*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, April 10th, 2015 11:46am PDT - promote requested by enoch.

Is he high as hell? He couldn't open his eyes more than a slit.
*quality thoughts there Bubba.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by newtboy.

I feel sad for this guy when he belatedly looks into the millions of kids killed by the foreign policy hes been cheering his whole life..

Kind of *nsfw due to an overabundance of the effin F word, right?

This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by PlayhousePals.

*controversy

"I'm a redneck. Have been my whole life..."

I'm willing to bet there aren't many converts in the first place.

My wife is ALWAYS calling me whitey. Why does she haf to say mean things like that? I'm standing up for white people!!!! Rock against women.

White Americans did NOT create slavery. In fact, white Americans made it illegal (eventually).

Now we just have wage slavery, which isn't racist at all.

Stop being defensive. Take some responsibility. White people have privilege just because of our skin. Own it.

The cynic in me really hopes this isn't a really good actor pretending to be a redneck.

Not many people are capable of such a massive paradigm shift late in life. It can make your entire ego crumble and you become a heaping pile of 'What the fuck am I?'

If he's legit, bless, because damn that's some major introspective aweseomeness.

What does that even mean? Nobody is blaming America for inventing slavery, just for building a nation on it and insufficiently addressing the inequalities it engendered that remain to this day.

And I hope you're not not implying that it's thanks to white America that slavery is now globally illegal, because fuck man, Wikipedia and all...

"3rd century BC: Ashoka abolishes slave trade and encourages people to treat slaves well but does not abolish slavery itself in the Maurya Empire, covering the majority of India, which was under his rule.
221-206 BC: The Qin Dynasty's measures to eliminate the landowning aristocracy include the abolition of slavery and the establishment of a free peasantry who owed taxes and labor to the state. They also abolished primogeniture and discouraged serfdom. The dynasty was overthrown in 206 BC and many of its laws were overturned.
17: Wang Mang, first and only emperor of the Xin Dynasty, usurped the Chinese throne and instituted a series of sweeping reforms, including the abolition of slavery and radical land reform. After his death in 23 C.E., slavery was reinstituted."

Again, stop getting defensive. Nobody is talking about slaves. You and I have privilege because of our skin colour. That situation is not cool. That is all.

And aside: Yes, Canadians held slaves prior to abolition.

Either way, while history plays a part in understanding the situation, the situation itself is the problem.

'White privilege' as i understand it is a description of the tendency for society to be quicker to persecute dark skinned people over light skinned people, or to otherwise treat light skinned people preferentially when compared to dark skinned people.

Using myself as an example.. As someone to whom race has never been an issue (it is as unnoticable to me as hair and eye colour), why does it fall to me to "own" the tendency of racists to grant me special favour - which i never asked for - when the only reason you have to link them to me is my skin colour? Have i misunderstood?

Related quote by writer Russell Banks:

"After living in Jamaica and writing The Book of Jamaica, I accepted that I was obliged, for example, to have African American friends. I was obliged to address deliberately the overlapping social and racial contexts of my life. I'm a white man in a white-dominated, racialized society; therefore, if I want to I can live my whole life in a racial fantasy. Most white Americans do just that. Because we can. In a color-defined society we are invited to think that white is not a color. We are invited to fantasize and we act accordingly."

...and whites (as a generalization) are the only ones on the planet who feel guilty about their histories, even though bigotry and racism isn't even remotely a "white thing".

*related=http://videosift.com/video/tim-wise-white-like-me-full-film

tim wise-white like me-full film has been added as a related post - related requested by enoch.

I'll never understand the defensiveness, and need to deflect, of people who can't just accept the fact that there exist white privileged that they benefit from.

If the fact that white privileged is a thing and it makes you feel guilty. STOP DOING THAT. Just be aware of the reality. That's it.

And that's stupid. We agree.

This isn't about guilt. This isn't about history. This is about the facts on the ground now. Now. Now. Not history. Now. Stop making out like this is only about history. That's a defence mechanism to avoid talking about now. Talk about now.

White people have a clear advantage over black people only because of the colour of our skin. Do you think that's good or bad or are you indifferent?

Let's extend it past white people. Almost* everyone in the world has got where they by an accident of birth.

I have a good job and I earn a decent living. I worked hard to get where I am and I continue to work hard to provide value to my boss so he pays me well. But I didn't get here entirely on my own.

First, I was lucky enough to be born in a first world country. Second, I have a reasonable aptitude for math and science and logic/programming comes easily to me.
Third, my parents both had good jobs (partially a product of their own births) and they cared about my education and gave me the opportunities to study.

And yeah, I'm white, English speaking, heterosexual and even more fortunately, male .

All of which gave me a frankly insurmountable head start over someone born in a 3rd world country whose family are scrapping by. Even if I had the same skills and work ethic, it's highly likely that I wouldn't have been able to have the quality of life I have now.

So yeah, I didn't own any slaves and neither did my ancestors. Hell, my country was oppressed for centuries. But that doesn't mean I still didn't come into this world with a massive privilege and it would be the height of hubris not to acknowledge that.

* obviously there are people who have pulled themselves out of extreme adverstiy despite everything against them. I'm not talking about those people.

A fair question. I'll try to answer it directly.

Your first paragraph is very close. What you describe there is the advantage afforded to you by the pro-white racialized society you live in. That's to say, all other things being equal, you are almost certainly better off as a white person than you would be had you been born a black person.

"White privilege" is the privilege of enjoying the benefits of the advantage you describe without even having to ask for it or condone it or even be aware of it. "Owning it" simply means acknowledging that this is the case and living your life accordingly. In your case, as a non-racist person, this might mean little change other than better understanding the situation every non-white person in most of the Western world has to actively notice, think about and deal with on a daily basis.

(Hope the bold wasn't too much. I wanted the "privilege" aspects to stand out from the "advantage" aspects.)