Another Disappointment Brought To You By The State Of California...

[smc]

Originally Posted by new believer

And about seperate but equal...please explain to me WHAT white privilages? The only white privilages that do exist are the ones that allow white males to shut up. And even that has limitations. I am white as most my peers, we have none, never have nor ever expect to. Some 'white privilages may have existed(as tody) but they have expanded to include ALL wealthy persons. They are the true elitist. What's good for them but not for you,Hollywood leading the pack. But now that you bring it up, does the term reverse discrimination ring a bell? Trust me it's not the Avon lady, but that's another topic for another thread,and I doubt I'll comment to that if it appears.

IF I appear a little po'd, it might be because I am also discriminated against in ways you do not or wish not to understand.

A history lesson is in order here, although I suspect that any white man who so readily buys the "reverse discrimination" argument will not be of a mindset to deal with facts. (I am, by the way, a white man.)

"Separate but equal" comes from a Louisiana law, dating back to before the turn of the 20th century, that established separate public facilities and institutions for Black and white people. It was an important component of keeping non-whites "in their place" in the post-Civil War era. The "equal" part was never really adhered to, because resources were under white control and were allocated to white facilities. One need only to see a typical photograph of something as mundane as a "whites only" drinking foundation next to the fountain for "colored" to see how the allocation went. Now imagine that writ large, as in a school. Most public schools for Black students received far less per-capita funding than did their nearby white counterpart schools. And almost without exception, all other facilities and social services for Blacks were of lower quality than those for whites.

"Separate but equal" was also used in social contexts to forbid interracial marriage and underpinned every effort to keep Blacks from exercising the right to vote, by creating "equality" in the right to register to vote, but keeping things "separate" by establishing all sorts of ridiculous hurdles for "colored" registration.

Hence, white privilege. And I haven't even mentioned housing, jobs, or many other things I could bring up.

I would be happy to take on the "reverse discrimination" argument, but I agree that it is not appropriate in this thread. However, using the "separate but equal" argument, as I first raised, absolutely is appropriate. The federal lawsuit filed by Boice and Olson (see an earlier post of mine) is predicated on Proposition 8 representing a violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause. Many scholars of legal history have discussed how various courts, ruling on same-sex marriage, have employed some of the same arguments as when they were asked to rule on marriage between people of different races. Much of the current debate regarding domestic partnerships and civil unions versus marriage are precisely about the "separate but equal" issue.