getting woke and SL

[FairreLilette]

29 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Yes, they will have more control of where the profits go...to the top cronies and not to the less-wealthy who actually need an income boost.

Well, I come from an area where I want to look at this idea of the U.S. Postal Service going private and issuing stock as perhaps a way they can somehow bring about better shipping prices so hear me out as a "little person" with an online business.  

It's not the prices for letters for example that are too expensive; it's the packages.  

I've shared I worked and had an Ebay business starting back in the 1990's when Ebay was just beginning and even before Paypal was invented.   The price to ship in the United States was so low, we could offer free shipping.  Most of us offered free shipping.  I did; many others too.  The people who listed crazy shipping prices on Ebay, their auctions were over-looked as though they were trying to scam with high shipping prices which those sellers were.  

Now, when I shop on Ebay, the shipping in the United States is extremely high.   I have passed over many items because the shipping was too high.

Amazon offers free shipping on orders of $25 dollars or more.  But, Amazon is more a corporate online business and nothing like Ebay which is the little people and individual sellers.  Amazon has warehouses full of stuff and is more like Overstock.com.  

With coronavirus a lot more companies will be going online business only I've read and we do need better shipping prices.  The shipping prices are making me NOT want to purchase at least 50% of the items online and especially on Ebay - the shipping prices are like highway robbery.  

So, an over-haul is needed somewhere, I just don't know where yet.  

Edited July 5, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Luna Bliss]

18 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

So, an over-haul is needed somewhere, I just don't know where yet.  

I hear you....I was shocked at how much it costs to mail anything these days when I mailed a few items left at my house over Xmas to my family in SF. The charge was more than the value of what was inside the box!  I think it wasn't UPS though..

I can only imagine it's going to get worse though as oil/gas problems increase.  I suspect we will  increasingly become localized in the decades to come, as transporting goods via trucks and planes won't be feasible.

* But regarding privatization,  I think privatization makes most goods and services more expensive. As an example, take the medical industry here -- we pay far more for these privatized services than in other countries where the medical industry is not as privatized.

Edited July 5, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[FairreLilette]

16 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I hear you....I was shocked at how much it costs to mail anything these days when I mailed a few items left at my house over Xmas to my family in SF. The charge was more than the value of what was inside the box!  I think it wasn't UPS though..

I can only imagine it's going to get worse though as oil/gas problems increase.  I suspect we will  increasingly become localized in the decades to come, as transporting goods via trucks and planes won't be feasible.

* But regarding privatization,  I think privatization makes most goods and services more expensive. As an example, take the medical industry here -- we pay far more for these privatized services than in other countries where the medical industry is not as privatized.

I know how much the shipping is.  I cannot offer free shipping like I used nor do I even want to have an Ebay business anymore because the shipping is too much money.

So, yeah, I should have said the whole of shipping needs an over-haul.  Amazon is corporate, they can buy contracts or whatever they do.  

I'd assume the Republican view is having more competition will make better prices, although that is a business ideal also regarding having to beat your competitors.  

Would it work in bringing prices down IF the market were more competitive?   I don't know.  But, I won't be having an online business any time soon.  I always offered free shipping.  Always.   But, with the prices of shipping, I couldn't offer free shipping anymore.  So, most things on Ebay that get the business are those shipping from China which is extremely cheap.   But, dam some of these shipping prices to ship one item is nearly $30 dollars.  There is no way I am paying $30 dollars to ship one item.  

So, there are real problems here.  But, I cannot solve them.  It's seems we had run-away inflation or something.  

 

[FairreLilette]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

"It turns out, white privilege may endure not because white Americans uniformly hold racist beliefs about others, but more likely is based on their beliefs about themselves. When people are "faced with evidence that their group benefits from privilege," the study's authors write, they not only fail to take responsibility for such benefits, but find those claims "threatening" and even "claim hardships to manage this threat." Essentially, white people may accept that "group-level inequity" exists but deny that they personally benefit from that privilege in order to protect their own self-conception."

I posted the definitions of privilege.  One of the definitions is "immunity".  

So, I'm wondering if the whole of white-skinned people are immune.  Well, we know they/we/me are not immune to discrimination; i.e. women, or even over-weight people as one person brought up in this thread, nor are white people immune from being severely damaged or even killed at the hands of the police.  So, I'm not so sure 'privilege' is the correct wording.

I'd say there is definite "police privilege" and maybe even "white police privilege" as far as immunity in that the police have something called qualified immunity.  But, the "white police privilege" definitely needs to be addressed as it's, to me, a sickness which has had sheltering with it's qualified immunity.  

I can relate more to the term "white favoritism".  I would definitely say there is white favoritism in this country even still today and in the courts of justice too.  

This is a "just saying" type of post.  

But, are you/we/me so sure the term "white privilege" doesn't come from money if you read the definitions carefully below?  It's been said the white wealthy can pay off a crime and not do time.  Just pay and go free for the white wealthy.  

 

PRIVILEGE

a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most:the privileges of the very rich.

 

a special right, immunity, or exemption granted to persons in authority or office to free them from certain obligations or liabilities:the privilege of a senator to speak in Congress without danger of a libel suit.

 

a grant to an individual, corporation, etc., of a special right or immunity, under certain conditions.

the principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities.

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Pussycat Catnap]

44 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

I posted the definitions of privilege.  One of the definitions is "immunity".  

PRIVILEGE

a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most:the privileges of the very rich.

 

a special right, immunity, or exemption granted to persons in authority or office to free them from certain obligations or liabilities:the privilege of a senator to speak in Congress without danger of a libel suit.

 

a grant to an individual, corporation, etc., of a special right or immunity, under certain conditions.

the principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities.

 

You should read these things as a gestault - the sum of the parts into a whole - not try to break them to find individual elements that are not 'perfect fits 100% of the time".

If you look at things at a larger systemic level, that's the way to look at well... systemic racism.

Sure there are individual white people who might get arrested because they were white and no other reason at all period full stop - but it's not a daily occurrence (*), sure there are white women that have been raped by black men - but statistics note it's so rare that at a societal level it doesn't exist, but something like 1/3 of black women have been raped, assaulted, groped, or molested across race lines (and well over 90% of white DNA in black people comes from paternal lines, while a like amount of black DNA in white people comes from maternal lines).

Sure you could probably find a white person who was denied a home loan, denied a job, denied their GI Bill, denied a student loan, denied their voting rights, given a 10-year felony for smoking pot, given a 10-year felony because someone ELSE bought drugs and then claimed it was a gift for them even though the two were not even in the same city at the time (Buju Banton's case), lynched because a random black woman said they winked at her, and so on...

- Somewhere in the past 500 years you might find some examples of these things happening to whites. But I suspect you won't find many.

But we can find thousands of them that have happened to blacks, and are still happening to this day.

 

And that is where 'immunity' comes in... at a systemic, ie societal level.

 

(*) And if we do want to focus back at the individual level, one of the black men that was shot unarmed had that year been given over 400 traffic tickets in a single year, almost none of them valid on posthumous review: X --- Y --- Z. He lived at black community X, Y was a white community, Z was his job. Every day, often multiple times on the same trip, he was arrested while trying to pass through Y. It turned out that was an almost normal fact pattern for several people in his community, and almost all of them who had to go through Y had some level of arrests.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, FairreLilette said:

PRIVILEGE

White privilege. There's a grocery store not far from my house and I enjoy a privilege that a Black person simply does not have when walking to that store for groceries. A Black person, more so a Black man, would more likely be viewed at a threat walking through my predominately White neighborhood on the way to procuring a few groceries for dinner. Someone might imagine that a Black person was casing houses for a burglary, or that he had already committed a crime in the area (as was the case with Trayvon Martin), simply because Blacks are more often viewed as criminals. So I have a tremendous privilege as a White person - the privilege of walking on a city street and not worrying if someone will report me to the police or shoot me.

Definition of privilege

 : a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor

I have much more immunity (the state of not being susceptible) to the possibility of being harmed as a White person compared to a Black man who is walking while Black. This greater immunity I enjoy, this greater protection, is my privilege.

Edited July 5, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[FairreLilette]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Definition of privilege

 : a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor

I have much more immunity (the state of not being susceptible) to the possibility of being harmed as a White person compared to a Black man who is walking while Black. This greater immunity I enjoy, this greater protection, is my privilege.

Some of this sounds as though it comes from "the good old boys" white network to me though this idea of immunity and privilege.  The immunity and peculiar benefit and favor part especially.  It's just made me wonder.  The white wealthy have built networks to remain immune through their money.  Did this white money build systemic racism?  

But, I do understand it on the systemic level as I had shared the story of a Black man I know wherein he lost his keys at night and went walking around to look for the keys and was hassled by the police.  The police were assuming he was a drug dealer.  The ironic thing is he is a drug counselor (someone who helps a person get off of drugs).   I'd assume a white man walking around at night looking for his keys wouldn't be so "profiled" in the same way.

Now, I have to take myself and put myself in the situation of a Black man walking at night and a White man walking at night and how I might feel or what I might assume.   I living in a multi-cultural neighborhood.  We have all colors and ethnicity here, even some exotic such as Israeli, Iranian, Armenian, and even some Asians.  Though it's predominantly a white/black/Hispanic neighborhood.   And, I'm just putting white there first because that's my skin color.  I'm not sure how I would feel as I almost never walk around at night by myself but during the day it would be nothing at all as I'd see all colors of people.  I probably wouldn't care one way or the other unless the person was getting close to me and it was deserted except for me and a man.  I might be a little uncomfortable about it being a man and me alone out on the street but most likely not because we have security guards in the area and nearby anyways too.  

I wanted to say something though.  I never knew Black people were denied their rights as citizens with the GI Bill and other things that occurred in the 20th Century such as sterilization of native women.  It's sickening.   And, what's even more sickening is our United States Constitution states "all men are created equal".  I don't know why they wrote that when they treated other people as slaves and other people so cruelly.  I don't know what they were thinking, so I did not celebrate the 4th of July yesterday.  

Edited July 5, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Pussycat Catnap]

Go on a racist tirade in some places now and... even if they can't find enough evidence in what you do there to arrest you, they're gonna make sure to get you a full 'black-over' and go through everything they can about you until they find "something":

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Woman-who-went-on-anti-Asian-tirades-in-15386561.php

- And everyone has something they did. Laws historically written to let police harass black people mean that it's technically impossible to step outside of your home in the USA without violating a dozen laws... just most people never get arrested for any of it...

But we can always flip who those laws get aimed, and go after racists with the very tools the once built. 😉

Quote

The confrontation occurred at Del Amo Fashion Center mall in Torrance, at which police allege that Hernandez, a retired social worker from Long Beach, verbally assaulted a custodian and struck another person who tried to intervene. Detectives had been investigating the alleged incident in addition to the two park incidents in June.

- in other words, once homegirl got on camera in June, and they realized they couldn't charge her, they went back to a complaint from 2019 to see if there was anything there they COULD charge. and now she's set to appear in court in a case of sweet justice.

Mind you here she's getting charged with assault, which is more than the usual 'shot by the police for crossing the street at the wrong angle in the intersection' that usually happens to black folk. But it's a start - the use their very race-based justice system to take things down.

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Akane Nacht]

13 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

So standing by what you said related to Chinese Privilege not being a reality in your country means you believe there is no prejudice there, no valid grievance by the 25% of minorities (Indian, Malay, and others) who are not Chinese, and that this movement by those claiming there is any kind "Chinese Privilege" enjoyed by the 75% majority is pretty much crazy?

I found a good article by Sangeetha Thanapal, the young Indian woman who first brought up the notion of Chinese Privilege in Singapore. In it she claims "We constantly think about and cater to Chinese people, as they have institutionalized power."
https://www.boundary2.org/2015/03/chinese-privilege-gender-and-intersectionality-in-singapore-a-conversation-between-adeline-koh-and-sangeetha-thanapal/#twelfth

Thanapal says:
"I define Chinese privilege similarly as White privilege, again by analogy rather than wholesale transference of one distinct historical context to another. White privilege is invisible and normal to those who have it, which makes it hard to discuss because people rarely see how they are being privileged. It goes beyond advantages people enjoy because of their race. It is also the unearned power the system confers by virtue of your race alone. It is a set of institutional benefits, with greater access to power and resources and opportunity, that are closed off to those who do not have it. In the same vein, these advantages are bestowed upon Chinese Singaporeans, regardless of any other intersectional identity they carry. By virtue of being Chinese in Singapore, they start life on a higher place in the scale as compared to minorities. They are the beneficiaries of a system of racial superiority, which is why when I talk about the country I call it a Chinese Supremacist state."

Another author claims Chinese Privilege is a more recent creation, and speaks of the PAP government, a center-right government run primarily by the Chinese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Action_Party 

Referring to Chinese Privilege in Singapore Saharudin says:
"Its inception can be located from the late 1970s onwards, when the party sought to ‘re-Asianise’ Singapore. This agenda shift has been attributed to several issues: the PAP’s fear of ‘Westernisation’, its then ‘poor’ electoral performances, and Lee Kuan Yew’s newfound appreciation for Confucianism and the Mandarin language. Other factors include the political demise of left-wing Chinese-educated groups and the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping’s China.

This period of ‘Asianisation’ saw the PAP-government promote a self-fashioned form of ‘Chineseness’ via policies that, intentionally or not, favoured, privileged, and valorised Chinese-Singaporeans. According to distinguished scholars like Lily Zubaidah Rahim, Michael Barr, and Terence Chong, state-sanctioned ‘Chineseness’ emphasised paternalism, elitism, apoliticism, fluency in Mandarin, a deference to authority, and the Confucian Junzi ideal (one whose ‘humane’, ‘benevolent’, and ‘righteous’ conduct makes them exemplary).

To cultivate such values, the PAP-government launched the Special Assistance Plan in 1979, turning Chinese-medium schools into well-funded, elite monocultural institutions. Yet, special aid did not extend to Malay- and Tamil-stream schools. Moreover, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, numerous Confucianist-oriented campaigns were championed nation-wide, like ‘Speak Mandarin’, ‘Confucian Ethics’, ‘Asian Values’, and ‘Shared Values’. This left little space for non-Chinese voices and narratives."

https://www.newmandala.org/brief-history-chinese-privilege-singapore/

Anyway, I'm not totally sure what to make of all this, in terms of comparisons between the US and Singapore. It certainly seems like minority people experience quite a lot of disadvantage in Singapore, but it has never reached the severe form as in the US where we fought a war over the right to enslave minorities and erected statues to commemorate our supposed victory over them. How it all plays out in today's terms though, could be very similar.

There is a saying I heard once: Those who are not liberal in their youth have no heart, and those who are not conservative in their maturity have no brain.

People are free to believe what they like in Singapore, but if they stir discord on race and religion, they will be explaining themselves to the police.

I am a minority in Singapore, and in my 50s. And I think this person you cited is suffering mainly from youth and an excess of idleness. She can thank people like me and my family who made Singapore a more tolerant society so she is free to indulge in her ideas. Let's hope she recovers some sense as she grows older.

ps. I googled this person. Apparently she was given a warning by police last year. Also she doesn't live in Singapore anymore. 😂

Edited July 6, 2020 by Akane Nacht
speling prblem :p

[Akane Nacht]

13 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Another author claims Chinese Privilege is a more recent creation, and speaks of the PAP government, a center-right government run primarily by the Chinese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Action_Party 

I forgot to address the part where you get into politics. If you want to understand that, here is a good interview to watch:

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

[LiberaLibera]

What Will Happen When Your Mom Finds Out You Joined #AntifaTerrorists

 

 

 

[LiberaLibera]

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/06/us/children-killed-holiday-weekend/index.html

[LiberaLibera]

https://educationblogit.blogspot.com/2020/07/atlanta-turns-on-blm-after-protesters.html

[LiberaLibera]

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

[Luna Bliss]

Christopher Columbus is now missing his head in several locations:

 

[Luna Bliss]

18 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

I forgot to address the part where you get into politics. If you want to understand that, here is a good interview to watch:

I am pondering the Singapore system, comparing it to how the US operates too...

[Pussycat Catnap]

7 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Christopher Columbus is now missing his head in several locations:

 

Quotes from Columbus:

Quote

While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.

Quote

"There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid."

 

Not sure who wrote this report, but it's motive specifically to behead Columbus status:

Quote

"exhausted Indian carriers, chained by the neck, whose heads the Spaniards severed from their bodies so they might not have to stop to untie them."

 

And written by a priest who came with Columbus to Cuba:

Quote

Endless testimonies . .. prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy…

And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them head first against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!” Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, “Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them….

 

So Columbus can F-off.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Luna Bliss]

@FairreLilette

This video answers some of the questions we have pondered about lately regarding how institutionalized racism began.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnV4QgbiF5Y&t=261s

In the early days Blacks (brought over via slave ships) and the poor from England were more like indentured servants who would earn freedom after working a set period of time, along with resources like a plot of land. Records show some free Blacks prospering in early years, owning hundreds of acres of land and even owning slaves themselves. Increasing restrictions occurred through the decades however.  Servants of African origin were oftentimes forced to continue working after the end of their contract, and in 1640 a Virginia court sentenced rebellious servant John Punch to a lifetime of slavery. With fewer white indentured servants arriving from England, a racial caste system developed and African servants were increasingly held for life. In 1662, a Virginia court ruled that children born to enslaved mothers were the property of the mother’s owner.

By 1705, any ambiguity about the status of blacks – free, indentured, enslaved – was clarified by a series of so-called racial integrity laws that institutionalized white supremacy.

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

[Akane Nacht]

57 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

 

Nice video. Love their closing comments.

[Pussycat Catnap]

33 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

Nice video. Love their closing comments.

That video is essentially people like me in many regards - save that as a gen-x (born in the early 70s) I grew up in a time when being mixed was dramatically less accepted in the USA. One of the things that pushes me toward my Latin American side and even made it easier to exist around Chicanos and Mexicans is that mixed is something that has been a norm in Latin America since the birth of Cortez' first son Martín.

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap