Irish White Privilege......Yeah

Jack Daw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513469#Comment_121513469

How come nobody ever mentions the privilege of being born in the 20th /21st century in these types of arguments?

It;s the greatest privilege of all and yet nobody is expect to feel a sense of guilt over it.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513494#Comment_121513494

well it depends where you were born in the 20th/21st century no?

johnnyk29

Is that not more of a circumstance of where you were born than a privilege? If you lived in a country that invaded or colonised one of the places I could see what you mean. Niger was colonized by France, Benguela by the Portuguese and Maraharashtra by the English.

It seems that the point is that Irish people are put in the same category as English people who colonised the world or the US who had slaves. which is unfair to compare Irish people to those countries due to our own history even being white.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513410#Comment_121513410

you couldnt have been born anywhere else , "you" had one chance of existence in the life time of the universe and it was however many years ago, the only chance that you could have been born in Syria is if both your parents had moved there and that would several order of lottery odds more. ;-)

JohnJoFitz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513393#Comment_121513393

Why don't you head over to one of the lads sleeping on a shop door step in Dublin tomorrow morning and tell him about his white privilege.

What a steaming pile of nonsense virtue-signaling and racism, this white privilege dung is.

thegame983

It's a term used exclusively be race grifters.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513393#Comment_121513393

I would call it a legacy, not a privilege. Our ancestors left us a world where we can spend on a pint of Guinness more than she makes in a day, her ancestors left her a world where she has to crack rocks for a living.

Strumms

Privilege:

a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.

if we all decide tomorrow to go to Australia, USA, India, South Africa, Canada, Mexico…..wherever….

every one of those citizens, there in those countries over 1 billion collectively…will have entitlements and privileges that far exceed our own entitlements, indeed if any privileges at all which I’d expect in each country for us to be…close to…. nil actually for us.

ednwireland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513867#Comment_121513867

reminds of about 20 years ago there was a lot of history programs trying to say that the British empire was good for India.

a indian historian said that the only thing you need to know is that they went from the richest to the poorest country on the Indian subcontinent.

all those palaces and massive houses in Europe didn't build themselves from indigenous trade alone.

however it's got be said the legacy left behind didn't help the average african

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513898#Comment_121513898

legacy left behind didn't help the average african

You mean the average african who lives in cities built with concrete, drives a car on roads made of asphalt and gets treated by doctors with antibiotics?

batman_oh

There's plenty of African billionaires and lots of people ruling countries there absolutely rolling in money while running the countries into the ground. Billions in aid is sent to many countries and squandered. We never here of their privilege. Arab oil countries are literally swimming in money, and make no bones about displaying it at every opportunity, while at the same time taking basically no refugees and having modern day slaves (non white) propping up their countries - no privilege there. Chinese billionaires all over the place, India too. But no it's only the whitey's that have privilege, all of them, tarred with the same insult, and mostly by virtue signalling wealthy white a33holes with some sort of guilt/saviour complex.

Forgive me if I don't care - we are a tiny MNC propped up nothing island on world scale that suddenly seems to think we are so important we are going to save all the poor

Jack Daw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513898#Comment_121513898

You can blame the colonists for countries being poor places to live while they are there.Once you get rid of your colonial shackles it's up to the people to make the best of the country they have.If countries haven't taken advantage of being freed from colonialism it is largely their own fault.All the problems that existed in Ireland since we've been an independent country have been our own fault , blaming your former colonial overlord for problems that exist today is pointless and is just passing the buck.

Mr. teddywinkles

Sounds like a religious order.

Repent!! Ya privileged sinners

smax71

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513935#Comment_121513935

A wonderful and eloquent summation of the current state of affairs👏👏

donaghs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513393#Comment_121513393

what are you on about?!!’

This is a thread about the privilege of having pale coloured skin in Ireland.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121513980#Comment_121513980

Except the legacy of colonialism never left. The countries left behind are with borders drawn to suit colonists, not border representative of the people who actually live there.

Europe had hundreds of years of conflict , disease, starvation, deprivation and migration to sort out the legacy of successive empires and is still not fully there. You think Africa with fake countries imposed on disparate peoples could sort that out in a few years?

randd1

Is it privileged to be born in a peaceful and prosperous country where I probably won't starve to death, will likely have a roof over my head and opportunities to work, and have quality healthcare where I can raise my kids in a similar fashion, and I and them will not suffer the consequences of war, famine, pestilence and oppressive governance due to the near zero possibility of any of them happening here, simply because I have pale skin?

Yes, I'm privileged compared to others.

However, I have that privilege because the people that came before me, my family, my community, and my countrymen, long decided to live that way. Extreme poverty, death, war, civil war, religious oppression, migration, depression, bad governance, terrorism, censorship, that is what my parents, grandparents and great grandparents all had to live through on this island, like so many of us. It's barely over 100 years since the 1916 rising and all that came after it.

And those parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, they the down changes that has given me, and my children, the relatively peaceful, safe, healthy, educated and fine society we have today. The culture we have, our sports and sporting heroes, our musicians, or skilled labourers and tradesmen, our optimism, our poets/actors/writers. Even some of our politicians, as useless as they are sometimes, I've never got the impression that none them didn't care about the well-being of the country and it's people.

Even accounting for all the huge problems we have, and we have very real problems, we have as a country decided and worked through every horror we could face as a society for 100 years towards providing the type of life of forefathers and foremothers could only dreamed of having, but worked for and agreed upon and acted upon so that we could.

Yes, I'm privileged compared to others in other parts of the world. And I'm proud of it. Not because I'm white, but because of what this country gives me and my children, and the work and toil of the people before us that made it possible, and the efforts of the people today to keep it going and improve for those that come after us.

And I won't apologize or feel bad about being proud of what we have and who we are, regardless of what my melanin count is, and if other culture or countries don't or won't take the same path we've taken for whatever reason. We came from nothing to get where we are. So we may be privileged, but it's nothing to apologize for, be ashamed of or embarrassed of, just because most of us have pale skin.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517046#Comment_121517046

Congrats - you have considered and acknowledged your privilege which is all that this whole thing was asking people to do. Consider what privilege you may have. For an Irish person this is the privilege of being in a stable, environmentally benign, prosperous democracy. For some its having had a stable upbringing relative to others within Ireland. Race, or skin tone specifically is not really a privilege in Ireland.

For white Irish people who travel to the US though for example, even though you as an Irish person did not benefit form privilege based on race growing up, you do get the benefit of the privilege of not being profiled by law enforcement for simply driving a nice car or similar.

Mr. teddywinkles

The whole privilege shite is bollix. Where ya draw the line. I'm privileged because Iv bi-pedal locomotion across the floor compared to some people that can't

Unfortunately most of lifes ills in this world is due to what your born into and with.

smax71

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517169#Comment_121517169

It's probably simple enough really. If people feel guilty about their privileged position in Irish society then instead of continuous hand waving and attempting to offload this guilt by brow eating other less privileged people just do something concrete to improve the lot of others. The only provisio I would have is to ensure they dont forget the less privileged white folk in this country when doling out their largesse

Jack Daw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517037#Comment_121517037

Europes borders have been redrawn constantly over the past century, no reason why African countries can't do that if they want to.

Europeans didn't force the people in Rwanda to butcher each other back in the day, they chose to do it themselves.Europeans didn't force people in East Africa to have excessive numbers of children when they've been experiencing constant famine .Blaming colonialism is the easy way out but for some people.It's all part of the racism of low expectations.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517650#Comment_121517650

European borders were redrawn peacefully were they?

And in Rwanda European colonisers did force two separate peoples as different from each other as French and Germans into being one country, and then made one people a defacto elite building in resentment and hate. Where there was an option to pit one local population against another the colonisers always took it, be it in India, Africa or wherever.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517321#Comment_121517321

Its not about guilt. Its about acknowledging an advantage and seeing is there anything that can be done to aid those who have a disadvantage getting to a similar position.

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517719#Comment_121517719

And in Rwanda European colonisers did force two separate peoples as different from each other as French and Germans into being one country, and then made one people a defacto elite building in resentment and hate. Where there was an option to pit one local population against another the colonisers always took it, be it in India, Africa or wherever.

How you can write this, and not see how it's comparative to the issue many of us have with concepts like "white privilege" is beyond me.

Jack Daw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517719#Comment_121517719

No they weren't but somehow despite that the continent has manged to prosper and be run fairly efficiently.

Well maybe the people in Rwanda should have worked better together and stopped having resentment and hate towards each other, people in Ireland eventually managed to get over the hate between catholic/protestant, nationalist/unionist and learned to live in relative harmony.Butchering people is the fault of the people who did it nobody else.Blaming colonialism is not going to do anything to fix problems which exists in Africa today , what happens in the present and future is the only thing the matters, the past is irrelevant, you want to harp on about the past fine, but it's not going to solve any problems today or in the future.

donaghs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517037#Comment_121517037

Potentially, yes, they could have done a lot lot better .. comparisons are often made with African countries and former East Asian colonies. Places like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia are the creations of colonialism. Multi ethnic etc. And often started from less advantaged place than for example the newly independent Kenya. And are far more successful economically now.

but that’s a discussion for another thread.

shootermacg

The amount of jobs in IT I've seen shipped off to India. It's literally policy these days. Surely that is discrimination based on our location.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121518089#Comment_121518089

General call / contact centre’s too, ring 1850-xxx-xxx to speak with customer services here and in a lot of companies you’ll get transferred to Bangalore or wherever. Not only IT although a major prevalence is IT, but also transport companies, leisure businesses, hotels, loads of them….

In a lot of cases, one multinational I was working for the clients were only short of threatening us, so much was their frustrations of dealing with some of the staff there in that Indian location who were not all that fluent in English and didn’t have a local grip or understanding of the business here.

so real feelings of privilege…. Jobs shipped off and practically no savings passed to the customer and all that for notably shittier service…customer complaints rose by xxxx

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121517169#Comment_121517169

Yeah, you are privileged over people who can't walk. But we make an effort to adjust to people who can't walk. We have wheelchair ramps. We'll help them find suitable accommodation. And we make it illegal to discriminate against them on the basis of their disability.

So unless you suggest we get rid of everything from disabled toilets, to wheelchair ramps to disability legislation, you're ok with us recognizing our privilege and helping them.

I always think of privileged in terms of intersectionality. There's loads of things about us that either increase or decrease our privilege. if all things are equal between two people, except for one characteristic, then it will be that characteristic that may make a difference. For example two rich guys, one black and one white. The black guy is slightly behind the white guy because he may experience racism. HE's still incredibly privildged though.

Likewise the negatives can build up. Women experience more discrimination than men. Black people more discrimination than white people. Poor more than rich. Disabled more than abled. These can all add up to make a life harder.

It's a venn diagram where loads of things can intersect and add up to a positive or negative.

I'd consider myself privileged. But I know I'm probably about the middle part. There's loads more privileged than me and loads that aren't.

I think that sometimes when people are told they're privileged they tend to react as if they're being told that they have it easy. It doesn't mean that. Life can still be hard. It's just that they have it easier than someone less privileged. And I think of all the attributes I mentioned above, it's probably money that makes the biggest difference. Enough money can erase any negatives.

AyeGer

Thankfully I only ever hear the term white privilege online or in the media. Nobody I’ve encountered in person talks about it. It’s a ridiculous term anyway imo.