This is for those who don't think there is any such thing as White Privlege

[HiPointDem]

33. I agree that white privilege is best understood in terms of the system. & speaking of the Bushes,

I'll repost something from the other thread on white privilege that I wrote in response to someone who listed some problematic aspects of the concept as it'd often used in practice:


"I'll add another point: This conceptualization of "white privilege" actually disappears its main beneficiaries. (and, I might add, its prime movers).

I don't deny that there's something like "white skin privilege" that applys to white americans generally, as well as something like "black skin disprivilege" that we see in cases like Trayvon Martin's.

But in the place of a more pointed analysis, the idea of "white privilege" offers a narrative of diffuse collective guilt, not necessarily for *doing* anything in particular, but just for being born white. That provides lots of fodder for serious racists and nazis and is in that sense seriously counter-productive. So lets look a little deeper.

Profits from the slave system built the elite universities and financed the industrial revolution and the railroads, generating more profits which continue to finance the expansion of capital in the present day. And the people who profited, and continue to profit from that capital, aren't, by in large, your average working joe. They're today's upper classes. But we're not often encouraged to think about those connections.

Some examples of what I'm talking about:

Brown Brothers (now Brown Brothers Harriman) made bank on slavery -- major cotton broker, financed plantations, owned slaves as tradeable goods. Offices in NY, Baltimore, Liverpool and Philadelphia -- all locations related to the trade in slaves and slave-produced goods. The slave system generated vast wealth for the partners. They invested it and made more money, and their descendants after them, and new partners (like Prescott Bush) that came into that nexus of capital.

Do THESE people accept any guilt, any charge of "white privilege"? Not at all:

Donald Murphy, a partner, says the investment bank has no pre-Civil War records and sees no need to go through its records. "As an institution, I and my partners could look you in the eye and say we abhor that slavery ever existed in this or any other country. And yet I don't feel qualified to comment on practices and actions of a different society of 175 years ago," he says.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/02/21/slave-brown-bros.htm

Nothing to do with *him*. All so long ago.


A couple of other random examples (there are many):

The Roosevelts' initial fortune came from the sugar business, back in the days of Dutch NY and colonial times. Slaves in the west indies grew the cane, and slaves in NY (about 20% of NY's population at the time) refined the sugar.

Isaac Roosevelt helped found the Bank of NY with the profits, and that bank undoubtably financed other slave-related ventures. Bank of NY was the first corporate stock traded on the NY stock exchange.

The Bushes benefited from slavery through their ancestors, the Fays. Prescott Bush's grandpa James married Harriet Fay. Her father was a Savannah cotton broker, and so were two of his brothers; the house was Padelford and Fay, circa 1820-1858. It was a US agent for Baring Brothers, which at the time was the second-biggest financial house in the world. The Quaker Barings had made a lot of their money financing -- what else -- the slave trade.

There's even a bit of evidence that the Fays themselves might have had some direct involvement in the slave trade.

For example, the Wanderer was the last known ship to bring slaves to the US. Harriet Fay Bush's uncle Joseph Story Fay acted as agent and guarantor for Charles Lamar (the ship's owner) when the ship was seized -- and the Fays and Lamars had personal and business connections that went back to Charles Lamar's grandfather.

The Fays were originally from Massachusetts. The family got involved in business in Georgia (steamboats and shipping to begin with) at about the same time that their cousin Eli Whitney (Yalie and second cousin of Harriet's great grandpa Jonathan, both born in the same town of under 1000 people) started ginning cotton there.

The cotton gin "boomed" the South, and those who got in on the action early, as usual, did best. The Fays invested their cotton profits in the northern textile industry and railroads, among other things.

James Smith Bush's marriage to Harriet Fay connected the Bushes to national and international business interests, rather than the merely regional ones they'd been associated with up to then. I peg it as the beginning of their rise to real power.

Samuel Prescott Bush was the next generation, associated with railroads, Rockefellers, and Harrimans, chair of the War Industries Board and a board member of the Federal Reserve of Cleveland. Quite a leap for a preacher's son -- all due to his native talent, I'm sure.

Ever hear the Bushes apologizing for their white skin privilege? People like the Bushes have the privilege of never having to apologize for their privilege.

White skin privilege? No, they're the civil rights leaders of our time!


And education outcomes is the distinguishing feature between the haves and have-nots. I would argue that education reform should be the great civil rights challenge of this time.

http://www.theshorthorn.com/index.php/news/university/29772-former-florida-governor-jeb-bush-discusses-educational-reform-and-politics


There's a reality to "white privilege," just as there's a reality to "pointy-headed elites," but the way those concepts are used in popular discourse often has the effect of maintaining the divisions of the slave system."