It's Louis C.K.'s most well-known bit, so few can deny it's out there:
What's not out there, usually, are the results:
Or why we get those results:
America's created a racist culture, born out of slavery and Jim Crow:
A culture - to the outsider - as obviously twisted as Nazi Germany's:
Well of course it (the white card) is (a wonderful thing to have in one's possession).
ReplyDeleteThe only people who seem to want to deny that are people in full, unassailable possession of said object. They need to just own up to reality; if you are white (especially if you are reasonably good looking by Nordic standards) and from a reasonably well off family (and you don't even need to be very bright either fyi), then in the grand poker game of life you were dealt a royal straight flush -- there is no getting around it. You have been given advantages straight off the bat.
Everyone else, to greater or lesser degrees, is playing under a handicap -- no matter how intelligent, talented, or strong/good charactered that person may be.
The world is an unfair and capricious place.
So maybe, just maybe, when that bit of reality sets in, we can all look at the world with a bit more clarity (and maybe some with a bit more charity, but people are by and large bastards in my pov, so I don't see it happening in large numbers -- I'd love to be wrong).
PW
*interesting bit about how one's speech can determine what others think of you: I used to teach a business writing class, and (because of my own background) one of the things brought up was "how to talk in interviews"; it got me into some trouble with my bosses (it was racist, of course -- all of my bosses owned the sacred card of power by the way, or had been let into the club -- except for a couple, that backed me up, wonder why?), but I always used this as an excercise: I spoke in my best "public English", and then I did a bit in my best down home talk -- and then I asked my students, if I came into interview with them, what would they think of me. The response was always something to the kind of "I'd think you were a dumb bumpkin" with some laughter at the bumpkin-i-ness of my speech (which I pointed out to them -- they were laughing now weren't they? hmmm).
Exactly!
So, it doesn't matter what your talents are, how smart you are, what an upstanding person you are -- if you don't learn to talk to the rules (unfair and capricious as they are) in public, then you will be slotted into a disadvantaged placement. The world is unfair...and you have to learn how to navigate it as best you can (and not giving the tools to do it in the name of being "nice" is really a pretty shitty thing to do to someone else, especially someone who is looking to you for help).
People in this country, maybe above all others, have to learn to move in a very unfair, tough, capricious, and multifaceted world -- it's hard to keep your feet in such a place (one of the reasons why I love Americans so; we can roll with the pitch and the yaw better than many, or at least we used to, and I don't want to see us lose that part of ourselves).