General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Tackling Asian Privilege [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)you think there's some merit in stereotypes?
What about the Asians who don't fit the stereotype? What about the reality that the author was using one stereotype to buttress another stereotype? Are people here defending this really that unaware of what they are actually defending?
This whole thing seems to have gone right over the heads of a lot of people here.
The entire reason for this moment here is because some white guys got pissed because they said they weren't economically privileged so don't talk about the idea of systemic privilege for light-skinned people (which would, actually, include many Asians, though not all from the Indian continent.)
So, the big joke about this howling is that people who are saying they don't fit a stereotype are arguing by using stereotypes that don't fit - when the reality is that, even if someone is not economically within the individual idea of "privilege" as an economic issue - they think it's fine to put all those things on others.
This, iow, does not read like satire when it's coming from people who routinely use racist stereotypes to indicate their perception of the world. See, that's part of the issue as well - so, these defenses of the article look like plain old racism.
People here who claim Jewish people are all "educated overachievers" apparently don't know that that, too, is a stereotype, not a reality.
The particular issue of African-Americans in this society, however, stems from the history of the U.S. No other group has faced what they have faced here. The idea of "white privilege" was initially about the interaction of those two groups.
The entire idea is not about one person's experience, but about the percentages of experience, the overwhelming preference given to "white Europeans" in American society - and that does mean to the exclusion of Asian of any skin tone. It doesn't mean individuals within various ethnicities have all the same experience. It means there is an assumption that is so prevalent, about various groups, that it amounts to discrimination based upon assumptions based upon ethnicity.
Is it really so hard for a white person to understand this?