ajax18 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 20, 2022 7:31 pm
I'd put it up for you if I could edit it. But just a couple questions...
What exactly does Patrice Cullors do for a living that earned her so much money? And how exactly has her lack of white and male privilege still allowed her to make it into the top 5% income bracket in a systemically racist and oppressive country? I don't begrudge what most people honestly earn but when you're entire platform is that these kind of opportunities are not available to people of her gender and ethnic heritage doesn't her own success kind of undercut her entire platform?
I'll take a stab at it. Think of it this way. You have two people. Person A and person B. They both are about to take a test. Person A was given 60 minutes to study for the test while person B was only given 15 minutes. Person A also has the ability to phone a friend 3 times during the duration of the test. Person B is only able to phone a friend once. Person A is also given a note card on some topics on the test to refer to while taking it. Person B is given a note card, but there is only half the information on their note card than person A's notecard.
I think a logical person would come to the conclusion that if this scenario was magically recreated 100 times with different sets of people, person A will most likely score much higher than person B. I am sure out of those 100 times the test is taken, there might be an occurrence where person B is able to score higher on the test. But we can safely assume that person A will more often than not score higher.
Try to apply this to the real world. Historically, black people have not had the ability to generate wealth (save money, buy property, pass that wealth onto the next generation) in the same way white people have. For the couple of centuries, they were legally restricted from doing so because of slavery and even after their emancipation they faced many legal hurdles that white people did not face. Think of the infamous Jim Crow laws that existed in the southern United States.
If you haven't picked up on it yet, person A is meant to represent someone who comes from a white background, and person B comes from a black background. Person A is able to tap into many resources that their ancestors were able to accumulate over time (inheritance, property passed down to next generation, investments). Historically, black people were not able to accumulate the same amount of wealth.
So to say that there isn't a degree of privilege that exists in the United States because Cullors is able to afford millions of dollars in homes is akin to saying that person B in my little thought experiment faces a fair shot at scoring the same or higher score than person A does. They clearly don't. It also doesn't mean we need to demean white people or take away their accomplishments. We are a very hard working country and should be proud of it. But we should also desire that everyone has a fair shot at the 'American Dream.'
ajax18 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 20, 2022 7:31 pm
Maybe this will help me answer Kulikhan's question
I agree with Make America Great Again's cause. I think Donald Trump made his millions off of individual private business,
inheritance, and honest labor, not MAGA donations. If anyone believes differently, having recycled a story about fraud from a source that is wrong 9 out of 10 times without first having put any effort into verifying the claims, then partisan political bigotry is a strong candidate for a motive.
I am really glad you pointed out the reasons by Donald Trump's success. All of the things you listed that contributed to his sucess, especially inheritance, were things that black people were barred from having access to for at least over a century. I think you would acknowledge that wealth accumulation requires time. Can we agree on that?