The Victim Oppressors
It’s always been easy for the oppressor in oppressor-oppressed relationships to deny the oppression of one group and to claim that they, in fact, are the victims in the situation. This goes for whites and POC, men and women, adults and children, rich and poor, first world and third world, heterosexual and homosexual, Christian and atheist, etc.
Recently, I had a conversation with a white supremist on a post here on Blue Linchpin. The post argued against the common white sentiment that it is racist and unfair that there are no such things as “White History Month”, “White Entertainment Channel”, etc. Because our society is dominated by whites, every month is White History Month, every channel white, every club and society, everything by default white. The response was for a handful of people ready to deny any sort of white privilege and, as usual. These were some of the responses I received, the last being the strongest example:
Most African-Americans and Mexicans exploit this and use it way to much to their advantage. There’s nothing like working for the place I worked for and a black ar Mexican would walk in with their six kids drapped in gold rings and chains and be on welfare, yet you watch where they go when they leave and they are loading up the group of thugs into their pimped out Escalade.
Would anyone care to elaborate on why the prison institutions across the “United” States of America are overwhelmingly populated with minorties?
Do you have any idea what white people went through to create this country. Do you not recall any history as to why we settled in America and the battles to follow?…I say celebrate your race, help your race become the best it can be! Just don’t tell me I can’t do the same for my race because I am a racist.
i think both the content and the presentation of the content shows how educated these people are. Lack of knowledge of history and the causes behind current economic and racial problems causes these sentiments. And last, but definitely not least, we have a post that begins this way:
As a white man in a white country i certainly dont feel superior, if anything i feel oppressed and discriminated for being white.
And it continues (shortened, because the original post consisted of a long, convoluted list):
These problems did not exist 30 years ago. Its only been since non white racial groups who have moved into this country that we have had to feel this way…Now due to immigration of non white people and their demands that we cater for them…we have had…various minorities playing the race card whenever they commit crime on the white australian population, and getting away with it, and in some cases getting compensation!!! I dont have anything against anyone because of the colour of their skin. But i have something against people who live on my tax dollars, commit crime against me and taking away the rights i was born with…I am PROUD to be white, i am PROUD to be Australian. And i will fight to restore the birthrights our grandparents and their parents worked and died to give us. Anyone who cannot be proud of their heritage is a traitor to themselves and their people, and anybody who stands in the way of my happiness, my pride and my constitutional rights will be dealt with accordingly.
The racial situation in Australia is in many ways similar to the racial situation in America. You’ve got a racial group that’s been beaten down and oppressed, had its rights taken away, and through government policies has seen itself blamed for not doing as well as privileged whites. But the interesting thing is, the group this commenter is talking about is the equivalent of Native Americans in America. The Aborigines were originally in Australia when it was colonized. Their land and rights were stripped from them, and they were systematically oppressed through the generations. They were the original Australians.
These are just my closest examples of whites denying privilege and claiming that they are in fact the oppressed group. While it can be argued that, like men, by being put up on a pedestal whites are forced to act a certain way, and that that is oppression, that is not the point being made by either group. There are countless examples of whites claiming to be oppressed by minorities.
So too, often, do men claim to be the oppressed group.
In another post of mine, I talked about my experiences as a woman and the things expected of me. A male commenter felt it well within his rights to deny my experience and that I was just being a drama queen. He then claimed that men, in fact, were the oppressed gender.
WE are the ones exploited, forced to work in boring, mind numbing offices to impress YOU so you can sit at home playing with the kids. How dare YOU have the hubris to assume that YOU have it worse?
After replying to the commenter and promptly identifying his posts as spam, I nevertheless continued to get posts from him attacking other women in the thread who said they had similar experiences. Like privilege-denying whites, he assumed that he was in the right and that the oppressed class was not in fact oppressed but simply overreacting.
POC and women are simply hysterical, obviously. At least, according to misogynist blogger Steve Hall, who responded (avoid clicking the link if you can, most likely the guy’s paid based on views) to the anger over a commercial featuring sexual harassment. Being a man, Steve Hall decided that the commercial was in fact a hilarious joke and that women who were disturbed or angered over the ad simply had “sticks up their asses”. Like the commenter above, Steve Hall felt that he didn’t need to be a woman to know how the ad or sexual harassment felt for a woman. He simply assumed that he knew better and that he had just as valid an opinion on the matter. And to top it all off, he threatened those upset with the ads with sexual harassment and told them to shut up and die.
These aren’t the only forms of oppressors claiming to be the victims. Atheists are well acquainted with the unusual phenomenon of the Christian majority in America claiming to be oppressed whenever it can’t force others to abide by its religious teachings. Members of the middle class complain often about being oppressed by welfare or immigrant workers, without considering that their demand for cheap products is causing these problems.
People like white supremists D (and his imaginary friend), Bill, and misogynists Steve Hall and Wolf, Christians, middle class conservatives, etc, are just examples of the members of oppressive groups which deny their privilege and aggressively set out to set themselves up as the ones being oppressed. Why? I can see the point of denying privilege, aside from avoiding guilt it allows you to continue benefiting from that privilege. But why the stretch, why the fight to make themselves out to be the victims? Maybe it’s guilt, too. Maybe no matter what the position of a group or person, they will always try to see themselves as the underdogs, to feel better about themselves. We can admit that mistakes were made, and we can admit that everyone should be treated as a human being, but for gods sakes why is it so hard to admit privilege?
http://galink.us/xaq8z/ @GlobalAtheist interesting article, but I have to say that as an Australian I thought the remark about Aboriginal Australians was not particularly realistic.
I’m not debating that they are the oppressed, they were here first and then they were invaded by Europeans, displaced and treated poorly, as often happenned throughout history and is quite a natural survival tactic in nature. Sad but true, this has many knock on effects which keep things unequal, from the loss of pride and other emotions they may feel including feeling that they are always discriminated against tends to create behavior that sees that they often remain self defeating. Basically the colour of peoples skin is not the main reason they have trouble today, the way they conduct themselves is what seperates them, sadly all the circumstances that create that behavior are rarely appreciated by those now experiencing it. This then becomes a looping problem.
But my point is that Australia is so very diverse in population, with peoples from all over the world now calling Australia home that to infer that Australia has only either caucassians or Aborigines is grossly missleading. But that mans argument, does show that by grouping people purely by race is opening the floodgates for abuse. It may be a perfectly natural survival tactic to protect the herd, however by agreeing to be part of society, people are agreeing to not do many many things which are also natural survival tactics, like rape and murder. We as a society are proclaiming that we are better than our basic primal behavior and that we don’t tollerate those who are not.
ie racists, rapists and murderers should be removed from society, they are not welcome.
Anthony – actually, the reason I pointed out that it was the Aborigines was because the discussion was specificaly about blacks.
“Its only been since non white racial groups who have moved into this country that we have had to feel this way”
Funny, but I remember the Aboriginals being there first….
“I am PROUD to be white, i am PROUD to be Australian. And i will fight to restore the birthrights our grandparents and their parents worked and died to give us.”
The birthrights their grandparents and parents worked to give them at the expense of the native population, who are now living in squalor and poverty.
Gee, you’re right. They’re very much like us.
I couldn’t agree more. I read a lot of feminist blogs, and even the non-confrontational, polite blogs get a lot of males showing up and denying everything, and the vast majority of those men complain about being oppressed because “they’re not allowed to be real men”. It’s ridiculous.
But what you? Aren’t you just been brainwashed? You live in the States and I suspect you’ve never been to Australia. What does it matter who was originally in a country?
“Do you not recall any history as to why we settled in America”
Potato famine?
“and the battles to follow?”
You mean this one:
http://www.dgaquarterly.org/Portals/0/images/0802/feature_scene_Gangs1.jpg
?
… I’m not following what this has to do with… anything?
Thank you for this post…you’re completely right, I can’t help feel ashamed to be a middle class, straight, white male, there’s so much privilege denial and denial of other people’s experiences like in your apologies post. I really want to apologize if I’ve ever done anything like that here.
I’d like to share some of my thought with you
-On privileges: Yes white straight middle class men have it easier than other and are dealt a a better hand to start with, should we apologise for it ? No. Why ? Because we didn’t chose to be born into middle class, or be white, or straight. There is no reason to apologise for it, we haven’t done anything wrong by being born this way.
What matters is that we try to help others that aren’t in the same situation, that we don’t keep peoples who don’t have those privileges from having a good life. Never apologise for what you were born with but do apologise if you encourage the system that make those disparencies.
-Pride: Why should we be proud to be black ? or White ? Or asian ? It’s nothing to be proud of, it’s an accident of birth, it’s like being proud of having 5 fingers on each hand. Get over it. Proud of your culture and heritage ? Why ? you were born to it, it’s not your accomplishment, it’s like taking credit for someone else work. We can be interested in our history and culture and heritage, we can learn about how we came to be this way but pride isn’t an emotion we should feel about this. We can certainly marvel and admire Martin Luther King Jr for what he did, we can feel inspired by it. But pride ? No, nothing to be proud of, you didn’t do it yourself, someone else did.
The only pride we should have is pride in our own accomplishment, never be proud of what happened before you were born, you had absolutly nothing to do with it. But be proud of what you accomplish on your own or with others after you were born. Admire others who have done great things, marvel at your heritage, the good part at least, and despise the bad part of it make sure you keep what is good going and discard what was bad but only be proud of what you yourself has done or of what you helped other accomplish.
If you didn’t had an hand in it don’t be proud of it.
-Shame: Simply replace the word pride in the previous part of this comment by shame
Country, culture and race are artificial construct, black and white aren’t a different race, we are all Homo sapiens sapiens. Want another human race ? Look at neanderthal. Countries don’t exist either, they are merely lines traced on papaers so that a group of peoples can say “that’s mine”, the universe doesn’t give a crap about our little lines in the dust. And culture is nothing but a bunch of peoples who decided one day that it would be a good idea to all act the same.
My point is, we are getting worked up over arbitrary notions that make absolutly no fucking sense. It’s all bullshit, it’s not real, it’s not a set of natural laws. It’s just our ego getting in the way. The sooner everyone realise this the better.
For me the solution to the problem that minorities face is not for them to further separate and make themselves even more distinct, nor is it for them to forget their culture and behave like white peoples. The solution is for white and black to realise that none of that matters in the slightest, that we are all in it together and that we should never ever let an accident of birth dictate our position in life.
We are not black and white and asian and who knows what else, we are peoples, each with our individual strength and weaknesses, each with our worth and value, each and everyone of us different and yet equal. Our actions are what make stand apart from others, our acts define us and make us distinct, not our birth.
And uyet I don’t believe in equality. Women and men aren’t equal, Black and White aren’t equal and never will be. Why ? Because our physiology has some differences, each person is different from the next. One is born with a better strength potential, another is smarter, those are facts. Pretending we are all equals is stupid, but making even more difference is also stupid. Country and culture shouldn’t matters, shouldn’t distinguish us, only our abilities should set us apart. Everyone of us has a place and a role, we just have to find it, put our abilities to use toward the betterement of all. We are all born equals in terms of rights and duties, not in term of abilities.
Who cares if your mother came from albania or if your great grandfather was a Nazi ? Why should it matters ? What matters is what you do, what you can do, what you chose to do. We should only be judged upon our accomplishments.