Irish White Privilege......Yeah

Is Acknowledgement of all privilege a good thing? Or just some types?

You made the statement. Maybe you need to think about your statement through a bit more. Answering my question might help you.

Man, people here have a hard time with complex feelings/emotions.

Here's another one.

"Sadly happy"

Surely these two emotions are direct opposites of each other, therefore as non-sensical (allegedly) as being aware of privilege, yet not feeling guilt or shame over it?

Then I put an example to you, a mother, waving goodbye to their last child going to college. Happy that they're on their own journey now, sad that that time of their life is now over. They are, "sadly happy".

Handling complex emotions is a very important step in our maturity, and it's a skill that appears to be fading.

I don't see any sign of context in what the poster teaches their 6 year old though - do you?

Moreover, "white privilege" is not a synonym for racism, yet posters arguing that it exists in Ireland have only given examples of racism. So I think the issue of context is actually one you need to raise with those posters rather than with me.

So do you think what I described isn't already happening regularly??

I can promise you it is. Nothing imaginary about it.

And you sabotage your own argument when you "nuance" your point about jobs by admitting that it only really works if the (white) kid is involved in the GAA etc. Like - maybe being part of the community is the real difference?? What about a black kid, born and grew up there, GAA star player for the local team, versus a white outsider that nobody knows who walks into the local bar: who do you think gets a better reception?

But more fundamentally: What differences do you see in the concepts of racism and white privilege?

Because it looks to me like you confuse the two. Your examples are all of racism (something that white people experience in Asia and Africa, by the way) rather than of "white privilege". For instance, is there any equivalent in Ireland to the policy of red-lining areas of towns such as existed even in cities like Chicago until recently?

No, I think you do. If you can't understand how you can't accept or acknowledge something without feeling guilt or shame over it, I'm not going to sit here spoon feeding you the differences between white privilege and racism.

Do your own homework.

Sinister? Are you having a laugh?

Maybe we should start teaching them theoretical physics while we're at it. F*CK taking baby steps, and age appropriate lessons, yeah?

LOL So much for this education you're intending to do with your child. What will you do when she starts to argue back? Throw a strop like the above and tell her to do her own homework? Because you haven't answered any actual questions - and kids pick up on that once they get near adolescence.

(And I still haven't said anything about guilt or shame, so I've no idea why you keep putting those words into my mouth. That's not part of my argument at all. As I've made clear previously. By the way - I'd love to be a fly on the wall when your six year old gets old enough to develop her own opinions - you are going to have a tough time if this is the best you can do!!)

I'm not saying there is "no connection" between privilege and guilt, simply that one is a distinct concept from the other. That things can be connected without being the same is hardly an act of intellectual contortion — pride in oneself is connected to arrogance, positivity is connected to complacency, generosity is connected to being exploited, patriotism is connected with war and atrocity. Many positive traits and mindsets are connected to, and can become, something negative without invalidating the fact that they are positive and things to be encouraged.

On top of that, using survivor's guilt as an example is fairly extreme — not least given the added facets of the trauma inherent in experiencing a near death situation or witnessing other people being killed. But I don't think the acknowledgement of good fortune to have survived is automatically and invariably the same as encouraging survivor's guilt.

Finally, you say the good circumstance of being born in a developed country was earned by our parents / ancestors — OK — but that's the very point I'm making. You didn't earn it. The choices they made in life are not your achievement, any more so than the choices made in life by the parents / ancestors of children born in impoverished circumstances are their failing. Using the roundabout argument that it's earned because previous generations earned it on our behalf is, to me, the same erroneous logic on which white guilt is advocated — the idea that from birth you inherit moral culpability for any immoral or wrong thing an ancestor did to improve their lot. Ultimately, I'm only rejecting the logic of your "hereditary earning" argument (to give it a name) on the same basis that I would reject the white guilt argument.

I have not.participated in this thread, but have been watching it to see where it is going.

The more this ideology is explained by its adherents, the more I am becoming convinced that it should be nowhere near the education system - even in small doses.

Whatever it is, it appears to be structured to create as much division as possible.

Teaching one group of children that they are the top of the pile when it comes to privilege with other races beneath them, while at the same time telling other groups children that they are held back from privilege because of the first group - doesn't seem like a great idea for social.cohesion going forward.