Universtity of Ontario IT Posts Privilege Awareness Checklist Around Campus - Sensationalist Headlines

[quote]A headline on one side of the poster reads: “Becoming aware of privilege should not be viewed as a burden or source of guilt but rather an opportunity to learn and be responsible so that we may work toward a more just and inclusive world.” On the other side, under a subheading, “Privilege: Unearned access to social power based on membership in a dominant social group,” there is a checklist. The eight boxes include: – able-bodied/physically and mentally – access to education – christian – cisgender – heterosexual – male – native English speaker – Canadian citizen at birth – white ... This poster was on the walls of the campus that is shared by Durham College on Simcoe St. It even has the UOIT banner on the bottom with the kicker saying, “Student Engagement and Equity.” So much for Dr. Martin Luther King’s edict to judge a person not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.[/quote] Source (image of poster is in the source): [URL]http://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-uoit-campus-posters-aim-to-shame-straight-white-christian-men[/URL] :privilege:

[quote]So much for Dr. Martin Luther King’s edict to judge a person not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.[/quote] this article was written by somebody who doesn't actually know what privilege is [quote]If the poster replaced any of the areas addressed with say Muslim or homosexual, Arabic speaking or black or brown, there would be people rightfully calling it inciting hate and calling for hate crime charges.[/quote] That's because these are persecuted minority groups. This article is ridiculous.

First two are reasonable. Not the rest.

i've got male, white, access to education, native english speaker, and able-bodied checked off but i am having trouble on some of the others. anyone got an FAQ for this quest? i can probably cheese heterosexual and cisgender but how do i get christian? i haven't even started on that guild questline and i think it is kind of bullshit they make it a requirement for this one, and don't even get me started on canadian citizenship, absolute shite they have requirements tied to what server region you're on

The Christian one is a little weird, but other than that it seems like a perfectly okay thing to have around

[QUOTE=SIRIUS;53184492]The Christian one is a little weird, but other than that it seems like a perfectly okay thing to have around[/QUOTE] It's in Canada and there's a lot of Christians in Canada.

[QUOTE=_RJ_;53184494]It's in Canada and there's a lot of Christians in Canada.[/QUOTE] I guess, but anyone can technically choose to be Christian

Pathetic children is all they amount to. Divisiveness for the sake of being divisive. These people have no substance to them, it's just buying into an ideology and making it their whole life. I love (hate) interacting with people like this at university. I'm glad they're being put to the flame though. No one is listening to them. It's repackaged original sin from Catholicism just minus the actual religious aspects. But they treat it like a religion. Of course I'm talking generally here. [t]https://puu.sh/zCNlQ/a7128d6c5b.jpg[/t]

I like how they explained the concept of privilege as benignly as possible and people still gave them a bunch of shit for it. Like if this is the worst thing you can find going on with the "left" in universities either it's not that bad or you're not looking hard enough?

Isn't the Toronto Sun a tabloid?

[QUOTE=Helix Snake;53184570]I like how they explained the concept of privilege as benignly as possible and people still gave them a bunch of shit for it. Like if this is the worst thing you can find going on with the "left" in universities either it's not that bad or you're not looking hard enough?[/QUOTE] They're literally just seemingly advocating for awareness of it too? Like they're doing well by not saying you're a bad person for having "privilege", which is true. Just trying to say "hey, these are all the subtle things you can be discriminated against". Facepunch is kinda weird about this concept though. [quote]Becoming aware of privilege should not be viewed as a burden or source of guilt but rather an opportunity to learn and be responsible so that we may work toward a more just and inclusive world.[/quote] Like this is really a pretty good quote and gets the point across: people coming at it as "omg feel guilty/bad about having privilege!" are the fucking worst because they scream the (abso-fucking-lutely) loudest and misrepresent the point. Its nice to see a university pulling off calm, coherent, and grounded discussion of a fairly complex and difficult topic tbh

[QUOTE=Lambeth;53184576]Isn't the Toronto Sun a tabloid?[/QUOTE] It's shit tier ya. No better than The Sun in the UK.

How are any of those things a privilege? Most of them are just normal things depending on who your parents are and where you're born. They're a privilege to what? [I]Shit hole[/I] countries that can't get their shit together?

[QUOTE=chocolatedrop;53184646]How are any of those things a privilege? Most of them are just normal things depending on who your parents are and where you're born. They're a privilege to what? [I]Shit hole[/I] countries that can't get their shit together?[/QUOTE] Privilege doesn't mean rarity

[QUOTE=chocolatedrop;53184646]How are any of those things a privilege? Most of them are just normal things depending on who your parents are and where you're born. They're a privilege to what? [I]Shit hole[/I] countries that can't get their shit together?[/QUOTE] You say that as if the US hasn't spent the last several decades documenting racism in various police departments. Of course, given the snide trump reference, I doubt you recognize that either.

[QUOTE=chocolatedrop;53184646]How are any of those things a privilege? Most of them are just normal things depending on who your parents are and where you're born. They're a privilege to what? [I]Shit hole[/I] countries that can't get their shit together?[/QUOTE] You can't see how different your life would be if you were physically and or mentally handicapped?

[QUOTE=God of Ashes;53184489] That's because these are persecuted minority groups.[/QUOTE] Who is persecuting everyone but the listed "groups"? Was there a crusade or canadian totalitarian revolution i missed? Or is this predicated on the notion of Derrida's idea of social power games played by collective groups against each other, using his idea of "exclusion" and "marginalization" as a mean of oppression, like the rest of this identitarian nonsense. Chewed up and regurgitated out in flowery language by the apex sophists like bell hooks. Given that our prime minister is a proselytizing self described intersectional feminmist, there's a distinct lack of jack booted thugs walking down the streets and that the poster itself uses the words "unearned social power", i'm going with the latter. I do not have access to "unearned social power" or indeed any "social power" for being white. And i'm not tryanically oppressed by the heteronormitive realities of biological life for being gay. And i refuse the notion of collectivist group based reasoning altogether. There is only one basis upon which to judge people, and that is on the basis of the individual. Nothing else works, and nothing else is a better method for attaining peace and co-existant between these hypothetical groups to begin with.

[QUOTE=Trilby Harlow;53184695]Who is persecuting everyone but the listed "groups"? Was there a crusade or canadian totalitarian revolution i missed? Or is this predicated on the notion of Derrida's idea of social power games played by collective groups against each other, using his idea of "exclusion" and "marginalization" as a mean of oppression, like the rest of this identitarian nonsense. Chewed up and regurgitated out in flowery language by the apex sophists like bell hooks.[/QUOTE] There is a long history of Canada deliberately fucking over natives in the name of white/European supremacy for one thing.

[QUOTE=Lambeth;53184712]There is a long history of Canada deliberately fucking over natives in the name of white/European supremacy for one thing.[/QUOTE] and that's over now, and we're doing our damndest to make up for it. What's your point? You can't carry over the sins of others through class guilt in perpetuity. And moreover, when would it be enough? What end state would be a satisfactory limit for one group of people who have inherited guilt for the actions of other people associated by hypothetical racial/group class acting in penitence to another group of hypothetically wronged people, claiming victim status on behalf of their own ancestors? You can play that game infinitely, which is why it's an absurd non starter to begin with. All you can do is agree that it was wrong, address and compensate those specific individuals who were directly affected and work to prevent things like that from ever happening again. Not keep acting as if any of the groups in question are all a homogeneous borg like hivemind that's one entity that transcends it's constituent individuals through time in perpetuity. It's an absurdity, and a dangerous one at that.

[QUOTE=Trilby Harlow;53184736]and that's over now, and we're doing our damndest to make up for it. What's your point? You can't carry over the sins of others through class guilt in perpetuity. And moreover, when would it be enough? What end state would be a satisfactory limit for one group of people who have inherited guilt for the actions of other people associated by hypothetical racial/group class acting in penitence for another group of hypothetically wronged people, claiming victim status on behalf of their own anscestors? You can play that game infinitely, which is why it's an absurd non starter to begin with. All you can do is agree that it was wrong, address those individuals who were directly affected and work to prevent things like that from ever happening again[/QUOTE] Unfortunately ages of discrimination, segregation and attempted cultural annihilation don't just go away in one generation. Indigenous communities are still being fucked over from the decades of attempts to smother them out, as seen by so many of them lacking proper infrastructure or having issues with water that shouldn't be acceptable in a first-world country. Especially in cultural aspects, with residential schools scaring people into being ashamed of their native culture, it's very easy for that shame mentality to passed down onto their kids and so on.

Being a native English speaker means you're statistically more likely to ONLY speak English. So how does speaking FEWER languages than someone else make you MORE privileged?

[QUOTE=Sumap;53184745]Unfortunately ages of discrimination, segregation and attempted cultural annihilation don't just go away in one generation. Indigenous communities are still being fucked over from the decades of attempts to smother them out, as seen by so many of them lacking proper infrastructure or having issues with water that shouldn't be acceptable in a first-world country. Especially in cultural aspects, with residential schools scaring people into being ashamed of their native culture, it's very easy for that shame mentality to passed down onto their kids and so on.[/QUOTE] See i know a lot about this. That's mostly to do with the corruption of the local leaders who're in charge of the money the goverment sends. If we're thinking of the same event, there's been more than a few times where some remote tribe will make a request for funds to build infastructure (running water, sewage, power etc), and the board will send them the money. But whoever's in charge of the money locally, usually the chief, will simply embezzle some or all of the money. And if the job gets started at all, it'll either be done poorly by cheap outside contractors or not at all, so the people still don't have that infrastructure. They'll then complain to the board that money didn't come, or more often, that it wasn't enough, and so the board will send more money, and that money disappears and on it goes. We dump so much money into that system it's absurd. For example, until her recent retirement, my aunt was the accountant for one of the local reservations in the interior, and she has all sorts of stories and numbers about this sort of thing. The reservation system is so cushy it gets to the point where rather than go to the store a few kilometers down the road, or go out with a chainsaw and an axe to make firewood, they'll strip the siding off their goverment funded housing, and burn it in the fireplace, knowing that after they make a call, a man will be sent around within the month to replace the siding. We're so generous, that we have a situation where some individuals (and not particularly uncommonly) would rather burn parts of their own house and let the goverment pay for the people, labor and materials to come and repair their housing, than simply go outside with a chainsaw and make firewood. And yet somehow the same government that would do that, is also simultaneously attempting a soft genocide, or "attempted cultural annihilation"? Why would we assume willful oppression of these people by the goverment when it's much more satisfactory explained by local corruption? The residential schools were a crime, make no mistake. But in contemporary times, we as a country have nothing to be collectively guilty for. And certainly nothing on the scale of an attempted slow genocide, or "smoothering out" of these people.

People immediately get mad when they hear about their privilege now because it has been popularly portrayed as a burden or in a demanding fashion. "These people want you to give them YOUR money!" That's how I looked at it for a while anyway. Maybe I do benefit from some of these listed characteristics. Maybe I don't. Such general descriptors obviously leave room for exceptions. Either way, giving to those in less fortunate positions is not a bad idea. Not required, but not a bad idea at all. The way certain individuals portray the subject should not distract from that important point.

[QUOTE=Dirty_Ape;53184753]Being a native English speaker means you're statistically more likely to ONLY speak English. So how does speaking FEWER languages than someone else make you MORE privileged?[/QUOTE] Depending on the main language of the area in question it gives you an inherent advantage over non-native speakers. Sure there's plenty of people who speak the language as a secondary or whatever really well, but that's not true of all non-native speakers. Privilege isn't a particularly hard concept to grasp, it's a set of advantages that a typical person has in a given environment that they likely had very little control over. Outside of some Internet loons who actually mean nothing (so stop paying attention to them?) most people who understand privilege don't expect people to change their lives in light of it, just to be aware that others who lack certain things (being a non-native speaker of the primary language, etc.) have some inherent disadvantages in society. So there's no point telling a disabled person they don't try hard enough or whatever when they're at an inherent disadvantage, understand that while you may fall into a job easily someone with an "ethnic" sounding name may not. Basically boils down to; don't be an asshole to people who don't fit in with the norm.

[QUOTE=Trilby Harlow;53184736]and that's over now, and we're doing our damndest to make up for it. What's your point? You can't carry over the sins of others through class guilt in perpetuity. And moreover, when would it be enough? What end state would be a satisfactory limit for one group of people who have inherited guilt for the actions of other people associated by hypothetical racial/group class acting in penitence to another group of hypothetically wronged people, claiming victim status on behalf of their own ancestors? You can play that game infinitely, which is why it's an absurd non starter to begin with. All you can do is agree that it was wrong, address and compensate those specific individuals who were directly affected and work to prevent things like that from ever happening again. Not keep acting as if any of the groups in question are all a homogeneous borg like hivemind that's one entity that transcends it's constituent individuals through time in perpetuity. It's an absurdity, and a dangerous one at that.[/QUOTE] Over now??? Ya joking bud?

[QUOTE=Sumap;53184745]Unfortunately ages of discrimination, segregation and attempted cultural annihilation don't just go away in one generation. Indigenous communities are still being fucked over from the decades of attempts to smother them out, as seen by so many of them lacking proper infrastructure or having issues with water that shouldn't be acceptable in a first-world country. Especially in cultural aspects, with residential schools scaring people into being ashamed of their native culture, it's very easy for that shame mentality to passed down onto their kids and so on.[/QUOTE] The issue is SO much more complicated than just "White people are mean to the native population". At one time, it probably was that simple, maybe well over a hundred years ago. it is not that simple anymore, if it ever actually was. The reservations aren't something white people force natives to live on. They choose to live there. The reservations I've been to are not nice places, so, why do they choose to stay there? Well, as long as they do, they get to be part of the tribe, claim assistance, and essentially exist for free in a way I can't fathom being able to do. There's also the issue of corruption. Last year there was a story of a local chief getting a million dollars to split with the tribe, but because the government and us whities can't have any say in how that money is divided, spent, or used, he quite literally ran off with a million dollars to go do whatever the fuck HE wanted. The manner in which natives are treated is abhorrent, from out and out racism, to more subtle forms that are also used, like treating them like fragile children that need to be watched and cared for. Canada's not a great place to be a native in, but part of that is because we've let them have this land, and space because we feel "guilty" and let them absolutely destroy themselves and their communities in it? It's not all the fault of the country, or government. They play a role in their own destiny as well, and they've not historically tried to take care of their own.

If you acknowledge the residential schools exist you gotta admit that some people are more privileged than others. I'm sorry you're a social justice warrior now.

The past doesn't exist in a vacuum from the present. The environments people are raised and live in today are directly linked to past generations and events. That's where a lot of privilege can be seen

I'm fully on board with privilege. It's a real thing that matters a whole lot. The part I disagree with is that it almost never has much to do with your inherent characteristics (like race, gender, etc. The one obvious exceptions are mental and physical disorders) and instead has a ton to do with your external social characteristics. For example, did you grow up in a stable home? If yes, then you probably have the single biggest privilege imaginable. The same goes for growing up in a safe neighborhood, or growing up with parents who value education, etc. Other issues also arise when you start to argue for social consequences of having certain privileges.

[QUOTE=sgman91;53184825]I'm fully on board with privilege. It's a real thing that matters a whole lot. The part I disagree with is that it almost never has much to do with your inherent characteristics (like race, gender, etc. The one obvious exceptions are mental and physical disorders) and instead has a ton to do with your external social characteristics. For example, did you grow up in a stable home? If yes, then you probably have the single biggest privilege imaginable. The same goes for growing up in a safe neighborhood, or growing up with parents who value education, etc. Other issues also arise when you start to argue for social consequences of having certain privileges.[/QUOTE] Also: does the government literally have it out for you