An anthropologist explains white privilege: what it is & does

Summary: Anthropologist Maximilian Forte explains white privilege, one of the hot button issues of today’s America. The concept has swept America. Where did it come from? Is it helping or hurting America?

Hello! My Name is Straight White Privilege

Privilege: White, American, or Imperial?

By Maximilian C. Forte
From Zero Anthropology, 7 January 2018.

Reposted with his generous permission.

To the extent that “white privilege” continues to exist in the US, is it the highest form of privilege? How might a focus on domestic race relations misdirect us from an examination of US society in its proper geopolitical context?

Related to the last question: is this introverted, America-centric focus itself a sign of “American privilege”? In practice today the tendency that is frequently exhibited in saying “check your privilege,” is to personalize, to reduce to the level of inter-personal rhetorical tactics what originally pertained to a large-scale, structural phenomenon — that existed over, above, and against the mere attitudes and utterances of individual agency. That is what gave the concept some power, because it referenced inequality that persisted despite what any individuals might do or wish.

The rhetorical tactic of personalization, however, becomes counterproductive when it is used for inter-personal goal scoring rather than doing anything concrete to attain fundamental social and cultural change. However, beyond this, would an account of “white privilege” be sufficient to explain or understand US dominance? Would it paint an accurate picture of social relations in the US? Marxists would generally scoff at the notion of social stratification driven by race rather than the economic system of material production. But would a conceptualization of “American privilege” fare any better?

Got white privilege?

Check Your White Privilege?

The concept of “white privilege” is a prominent one in American academia. A search for the phrase in Google Books yields 105,000 results, which suggests this is also a profitable concept supported by publishers. Raised to the level of canonical knowledge it has been institutionalized in some quarters: taught to school children in Ontario for example. By now, many readers will have encountered the colloquial phrase, “check your white privilege”. (How one is supposed to go about “checking” this privilege remains unclear, nor is it clear what will be achieved by “checking” it. And is the “checking” meant to be an act of examination, or one that counters such privilege? In all honesty I often find American grammar to be baffling.)

There is considerable debate around the concept in the US, and a significant amount of criticism, both in academia and public commentary. Four of the features that concern me the most about how US white privilege has usually been conceptualized are…

  1. that it is rooted in a long-term continuity that approximates stasis;
  2. benefits and entitlements take centre stage in what is ostensibly invidious competition;
  3. it emphasizes race above all other social cleavages; and, following from the last point,
  4. it melts social class divisions.

Clearly much of the inspiration for the concept is derived from an understanding that the formal end of slavery in the US, as elsewhere, did not result in a termination of racism, both of the everyday and institutional kind. This is a useful reminder not to confuse de jure with de facto change — not to assume that changing laws automatically results in changing cultures or customs, which would be a great lesson for neoliberal cultural imperialists to finally learn. The historical origins of the concept are also a valuable reminder that, in the US, what is now criticized as identity politics originated as largely a white-dominated affair before the civil rights movement.

The critique of white privilege is an understandable reaction to that system of identity politics that had all blacks drinking from separate water fountains, sitting at the back of the bus, and that kept them away from ballot boxes. That so much public commentary seems to forget this history of identity politics, may be due to the unconscious tendency to place blacks in the category of “race” and “identity,” while whites alone occupy (upper) class positions.

The four features listed above also point to some of the main problems with US theories of white privilege, a list that grows longer as you keep reading this article. One might think, if you subscribe to the concept, that the whole point of racism is just to produce racial inequality, not capital accumulation. The concept suggests an understanding of privilege, but then loses sight of privilege’s sources and purposes. It is difficult to think of when and where identity politics were not first and foremost the creation of the dominant class, since this class had the power to make identities stick and institute them as political objects to begin with. However, race has dominated over class in US academia since the 19th-century. Thanks in part to the sterilizing effects of the last Cold War, Marxist class analysis is a latecomer to US campuses, a relative novice in fact. Thanks to the sterilizing effects of the new Cold War, class is once again the target of a campaign from all sides of the political spectrum, primarily targeted by neoliberals and their new left allies.

We apparently also need to be reminded of how identity politics and divide-and-rule are almost synonymous. As with colonial rule abroad, divide-and-rule also has a domestic function, which is to discipline the working class by erecting a hierarchy among the dominated classes. However, one of the most counterintuitive contentions behind the white privilege idea is that one can somehow be powerless and yet privileged at the same time. Where is the privilege in being discriminated against as “white trash”? What constitutes a privileged “hillbilly”? If there is “white privilege,” then those non-college educated working class whites, living shorter lives than their parents, must be personally responsible for their own misery.

Besides being a form of victim-blaming, prized among neoliberals, the “white privilege” concept air brushes capitalism from the picture. Even more questionable would be any conspiratorial assumptions that somehow whites entered into a secret pact to share everything among themselves, a notion that was famously lampooned by Eddie Murphy in a “mockumentary” on Saturday Night Live (when it still pretended to offer comedy). As the concept exited from academia and became a commonplace term in social media, it has generally tended to tilt closer to the version mocked by Murphy.

Analysis reduced to caricatures has been turned into a blunt instrument. Now white liberals can disingenuously accuse other whites over their unacknowledged “white privilege,” often used to shame the white members of the working class that were once the base of the Democratic Party. This was before that party underwent neoliberal structural adjustment, after which the emphasis was on individual“human rights,” on superficial and token (low cost) social reformism that favoured minorities, on rendering American workers disposable and replaceable, and breaking class itself down into competing status groups. Now even arch neoconservatives, proud imperialists, and war-mongers like Max Boot can virtue signal about white male privilege — as evidenced by his recent fake conversion, an expression of an abysmally dishonest moral narcissism that is exploited for petty anti-Trump politicking. It was Fox’s Tucker Carlson who read Boot’s article correctly: “Max Boot will say anything if they just let him invade Iran”. However, this still leaves us with the question of whether a concept of “American privilege” would result in some improved understanding. Before we get to that, a few words about class warfare.

Forbes 2012 list of the Richest People in America.

Forbes 2012 list of the Richest People

Hiding Class Conflict.

A series of rebuttals were published that aimed to either counter, qualify, or better contextualize the statistical case for race-driven police brutality that was routinely advanced by Black Lives Matter activists. To me, what was striking about a number of the rebuttals (aside from the volume of data) is that they seemed to paint a picture even worse than that painted by BLM. Rather than denying that there is a disproportionate amount of police violence in many of the cities where blacks have a major demographic presence–what also stood out is that low-income whites were also being targeted in great, or even greater numbers. One study published in the journal, Criminology & Public Policy, found that police officers are “three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects”. The study appears to fortify studies from past decades that showed half as many white suspects shot by the police carried any guns, compared to black suspects.

It has also been found that 12% of white and Hispanic homicide deaths were due to police officers, while only 4% of black homicide deaths were the result of police officers. Another interesting finding is that black police officers are three times more likely than their white colleagues to shoot at black suspects. Whites are almost exactly half the fatalities (49%) of all police shootings in the US. More telling, another analysis found that 95% of reported police killings were in neighbourhoods with incomes under $100,000 — with the average neighborhood family income where a killing occurred being $57,764, and the median family income was $52,907.

Moreover, as Adolph Reed Jr. pointed out: “the states with the highest rates of police homicide per million of population are among the whitest in the country: New Mexico averages 6.71 police killings per million; Alaska 5.3 per million; South Dakota 4.69; Arizona and Wyoming 4.2, and Colorado 3.36”. Finally, in terms of an increase in the number of police shootings, whites have suffered a greater increase than blacks: “From 2000 to 2013, the number of whites killed by the police increased 57%, while the number of blacks killed by the police increased 42%”. If this is what “white privilege” amounts to, it doesn’t seem like a privilege anyone would want. Theories of racialism do not explain any of these facts. To the extent that “white privilege” and “white supremacy” are believed to exist, they do not have an obvious, logical, causal role in generating such facts on the ground.

What is more apparent instead is that what various branding exercises (as Reed calls them) have done is to reduce class conflict to various distracting labels, empty of historical sources, context, and purpose. This is not just “police brutality”. The police, staffed almost exclusively by the working class, readily engage in coercion to contain the working class. The police have been effectively schooled into acting on class prejudice, thus we have black officers readily shooting black suspects just as we have white officers doing the same with white suspects. To then focus on a single “race” among the victims, is to indulge in the long-standing classism that has met with official approval in the US and which best suits neoliberal purposes.

In 2016, when more articles started to come out that sought to explain the supposedly mysterious phenomenon of the “Trump supporter,” it seemed as if there might be an American reckoning, a rediscovery of poverty, class inequality, and alienation in the US, a thaw in the glacier that hid class inequality and working class struggles under deep layers of ideological ice. From articles exploring the lives of unemployed coal miners, to charity drives to support the rural poor in West Virginia, to reports about the fall of life expectancy rates among the white working class, to heightened alert about the opioid crisis, unemployment, homelessness, rising numbers on food stamps, the Rust Belt, flyover country — right down to Fox News hosts using the forbidden phrase, “working class” (at least for a while) — it seemed as if a major transformation was at hand. (The Fox narrative has now returned to the myth that all workers are “middle class,” or the working class is opaquely romanticized by Sean Hannity as the “forgotten men and women”. Hannity never has any actual working class people on his show to share their stories.)

Either way, it seemed that 2016 would finally break the American illusion of a country of plenty for all, of prosperity and wellbeing that were universally enjoyed, that “made America great”. The “land of milk and honey” narrative that sold the “American Dream” to countless millions of gullible and/or desperate persons in the global periphery, seemed to have finally crashed. Some, such as Obama, insisted that America was “already great” — thereby unwittingly making the argument for the existence of “American privilege” — while others who rallied behind “make America great again,” in using the word “again” suggested that something had been badly broken. There was insufficient “privilege” in the present, one might have said, hence time to return America to its past level of privilege.

Jeff Latchaw, a homeless man, looks at a pool of water from a recent rain storm at a homeless tent city March 4, 2009 in Sacramento, California.

Sacramento Tent City

A Fight Over American Real Estate.

At the same time as the ostensible beginnings in a transformation in public consciousness seemed to be occurring, calls to “check your white privilege” seemed to grow louder — perhaps this is due to the Black Lives Matter movement cresting in popularity just as the Make America Great Again movement began to gain momentum. The juxtaposition of new eye-opening exposés of the American socio-economic wastelands, with assertions that their inhabitants experienced “privilege,” seemed like too much of a contradiction. At best, it seemed as if a concept that once showed signs of nearing the right track, had been derailed, and fell into a partisan gutter. At worst, it seemed like the emptiest, most callous expression of crass indifference to all poverty and inequality. The only problematic poverty would be the poverty of those with a certain skin colour–and if that view is not an expression of racism, nothing is.

However the assertion suggested something else: a desperate attempt to preserve what has become the master narrative for everything posing as social analysis in the US today, that being “race relations”. Americans could supposedly not afford to let class creep back in, or the race industry might lose valuable real estate. Given what was outlined by Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant nearly 20 years ago, with reference to US cultural imperialism, it was therefore not surprising to find an African-American scholar transport her society’s obsessions with “race” all the way to the ex-industrial regions of the UK, in a supposed “analysis” of the root causes of Brexit which, sure enough, were predetermined to be all about “race” and specifically “white supremacy” (because Brexit voters are evil, ignorant racists, naturally to be impugned for being white).

Which “races” were involved is a big mystery however, especially as the focus of the immigration debate centred on Polish migrants to the UK, the largest of all the foreign-born populations in the country. Neither “Poland” nor “Polish”1 are ever mentioned in such spurious analyses (published by Verso Books, of course) that, more importantly, reflect the generic, one-size-fits-all mentality of globalized American academia. That Americans (regardless of skin colour) not only like to see themselves in everyone else’s story, but also have the power to publish and promote their views, is another sign that tempts one to think that American privilege is real.

Continuing with the theme of American cultural imperialism in academia,2 we had the example of Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, advising us that mathematics “operates as Whiteness”. Aside from decent rebuttals like this one, and leaving aside the possibility that the press had once again distorted and simplified a decent argument, I was taken aback by the arrogance of the assertion of mathematics as white — it struck me as something only an American would say, possibly with a streak of guilt-ridden self-praise. The notion that mathematics is to be associated with either white people or westerners is already flawed — while still making a better argument that math is not culture-free, others at least took the time to describe the mathematical principles that have been developed by cultures around the world. Were the Maya astronomers white westerners? Were the pyramid builders in Egypt strangers to geometry? What can be said about India? What about China? What about the fact that the very word “algebra” is Arabic? What about the Arab numerals we use?

I thought: good lord, where would such a person come from, who could even for a moment think “math is white,” it was just so amazingly, unforgivably, dumb. But then I thought: carry on, because your debate about math being white is not stopping all those Chinese mathematicians and scientists who do not concern themselves with the skin colour of math and are instead busy at work, burying you.

Not only did the “white privilege” focus fail to convince me that it could adequately take into account actual facts on the ground, it struck me that the whole construct had a self-obsessed American character to it. Did it make matters better for Iraqis that the bombs dropped on them fell from planes piloted by African-Americans, or that a black general gave the order, because at least they were not being annihilated by representatives of “white privilege”?

However, what was the use of complaining? If some insist that essentially there is no meaningful difference among “whites,” that they are all “privileged,” and that no matter their actual situation they have all “benefited” from a system of white domination, then we too can use this same amalgamating, homogenizing, and essentializing principle. However, instead of just applying it to one demographic sector of the US, we will apply it to the entirety of the US. Hence, behold American Privilege — something you are going to have to “check” before you presume to address us Non-Americans. (Although some of us are really Sub-Americans, or American Clones, but let’s not complicate matters.)

Debating “American Privilege.”

What I discovered was that I was far from alone in realizing that “American privilege” is not just an important counterpoint to “white privilege,” it may be its lost long-lost parent. Reading discussions about American privilege can however become rather annoying — annoying, in so far as writers commonly restrict themselves to making simple little generalizations, such as “you are privileged to be an American,” “this is the land of privilege,” or “some Americans are privileged, and others are underprivileged”. Most treatments restrict “privilege” to a mere idea, a way of seeing or thinking about oneself, or as a tool of discourse, like it had no material reality. That is one result of identity politics and the dominance of the race relations industry in the US — the constant narrowing of debate to the level of navel-gazing, reduced to a form of narcissism that obsesses about “how I see myself” versus “how others see me,” a fixation with self-fashioning and moving through society always on the alert for anything devaluing one’s status.

In reviewing some of the articles on “American Privilege” that one can find online, there are those that proudly affirm that privilege exists for all Americans, regardless of race:

“American privilege is present, pervasive, and potent for all those workers. Even the poor amongst us can afford big screen TVs and fancy cell phones if they work hard…. American privilege ensures that even our poor probably live better than kings and queens of yesteryear, and certainly better than most of the world’s population today”.

Others also paint a portrait of America as a cornucopia. They revel in the fiction that there is no real poverty in the US. Not all of those who write such things are white — this black conservative uses “American privilege” precisely to deny “white privilege”. (On the other hand, white privilege subscribes to the myth of America as a cornucopia for all supposed whites.) If there is any value at all to such articles, it is in offering us a valuable lesson: that some notions of “American Privilege” can be used for propaganda, as complement of American Exceptionalism.

Interestingly, right wing Americans who might ordinarily be critical of increased immigration, now are instead proud to point to immigration since it is convenient for their argument: “No wonder so many immigrants aspire to the American Dream. They are not uprooting their lives and flocking to the U.S. because of white privilege”. The collection of foreign peoples is like living votes of confidence that “America is alright,” that “America is still Number One”. What is routinely ignored by such affirmations however, is that the US has invested many millions of dollars, with the work of agents in the tens of thousands, over a period of seven decades, in selling the “American Dream” all over the world and investing in Americanization/modernization. What a surprise, that mass advertising and always insufficient “development” can create some little demand (overwhelmingly, around 97% of humans continue to remain in their countries of birth).

Using the idea of American privilege as a critique of US imperialism, we have examples such as Caitlin Johnstone’s article. In that piece she argues that if people in the US think “interventionism” and “warmongering” are just words, and not reality, it is probably owing to their “American privilege” (which again reduces privilege to an idea, an attitude, a form of [un]consciousness). Johnstone then expands on the idea in a stinging attack on how identity politics suit the neoliberal/neocon elites:

“Two words: American privilege. Democrats will gleefully accuse their political opposition of white privilege, male privilege, straight and cis privilege in their attempts to hand the government over to politicians who want to topple governments and drop cluster munitions on cities overseas, because the alternative might make things a little uncomfortable for them at home. How many of my readers were accused of ‘white privilege’ for their decision to back Jill Stein over Hillary Clinton in the general election? Quite a few I’d imagine. They’d rather have elected a President with an extensive history of supporting disastrous military intervention after disastrous military intervention, who was promising to shoot down Russian military planes over Syria and provide ‘military responses’ for Russian ‘cyber attacks’, than fight the political system that forces them into voting for World War 3 in a pants suit. All because the orange guy said he’d build a wall”.

Still critical in asserting the existence of American privilege, others emphasize a particular attitude: “American privilege brings with it the luxury of obliviousness”. Expanding further…

“not having to bother, unless one chooses, to learn about other countries; and not having to bother, unless one chooses, to learn about how U.S. foreign policy affects people in other countries. A corollary privilege is to imagine that if people in other countries study us, it’s merely out of admiration for our way of life. The list of American privileges can be extended. For example, Americans can buy cheap goods made by super exploited workers in Third World countries; Americans can take a glib attitude toward war, since it’s likely to be a high-tech affair affecting distant strangers; and Americans can enjoy freedom at home, because U.S. capitalists are able to wring extraordinary profits out of Third World workers and therefore don’t need to repress U.S. workers as harshly”.

Others also affirm that American privilege exists in enjoying a lifestyle that is ultimately the product of despoiling others: “My American lifestyle and the privileges I enjoy are a direct function of genocide”. In attempting to define American privilege, it’s not surprising that the ideational approach is dominant: “American privilege — the blind spots in our perception which prevent us from seeing our country in its true light”. (There are also articles such as this onethat one, and the other one, which use “American privilege” in their titles, and then proceed to neither define nor explain the concept.)

“Attitude” is a big deal for Americans, so we should expect to find it defining almost everything that is social, political, and economic or cultural. The belief that “success” largely depends on one’s “attitude,” that you can have whatever you want if you want it enough, and that improving your attitude improves your chances of reaching your goals–has been sold to Americans by generations of priests, pop-psychologists, propagandists in public relations, politicians, a long line of self-help gurus, and even some academics. “Having the right attitude” is one of the oldest working myths of US society.

For the “American privilege” concept to be useful, it should incorporate but also go well beyond individual consciousness (lack of interest in the wider world), and include social structure and political economy. We would need to see not only the lion’s share of world capital accruing to the US, we would also need to see this capital distributed among the whole of the US population. If we should instead find that a disproportionate share of the wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny class section at the top (plus their class allies overseas), while a disproportionate share of the costs and sacrifices are distributed to the mass of the population below, we would be forced to ask: where is this privilege? What privilege is it that has me risking my life as a soldier, to pay my debts and raise a family, while others enjoy champagne on their yachts?

We would also need to see examples of all Americans enjoying the power to make decisions that secure their world dominance. American privilege would mean that US imperialism produces benefits for US society as a whole — but the problem is this: when did imperialism ever bother itself with improving the lives of everyone in the imperial mother country? It’s true that social reformers arriving on the scene well after the imperialist project had already been launched, could and did push for social welfare, but imperialism itself was never devised as a tool of social welfare (though it might be sold as such, and could sometimes produce unexpected benefits).

One could equally make the case that the ideologies, methods and technologies of imperial rule were re-imported into the so-called mother country and then used against working class and marginalized populations (which involves a broader understanding of “blowback”). It is also important to remember that imperialist warfare is always class warfare. One begins to sense that this is very complicated, and will require delving into large heaps of European and American history, backed by extensive statistical analysis–well beyond the reach of this one article.

In the adaptive appropriation of the “white privilege” concept, all stand condemned, as all are either complicit or all have benefited somehow from the US’ global dominance. However, to be slightly more elevated some choose to not just revel in their new found validation of anti-Americanism: the idea of “American privilege” is instead used as an approach to criticizing imperialism. Of course this assumes one agrees that imperialism has historically been “disadvantageous” to those on the receiving end (some do not agree, and they point instead to the spread of English, Cricket, and the Good News, etc.), and it also assumes that one understands how the US is and has been an imperialist power for the past two centuries.

The Stain on the American Name.

What strikes me when reading American political commentary is — aside from a few exceptions — the general lack of “diversity” when it comes to Americans reflecting on their American specialness and their special “role in the world”. Americans attack each other over who would dare deny American Exceptionalism: as the official religion, all must swear by it. Prominent politicians give speeches about “America’s role in the world,” as if it were almost natural to have one, that is, a role in the world. I spent two summers in Central America, and I cannot once recall hearing a Costa Rican or a Guatemalan ever utter a word about their “role in the world”. But Americans are special, privileged people, who believe that they automatically deserve to have a role in everyone’s affairs. They cannot help themselves — they just cannot stay away, and this is even true in academia. They need to author themselves into everyone else’s story, which is also why there is scarcely an American film set in another nation that does not feature an American protagonist. We would should just stand back and watch them arrange our affairs for us — for their own benefit, to be precise.

By now the reader will have noticed my use of the word “American”. Some will want to urge me to stop using this with reference to US citizens, because in the Americas we are all Americans. Sorry, but people in the US can keep the term now, it has been ruined beyond repair by them, and we don’t want to confuse the rest of the world. As with everything else apparently, they had to takeover something that was never theirs, or not theirs alone, and they had to monopolize it and then distort it into something repulsive and alien.

Marking this lack of political diversity in American commentary on America’s role in the world, leads one to uncomfortable conclusions: that all major sectors of American politics bear the stain of imperialism. We can do a quick survey right here:

(1)  The Democrats, and Hillary Clinton, craving conflict with Russia to the point of fomenting a new Cold War, seeing Russian conspiracies everywhere, with select Hollywood celebrities even doing commercials declaring war on Russia. Never mind state structures whose agents daily labour at producing evidence-free claims of Russian “intervention” (conveniently left undefined).

(2)  Donald Trump (not to mention Republican neocons), apparently keen to do everything necessary to ensure war with North Korea, while also threatening Iran, occupying Syria, and virtually turning Afghanistan into a permanent colony. Trump laments the trillions of dollars wasted in nation-building in the Middle East, but then proceeds to waste hundreds of billions more (in his first year alone), for the purpose of making wars abroad.

(3)  Steve Bannon and the so-called “alt right”? Bannon has a special fixation on China, with reasserting US hegemony, and going to war with China on trade. Not only that, his Breitbart runs stories that should be totally irrelevant to the alt-right, but instead are curiously prominent — grossly propagandistic pieces that slam Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and so forth, repeating the classic, standard, US prejudices about the Third World, and worst of all, (brown-skinned) socialists. The Bannonites are littered with other contradictions as well: denouncing “corporate fat cats,” yet championing capitalism and running campaigns funded by billionaires; denouncing war-mongering globalists and yet Sebastian Gorka recently offered gushing praise for Nikki Haley, someone who was resolutely anti-Trump (until he won). No relief is to be found in this quarter either.

(4)  Bernie Sanders, surely he must be a major exception. Sanders? This would be the same Sanders who loves colonialist Winston Churchill, almost as much as he endorses NATO, democracy promotion, liberal imperialism, all while denouncing the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and formerly Libya. Forget it, there is no relief here either. At one point even Jill Stein seemed to call for foreign intervention in Syria, at the time Aleppo was being liberated from the hands of brutal jihadists–so if you went to Stein looking for relief, little was to be found.

Therefore, if we wanted to be unfair and class all Americans as imperialists who seek to maintain American privilege, we could easily do so — and with more evidence in favour of our concept than is the case with white privilege which, to be fair, is not evidence-free either.

Toffs in Britain
Tim Graham/Getty Images.

Delinking from US Dominance.

In the rest of our world, that vast area where we “Non-Americans” reside, there is an unfortunate tendency among select elites and impressionable followers to believe that what the US wants for us, it wants for the best. However, we should take great care with the “gifts” they wish to bestow upon us — because what they distribute abroad is precisely what they restrict and control at home. That includes: democracy, health care, and guns. Why is that? It is because each of these has been weaponized (except for guns, which are already weapons). Democracy is promoted overseas, and used to unseat established governments and even whole state structures, while it is actively regulated, monitored, and restricted at home, if not despised outright.

Health care in the US is for those who can afford it — but for some reason this never stops the US military from delivering free health care to countless numbers across the world during US military exercises (the Flickr accounts of all the branches of the US armed services are littered with images of such health care delivery — which is why I sarcastically advised Americans to seek Honduran or Filipino citizenship if they want to receive free American healthcare). This was part of the US’ “soft power,” its desire being to project US power as beneficial to its targets, with the US standing in as a global baby sitter, nurse, doctor, and step-father.

Also, for as much as American liberal commentators moan on about the need for gun control, they are the first ones to send or sell vast amounts of weaponry into virtually every conflict zone on the planet. Hillary Clinton — quick to push herself to the front whenever there is a noteworthy mass shooting (there are so many that some escape wide notice) — always demanding greater gun control in the US, is the same Hillary Clinton who saw to it that jihadist lynch mobs in Libya got all the guns they desired.

The “gift” of academic Americanization also comes at a cost, with not just a transfer of capital — of all kinds of capital — from our countries to the US, but also other significant costs, including intellectual ones. Thanks to Americanization via globalized neoliberalism, our campuses have become importers of the kind of liberal totalitarianism one sees prevailing in the US. We now have endless rounds of conferences, speakers, exhibits, and articles in university media, all engaged in a grand denial of reality, that is, a denial of their own responsibility for making the “Post-Trump” and “Post-Brexit” world possible. What we witness is a desperate effort to claim partisan monopoly ownership over all that is true, good, and beautiful — only to achieve the opposite of each of these.

In terms of US dominance, it would no longer take anyone much effort to compile charts, graphs and maps showing the unequal distribution of wealth and resources in the world, accruing to the benefit of a blob on the map called the USA. We could have lists showing the amount of meat consumption per capita in the US, or energy consumption per capita, compared with other countries — and they had better be per capita figures, because this is the way to lie with statistics and pretend class differences do not exist. We could go further and reduce American privilege to a calorie count, or a measure of fuel consumption.

One could produce charts showing which country reaps most of the rewards of most armed conflicts on the planet — the US. We could add to this the lengthy chronology of US armed interventions around the world, over a span of 200+ years. We could present maps showing the global distribution of US military installations, and other maps showing the dozens of countries where US Special Forces currently operate. We could have bar graphs showing how the US rivals the combined entirety of the rest of the planet when it comes to military spending. We could produce a statistical breakdown of the controlling shares of votes that the US maintains in the IMF and World Bank. Other charts could show how the US controls global financial circuits. We could do all of this, all over again (it’s been done, by many, for decades now) — and it would prove beyond a doubt that something looking like American privilege actually does exist.

Both white privilege and American privilege respect differences to a limited degree. White privilege perceives differences in US society according to race, but ignores class differences. American privilege perceives difference in the wider world-system, but ignores social, political, and economic differences at home. Neither concept can comprehend the existence of a transnational capitalist class, many if not most of its members being neither white nor American. American privilege exists to the extent that one ignores the severe differences among Americans, just as white privilege downplays those differences — because both conceptualizations are premised on the idea that benefits are indeed shared, even if not shared equally. Both conceptualizations automatically deny as a possibility the fact that benefits might not be shared at all. After all, it’s not very capitalist, this whole “sharing of benefits” thing — on the other hand, the “privilege” theorists are not known for publishing epic tomes on capitalism.

And this is the other irony of the American privilege idea: it validates trickle down economics as actually working, and working to the benefit of all Americans. One cannot assert that trickle down economics over the last 30 years has failed Americans, and then turn around and assert that all Americans benefit from the imperialist system which they lead. That is because not all Americans lead the imperialist system, which is instead dominated by a small, transnational capitalist class.

Imperialism, by poasterchild
By poasterchild at DeviantArt.

Imperialism’s Second Nature.

The reality is that anti-imperialist tendencies do exist within the US, and there are publishers devoted to the publication of books and articles that feature an anti-imperialist theme — and that has also been true, off and on, for over a century. Some prominent figures in American history even characterized themselves as “anti-imperialist,” from Andrew Carnegie to Mark Twain. There are also reasonable facsimiles of anti-imperialism, or refractions of anti-imperialism that appear under the anti-war, anti-intervention, and anti-globalization banners.

My approach is one that stresses not just class differences among Americans, but also cultural and political ones. Perhaps as a sarcastic move, as part of a heated polemic, I would be tempted to speak negatively of “American privilege”. However, with all of that, there is still reason to worry that serious differences within the US never seem to amount to enough to stop the US’ imperialist bent, which by now has become so ingrained that it is virtually a second nature, seeping its way deep into almost every corner of American life.

Imperialism has become so naturalized and diffused, that it has been distilled and distributed as a mindset, percolating down to the level of everyday principles of social interaction. It’s interesting to think of how something that is structural, pertaining to international political economy, can spawn a set of everyday attitudes that people live by, even when they are far removed from the cockpits of imperial power. Here are seven basic examples of imperialism transformed into social norms:

  • that I should be able to say or do what I want, to make any allegation, cast any aspersion, cheat anyone, and there will never be any consequences, because I am untouchable, even invincible;

  • when I finally suffer the consequences of my actions, I deny their reality as consequences — for I am the perpetual victim, I am innocent, I am the best who suffered at the hands of the worst;

  • I come first, and what I am, and what I have, is always the best, top of the line — I am always better than you, or what I have is better than what you have;

  • I am morally entitled to take a certain course of action — but because I am superior to you, if you take a similar action in your defense then you are to be condemned, and any comparison is to be automatically rejected as a “false equivalence” — my hypocrisy is privileged and beyond question and will not answer to your “whataboutism”; and,

  • that what I require to live well and to live safely, is entirely different and separate from what all others might also require, because my needs/wants are special;

  • that all others must treat me well, as I would never treat them;

  • others should always be aware of me, while I will offer no such recognition in return.

These are basic, routine operations (even US academics reproduce them). What is important is not calling such operations “American” as much as it is to notice the fundamental transfer of costs and revenues that is common to all of them: you incur all the costs, and I accumulate all the gains. You lose. I win. This is the basic structure of extraction that is one of the features of imperialism, and it cannot help “contaminating” the culture of the leading imperialist nation. Some might point to these tendencies as evidence of American privilege; I would instead see them as by-products of imperialism, attitudes that are widely shared because it costs nothing to share them, useful too if they can shore up domestic political support for imperialism.

Friends of Anti-Imperialism?

Beyond published political commentary, matters become even more disconcerting when it comes to American political behaviour during national electoral seasons, especially where presidential elections are involved. Just when we Non-Americans might have thought that we had anti-imperialist allies in the US, we discover they are riven by all sorts of secondary contradictions. It turns out that they cannot be trusted to take any of the best opportunities to make gains on the anti-interventionist front, because ultimately other concerns overtake them: health care, education, and don’t forget “race relations”. Whatever affects them personally, including whether particular personalities appeal to them, seems to trump consideration of which position may make the best sense, at any given moment, when it comes to either halting or at least weakening US imperialism.

It’s understandable, when you consider that Americans are forced into thinking there are few available options. On the one hand, there is the Republican establishment, which stills insists on being frightened by Donald Trump, even after getting most of what they wanted — no matter, they persist in doing combat with an illusion of a radical Trump, a Trump who threatens real change. It is not so irrational either: in fighting “Trump 2016” (even after he was deposed by “Trump 2017”), what the Republican establishment is actually doing is fighting the supporters of Trump 2016, lest they ever dream of power again. This would explain the monumental hypocrisy of figures like John McCain and George W. Bush, the most acerbic unilateralists now denouncing Trump for disrespecting the UN — two arch neocons, whose continued dishonesty is now celebrated in the “liberal” media.

Also remarkable is this American art of projection — where you accuse your opponent of doing everything you already do, or of being what you are. Both McCain and Bush are guilty of what they criticize in their speeches — they criticize Trumpist nostalgia, by being nostalgic; they condemn isolationism, and they isolated the US; they mock old dogmas that have ended up in the ash heap of history, only to dig around in that heap for their own dogma:

  • NOSTALGIA: for when America was a respected world leader (respected?);

  • ISOLATIONISM: when sanctions, censorship, wars, promoted by neocons, have done far more to isolate the US than any withdrawal from a climate change treaty;

  • THE ASH HEAP OF HISTORY: yet droning on with the tired old dogma of American Exceptionalism.

(The irony of the last one is not to be missed: it’s from that same ash heap, where North Korea supposedly dwells, that the US faces being reduced to an actual ash heap.)

If not the Republican establishment, Americans can instead turn to the liberal media’s daily, freaked out psycho-fests, where screaming, frowning, splenetic hyperbole, ritualized tearless sobbing, or even real tears can be seen. Such media do not only tell Americans what to think about, they go a step further and tell them what to think. The media’s distrust of their own audiences is just that pronounced, that they take no chances on the possibility of audience members thinking for themselves. This repellent attitude might make anyone feel sympathetic toward anything the media hate. One can understand how some would have voted for Trump just to smite this neoliberal class of blighted darlings, just to take one long hot piss on their incessant self-flattery, just to boot them from their pristine perches and fill the sky with their pompous little feathers.

So it is not so difficult, even without deeper probing, to see the conflicts that can overwhelm American voters, at the cost of what is important to their would-have-been allies abroad.

Is there American Privilege?

The conclusion I ended up with is a knotted one, or one that keeps folding in on itself until it disappears. The argument for white privilege seems impervious to American privilege (and a great deal more), yet the construct of American privilege itself is based on broad generalizations and can serve to reinforce the ideological propaganda of US imperialists. Cancelling American privilege cancels the white privilege within it, leaving us with nothing. Except, that we do not actually have nothing: we have older theories that did a much better job — however imperfect — in trying to account for both internal inequality and exploitation within the US, alongside the US exploiting other nations and expanding a system of international inequality. This takes us back to the 1940s–1960s, with centre-periphery theories that were developed by “Non-American” scholars. We also have newer theories of the transnational capitalist class. Of course, it is one’s privilege to ignore both.


(1)  “…things really changed in 2004. Poland was one of 10 countries to join the E.U. that year, and Britain was one of just three member states to allow these new European citizens to work immediately in the country. Polish citizens were now part of the European principle of freedom of movement. Prompted by high unemployment and low wages at home, many young Polish citizens opted to be a part of it: About 2 million Poles have left the country since 2004. While significant numbers of the Polish citizens headed to Germany and Ireland, Britain was the intended destination for many: With an estimated headcount of 850,000, Polish citizens are the largest group of foreign citizens in the country” [emphasis added]. Source.

(2)  Similar arguments could apply to the internationalization of the standard American sociological formula for studying social divisions, always reduced to race/ethnicitygender, and class — this is now the classic American menu. Ask for proof to be provided that these are the dominant ways in which all other societies organize themselves, and you will be left unsatisfied. At least that was my experience when querying why an American scholar writing an ethnography of Trinidad & Tobago, focused on “race, gender, class” — had the person not noticed the special importance of regionreligion, and generation in organizing social divisions? That is, which part of the country you came from, which god(s) you worshipped, and whether you were an elder or youth, were also paramount lines of division.

I do not recall the answer, and I wonder if there was one. I also apparently lost a job opportunity once because after a long talk I gave on Carib indigeneity, I was asked point blank: “what about gender?” That’s it, the person even refused to elaborate, just repeating: “what about gender?” I had talked about “men” and “women,” but apparently that wasn’t good enough, so I was truly at a loss. The person on the committee rooting for me then slumped over and clapped his hand to his forehead when he heard my reply: “I like gender! I think everyone should have at least one”.



A few of the many many books about white privilege

About the author

Maximilian Forte


He writes at the Zero Anthropology website (many of his articles are posted at the FM website). It is one of the of the few with an About page well worth reading — excerpt…



For More Information

Ideas! For ideas about using your Holiday cash, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about racismabout imperialism, by Professor Forte, and especially these…

  1. An anthropologist looks at our New Victorianism: Imperialism, and Identity Politics.
  4. Hard data from Harvard about police violence & race.
  6. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let the GOP remember its great betrayal.
  7. America’s unspeakable problem: African-American’s crime rates.
  8. About a cause of America’s rising tide of hatred. We can still stop it.

Two books by Maximilian Forte.

Slouching Towards Sirte
Available at Amazon.
Who is an Indian?: Race, Place, and the Politics of Indigeneity in the Americas
Available at Amazon.

38 thoughts on “An anthropologist explains white privilege: what it is & does

  1. Yes , I am privileged, AND PROUD OF IT!
    My civilization, built by my own and kindred ethnicities, developed the idea of individual worth, ended slavery, attempted to bring the rest along the journey, and developed the modern world. Today’s absurdities are reactions to the West welling up from self-haters projected onto others.

    1. rjjcda,

      According to The Narrative, everyone is entitled to pride. Except Western Pride. This must be one of the odder developments in this time, the Crazy Years.

    2. People who take pride in things they had nothing to do with, in my experience have very little else to be proud of.

    3. 6a6ka,

      I understand the logic of that. But it is natural to feel pride in our society. We have come a long way.

      Encouraging this is also functional. Pride is a powerful mechanism to build social cohesion. Cohesion isn’t everything when it comes to a society’s ability to prosper, sometimes even to survive. But it’s close.

  2. The dimensions of religion (which we could possibly extend to other personally-defining traits; I am sure there are many Americans who are far more “Republican” or “Democratic” than they are “Christian” or “Jewish”) and generation are pretty overlooked, aren’t they? I know they get perceived, at least; see also a lot of us millennials/late-gen-Xers expecting to have to live in the wreckage of the Baby Boomers and having little power to prevent that wreckage.

    As for pride in one’s background, it’s always funny to me how people take pride in weird things. Nobody much, for instance, seems to take pride in the history of relative gender equality and widespread democratic practices in the pre-modern Norse. Similarly, a lot of “American” pride seems to be more “we triumped in a war” than “we did great things or have beautiful cultural activities.”

    1. SF,

      (1) There are a thousand factors at work. Nobody is trying to list them all. Why do you believe “religion” is a relevant factor here? Ditto, generations?

      (2) “expecting to have to live in the wreckage of the Baby Boomers and having little power to prevent that wreckage.”

      Sad but true. How is that relevant to this discussion?

      (3) “seems to take pride in the history of relative gender equality”

      That’s quite specific. Pride is usually for broader categories, like Western Civ or America, not a long list of specifics.

      (4) “widespread democratic practices in the pre-modern Norse.”

      Have you asked anyone in those societies, such people living in Greenland, Iceland, or the Nordic states?

      (5) “a lot of “American” pride seems to be more “we triumped in a war” than “we did great things””

      Evidence? That is not my impression.

      (6) “or have beautiful cultural activities.”

      I doubt many Americans — or anyone else — think America is great due to its High Culture. The French and Italians probably due, for good reason. But then, no person or society is excellent at everything.

    2. About (5) in my experience, a lot of American ‘pride’ is blended with a toxic stew of jingoism and nationalism. It’s the ‘love it or leave it’ mantra that’s shouted anytime any, even mild, criticism of the military or our wars is voiced. It’s the hawkish liberals who fall over themselves to to show how bloodthirsty and ‘patriotic’ they can be. Remember the Bush years and the way even ostensible liberals called for national unity and almost universally supported every war abroad? The typical MAGA guy loves every loud-mouthed provocation Trump makes about North Korea because it’s ‘alpha’ or whatever. Anyway, Hunter S. Thompson said it better:

    3. Nilzya,

      “a lot of American ‘pride’ is blended with a toxic stew of jingoism and nationalism.”

      In my experience people who write such things wear heavy ideological blinkers. For example, seeing “nationalism” as part of a “toxic stew.”

      Perhaps the problem is with the observer, not national pride (a trait commonly found in the people of most nations).

    4. re: 1, I’m reacting to the author’s second note, especially “At least that was my experience when querying why an American scholar writing an ethnography of Trinidad & Tobago, focused on “race, gender, class” — had the person not noticed the special importance of region, religion, and generation in organizing social divisions?”

      The salience is because I don’t know of much actual scholarly work looking specifically at inter-generational relations in American society, especially when compared to discussion of race, gender and class. (It may exist and just not be well publicized to the extent that material about climate change, Trump voters in the Midwest, and Hillary Clinton’s emails is.)

    5. I would say you have to consider nationalism within the context in which it arises. For instance, I have a lot of sympathy for say Kurdish nationalism or Irish republicanism because it’s natural to feel sympathy for oppressed people rising up against their oppressor – and it seems like the only viable politics in those situations. Even the kind of sports-centered nationalism of European football fans is understandable and kind of cute, I guess. But it’s a little bit harder to see the kind of American nationalism that defends 800 military bases across the globe and reflexively supports every US war, without question, no matter how dumb, illegal, or evil as not being toxic. It’s hard to see every pundit who screamed enthusiastically for the Iraq war being rewarded handsomely as anything other than a sign of a dysfunctional culture.

    6. Nilzya,

      “I would say you have to consider nationalism within the context in which it arises. ”

      Fortunately people get to feel pride in themselves, their society, and their nation without needing your approval.

      “I have a lot of sympathy for {XXX}”

      I doubt they care for your approval or sympathy, or consider it of any value. Why should they?

      “But it’s a little bit harder to see the kind of American nationalism that defends 800 military bases”

      I suggest that you read some history, and compare America’s past with that of other major nations. History is a horror show, with the only bright lights — rare as they are — with those peoples who at least strive to sometimes make things better. In my opinion, we have done better than most at getting better at using our power. As usual with humanity, at best it is two steps forward, one step back.


      So you’re just reaffirming the idea of American Exceptionalism that Forte ridicules… Cool.

      Pro tip: maybe try reading the piece a little closer next time before you post it to your own blog


  3. Nilzya,

    — attributed to Eric Hoffer in The Ordeal of Change (1963).

    By the way The Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK ideology was originally a fusion of revolutionary socialism and Kurdish nationalism, seeking the foundation of an independent, socialist state in the region, which was to be known as Kurdistan. Read up on the history of Revolutionary Socialism, it is quite bloody and oppresive. A bit of the pot calling the kettle black when harping on the USA about oppression and then defending marxist-Leninist groups. But just in case you forgot Stalins DeKulakization, followed by the Ukrainian Famine followed by the Red Army Purge. Mao’s Cultural revolution, Followed by a mass famine, Pol Pot’s killing Fields, Shining Path Guerillas terror on the peasantry because they refused to follow them. etc. etc.

    1. Dayton,

      Thanks for the info about the Kurdistan Workers Party. There are few or no nice guys in the Middle East’s wars. The PKK is listed by many nations as a terrorist group for some of their more infamous deeds.

      Re: the quote

      That is a great quote. I edited your quote to show the usually cited source (Eric Hoffer’s 1963 book).

    2. Do you really think if the Kurds just ask their enemies nicely they’ll treat them fairly? I doubt you’re that gullible. Exactly what kind of option is there for the Kurds besides armed struggle? Kurdish militia like the YPG were the only thing that prevented the massacre and enslavement of Kurds in Kobane by ISIS a little over a year ago. You can pretend to be above the fray with quotes like that because nothing is at stake for you. However, for a typical Kurd in Kobane – say – the choice is between armed struggled trying to achieve a more equitable world in one of the most sectarian places on earth, versus accepting a fate where your family is sold into sex slavery and you are tortured to death by bearded hicks. Doesn’t really seem like a choice to me… Mind you, this is the kind of thing people are forced to choose thanks to the US invasion which created the conditions for ISIS. Another’s blood and another’s money – the American way.

      What really gets me though is this: you’re butthurt that I criticized the US and respond by smugly tsk-tsk people far more courageous than you, fighting for their lives against cartoon villains like ISIS, for not apologizing for Pol Pot or whatever it is you think they should do to earn your stamp of approval.

      The rest is just classic ‘whataboutism’ (see: I’ll just note in passing that it’s an extremely Soviet mindset. It’s the American version of a Soviet bureaucrat responding to a criticism of Soviet repression with ‘in America there is apartheid’.

    3. Nilzya,

      “Do you really think if the Kurds just ask their enemies nicely they’ll treat them fairly?”

      That’s the classic bogus defense of terrorists: the world is binary, and there are no alternatives between terrorism and submission. Odd how so many gullible people believe it. Lenin called then “useful idiots.”

    4. You use a word like ‘terrorism’ that connotes a hostile view to the violent acts it references. It could just as easily be called ‘armed resistance’ or ‘justified violence’ by someone with a different viewpoint/values. I don’t see why your political opinion is any more valid than anyone else’s. I don’t believe what the Kurds of the YPG and PKK are doing is terrorism – in fact I think it’s extremely courageous. It’s arguably more justified than anything US military has done in the Middle East recently. You come across as having almost no knowledge about the actual situation in places like Iraqi Kurdistan yet still want to give sanctimonious advice about what they should do.

      If you’ve got some alternative to armed resistance, I’m sure the Kurds would love to hear it, though we both know you don’t. You don’t have a thought in your head about what the Kurds should do in the present moment. It’s why you and Dayton want to talk about Pol Pot and Lenin and other ‘whatabout’ topics.

      Also, someone who says “[America has] done better than most at getting better at using our power” without irony should probably not be accusing others of being gullible.

  4. I was pleasantly surprised by Prof. Forte’s final and concluding paragraph because he seems to acknowledge that his analysis leads to a level of confusion and frustration that matches my own in reading his analysis:


    Prof. Forte is a Professor of Anthropology. In general, I like Anthropological analysis in general because it usually argues from the specific to the general and a good piece of analysis frequently incorporates sufficient data to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions as to the reasons for a particular set of behaviors. Prof. Forte’s analysis strikes me as too sweeping and too generalized to do anything but (besides being confusing and circular) reinforce existing assumptions and prejudices – including my own.

    Prof. Forte’s analysis strikes me as classic Marxist without explicitly acknowledging the fact and without adding very much except a claim of greater completeness.

    1. Bernie,

      The framework Forte uses is not one I’m fond of. He provides many interesting insights, however. I agree that his last paragraph suggests that this perspective is a dead end, however useful ideologically.

      Note: Prof Forte is a marxist to the extent such things exist today. Posts on a blog are like chapters in a book; they don’t repeat the basic assumptions and beliefs of the author.

  5. Larry:
    I agree. His analysis/presentation of data on shootings by police was pretty potent – but it was almost as though he did not want to draw the obvious conclusions. It was left hanging.

  6. Nilzya,

    Wrong again.

    I was in the US Air force from 2004 – 2013 and I can tell you from first hand that the Kurds were protected and supported. The Kurds messed up by still fighting in Turkey and pissing off the Turks by continuing their war in Turkey.

    Later on we supported the Kurds via Airstrikes against ISIS. Also it was people like you who wanted Obama to get out of Iraq and that is what he did. Creating a power vacuum with corrupt Arab and Kurd factions battling over what what was left. History lesson: The Kurds were sure thankful for the no fly zones prior to Iraq war 2. A

    lso what are you doing for the Kurds. where do you live. I’m guessing it is England or USA. Yes I was in direct support of operations in Iraq. Kurds were supported militarily and politically. Again Pot calling kettle black. You know as well as I do that your disgusting and delusional Ideology that you support (Revolutionary Socialism) has contributed to as much suffering if not more than the West. Sure the West has done bad things, but nothing on the scale as others, to especially include your Revolutionary Socialists/Communists. So don’t you dare moralize to any of us about anything.

    Your ideology is as bad as that of the Fascists. You just hide behind cloaked language about freedom, oppressors etc etc. I am pretty sure you do nothing for the Kurdish people other than be a keyboard warrior and shout empty platitudes for a cause while enjoying a middle class Western Capitalist lifestyle, with all the creature comforts. Why don’t you go over to Northern Iraq and or Nort Syria and fight the good fight, or would that be having too much skin in the game. Also it is ironic that a Socialist would talk about ‘whataboutism’, since it was your political ideology that used it all the time, and are still doing it to this very day.

    1. Dayton,

      Interesting material! One small correction.


      That is wrong on two counts. First, the Iraq government ordered us out. They required that Status of Forces agreement mandate that US forces be out of Iraq’s cities by 30 June 2009 and out of Iraq by 31 December 2011. That was very popular in Iraq.

      Second, President Bush signed the agreement on 14 December 2008. Bush said the SOFA marked a victory in Iraq:

      “Earlier today, in another sign of progress, Iraq’s Council of Representatives approved two agreements with the United States, a Strategic Framework Agreement and a Security Agreement, often called a Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA. The Strategic Framework Agreement sets the foundation for a long-term bilateral relationship between our two countries, and the Security Agreement addresses our presence, activities, and withdrawal from Iraq. Today’s vote affirms the growth of Iraq’s democracy and increasing ability to secure itself. …Two years ago, this day seemed unlikely – but the success of the surge and the courage of the Iraqi people set the conditions for these two agreements to be negotiated and approved by the Iraqi parliament. The improved conditions on the ground and the parliamentary approval of these two agreements serve as a testament to the Iraqi, Coalition, and American men and women, both military and civilian, who paved the way for this day.”

      That the GOP blame Obama for this is an example of their now-frequent use of the Big Lie. Hitler would be proud of them.

    2. US support of the Kurds is more complicated than you suggest – with a history of support and betrayal by the US. The US will always throw the Kurds under the bus for Turkey though – they’re not going to betray a major ally which hosts US nukes for a small ethnic enclave, no matter how righteous their cause is. That’s just a reality of the world though that’s kind of besides the point we were discussing about the Kurds.

      “Kurds messed up by still fighting in Turkey and pissing off the Turks by continuing their war in Turkey” is just victim blaming – Kurds are barely second-class citizens in Turkey. Again, your advice seems to be ‘just be nice’ and the Turkish state will act fairly which is a complete fiction.

      The rest is more ‘whataboutism’ and then whataboutism about whataboutism. Nice! You brag about being in ‘direct support’ of probably the biggest fucking military disaster of the past half century. Cool bro. A war built on lies that has killed what, 500,000+ Iraqis? A complete disaster for the people of that region, a complete disaster for US policy, a complete disaster all around, and – yes – the necessary pretext for a group like ISIS appearing. Why don’t *you* go to Iraq since you feel so proud of your contribution to destroying it? Why don’t you go lecture Iraqis about how killing half a million people for a lie was actually good because it’s only bad when commies do it or something?

      Nobody in the USA was threatened by Iraq or made safer by the war you participated in. Iraq didn’t serve the interest of the American people and I’m sure somewhere, under the layers of ideology that have been stuffed in your skull, you’ve got to recognize that on some level. Not being able to admit that though is part of that whole complex of ‘American exceptionalism’ that Forte talks about and you show your slavish devotion to. Also, here’s a news flash you seem to have missed: the Soviet Union hasn’t been around for almost three decades. It’s been neocons and hawkish libs that have sold us war after disastrous war for the past 20 years and have done more to harm the US and tarnish its image than long-gone communists.

    1. Rando,

      That nails it. Emma Watson is a guru or leaders for millions of young women (over 5 million likes on her instagram account). Quite bonkers. Her wealth will protect her from the consequences of her beliefs. Not so her followers.

      America is raising a generation of cat ladies (i.e., in their 40s will have one to three cats instead of a family). House cats are hyper-predators. It will be a bad century for birds in the United States.

  7. Nilzya,

    Been to the Middle East more than once. What are you doing for the Kurds. Again where do you live? I’m guessing it is England or USA. Your ideology is as bad as that of the Fascists, (read Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism or Eric Hoffers True Beleiver). You just hide behind cloaked language about freedom, oppressors etc etc. I am pretty sure you do nothing for the Kurdish people other than be a keyboard warrior and shout empty platitudes for a cause while enjoying a middle class Western Capitalist lifestyle, with all the creature comforts. Why don’t you go over to Northern Iraq and or Northern Syria and fight the good fight, or would that be having too much skin in the game? It’s ironic & sad that you downplay the atrocities of your ideology.

    “US support of the Kurds is more complicated than you suggest” Are you confused? That is pretty much what every one on this thread has been saying. It was you who went on some Vulgar rant about a place you’ve never been to and only barely read about. Guess What? Geo-politics, conflicts and human social dynamics are way way more complicated than you even have a clue about

    Side Note. Cool Bro? Really what are you a teenage girl from the valley? Talk like an adult if you want to be taken seriously.

    people like you become angry and disappointed with people largely because they fail to live up to some ideal that you’ve constructed for them. This is the problem with people like yourself who pretentiously refer to themselves as utopianists and profess a Love/hatred for all humanity. They secretly hate people for not being who they want them to be, for not conforming to some idiosyncratic personal fantasy about how people should behave. Wiser men observe how people actually behave, recognize who people actually are, and adjust their expectations accordingly. Better to be realistic and find yourself pleasantly surprised than to be eternally sullen and disappointed.

  8. As have I, lived in the ME and visited but I sure wouldn’t venture to Iraq right now and neither would you – the place is a disaster and will be for generations to come because of the US occupation.

    I’m not sure how saying the US shouldn’t engage in endless war across the Middle East is ‘utopian’ – it’s a completely reasonable opinion and a very popular one across the world. It’s the ideology of American exceptionalism that claims every disastrous invasion is about ‘bringing democracy to X’. It’s the arrogance of believing the US can remake whatever country it wants to in its own image (for the most altruistic of reasons of course). The level of projection required to believe that crap and then tell other people things like ‘wiser men observe how people actually behave, recognize who people actually are…’ is staggering. Like you have a leg to stand on. You’re stanning for an ideology that has been completely rebuked by the reality of recent US wars so I don’t know where you get off telling others to be ‘realistic’.

    The weirdest thing to me about this whole exchange has been how little you actually want to try to defend the US explicitly, like maybe explaining why a war you participated in wasn’t a huge disaster would be a good place to start. But then that’s part of the entitlement and arrogance of American exceptionalism – seeing fuck-up after fuck-up and never thinking coherent explanation or even reflection is in order. This probably explains why you constantly need to talk about Soviet communism – it’s much easier to make the argument ‘gulags were bad’ than to try to say ‘the war built on lies that killed over half a million people and weakened the US was actually good’. It’s also why you have to pretend any criticism of the US (the kernel that started this whole thread) is being made by commies unhappy with anything short of the workers’ paradise on earth. You’re the ideologue here, but hey, keep projecting bro!

  9. This was posted on before comments were closed:

    Prof. Forte, you stated that Dr. Gutierrez claimed that math “operates as whiteness” then you insinuate that she thinks that “math is white”. What am I missing here? Is she not correct that non-European contributions are minimized in math education? What is so controversial about that? Also, don’t Iraqis consider themselves “white” and are “white” as per present US classification? What method are you using to make them “non-white”?

    1. E Muse,

      I know zip about such debates. But I don’t understand how one goes from “math is white” (probably intended much like calls for feminist science) — and the people who are feature in the history of math. Math and math history are distinct, and not inherently overlapping, subjects.

      As for the Iraqi people. People of the Middle East are being reclassified (unwillinging) by the western Left as African. This is visible in films and cartoons in America, for example. So it is not necessarily correct to say that it is Professor Forte doing this.

      See “The Real Face Of Jesus” by Mike Fillon in Popular Mechanics, 22 Jan 2015 — “Advances in forensic science reveal the most famous face in history.”

      Jesus Christ

    2. Mr. Kummer, Dr. Gutierrez claimed that math “operates as whiteness” not that it IS white. Additionally, she would (probably) be speaking only about US math. Prof. Forte should be aware of categorial issues surrounding assignment of race so for him to insinuate that Iraqis are non-whites is to deny them their own classification and to impose his Eurocentric one. So yes, Prof. Forte is re-classifying so-called Middle Easterners just as media Hebrewpeans have done for years.

    3. Emuse,

      Please read more carefully. You are materially misstating what I said. I do you the courtesy of replying to direct quotes to reduced the odds of doing that. I suggest you try it.

      (1) “Dr. Gutierrez claimed that math “operates as whiteness” not that it IS white.”

      You — not Dr. Gutierrez — said “math is white”, and my comment said that I don’t understand what you meant — and explained in a few sentences why.

      (2) “Prof. Forte should be aware of categorial issues surrounding assignment of race so for him to insinuate…”

      I — not Forte — used the example about classifying people of the Middle East as non-White.

      (3) “is to deny them their own classification and to impose his Eurocentric one.”

      I explicitly said that: “People of the Middle East are being reclassified (unwillinging) by the western Left as African.”

    4. Mr. Kummer, there is miscommunication here.
      1. In the full article, Forte insinuates that Gutierrez claimed that “math is white.” This is incorrect on Forte’s part and I make no such claim concerning math’s whiteness.
      2. Irrespective of what others are doing to ‘Africanize’ so-called Middle Easterners, Forte further insinuates that Iraqis are non-white which is incorrect as per their self-identification and US classification.

    5. Emuse,

      Since you don’t provide quotes, I have to guess at your meaning.

      (1) The relevant point is that I did not say “math is white.” I have no dog in the “what Gutierrez believes” fight.

      (2) “Forte further insinuates that Iraqis are non-white which is incorrect”

      That’s a reach. Here is the only reference to Iraq in Forte’s article. Getting excited about such “implicit” thing assumes that each sentence is carefully crafted. They’re not. This isn’t Homer.


    6. Mr. Kummer, if you believe “that’s a reach”, it would seem that you want to worship at the altar of Forte. Hope that pays off for you.

    7. EMuse,

      “that you want to worship at the altar of Forte.”

      As with so many of your statements, that’s more imaginative than accurate. Too bizarre to bother with.

Leave a Reply