[wat0n]

So we see that Republicans can and do deliberately manufacture and manipulate white resentment in order to oppose certain legislation.

No one seems to disagree.

Also:

If the argument is that white conservatives oppose these programs because of other issues and not race, then please note that studies disprove this idea:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805001/

Abstract
Measures of symbolic racism (SR) have often been used to tap racial prejudice toward Blacks. However, given the wording of questions used for this purpose, some of the apparent effects on attitudes toward policies to help Blacks may instead be due to political conservatism, attitudes toward government, and/or attitudes toward redistributive government policies in general. Using data from national probability sample surveys and an experiment, we explored whether SR has effects even when controlling for these potential confounds and whether its effects are specific to policies involving Blacks. Holding constant conservatism and attitudes toward limited government, SR predicted Whites' opposition to policies designed to help Blacks and more weakly predicted attitudes toward social programs whose beneficiaries were racially ambiguous. An experimental manipulation of policy beneficiaries revealed that SR predicted policy attitudes when Blacks were the beneficiary but not when women were. These findings are consistent with the claim that SR's association with racial policy preferences is not due to these confounds.

The paper doesn't control by the subject's sex in the experiment, so it's possible - indeed, likely - women support policies benefiting women while men are against. By not adding a sex dummy, the result is quite evidently overestimating the effect of the beneficiary being a woman (even more so since 69% of participants are women - why would you be surprised to find women support policies meant to benefit women?). A similar thing could happen with race, as in people will oppose policies designed to exclude them for characteristics perceived to be immutable like race and sex.

A similar experiment done among BIPOC would also show they reject policies designed to leave them out (and to avoid comparing to whites, where the result could be confounded by the belief they are privileged, the race manipulation could just mention another nonwhite group). Too bad the study did not do any of that, for some reason, and is suffering from an omitted variable bias.

Progressives are among the first ones to criticize policies they regard as being designed to benefit whites due to their race, even if they fall into the "welfare" label. It should not be surprising, then, to find conservatives showing a similar pattern but for some reason there is no buzzword for the former.

Note this is not like income, where a social safety net to address poverty can be regarded as a form of insurance for those who are not poor: If I lost my source of income, I'd know I will be helped and therefore I may accept being taxed to fund that type of thing regardless, just in case I end up in the dole at some point. And the available evidence does suggest voters will support policies meant to address low income, even if they know people from a different race are more likely benefit.

[late]

That's not what research suggested, even at the time.

There had been experiments done in several states showing the type of reforms made by Clinton could have the net effect of increasing the employment of poor people and also their net incomes (yes, accounting for the loss of benefits).

That is what the educated call fiction. The perverse reality is that the research I am talking about was a Republican idea. They thought they could prove there were welfare bums. So, unlike most social research, this was top quality work. It was well funded.

What it showed was that people were desperate to get off welfare. Instead of finding bums, they found people working themselves half to death trying to escape poverty. Sometimes more than half...

There is no need to rely on fantasy here, or to reinvent the wheel.

Or drown us in your BS.

A decade later: " New research had showed that in fact welfare reform fell short in the depths of the Great Recession — substantially increasing deep poverty and leaving families who can’t find work without any cash safety net."
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/20/11789988/ ... are-reform

This is one of the reasons we have such a big problem with homelessness.

[wat0n]

That is what the educated call fiction. The perverse reality is that the research I am talking about was a Republican idea. They thought they could prove there were welfare bums. So, unlike most social research, this was top quality work. It was well funded.

What it showed was that people were desperate to get off welfare. Instead of finding bums, they found people working themselves half to death trying to escape poverty. Sometimes more than half...

There is no need to rely on fantasy here, or to reinvent the wheel.

Or drown us in your BS.

A decade later: " New research had showed that in fact welfare reform fell short in the depths of the Great Recession — substantially increasing deep poverty and leaving families who can’t find work without any cash safety net."
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/20/11789988/ ... are-reform

This is one of the reasons we have such a big problem with homelessness.

You should read the rest of that article.

...

With enemies like that, many on the left were understandably suspicious of attacks on welfare. But the program really did have deep problems. The three most common criticisms made of AFDC were:

It caused poor adults who could work to not work.
It caused dependency; rather than using it as a temporary safety net, some people embraced it as a way of life.
It encouraged having children out of wedlock and discouraged marriage.
The first of these claims was definitely true, the second was kind of true, and the last might have been true but the effect was very, very small.

Very few social policy analysts would contest that AFDC discouraged work. For one thing, it often featured a 100 percent phaseout rate: Each dollar you earned meant one less dollar in benefits.

"I'd always talk about it in intro econ classes," Hilary Hoynes, an economist at UC Berkeley, says. "Students come in thinking welfare recipients are lazy, and then you talk them through the basics of the economics and describe the incentives of the program, and people were like, 'Of course, why would you work in this program?'"

Ironically, one thing Reagan did upon taking office was increase the phaseout rate, therefore making AFDC an even worse work deterrent than it had been before. "Reagan's cuts cut all the working people off and made it a program for people who weren't working," the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Liz Schott explains

Ethnographic work by Kathryn Edin (now at Johns Hopkins) and Laura Lein (now at University of Michigan) in the early 1990s suggested that AFDC both provided inadequate benefits for the poor, leaving them mired in poverty, and provided significant work disincentives. The phaseout rate, they concluded, was a major deterrent.

"Most of the welfare-reliant mothers we interviewed had an accurate view of the benefits they would lose by going to work," Edin and Lein write in their book Making Ends Meet. "They made reasonable assessments of how much they would need to earn to offset the added costs of work."

The families they spoke with concluded that low-wage jobs would at best leave them no better off than they were with welfare, that it might leave them worse off if they lost their job and were forced to reapply for welfare, and that the jobs they could realistically get would not prepare them for better, higher-paying work in the future.

But because of the stinginess of AFDC, Edin and Lein found that welfare mothers still needed to find other sources of income. Only about 64 percent of their income came from AFDC, food stamps, and other safety net programs. Twelve percent came from off-the-books work (which wouldn't reduce welfare benefits) and underground work (selling sex, drugs, etc.), and 17 percent came from friends and family members. Only 2 percent came from formal work.

Some economists I talked to were more skeptical that the phaseout rates were the major problem — but still agreed that AFDC discouraged work. "Congress lowered the phaseout rate from 100 percent to 67 percent in 1967 and work levels among AFDC recipients went up only modestly," Robert Moffitt at Johns Hopkins notes. The bigger work disincentive, he says, was the mere fact that people were getting money with no strings attached.

Even though few welfare recipients were formally working, research indicated they actually wanted to be working. "Research indicated, including research that we conducted in Chicago, that AFDC recipients preferred work to welfare and would readily accept jobs that will not result in slipping deeper into poverty," according to William Julius Wilson, a professor and sociologist at Harvard University.

What about the claim that AFDC caused dependency? The most influential work on that question was done by Harvard’s Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood in the 1980s. They found that while most people who entered AFDC left fairly quickly, a minority stayed for long periods, averaging eight years. Though a minority of those entering, because of its longer duration this group made up the majority of the AFDC caseload at any given time.

Moreover, plenty of research has documented that there was a correlation between mothers receiving AFDC and their daughters receiving it later; the literature is split on whether this was causal (the mom getting welfare actually made the daughter more likely to take it up) or whether it was wholly explained by the fact that children of poor parents tend to be poor too.

The best, most recent research I’ve seen on this question, from the University of Kentucky’s James Ziliak, Robert Paul Hartley, and Carlos Lamarche, finds that at least some of the relationship was causal.

Reasonable people can disagree about how bad it was that a majority of AFDC recipients at any given time were in the midst of a years-long spell. After all, that was the original intent of Mothers’ Pensions: that the money could support mothers indefinitely, that they’d never need to work. But it’s hard to deny that the program did lead to millions of people living off welfare for years at a time, without working.

As for the claim that welfare discouraged traditional families, the evidence there is shakiest. Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, tells me the argument that welfare discouraged marriage "was probably a little true, but not very." The effect sizes just weren't big enough.

And the phenomenon seemed to be largely about women preferring to rely on their welfare checks than on the earnings of their male partner — it was about independence as much as anything.

As the welfare backlash grew in the 1980s, the federal government was beginning to issue waivers to states to allow them to experiment with various welfare-to-work approaches. A number of governors, notably Gov. Tommy Thompson (R-WI), seized the opportunity, experimenting with work supports, time limits, work requirements, and other approaches that would inspire the latter federal reforms.

The waiver programs were often run as actual experiments, and the results were encouraging. "Out of 11 state programs studied, nine raised employment and earnings, albeit modestly," DeParle recalls.

For example, the organization MDRC produced a hugely influential study in 1993 of a welfare-to-work program in Riverside County, California, which found that the Riverside approach (which emphasized getting a job above all else, including education and training) raised earnings more than 50 percent. That fueled a burgeoning consensus that liberals should accede to work requirements and accept some form of "workfare."

(Subsequent research suggested the Riverside finding was a fluke, the product of an already stronger local economy rather than any reforms.)

The liberal pro-reform line was that assisting the poor was worthwhile but that AFDC had unacceptable work disincentives, and that a public jobs program would be superior. Mickey Kaus at the New Republic was the most vocal journalistic exponent of this view, while Ellwood's 1988 book Poor Support laid out the most sophisticated, detailed plan for achieving a liberal version of reform, including greatly expanded health benefits, child care, and guaranteed jobs, alongside time limits on receipt of actual cash welfare.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was strongly associated with this approach, putting together "the Clinton plan" through his role as chair of the welfare task force at the National Governors Association. The plan sought $1 billion to $2 billion more a year in spending, in exchange for tougher work requirements. Every governor in the country save one endorsed it.

The plan eventually morphed into the Family Support Act, which provided additional matching funds in exchange for sending a certain fraction of the recipients to work programs. Reagan signed it into law in 1988, but it didn't stop the welfare rolls from continuing to grow.

...

Even among the Democrats there's agreement there's no going back to the old welfare system and that the criticism was basically correct:

...

At the same time, the leftward Democratic Party movement on welfare reform has not led to calls to return to AFDC. The 100 percent phaseout rates, combined with sub–poverty level benefits, are not good policy. And programs that are widely hated by the public are not good long-term policy.

There's widespread consensus, including by experts on the left, that resurrecting the program is not an option. "AFDC was a deeply flawed program, and it was particularly deeply flawed because it was so disliked across the board," Shaefer says. "No one sensible is saying that we should go back to the old system," Harry Holzer adds.

So what do we do instead?

Almost everyone across the political spectrum agrees that something has likely gone wrong with the way the TANF block grant is handled. So the simplest way to address welfare reform's failures would be to try to reform TANF to function more effectively.

The Obama administration has a proposal to do just that in its latest budget, requiring that at least 55 percent of state and federal funds go to work activities, child care, and cash assistance. Obama would also create a permanent TANF fund for recessions, to help make the program better at fighting downturns, and would, for the first time ever, increase the size of the TANF block grant.

Doar has an even simpler proposal: He'd require states to examine all cases of food stamp recipients reporting no income and work to enroll them in TANF. That, he argues, would effectively tackle cases of extreme poverty.

Most left-of-center experts I spoke to, however, wanted to go further. Their answers generally involved the creation of one of two new programs for low-income Americans. The first is a child allowance. The second is a subsidized jobs program, like the one David Ellwood originally wanted as part of welfare reform.

A child allowance is a universal benefit paid out equally to all families with children. It's a very common policy across the developed world, with countries like Germany, France, Sweden, and Ireland all boasting versions. In a US context, that would provide a source of cash to families with children who lost one when AFDC went away — but because it's universal, it would likely avoid becoming as politically toxic as AFDC did.

The Center for American Progress endorses a version of this through its proposal to make the $1,000 child tax credit fully refundable and add a $125-a-month ($1,500-a-year) young child tax credit, also fully refundable. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), along with Nancy Pelosi and Democrats’ ranking member on Ways and Means, Sander Levin, has introduced legislation creating the latter.

Wisconsin’s Timothy Smeeding, Jane Waldfogel at Columbia, Shaefer, and a number of other poverty researchers are putting together an even more ambitious proposal that would pay out $250 a month per child under 6 and $200 a month per kid ages 6 to 18.

"There's still an incentive to work," Smeeding argues. "We're talking about something that's modest and that's low. … It's not a lot of money, but it does provide a reliable steady floor."

The main argument against that plan would be that it does hurt the incentive to work. That's what's implied by Moffitt's argument that the income effect — the raw increase in income generated by welfare — was the primary reason AFDC reduced work. "You can't give people money without causing them to work less," Mead insists.

Hoynes, though slightly skeptical of a child allowance on cost grounds, disputes this. "Poor folks' income effect responses are not very large, because they're really poor, and they need the money," she argues. That suggests a child allowance wouldn't provide much of a work disincentive.

The other main category of solution involves subsidized or public-provided jobs. This was part of the original liberal image of welfare reform and responds to Americans' wariness of assisting poor people who aren't working. It got new traction in the wake of the recession, when the stimulus package authorized a TANF emergency fund that states used for subsidized job programs.

Though the program wasn’t rigorously evaluated, retrospective analyses suggested that the fund was effective at creating work at low cost: $1.3 billion in federal funding led to more than 260,000 new jobs, a ratio of about $5,000 per job created. The fact that the subsidized jobs programs were set up and implemented quickly was also encouraging, suggesting that large-scale direct job creation is administratively possible in the modern era.

The idea could get fairly wide buy-in. Brookings and AEI recently convened a bipartisan working group of 15 poverty scholars — including Ellwood, Doar, Haskins, Mead, and Waldfogel — attempting to arrive at a common approach to combating poverty. The resulting report was very enthusiastic about subsidized jobs, and particularly positive toward the TANF emergency fund.

"I actually support that in principle," Mead says. "If you want to require work, you must be sure work is available, but in principle that would have to mean some kind of job guarantee." This could be useful not just for the single mothers AFDC targeted but for underemployed men as well.

William Julius Wilson, at Harvard, is also a strong believer in subsidized jobs, suggesting former Rep. George Miller's (D-CA) 2011 Local Jobs for America Act as a worthy model.

"When I talk about public sector jobs, I mean the types of jobs provided by the Works Progress Administration [WPA] during the Great Depression," Wilson says. "Work that would help to improve the infrastructure in our communities, including state and local park districts that suffer from lack of upkeep and limited hours; cleaning playgrounds, beaches, and other recreational areas; working in public libraries to keep them open into the evening and on weekends; increasing the number of safe, stimulating day care centers for toddlers and preschoolers; improving and increasing the number of after-school programs for school-age children."

Sheldon Danziger, a leading left-of-center welfare expert who's now serving as president of the Russell Sage Foundation and who was in the Brookings-AEI group, also places heavy emphasis on subsidized work. "We don’t have enough experience with guaranteed public sector work. I would certainly experiment with that," he says. "I would also welcome public subsidies for private sector and nonprofit employers, summer jobs for youth, etc."

One thing that's clear is that any solution would cost money. The TANF Emergency Fund might've been cheap, but there's no guarantee that it would scale up at the same cost per job. Miller's bill allocated $75 billion. A child allowance paying $2,500 per year ($208 per month) would cost $109.3 billion a year on top of existing child tax credit spending.

A comprehensive plan from the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute in Wisconsin, incorporating a subsidized jobs program and expanded EITC, among other measures, would cut poverty by at least half. It'd also cost $332 billion to $399 billion per year.

To be clear, the US could afford a policy that big. Even though $400 billion a year sounds like a lot, it is a little over 2 percent of GDP; the US could grow its government by that amount and still remain way smaller than European welfare states, cutting poverty dramatically. The question is whether, in an era of divided government where the Republican Party has a strong ideological commitment to lower spending, a governing coalition will ever be willing to make that large a commitment to fighting poverty.

...

I'd not rely on a child allowance as defined there, it should be conditioned on sending your kids to school and keeping them vaccinated.

As for public works programs, it depends a lot on what would they be working on. If their work's useless, one may as well just give them the money.

At last, I'd reform TANF so states don't have that much flexibility to use the money for other ends, and I'd expand the eligibility condition so training and studying count as "employment", especially during times of high unemployment. One doesn't necessarily need to get a job to qualify as "deserving", finishing high school if you dropped out and attending post secondary education (be it college or learning a trade) most certainly counts and improves social welfare.

All benefits and tax brackets should also be inflation adjusted.

But going back to the old system? No way.

[late]

You should read the rest of that article.

You keep talking about old crap. In this case old work that has been replaced with newer and better.

I'd say pay attention, but your trolling is a way of paying attention.

[wat0n]

You keep talking about old crap. In this case old work that has been replaced with newer and better.

I'd say pay attention, but your trolling is a way of paying attention.

Are you sure you are not trolling?

Experts widely agree that the old welfare system was broken. That's the truth, even if there is also an agreement that the current programs are not perfect.

And this is coming from the same Vox article at that.

Hint: Your feelings do not trump expert opinion.

[Pants-of-dog]

Since there are no realistic and supported criticisms of these studies that would merit dismissing the findings, any argument that is not consistent with the findings is probably empirically incorrect.

Here is another study further corroborating thr claim that white resentment leads to opposing social programs:

Abstract
White racial resentment is associated with opposition to a broad range of racial policies but it is unclear whether it derives from racial prejudice or stems from ideological principles. To resolve this ambiguity, we examined the impact of racial resentment on support for a college-scholarship program in which program beneficiaries' race and socioeconomic class was experimentally varied. The analyses yield a potentially troubling finding: racial resentment means different things to white liberals and conservatives. Among liberals, racial resentment conveys the political effects of racial prejudice, by predicting program support for black but not white students, and is better predicted by overt measures of racial prejudice than among conservatives. Among conservatives, racial resentment appears more ideological. It is closely tied to opposition to race-conscious programs regardless of recipient race and is only weakly tied to measures of overt prejudice. Racial resentment, therefore, is not a clear-cut measure of racial prejudice for all Americans.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3647720

[wat0n]

Since there are no realistic and supported criticisms of these studies that would merit dismissing the findings, any argument that is not consistent with the findings is probably empirically incorrect.

Just because you are too statistically illiterate to understand the criticism of that research, it doesn't mean that criticism does not exist.

Here is another study further corroborating thr claim that white resentment leads to opposing social programs:

Abstract
White racial resentment is associated with opposition to a broad range of racial policies but it is unclear whether it derives from racial prejudice or stems from ideological principles. To resolve this ambiguity, we examined the impact of racial resentment on support for a college-scholarship program in which program beneficiaries' race and socioeconomic class was experimentally varied. The analyses yield a potentially troubling finding: racial resentment means different things to white liberals and conservatives. Among liberals, racial resentment conveys the political effects of racial prejudice, by predicting program support for black but not white students, and is better predicted by overt measures of racial prejudice than among conservatives. Among conservatives, racial resentment appears more ideological. It is closely tied to opposition to race-conscious programs regardless of recipient race and is only weakly tied to measures of overt prejudice. Racial resentment, therefore, is not a clear-cut measure of racial prejudice for all Americans.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3647720

You do realize that the very abstract says the conservative position is to oppose considering race as a factor regardless of recipient race, right?

Where can I read the complete paper so we can see how the experiment was carried out?

Why do real world programs like Pell Grants enjoy widespread support even though they are a real world program where nonwhites are known to benefit at higher rates than whites? Are these experiments believable when real world voting says otherwise?

[Unthinking Majority]

One important thing about white resentment is that white people use it to shift the conversation away from inequality and into a conversation about how unfair it is for whites.

This just sounds like an excuse to shame white people into silence, even if some things might be legitimately unfair to them. What are white people supposed to do then if something is legitimately unfair to them? Say nothing and let resentment build?

I think we can live in a society where everyone, POC and white people, are treated fairly, and criticism of unfair treatment towards anyone of any racial group can be aired and debated. This is what equality means. Equality is not a competition.

If we call this "white resentment" what do we label it when POC seem to resent it when any Caucasian airs a grievance? They call it "white victimhood" in order to shame them into silence. Are Caucasians not also deserving of justice? You seem to only advocate on the side of POC and argue against the interests of white people whenever these kinds of issues pop up for debate. Sounds like you may have "Hispanic resentment"? Why all the hostility? This might be a shock to you, but caucasians are human beings too, the same as you and any other POC but with less melanin. Maybe if you and others were on the side of justice instead of only the interests of "your side" then race relations wouldn't be in the state they are now. Unwavering racial tribalism is not the path to equality and or justice.

In my opinion, POC with this mindset are racists and no better than white racists. They want all the gains of "justice and equality" and don't care whether Caucasians are treated unfairly or not if it benefits them. Not only is this racist, its very selfish and sociopathic, not to mention a really bad strategy for social cohesion that probably isn't going to end well. If this is happening now, what's going to happen in 50 years when POC are the majority in some western countries like the US? Are they going to take the opportunity to "take their revenge"?

[Rancid]

This just sounds like an excuse to shame white people into silence, even if some things might be legitimately unfair to them. What are white people supposed to do then if something is legitimately unfair to them? Say nothing and let resentment build?

I think we can live in a society where everyone, POC and white people, are treated fairly, and criticism of unfair treatment towards anyone of any racial group can be aired and debated. This is what equality means. Equality is not a competition.

If we call this "white resentment" what do we label it when POC seem to resent it when any Caucasian airs a grievance? They call it "white victimhood" in order to shame them into silence. Are Caucasians not also deserving of justice? You seem to only advocate on the side of POC and argue against the interests of white people whenever these kinds of issues pop up for debate. Sounds like you may have "Hispanic resentment"? Why all the hostility? This might be a shock to you, but caucasians are human beings too, the same as you and any other POC but with less melanin. Maybe if you and others were on the side of justice instead of only the interests of "your side" then race relations wouldn't be in the state they are now. Unwavering racial tribalism is not the path to equality and or justice.

In my opinion, POC with this mindset are racists and no better than white racists. They want all the gains of "justice and equality" and don't care whether Caucasians are treated unfairly or not if it benefits them. Not only is this racist, its very selfish and sociopathic, not to mention a really bad strategy for social cohesion that probably isn't going to end well. If this is happening now, what's going to happen in 50 years when POC are the majority in some western countries like the US? Are they going to take the opportunity to "take their revenge"?

Of course, this is because very few are actually trying to listen and understand each other. Instead, everyone is just talking over each other to try and silence each other. Basically, we don't know how to actually work through these issues constructively, so we devolve into this spiral of resentment/hate towards each other. It's a spiral that is self-re-enforcing from all sides.

Lots of finger point "well they do this when this...." and "Well they do that when this...." and it's just a blame game like dip shit children do. Everyone blaming each other, no one listening, no one self-reflecting, everyone externalizing everything. Everyone acting like a bunch of entitled fucking brats. ALl sides all of them.

[wat0n]

It's not that surprising, though. It is consistent with American history, for good or evil.

[Rancid]

It's not that surprising, though. It is consistent with American history, for good or evil.

True. Add social media to this, and now we have more fucking dip shit morons and dip shit moron self proclaimed experts at whatever saying more dumb shit. People are fucking morons, all of them.

[wat0n]

The sad part is that there is a lack of self-criticism here. Much of the things the other camp does, is something your own camp does as well.

And an even sadder part is the inability to realize that there are many, many things (ideas, outlooks on life, traditions, etc) most Americans share and which makes them just that, Americans.

[Rancid]

The sad part is that there is a lack of self-criticism here. Much of the things the other camp does, is something your own camp does as well.

And an even sadder part is the inability to realize that there are many, many things (ideas, outlooks on life, traditions, etc) most Americans share and which makes them just that, Americans.

Agree, no self reflecting as I've said.

I also don't like the phrase white privilege because it's too dismissive, and this is exactly how white resentment is created. For example, I work with a bunch of white people. If we just wash away their life story as "white privilege" what am I saying? I'm saying that these people whole spend as many hours as I did studying engineering, getting a job, worked hard to get promoted, to be successful to earn more... didn't earn any of it, when clearly they did. Sure, maybe they had an easier time getting hired because of whatever systemic racist stuff (which is real for sure). However, that doesn't mean they didn't work. This is what builds this resentment. We should be mindful not to just dismiss everything white people have ever worked for as being given to them for free.

[wat0n]

Agree, no self reflecting as I've said.

I also don't like the phrase white privilege because it's too dismissive, and this is exactly how white resentment is created. For example, I work with a bunch of white people. If we just wash away their life story as "white privilege" what am I saying? I'm saying that these people whole spend as many hours as I did studying engineering, getting a job, worked hard to get promoted, to be successful to earn more... didn't earn any of it, when clearly they did. Sure, maybe they had an easier time getting hired because of whatever systemic racist stuff (which is real for sure). However, that doesn't mean they didn't work. This is what builds this resentment. We should be mindful not to just dismiss everything white people have ever worked for as being given to them for free.

It's just the flip side of a "diversity hire".

After all, if one can assume a POC was hired solely for diversity then one may as well assume the rest are there solely because of their privilege. And of course the converse is possible too.

None of them seems accurate. Even in the case affirmative action, those who benefit must meet other eligibility conditions (having the correct educational background and work experience, for example - a high school dropout will probably never be hired for a position requiring a PhD). It's why affirmative action doesn't really benefit those it's supposed to benefit for the most part, since the kind of BIPOC one would think has had the least opportunities is unlikely to be eligible for the position anyway. It will likely benefit those BIPOC who already had opportunities to succeed since they were kids (i.e. were part of at least the middle class).

[Pants-of-dog]

@wat0n

Please do not be disrespectful.

And again, there is no point asking me questions since you believe me to be a malicious liar. There is no reason to tryst my answers.

——————

This just sounds like an excuse to shame white people into silence, even if some things might be legitimately unfair to them. What are white people supposed to do then if something is legitimately unfair to them? Say nothing and let resentment build?

There is no way for me to censor you even if I wanted to.

In fact, since the vast majority of all podiums for political discourse will allow white people to put discussion of their feelings before (or instead of) discussing inequality, it is difficult to argue that anyone will be silenced if I point out how white resentment is used to shift debate.

I think we can live in a society where everyone, POC and white people, are treated fairly, and criticism of unfair treatment towards anyone of any racial group can be aired and debated. This is what equality means. Equality is not a competition.

Yes, we can live in such a society.

At this point, we do not.

We do not live in a society where everyone is treated fairly. There is racism, and BIPOC people are not treated fairly.

And we also do not live in a society where we can openly discuss such unfair treatment. We even have conservative politicians making it illegal to teach critical race theory, for example.

If we call this "white resentment" what do we label it when POC seem to resent it when any Caucasian airs a grievance? They call it "white victimhood" in order to shame them into silence. Are Caucasians not also deserving of justice? You seem to only advocate on the side of POC and argue against the interests of white people whenever these kinds of issues pop up for debate. Sounds like you may have "Hispanic resentment"? Why all the hostility? This might be a shock to you, but caucasians are human beings too, the same as you and any other POC but with less melanin. Maybe if you and others were on the side of justice instead of only the interests of "your side" then race relations wouldn't be in the state they are now. Unwavering racial tribalism is not the path to equality and or justice.

No, white resentment is not something that BIPOc people use pejoratively towards white people.

Considering the fact that not a single critic of the idea even heard of white resentment to this thread, it is hard to turn around and now claim that white conservatives are being harassed by this label.

You cannot logically claim it is a vague new buzzword, and also claim that it is constantly being used a tool to silence debate.

In my opinion, POC with this mindset are racists and no better than white racists. They want all the gains of "justice and equality" and don't care whether Caucasians are treated unfairly or not if it benefits them. Not only is this racist, its very selfish and sociopathic, not to mention a really bad strategy for social cohesion that probably isn't going to end well. If this is happening now, what's going to happen in 50 years when POC are the majority in some western countries like the US? Are they going to take the opportunity to "take their revenge"?

Since this seems to be a rant against imagined enemies, I will simply ignore this tilting at windmills.

Also, I would not worry about those non-whites taking their revenge. Even if we all wanted to act like white people have over the last few centuries, we could not, since we would not have the historical and material context that white people enjoyed at the beginning of colonialism.

[Unthinking Majority]

Of course, this is because very few are actually trying to listen and understand each other. Instead, everyone is just talking over each other to try and silence each other. Basically, we don't know how to actually work through these issues constructively, so we devolve into this spiral of resentment/hate towards each other. It's a spiral that is self-re-enforcing from all sides.

Lots of finger point "well they do this when this...." and "Well they do that when this...." and it's just a blame game like dip shit children do. Everyone blaming each other, no one listening, no one self-reflecting, everyone externalizing everything. Everyone acting like a bunch of entitled fucking brats. ALl sides all of them.

I totally agree. Why did this happen, because up until about 10 years ago before all this wokeness and Trump bullshit things seem to be progressing ok and people were more or less reasonable with each other. Now its a zero-sum game.

I think its a combo of a new generation of entitled brats teaching in colleges and coming out of colleges with this stuff in their heads plus twitter allowing people to express these views and shout at celebrities and companies about it, shaming them into compliance for fear of bad PR, plus the coastal progressives who buy into this stuff (ie: Hollywood). All the young progressive people I know who graduated from university since 2015 were the first ones I heard complaining about all this woke stuff, they got it from school & each other.

Demographic change is also a factor, young POC now have the numbers to shame the white boomers on social media, for better and worse. And then the Republican chuds react to it...badly (electing Trump and DeSantis & repeating FOX News memes). And more reasonable people like Bill Maher are rare because outrage gets more views.

I think some of it is the impatience of younger generations too, they want social change and don't want to wait for it, so they use whatever tactics are necessary. To a degree they're right to not want to wait for slow progress. ie: #MeToo was positive change that should have happened without having to wait for old boomer perverts to die off.

The funny thing is there's a ton of white people ie: white liberals who spent decades fighting alongside POC & women & LGBT for their rights, but when you turn around and start pointing the finger at them just because they're white you lose a lot of them and then they're too busy defending themselves from racist/discriminatory BS rather than helping minorities in their fight. If you can only be an "ally" by buying in to all that BS then there's going to be fights...unless you're the type of bleeding heart self-hating caucasian that just rolls over & takes it up the ass.

And if it becomes "us vs them" & you're putting whitey's back against a wall you're just driving a lot of them over to the Trumpists who wouldn't normally be there because clearly a lot of people who can't be convinced to hate themselves would rather associate with an ideology that doesn't make them feel like shit and protects them from the woke mob rather than hang with the white-guilt brigade.

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog did you read the papers you cited?

[Unthinking Majority]

@wat0n

Please do not be disrespectful.

And again, there is no point asking me questions since you believe me to be a malicious liar. There is no reason to tryst my answers.

Classic sealioning. You are a liar, you're the biggest sealioner i've ever encountered. Get bent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

The sealioner feigns ignorance and politeness while making relentless demands for answers and evidence (while often ignoring or sidestepping any evidence the target has already presented), under the guise of "I'm just trying to have a debate", so that when the target is eventually provoked into an angry response, the sealioner can act as the aggrieved party, and the target presented as closed-minded and unreasonable. It has been described as "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".

There is no way for me to censor you even if I wanted to.

In fact, since the vast majority of all podiums for political discourse will allow white people to put discussion of their feelings before (or instead of) discussing inequality, it is difficult to argue that anyone will be silenced if I point out how white resentment is used to shift debate.

What a crock of shit. You're the king of spinning narratives and twisting intent. You're an extremely manipulative person. Get bent.

Yes, we can live in such a society.

At this point, we do not.

We do not live in a society where everyone is treated fairly. There is racism, and BIPOC people are not treated fairly.

And we also do not live in a society where we can openly discuss such unfair treatment. We even have conservative politicians making it illegal to teach critical race theory, for example.

Aka "I'm just here for equality and justice, tee-tee" and "It's all the other side's fault, my shit don't stink".

Considering the fact that not a single critic of the idea even heard of white resentment to this thread, it is hard to turn around and now claim that white conservatives are being harassed by this label.

Who said anything about "white conservatives"? Unless all white people who do not submit to racial shaming are then by definition "conservative". This is more of the shame-labels. "If you stand up against discrimination and racism against white people, you're not progressive!".

Wokesters have created an entire cache of terms designed to shame an entire race. White fragility, white tears, white privilege, white resentment, whiteness etc.

This whole forum is filled with your hispanic fragility, hispanic tears, and hispanic resentment etcetc. Does that sound racist to you? Because it should.

Also, I would not worry about those non-whites taking their revenge. Even if we all wanted to act like white people have over the last few centuries, we could not, since we would not have the historical and material context that white people enjoyed at the beginning of colonialism.

That hasn't stopped POC in non-white countries before, during, and after European colonialism from engaging in brutal violence, genocides, colonialism, slavery, torture, rape, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and the like. In fact, its in your blood!... FOR SHAME.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Empire

[Pants-of-dog]

I see that there is no more argument.

Have a pleasant evening, gentlemen.

[Rancid]

gentlemen

Excuse me? Why are you assuming my gender?

I sexuality identify as a crocodile. (My son told this to me the other day.. I'm not sure why he had to say "sexually" identify...)


I identify as a grain of salt peter pan-archist - NOFX