your granddaughter's treatment to those who don't enjoy "privilege"?
I should add, it's a serious question. The man's deeds speak for themself. He's a sicko. However, do you think that if he was Black, he would have received a harsher sentence, and not even been released in the first place?
cavfancier wrote:I should add, it's a serious question. The man's deeds speak for themself. He's a sicko. However, do you think that if he was Black, he would have received a harsher sentence, and not even been released in the first place?
...seems to me a little 'busy' to try to fit this scenario into terms of white privilege vs black discrimination, for one thing. But, in deference to your desire to do so -
All things remaining equal, I believe that blacks are more stringently sentenced in general, yes.
Snood- The reason that I related the story is because lack of privilege is not solely relegated to black/white issues. There is no doubt in my mind that black people have a rougher time in this country than whites. My point was that the prejudice and bigotry that goes on in the US is a far larger issue than black/white. If we are going to discuss privilege, I think that we need to open the entire can of worms.
I see what you are saying Phoenix, but in a country like UK - all things being equal - most of the time a white man will be treated preferentially compared to a non-white.
...and so your granddaughter suffered from age discrimination? forgive me, not trying to be obtuse; just trying to make the connection...
