General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What fueled right wingers, fathers rights, mens' rights, gun rights & teabaggers into existence? [View all]My Good Babushka
(2,710 posts)never had and couldn't lose white male privilege. I live in an area where there are lots of Irish, Russian, Italian, Polish, and Hungarian immigrants, and those groups never really had white male privilege. In the steel mills at the turn of the century, it was okay to pay all of these groups, as well as black people, less than Anglo-descended Americans. It seems a bit revisionist to say all white men have had privilege since the country's inception. I think injecting gender and race into it confuses the fact that the standard of living for all workers has declined. That is the stress that is fracturing the social compact. I think people have been made to believe that they once belonged to that privileged class, and it's someone else's fault that they have somehow fallen, but they never were. I think this error stems from the taboo of talking about labor, not gender or race.