This Week in the Mercury
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Portland Today in PDX
Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 9:17 AM
Spotted at NE Failing and Vancouver:
From the website, places where "you notice white privilege in your daily life."
I notice my white privilege when I walk into a cute new coffee shop in an up and coming neighborhood and I feel like I'm part of the crowd.
Reactions by most everyone around me, at work, is I know, some how, I just know, exactly what to do and/or have the answers, while the person of color, my colleague, standing next to me, does not. And, I am the trainee under her!
1
Is this where the discussion has stagnated to? Fucking pull-a-tab fliers about privilege stapled to telephone polls? What recent and/or current college student thought this would be some sort of mind-blowing wake up call to the masses?
2
Thanks for the link! Though I myself am not white, I still identify with the accompanying social & economic effects
And to Graham -- I think that postering around town on telephone poles etc is a pretty common and effective way to disseminate ideas and events to a diverse number of people. From anything from shows and events taking place in town to the assault posters recently seen in the 28th neighborhood, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better way to directly target a huge swath of people.
Dismissing this sort of discourse to strictly "recent and/or current college student"s really limits the effectiveness of the campaign and also suggests a preconception of white privilege that this campaign is aiming to examine.
And to Graham -- I think that postering around town on telephone poles etc is a pretty common and effective way to disseminate ideas and events to a diverse number of people. From anything from shows and events taking place in town to the assault posters recently seen in the 28th neighborhood, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better way to directly target a huge swath of people.
Dismissing this sort of discourse to strictly "recent and/or current college student"s really limits the effectiveness of the campaign and also suggests a preconception of white privilege that this campaign is aiming to examine.
4
@ Michelle
I am not inherently against postering. Fuck, I've put up my fair share of posters. But you do realize that the assault posters that got put up around Hawthorne and 28th were a hoax? Didn't happen. They were creating a false sense of fear and dread in the populace. Hell, that would be a good way of keeping and enforcing male privelege by oppresing the pysche of the female population... but anyways. On to better and funnier aspects of this poster.
Not only is this group annoying, they plagarize:
Relatively famous essay on privelege and the like:
http://mmcisaac.faculty.asu.edu/emc598ge/U…
Scroll down to the "daily effects" list. Number 5 in particular.
So I guess this poster's white privelege is the ability to quote without attribution.
I am not inherently against postering. Fuck, I've put up my fair share of posters. But you do realize that the assault posters that got put up around Hawthorne and 28th were a hoax? Didn't happen. They were creating a false sense of fear and dread in the populace. Hell, that would be a good way of keeping and enforcing male privelege by oppresing the pysche of the female population... but anyways. On to better and funnier aspects of this poster.
Not only is this group annoying, they plagarize:
Relatively famous essay on privelege and the like:
http://mmcisaac.faculty.asu.edu/emc598ge/U…
Scroll down to the "daily effects" list. Number 5 in particular.
So I guess this poster's white privelege is the ability to quote without attribution.
5
Graham, a clarification: From what we've pieced together, the assault posters were not a hoax. Thanks to what amounted to an elaborate, neighborhood-wide game of Telephone, one quite had the facts entirely straight. As far as we've been able to piece together, there's only been on rape, and it went unreported to the police. There was also a woman pulled into a vacant lot at knifepoint (I've got the police report on that one).
6
Amy,
My apologies. In response I would profer this quote:
"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." - Robert Hanlon
My apologies. In response I would profer this quote:
"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." - Robert Hanlon
7
That's one of my favorite quotes, especially when discussing the government.
Re: that ning site, it looks very... unreal. In the "where do you notice white privilege" thread, everyone is responding in complete sentences with no typos, and no one has an avatar. No way, man. Creepy and fake.
Re: that ning site, it looks very... unreal. In the "where do you notice white privilege" thread, everyone is responding in complete sentences with no typos, and no one has an avatar. No way, man. Creepy and fake.
9
Ick. Between the sockpuppetry, the plagiarism, and the graceless good intentions, that website (and its creator) seriously creep me out.
11
I understand my white privilege when I put fliers up encouraging those with European heritage to single out ethnic minorities as examples of the underprivileged and then stumble to explain why this is in any way useful or positive
12
It's amazing what a crazy person with a printer and some masking tape can do these days. Hilarious.
13
Pretty poor execution, partially because the URL is so weird. Good subject matter, though. Clearly inspired by the highly-regarded and much-celebrated essay "The Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy Macintosh. Very likely done by students, since it's taught widely in Colleges & Universities these days. Google it, it's excellent.
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