While that's an interesting view, it's also wrong. It might make for a good way of justifying things in your mind, you should really take a look at the more common definitions of racism to understand why this point of view you have in one held by a minority of people.
Hey, you know what? If every black person sees you and thinks "honkey," you will likely experience hurt feelings, and a slight discomfort when in certain neighborhoods. You probably will stop going to those places. It would be very hard to blame lack of progress in your professional or academic career on this perception. You could go almost your whole life without that perception having any tangible manifestation in your life.
If every white person thinks the N-word when he sees a black person, that fact creates an inescapable environment of hostility where anyone would feel completely helpless to create any sort of positive future for themselves. Of course we don't live in a world where everyone is this blatantly racist. The point of this is to explain to you in a different way why racism is more powerful than just "you exclude people based on race." Some people need environments where they can feel comfortable learning, before they can get up to speed and have the confidence to defend themselves against criticism and hostility.
...you should really take a look at the more common definitions of racism to understand why this point of view you have in one held by a minority of people.
Right. Because letting the majority population define which terms an aggrieved minority can use to describe its own situation is completely sensible. What a surprise, the discriminated minority has a different view of the majority's behaviors than do those in the majority!
> "Right. Because letting the majority population define which terms an aggrieved minority can use to describe its own situation is completely sensible. What a surprise, the discriminated minority has a different view of the majority's behaviors than do those in the majority!"
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Perfectly stated. Seems like the people at BCG are trying to help girls learn to code, with an emphasis on those who are black--because of a range of obstacles that might otherwise prevent these girls from learning.
And let's be honest here: if BCG didn't do this work to encourage black women and girls to code, who would? I see nothing wrong with their desire to encourage black girls to learn more about coding.
>Right. Because letting the majority population define which terms an aggrieved minority can use to describe its own situation is completely sensible. What a surprise, the discriminated minority has a different view of the majority's behaviors than do those in the majority!
Ha! I've had to respond to this "point" more times than I can count and I really like how you put this. I think I'm going to steal this for next time :)
(Sorry, accidental downvote while attempting to select text)
> Not that it changes your overall point, but note that California no longer has a majority population along racial lines.
California still has a very substantial White racial majority (74.0% as of the 2010 census), it just doesn't appear to when people of Hispanic ethnicity are counted as a separate group from their race (non-Hispanic Whites were only 39.7% in the same census), as is frequently done in the US.
It makes sense to divide Hispanic and non-Hispanic White if we are performing this categorization for the purpose of analysing discrimination. This is because traditionally Hispanics have been discriminated against by non-Hispanic Whites. The same could be said for the Irish, or Catholics... but Protestant/Catholic discrimination seems to have simmered down in the US.
Or to put it simply: Does a Hispanic in California currently experience White privilege? If no, then they should be counted separately.
