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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Today in PDX

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 9:17 AM

Spotted at NE Failing and Vancouver:

whiteprivilege.jpg

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!

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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?

Posted by Graham on November 26, 2008 at 9:32 AM | Report this comment

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.

Posted by Michelle on November 26, 2008 at 9:53 AM | Report this comment

Is this part of that "shit white people like" blog?

Posted by Totalnerd on November 26, 2008 at 10:15 AM | Report this comment

@ 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.

Posted by Graham on November 26, 2008 at 10:23 AM | Report this comment

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).

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on November 26, 2008 at 10:35 AM | Report this comment

Amy,

My apologies. In response I would profer this quote:

"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." - Robert Hanlon

Posted by Graham on November 26, 2008 at 10:49 AM | Report this comment

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.

Posted by tk. on November 26, 2008 at 11:07 AM | Report this comment

That is so damn embarrassing.

Posted by applebrownbetty on November 26, 2008 at 11:11 AM | Report this comment

Ick. Between the sockpuppetry, the plagiarism, and the graceless good intentions, that website (and its creator) seriously creep me out.

Posted by A cat on November 26, 2008 at 11:26 AM | Report this comment

Weak, both in concept and execution.

Posted by Freshmaker on November 26, 2008 at 11:56 AM | Report this comment

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

Posted by maalox on November 26, 2008 at 10:39 PM | Report this comment

It's amazing what a crazy person with a printer and some masking tape can do these days. Hilarious.

Posted by Will Radik on November 27, 2008 at 2:53 PM | Report this comment

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.

Posted by Bob_the_janitor on November 28, 2008 at 11:41 PM | Report this comment

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