"Are Whites Racially Opressed?" a.k.a. "How Hard Can CNN Troll?"

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

May be true, but they're outweighed by the biases in our favor, so it seems entitled and/or naive to complain about it.

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The balance of bias doesn't make the bad stuff alright. I complain about a lot of things that are way less crucial. Like weapon balance in Halo 2.

But if you're specifically referring to the boobs in the article crying as if they just can't catch a break, I agree.

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The way we choose to identify ourselves is based largely on how we are identified by others. I know this was meant as an oversimplification, but it borders on an impossibility in this country. You'd need everyone to change.

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I can see how this would be natural, but as an individual you're certainly not bound by identifying yourself through the eyes of others. In fact, it is direly important that you don't.

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Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

It has to do with watching whites pass right by you even though they don't do shit to earn it. Simply being white already gives off a positive impression. I'm dealing with this at work now.

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I don't know your personal work situation so don't take this as criticism of you, but consider that for every white dude promoted past a non-white, there are nine other white dudes that also didn't get promoted. The white guys that don't get promoted, the guys that work the shit jobs and don't get recognized, have to come up with other reasons for their situation. My opinion is that they are generally excuses.

I am a big believer in the individual's power to change his situation. The only thing separating you from executives is that they went for it, they didn't accept less, they aligned themselves with the right people and made sacrifices you weren't willing to make. Those aren't necessarily positive differences, I'm not suggesting everyone should strive to be an exec, but my point is that the difference isn't that these guys were born executives, it's not because of the schools they went to. The greatest privilege of rich white dudes is expectations. People tend to live up to their expectations. Or live down to them.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

The tough thing is getting an objective view though. No one wants to concede that they didn't have the qualifications, so they may blame something obvious, like race or gender. That's why these discussions are so difficult. You'd almost need access to all the resumes/interviews to know for sure what the root cause was.

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You can blame EOE for this. Sorry you're qualified but we have a quota of non whites we have to have in this company. Because of this we still go through the motions of interviews but we have to have X number of non-whites and you're well.......white. Doesn't matter if you're qualified, we gotta go with the black fella.

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Originally Posted by Josh

I interviewed for a job at Johns Hopkins with long, greasy rock and roll hair, and the most epic chops this side of Andrew WK's bass player and got it. I make crazy money by looking homeless.

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Affirmative action.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

And I want causes, not results.

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Money. Buckets of it. Historically whitey has had the most money and done the most to keep it.

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Originally Posted by Nash

Affirmative action.

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They'll hire anybody to mop floors.

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Originally Posted by MarkRyan

I am a big believer in the individual's power to change his situation. The only thing separating you from executives is that they went for it, they didn't accept less, they aligned themselves with the right people and made sacrifices you weren't willing to make. Those aren't necessarily positive differences, I'm not suggesting everyone should strive to be an exec, but my point is that the difference isn't that these guys were born executives, it's not because of the schools they went to. The greatest privilege of rich white dudes is expectations. People tend to live up to their expectations. Or live down to them.

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I have a problem with this right here. I'm no debutant or what have you but every single executive I've met with the exception of maybe 1% (and even this is generous) have all come from the Ivys and all knew each other or of each other. It really is who you know from the beginning. Even the venture capitalists keep close ties with these people from the time they are teenagers.

I once met up with my dad (blue collar guy) who was working in a condo on Central Park East. $12 million place, the works. While looking around I saw that his dad was CEO of Citi back in the day, he went to Yale and Wharton, and met up with some other upper crust WASP to get the baby factory running. No doubt he thinks the system is just fine and his success is due to hard work and merit, but come on. This guy's success in life, his admission to Wharton, his fancy pants condo, was guaranteed the day he popped out of his mom's vagina.

It's more who you know than anything. But that's a sales / accounts management game, too. You have to know someone for them to know you're even a candidate.

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Originally Posted by Dyne

They'll hire anybody to mop floors.

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This actually isn't true. Our cleaning crew is exclusively union, and exclusively black.

Damn unions keeping out the Mexicans.