Absolute statements are usually a bad idea. So when John Scalzi categorically states that "straight white male is the easiest setting in the game of life," he's wrong. Repeatedly.
Let's start with one very obvious example (at least, obvious if you're part of the culture in question). To graduate USAF Basic Training, a male, regardless of age, must complete 50 pushups. A female must complete 27.
50:27.
It's worse in the Army, because they adjust for age, and require 50% of potential max score for your age group. So an older female can graduate with 9. That's right, 9.
50:9.
Yes, the male has it much easier.
This continues throughout military service. Males are required to score much higher on pushups and running speed than females, and are held to standard. Ask any vet, and they can tell you of numerous females who pass with the ugliest, squintiest, not-really-pushups-but-she-tried flops.
Then there's the fact that any male can be called from his official duties to serve as an infantryman. Females are forbidden by law from such duty. Yes, these days the lines are slippery, and some women have served up front and personal (and with honor and professionalism). But officially, by law, it cannot be mandated. Any male can be told to charge a machine gun nest. Such is "male privilege" in the military.
Please note I am not commenting on the logic or morality of said laws, just noting that these laws do exist. Men are combat troops at the general's whim. Women are not. Men are required to maintain significantly higher standards of physical readiness.
Females can get out of a deployment or cruise in a second by stating, "I think I may be pregnant." Bang, off the list, like that. Now, most troops are there knowing deployment is part of the mission and agreeable to it. And women do actually get pregnant. But there are some few who play the card, and for various reasons (legal, moral, practical), that reason must remain. But it is an available escape that any female has that no male has. (And note they don't actually have to be pregnant, just claim they think they might be.)
You'll find this is also true in most police and fire departments, too.
Military purchase contracts give preference to minority businesses as a matter of federal law.
Have you noticed there are still places where there are baby changing stations in the women's room, but not the men's room? That if a man has kids with him, he's "babysitting." Sorry, no. I'm being a parent. That teenager down the street babysits. And if he's male, boy is he going to get looked at funny. Gay? Pervert? Must be something. How many males are in the child care business?
Scalzi used to be a journalist. A journalist should do better research before making blanket statements.
~~~
How about a female point of view? Let's ask Jess:
~~~
I look white. I look like I should "fit in" with most "privileged" groups. But I do not, and have never been welcomed among their number, for several reasons.
My parents married in 1980. The wedding was nearly called off when my father's parents -- of mostly German extraction, both born in South Dakota -- discovered that my mother's mother's mother's family had some black in them. My mother is only 1/32 "Creole" (black, of what exact extraction is anyone's guess, although we know my ancestress had green eyes to go along with her very dark skin), but that was, I'm told, a very close thing over whether my father would be allowed to marry my mother (as he was 17, and required his parents' permission).
I was born on a reservation that my mother's family did not come from, but, because I was very blonde (from the German side), and otherwise looked like one of theirs, I was nearly kidnapped as a toddler on a handful of occasions. After all, I look white -- until I "tan", and then the red comes out, particularly if I keep the tan consistent. The fact I was born on a reservation -- with a "limited qualifications" doctor supervising the birth -- has left me with a few issues I've dealt with since. After all, no one comes out of a five day labor entirely unscathed; my mother nearly bled to death, and I have a few birth-related handicaps, although most are not ones readily visible.
Note the "if I keep the tan consistent," from above. One reason I learned to stay inside as much as I do, is because -- as long as I don’t let the tan settle in -- I pass as white, or near-enough. (The money is even as to whether my somewhat wide-and-flat nose is genetic or from fist-fights as a toddler.) If the red shows up for long? Yes, well, it was one of the several factors that led to the endless torture from my agemates in school. By high school, I was concerned enough about it that even during August and September's marching band practices, I wore the most over-large tshirts and jeans I could, to decrease how much sun exposure I got, and I still got some harassment over my forearms' being tanned an unusual shade.
Health-wise, the dietary "advice" provided (and enforced in schools) is geared towards those of mostly-white extraction. Guess what? Most of my health problems can be traced back to a bad-for-me diet -- which, given during my school years, was mostly under the control of the school district -- meant it was mostly a "white man's" diet.
From social aspects, there are several disadvantages that -- as someone who looks white (or near-enough) -- you'd think I wouldn't have to suffer.
1) I have what's known as "alcohol intolerance" -- which basically means that, while I can drink alcohol, it's not the most comfortable thing in the world for me. Genetically, that comes from my Native American heritage. Know what that means for standard socialization options? Yeah, I'm pretty much SOL, because people start freaking out when you go to a bar (even with friends) and don't order anything. No, really. Try it sometime, and not have the excuse of being the designated driver. See what reactions you get.
2) There's also the fact that as someone who looks white, the assumption is that I'm some various flavor of Christian … when, indeed, I am about as areligious as one can get (on good days). Know what happens when backwater towns of Texas discover that someone they assumed was "just like them" on the religion front turns out to be an atheist (or flat out can't/doesn't care)? Hell on Earth, for the atheist. Chased out of apartment complexes, because my family didn't go to the same church as the rest of the complex. Our lease was not renewed, specifically because of that fact. Endless abuse and torment from agemates and teachers, pets poisoned to death by neighborhood kids (because I didn't go to church with them). Really, the only reason I didn't get beat up as often as might have normally occurred was because I was in 4-H with two of the Varsity football players and they'd seen me in one fight, and were scared of crossing me.
3) Speaking of 4-H, white privilege? Oh fuck that nonsense. It's all about who has more money. Scholarships went to the rich kids, championship placements went to the rich kids. The fact I got passed over for so many things due to a lack of money, so pissed off my Extension agent, he put me up for the highest honor he could give me without anyone else's input-and-approval (the Gold Star) and still had to run roughshod over a few people for me to get it.
4) Scholarships? Nominally, I'm a white girl. Know what happens when you apply for scholarships based on your proven ancestry, and you look white? You don't get them, even if you're "economically disadvantaged." They go to the kids who look non-white, and are richer/better off than you are, because they got financial support when your family got jacked over by being told that you were $1.50 over the allowed poverty limits for a family of five.
5) I live in a black neighborhood. I deal with a bit of harassment (although no longer from my immediate neighbors). Most of them have nicer vehicles than I do, pay someone else to mow their lawns/take care of things, and such like. I'm the one who is mowing her own lawn, driving an older car, and generally trying to fix things myself. From any cursory glance, that certainly seems like I'm not the privileged one around here.
~~~
Like Jess, my wife is part native—Cherokee. 1/8. She actually didn't know this until a few months ago, and never claims it. She looks white.
See, to be Cherokee officially, you have to have an ancestor on a particular census about 115 years back. But back then, being Cherokee wasn't cool. So her full-blooded great grandmother…lied. She claimed she was white.
This continues today, when Liz Warren claims to be 1/32 Cherokee, no doubt trying to minimize her heritage.
No, actually she's trying for some shred of credibility. Apparently, it's no longer so totally uncool to be Native American. How about that? It's almost like there's some advantage to having minority heritage. A century ago, full bloods would LIE about their ancestry to deny it. These days, claiming a tiny percentage can add credibility in some circles.
There are other cultures where being a white male doesn't help. Consider, for example, illegal aliens.
Now, not all illegals are from Mexico. Many are from Asia, or even…New Zealand.
~~~
"Jackson" says:
So yeah, I'm a white guy, hetero, speak fluent English - I even write for a living. I'm also an illegal. I'll tell you, Mr. Scalzi, just how privileged I feel.
We'll start not with the virulent hatred (I wouldn't visit Arizona at gunpoint), but with the simple economic fact that it's not simply legal to discriminate against me. It's *legally mandated.*
So yeah, I feel real privileged on those grounds. I have to pass PhotoShopped documents just to work, and pray that my crude work (I'm a writer, not a graphic designer) doesn't get noticed.
I've seen people apply for jobs I haven't dared to. I've also checked out their subsequent work - garbage in a few cases. I could write better copy than that drunk, but I haven't had the chance. But they got the job and I couldn't even safely apply. So privileged I feel, Mr. Scalzi. Should I be ashamed?
Then there's the endless patronizing crap from friends who hear of my plight. "Can't you just legalize?" As though there were a way. I don't have relatives here and a fake marriage is out of the question. "Can't you return back there and re-apply?" As though the ten-year bar, as enforced by the 1996 Immigration and Nationalization Act, didn't exist for those who'd been illegal for more than 180 days. We won't go into how that time was past before I'd ever realized I was technically illegal in what I'd come to think of as my home country.
Not to mention the hatred. We're all moochers. We're all thieves, despite the fact that I've never taken a dime of government money in my life, nor been able to. Healthcare? Forget about it. I was asked for hard cash the one time I went to a hospital; thank God I could promptly borrow that money. I've had teeth for years that could use fillings I can't afford, and sooner or later I'll lose them. But I'm not eligible, in my home state (one of the most liberal in the country) for anything a given hospital doesn't classify as immediate emergency. And no company offering health insurance will hire me. Why, how privileged I feel here!
We won't even begin to go into how that virulent hatred *gets* to you, eventually. Makes you feel like a worthless mooch, despite never having taken a taxpayer nickel. Like a parasite, despite how I've run companies that have *created* jobs. But I suppose that's just all part of the deal with being privileged, right?
These days I work as a freelancer, for beans. Mr. Scalzi, I'm glad you think that as a white male I have every damn opportunity on the planet. The fact is that I'd sell my soul into debt for a decade (if I could just avoid exile!) in order to have an *equal* chance based on merit.
Never mind. I'm a white male. I'm by definition privileged.
Yeah fucking right.
~~~
Jackson doesn't have it much better, if at all, than a Mexican illegal, does he? In some ways better, since he looks "white," although he sounds different. But he doesn't have a bunch of agencies going to bat for him about how he's being repressed, because he's white.
But let's look at some legal immigrants, just to be sure.
This is from "Ilya," an escaped Soviet Russian Jew.
~~~
Both sets of my grandparents bribed Party officials to remove "Jewish" from the records, so my Mother was listed as "Georgian" and my Dad "Russian." I am pretty positive that had my Mother's parents not done it, she would not have been able to get into St Petersburg (then Leningrad) Conservatory, not sure what it did for Dad.
I know I had classmates whose parents did the same (although at the time it was not just the "Jew" classification that was to be avoided, but almost all other nationalities, especially "Chechen" (you can guess the reasons) and to a somewhat lesser degree all "Caucasus nationalities, such as Georgian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Ossetian etc (those nationalities commonly bundled together under "Chernozhopie" (Black-assed) perjorative.
The reason for that was somewhat different though - while my grandparents did it to give their children extra chances for their college/university acceptance as well as better their job prospects, at the time I was 16 it was more to decrease police and bureaucratic harassment on a daily basis rather than anything else (although "Jew" label still carried similar negative baggage as in the past, the level of discomfort it gave had become considerably less obvious, and the choice my grandparents made for my Mom - "Jew" or "Georgian" had become much more nuanced).
The less is said about my current immigration situation the better (Yes, I am legal right now, but have ongoing issues). Insofar as the past goes... I really think my Mom's immigration story is more interesting, but I guess she would not qualify as male .
The brief rundown:
Came over from the UK, after living there for over three years, on a visitor visa. Extended it once, and then switched to a student one. Despite lawyers telling me it could not be done at the time too. I think that was the "immigration runaround" but I am really hazy on details now except it was soon after 9/11 and things were changing in ridiculous directions.
Got my Bachelor's at a very poor on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy "historically black" college. Had said college mess up my (and almost every other International student's - and we were almost a majority by then) immigration status my last year there.
Managed to convince a first-rate grad school to accept me despite above-mentioned messed up status to accept me and even let me start classes. Had the status fixed roughly two months into grad school.
Got my Master's. Then OPT… and the less is said about afterwards the better.
~~~
For statistical purposes, Ilya is "white." He grew up in a place where, like my wife's family, one denied one's ancestry in order to get out of the bottom. He's most definitely not American when you meet him.
Let's talk to another former Soviet Jew, from the Ukraine. That's two strikes against her back there:
~~~
Nicki says:
I don’t know whether to laugh or cockpunch someone who claims white people automatically have an advantage by nature of being white!
I remember being white in the former USSR, where I was literally beaten, as well as mentally abused by teachers, because of my weird, Jewish last name. I remember sitting alone on a swing, while every other kid played together in kindergarten because the teacher told them not to play with the Jew. I remember having to defend myself from classmates in first and second grade – kids who were trying to hit me, rip my clothes and generally attack me, because of my funny last name. White privilege? Right.
Is it privilege to escape from the USSR with barely a shirt on your back because the border and customs guards felt themselves entitled to your stuff?
Is it privilege to watch your dad taken into another room at the customs in Poland and strip searched?
Is it privilege to escape with “a” bag, because the guards stole everything you were trying to leave your country with?
We were white, but it didn’t seem to matter, because people will always find something for which to hate you.
When we came to the United States, my parents spoke no English [and try having a "Russian" accent in the US in the early 1980s during the Cold War]. They had $300 in their pockets and were $3000 in debt to the international organization that helped them escape the USSR. My dad wasn’t handed anything. He has two Master’s degrees – one in electrical engineering, and one in mechanical engineering – and yet, he wasn’t handed an engineering job. He went to work in a restaurant, cleaning up and washing dishes. He didn’t accept welfare. He didn’t ask for it. He simply worked his ass off until he learned enough English to begin applying for jobs.
It took a few months to find a job, but in the meantime, there was no welfare, there was no privilege. There was a roach-infested apartment in Brooklyn. There were trips through other people’s trash on trash pick-up nights to find furniture and clothing and toys for me. I wore other people’s discarded garbage for two years. Is that what you call privilege?
My dad found a frame from an armchair in someone’s trash. He took it home, stuck two 2x4s in it, put cushions on top and called it furniture. Is that what you call privilege?
My grandfather – another white male – got mugged by two black guys in our neighborhood as he was carrying several bags of toys and clothes for me and my family. They took the meager stuff he had scavenged from someone else's trash, and bashed him over the head with a piece of wood. Quite the privilege.
After four years of scrimping, saving, working his ass off, not buying anything but the bare necessities, driving a jalopy to work every day and taking no vacation, my dad was finally able to afford a small house – something he could call his own. That’s where I grew up. No VCR, no cable, no posh car. He worked for everything we ever got. He never once accepted public assistance. And no one gave him a helping hand.
White man privilege? Please!
~~~
So let's pick another immigrant in SF, who fits a different demographic.
~~~
Sarah Hoyt is from Portugal:
I'm sorry. But the more I thought about it, my run ins with race are ALL US based. Also stupid.
I took a long time to write this because I’ve learned that race in the US is a complicated thing. The first time I got the concept of white privilege explained to me was in my son’s essay in high school, which was also when I learned my son didn’t think of himself as white. Turned out he was right, because the Federal government, sometime in the last ten or twenty years had decided Portuguese were Latin. (Which made perfect sense from a bureaucratic point of view, since up till then Spaniards were Latin/Hispanic, but Portuguese weren’t – meaning if you came from one side of the border and spelled your name Marques you were white, but go ten miles and spell your name Marquez and you’re Hispanic. So normalizing made bureaucratic sense, but nothing else.)
My son’s essay brought into relief at least one interaction with an editor, who wanted me to write "Latin stuff" and with another who wanted me to write my autobiography... at thirty five. When – still to my knowledge – I’ve done nothing special. I refused then and I still do, partly because my most interesting experiences aren’t mine to talk about and refer to other people’s actions.
As a background, I grew up in a village, outside Portugal’s second largest city (20 minutes by train.) We were "rich" because we had running water in the bathroom – which was outside the back door – and a faucet in the kitchen, over the sink. I was one of four – in a class of twelve – to not be taken out of school in fourth grade to go work in the textile factories. (Portugal was one of the first countries to outlaw child labor. Which means nothing, since any doctor would certify you kid was "slow" so you could pull him/her out of school and put him/her to work.) I learned to write with a quill pen and I was ten the first time I saw a dishwasher. Also, there were two cars in the village. We got a TV when I was eight. It was a black and white which we kept till I was 22.
Now, a great part of this was because Portugal’s government was authoritarian, mercantilist and crazy. Weirdly the revolution made things worse – for a while, before they got better. The first thing that was worse was danger of violence and restriction of opinion. For a few months there, even being a socialist was being a dangerous right winger and at danger. Also, groceries became irregular and jobs were interesting. For a while we lived from my brother’s tutoring money (the equivalent of maybe 200 a month) and the red cross supplied my clothes.
When I got to the States, I found out that Portugal had had a peaceful and flower-laden revolution and that therefore I lied if I spoke of being shot at. While at that I also found out, from no less source than writers’ digest that the only reason Mozambique’s president was a nurse’s aide and not a doctor was that Portuguese wouldn’t allow a black man to be a doctor. This confused me somewhat since in the flood of refugees who left after "independence" – they are I think more or less independent now. Not sure, since only source of news is the US but at the time all it meant was that instead of a Portuguese colony they because a Russian-Cuban colony – were any number of black doctors and medical students. My sister-in-law’s best friend was a medical student and native. She escaped with the clothes on her body, as did my sister-in-law. The difference was my sister-in-law was told to leave (though born and raised there) while her friend was told to go work in the fields to aid the (Maoist) revolution and left AS someone’s clothes, in a traveling trunk. I suppose that was some white privilege for my SIL.
In the States I also found out I’d left a superior culture and chosen to raise my kids in an inferior one. At the same time I discovered – from about a third of the people – that I’d left because we were desperately poor and possibly starving which (obscurely) was the US’s fault and not the fault of a completely buggered up political system.
Other interesting things I discovered were that: culture is race-coded and genetically transmissible and that I should teach my kids about "their culture" which was, inexplicably, Portuguese.
And that bureaucratic normalization of the status of Portuguese immigrants? Yeah. It makes as much sense as before. Turns out I changed races by getting married. While I use my maiden name as a married name, if I use Hoyt I’m white, while if I use de Almeida Hoyt I’m Latin. Same for my kids. Though to be honest, because of the area of the country we live in, my kids are assumed to be Latin most of the time. (If we lived in NYC they’d be assumed to be Jewish.) Meanwhile my friend Larry Correia (at least half Polish) is Latin all the time. So are his daughters, even if their mother is Danish by ancestry.
Have I suffered discrimination for being Portuguese-born? Mostly by idiots who think Portugal is in South America and get upset at me for not having a victim-story for them. Many of these idiots work in publishing. There’s also the idiots who think my place of birth should dictate my politics, but they already think my vagina should do so.
As for that white-privilege? I think it’s supposed to be knowing how to dress and how to apply for jobs, how to get scholarships, how to "move" in society, as well as having contacts that give you a hand up. When my husband and I got married we more or less got cut off by both families (though not entirely and not officially.) We live in a part of the country where we have no contacts and no experience. When older son applied to college our lack of knowing what to do was ultimately responsible for his ending up in the local state school instead of the ivy leagues he could have applied to. Because our last-last name is Anglo-Saxon, we were however presumed to know. Schools have counselors devoted to telling "minorities" how to do things – but since culture is genetic, my kids are presumed to know.
In the end I don’t care. The kids will be okay because they learned not to depend on anyone telling them what to do and feel no compunction in mixing with ANY race. Also they know culture isn’t inherited and their minds are their own.
If there is white privilege in the US it is that no one assumes you must think a certain way because of last name or ease in tanning.
~~~
I think I've made the point that immigrants from anywhere don't think like native born Americans.
So let me tell you about my own privilege, and since we're playing the ancestry game, here goes:
One group of my ancestors, only two centuries ago, were invaded, had their government and culture destroyed, were threatened with heinous punishment for using their native language, and completely subverted to a new way of life. Many of them were forcibly relocated and their land taken for reuse. They now have some limited home rule, and some would like independence. It'll be a long time coming. Both groups were white, so this didn't have any negative effect on my people, right?
But that's old news. A bit after that, they were involved in busting slave ships to disrupt the trade. Not me personally, though, so I'm still part of the oppressor culture…
Look, everyone's ancestors took a beating from someone else. So that shit doesn't fly. Let's stick to the present.
I've covered my upbringing elsewhere. My parents weren't rich, but they worked hard. We moved to Canada and then the US, and yes, by that time we were middle class. Privileged.
It seems our immigration attorney was sneaky. He never actually put in writing what he was advising us by phone. We got a temporary visa for a year, moved to the US, bought a house, settled in, and applied for a permanent visa.
The temporary visa expired. That left us in limbo. You can't leave the country and re-enter without a visa, so we couldn't visit family. We had no legal status at all, though we were still paying taxes. But you know those silly things kids do, like shoplifting, breaking curfew, etc? If I'd been caught doing stuff like that, my entire family could have been deported, our future stricken. In theory, it takes a pattern of such behavior, and a few misdemeanors aren't an issue. It has to be a crime of "moral turpitude." But legal immigrant teens are VERY cognizant of this standard. And, once the visa expired, we had no status.
Three years later, we finally got in to see an immigration officer. She looked at our papers, considered, looked at us, and said, "The problem is that what you did is illegal." (It is legal now. It was not then.)
Even for a teenager, that's a pretty heavy blow. We'd stated an intent to leave with the temporary visa. Applying for a permanent visa contradicted that. And no, being white makes no difference in a case like this. All that matters is your papers. The easiest thing for this agent to do was to stamp a sheet and send us back to the country before the country we'd left, with a bar on re-entry to the US, and sucks to be you. The hardest thing was for her to write a letter to her superiors explaining that she believed we had honest intent and faulty advice, and that we should be granted the opportunity to apply for permanent visas.
She did this. Ma'am, whoever you were, THANK YOU.
Of course, citizenship took three more years, and proof of literacy, not belonging to any subversive or communist group, no criminal background, "adequate knowledge" of US history and government, and yes much of this applies to teenagers as well as adults. That last is the cutout—if they're sure you're some kind of enemy plant, they can ask who the 15th vice president was (Hannibal Hamlin) and when you don't know, they can boot you.
This of course didn't apply to Haitian boat people and some Vietnamese, who were granted permanent residency as the Coast Guard fished them out of the water. They weren't privileged. Yes, I'm sympathetic to their plight, and I'm glad they got rescued. We had to pay our own lawyers, meet standards, petition for recognition. There is talk of a similar program for illegals now, regardless of any refugee status.
If you were born here, you can be a petty abusive thug, a car thief, illiterate, a card-carrying commie and make Facebook posts about your invitation to the Chinese to buy out GM while cashing your welfare check. If I'd been caught smoking dope it could have gotten my entire family booted from residency, and once a resident, a little violence or theft could have killed any chance of citizenship. I had to pay taxes and not take any handouts. Enjoy your born privilege. I had to earn mine the hard way.
This is why whenever I meet any immigrant, I feel kinship. We all have different backgrounds and stories, but we have cultural ties of our own—a desire to live here, the discipline to do so, and a dedication to follow through. So once again, I'm not like you, whoever you are.
So, yeah, when you've sat in front of an immigration officer who's holding your life in their hands, you can tell me how fucking privileged I am to be allowed to hand over a piece of paper that says I'm allowed to live here.
Yes, I still have to do this. When anyone born here, most of you, fill in a form (sorry, that's the British term), you probably check "citizen." On most government forms, I have to check, "Naturalized," and, upon demand, produce a piece of paper to PROVE I'm allowed to live here. Military? Passport? Federal processes? Sure, just PROVE you're now an American and we'll continue.
And yes, immigrants get discriminated against, officially and unofficially.
I've been told to my face that "immigrants shouldn't be allowed to own property" because we're "stealing American jobs." Yes, this was said knowing I was a legal immigrant. I've even been told "anyone not born here shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military."
My first roommate on active duty would mock my Queen in front of my face.
Another asshole attacked Prince Andrew, who is a real helicopter pilot, who deliberately used his craft to block Exocet missiles in the Falklands, as "privileged." How else could he have gotten that job? (NOTE: apparently, middle class white boys think there are people more privileged than they. Where does it end? With white college kids protesting on Wall Street?) I pointed out that flying a helo isn't something that come from favors, it comes from talent and skill. An
