Are You SORRY You're WHITE?

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Are You SORRY You're White?
6.12%
3 votes
Yes
87.76%
43 votes
No
6.12%
3 votes
Maybe
49 votes. You may not vote on this poll




Responses like this are why I voted yes.
Not really sure how that makes sense. Unless you were using the poll as a proxy for broader issues and not answering literally.



Welcome to the human race...
Not really sure how that makes sense. Unless you were using the poll as a proxy for broader issues and not answering literally.
I can do both. I'm sorry that being white means I share something in common with the kind of person who gets this upset over having to acknowledge the concept of white privilege.

Make sure you address your white privilege before you respond to him/her, please.
*them
__________________
I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.
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I can do both. I'm sorry that being white means I share something in common with the kind of person who gets this upset over having to acknowledge the concept of white privilege.
Do you literally think people are responsible for the actions of other people of their race, and should express remorse for them, or were you just looking for a way to push back on that sentiment in a way that seemed like it related to the poll question?

I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea that they were upset over "having to acknowledge the concept of white privilege." The question was about being "sorry" for being white.

Seems to me this is another proxy fight, where people say things they don't mean because they understand it to be a signal for a broader disagreement. So "I'm not sorry for being white" is treated as a stand-in for rejecting the entire concept of privilege, and "I am sorry for being white" is just a way to acknowledge it exists.

I think very little is served by having these discussions through so many obvious layers of abstraction--either in terms of simply speaking truth, or persuading others.



Um, no. I'd love to actually encounter someone in real life trying to pull this kind of crap, just for the look on their face when I put my foot up their ass.
If they did, I'll put my money on you totally not doing that. Because it'd be, ya' know, crazy, and wildly disproportionate to the offense.

It's always kinda funny when people use the Internet to imply others are only talking tough because they're on the Internet.



Now I'm just sorry I posted in this thread.
Why? You got your dig in. You expressed the obligatory pithy disdain. You can now disregard my attempt to draw a discussion from it until it comes up again, as is our inexplicable tradition.



Welcome to the human race...
Very well...

Do you literally think people are responsible for the actions of other people of their race, and should express remorse for them, or were you just looking for a way to push back on that sentiment in a way that seemed like it related to the poll question?
More the former than the latter. It doesn't seem like it's asking too much to acknowledge that (even if "sorry" is not the most accurate choice of words to reflect the situation as you can only take so much - if any - personal responsibility for the misdeeds of others), hence why it's questionable when someone disagrees so strongly with the question.

I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea that they were upset over "having to acknowledge the concept of white privilege." The question was about being "sorry" for being white.
I got it from the part about threatening physical violence against anyone who tried to pose this same question at them in real life - also, the idea that one has to first acknowledge a problem before they can truly be sorry for it so it just makes me question how many of the "not sorry" people still acknowledge the concept or not.

Seems to me this is another proxy fight, where people say things they don't mean because they understand it to be a signal for a broader disagreement. So "I'm not sorry for being white" is treated as a stand-in for rejecting the entire concept of privilege, and "I am sorry for being white" is just a way to acknowledge it exists.
You're right, it was wrong of me to assume that Sexy Celebrity of all people with his trademark oversize coloured words and use of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man was posing this question with a particular degree of sincerity. It's bad semantics all over this thread.

I think very little is served by having these discussions through so many obvious layers of abstraction--either in terms of simply speaking truth, or persuading others.
Tell me about it. At least this one looks like it'll be short.



Welcome to the human race...
Why? You got your dig in. You expressed the obligatory pithy disdain. You can now disregard my attempt to draw a discussion from it until it comes up again, as is our inexplicable tradition.



Since I'm guessing no one looked up the nurse's code in question, here's some context on that link at the start of the topic.

Here's a link to the code, http://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov...standards.aspx

Here are the two applicable portions as far as I can discern, the first is in the glossary and it's the singular spot where "white privilege" appears:

Cultural safety concept was developed in a First Nations’ context and is the preferred term for nursing and midwifery. Cultural safety is endorsed by the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives (CATSINaM), who emphasise that cultural safety is as important to quality care as clinical safety. However, the “presence or absence of cultural safety is determined by the recipient of care; it is not defined by the caregiver” (CATSINaM, 2014, p. 9 ). Cultural safety is a philosophy of practice that is about how a health professional does something, not [just] what they do. It is about how people are treated in society, not about their diversity as such, so its focus is on systemic and structural issues and on the social determinants of health. Cultural safety represents a key philosophical shift from providing care regardless of difference, to care that takes account of peoples’ unique needs. It requires nurses and midwives to undertake an ongoing process of self-reflection and cultural self-awareness, and an acknowledgement of how a nurse’s/midwife’s personal culture impacts on care. In relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, cultural safety provides a de-colonising model of practice based on dialogue, communication, power sharing and negotiation, and the acknowledgment of white privilege. These actions are a means to challenge racism at personal and institutional levels, and to establish trust in healthcare encounters (CATSINaM, 2017b, p. 11 ). In focusing on clinical interactions, particularly power inequity between patient and health professional, cultural safety calls for a genuine partnership where power is shared between the individuals and cultural groups involved in healthcare. Cultural safety is also relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals. Non-Indigenous nurses and midwives must address how they create a culturally safe work environment that is free of racism for their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues (CATSINaM, 2017a ).
Maybe you hate the idea of acknowledging white privilege, if you think the concept even exists, but 1) This is not asking the nurses to apologize for being white 2) there is no requirement for nurses to declare their white privilege [when looking around this stuff a lot of people were buying into this fabrication].

Second is the code around Culturally Safe Practice:

3.2 Culturally safe and respectful practice
Culturally safe and respectful practice requires having knowledge of how a nurse’s own culture, values, attitudes, assumptions and beliefs influence their interactions with people and families, the community and colleagues. To ensure culturally safe and respectful practice, nurses must:
a. understand that only the person and/or their family can determine whether or not care is culturally safe and respectful
b. respect diverse cultures, beliefs, gender identities, sexualities and experiences of people, including among team members
c. acknowledge the social, economic, cultural, historic and behavioural factors influencing health, both at the individual, community and population levels
d. adopt practices that respect diversity, avoid bias, discrimination and racism, and challenge belief based upon assumption (for example, based on gender, disability, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, age or political beliefs)
e. support an inclusive environment for the safety and security of the individual person and their family and/or significant others, and
f. create a positive, culturally safe work environment through role modelling, and supporting the rights, dignity and safety of others, including people and colleagues.
Additionally, there's a fact sheet that also touches on the changes and why they were made including:

What is ‘cultural safety’ and why is it a requirement in the codes?

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience poorer health outcomes than non-Indigenous peoples.

Cultural safety is a proven way for nurses and midwives to contribute to better health outcomes and experiences for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Cultural safety is about acknowledging the social, historical and structural factors that can have an impact on the health of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples. Rather than saying ‘I provide the same care to everyone regardless of difference,’ cultural safety means providing care that takes into account Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples’ needs.

Many nurses and midwives will already be practising cultural safety, even if they have not heard of the term. The new codes of conduct guide all nurses and midwives on a cultural safety.
By the way, this seems to have been created in response to a Medical Journal of Australia study in 2016, in particular under the section "Priority 2: Culturally competent maternity care", and here is the general justification (I edited for length, but by all means read it all):

Maternity systems have failed to incorporate the evidence provided by Indigenous women on the impact of social risks that include cultural risk...Recent empirical work in Australia reconfirms that these risks are still valid, highlighting that they not only cause distress to women and families, but also increase clinical and medical risks...

We acknowledge the importance of clinical and medical risk, but suggest that the definition of risk needs be broader, to incorporate the social (cultural, emotional and spiritual) risks as valid and important dimensions of risk assessment requiring risk management processes. The disconnection between social, cultural and spiritual risk and western clinical and medical biophysical risk is a critical and understudied phenomenon that needs further work.
What they are calling culturally competent care is a standard best practice across US medical associations as well. But they didn't use the term white privilege so it wasn't grabbed on to by external groups for their pet issue. And honestly, that may have been the mistake that the writers of the nurses code made, because now there's this huge distraction that's setting back a well-established good principle of accounting for people's culture when treating them. So I do wish they hadn't used the term, because clearly their hearts are in the right place and it's politicized a concept that should remain within the medical practice.




Do you ACKNOWLEGE your WHITE PRIVILEGE, whitey?
Absolutely.

Are you SORRY for being WHITE?
Absolutely not.

Should white people be sorry and acknowledge their white privilege to those who are not white?
Acknowledging white privilege is vastly different from feeling sorry about being white and putting those two different things in one question is implying you cannot have one without the other. This is what turns most white people off from discussing or acknowledging white privilege because a lot of them feel that somehow when they acknowledge it, they have to feel guilty about it.
__________________
“There's no place to hide, When you're lit from the inside” Roisin Murphy



I was writing up a post that was going to answer the direct topic question, but d_chat beat me to it and probably did a better job.

You owe it to yourself to acknowledge unearned benefits in your life, if only for the sake of calibrating which forces were responsible for the shape of your life.

If someone says you need to do it in a public shame sort of way, yeah, I'd probably be against that. But when people encourage you to do it out of self-reflection, I think it's completely healthy.

That said, I still answered Yes out of the pettiest instinct because the poll was made in bad faith.





Nothing showed WHITE DOMINANCE like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters. Tell me that's not a secret KKK scene.
Dang! Newt Gingrich sure looks different today! Or is it Chris Christie? I can't tell. Don't have my glasses on.



This thread is in serious need of Aretha Franklin and George Michael.

I would prescribe this for every thread with an ailment.

Let's say a prayer for Aretha. I read she is very ill in the news.



Let the night air cool you off
That said, I still answered Yes out of the pettiest instinct because the poll was made in bad faith.
By the same token, most conversations about white privilege aren't in good faith.

Sure, white privilege exists. But privilege of all kinds exists, and the benefits of just being white are incredibly slim. I live in rural Oklahoma, and I can tell you, white privilege hasn't done sh*t for all these white people out here.