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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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That's hardly fair. Being just slightly charitable, what they mean by 'favourite students' fairly clearly does not imply any genuine preferential treatment or discrimination in respect of grades, discipline and so forth.

So someone saying "whites are my favorite" also wouldn't imply preferential treatment or discrimination, right?

I don't think the two are apposite. His comments - which I think were kind of silly but basically harmless, I mean it was one line in some guys short video, who really cares - just mean that he is particularly happy to see gay students doing well personally because of the change that represents from his personal experience. I don't know in what context such a line of thinking could emerge in the case of whites.

just mean that he is particularly happy to see gay students doing well personally because of the change that represents from his personal experience.

How do you determine, from the outside, that the guy meant it in this harmless way?

I don't know in what context such a line of thinking could emerge in the case of whites.

Why? The context is perfectly analogous. Dude goes to school, gets bullied by black kids. Teachers, media, and the general culture push racist Critical Race Theory-derived ideas about the White Supremacist Cis-Heteronormative Patriarchy. Grows up to become a teacher, and makes a TikTok video with a throwaway line about how white kids are his favorite, and it just means that he is particularly happy to see white students doing well personally because of the change that represents from his personal experience.

I don't think the general level of homophobia encountered across the, in this case, United States decades ago, is on the same level as anti-white prejudice.

This hardly seems relevant, people don't go around doing calculus about their relative levels of oppression. We shouldn't expect a white guy that got bullied, systemically and personally, to say "well, I guess the general levels of prejudice against me weren't as bad as they were for gay people" any more than we should expect a gay person to say "well, I guess the general levels of prejudice against me weren't as bad as they were for black people", etc.

Also while the general levels of prejudice against cisstaightwhite people probably lower, the elite levels of prejudice are probably higher than they were for gay people when this guy was growing up.

systemically

Well the point is that I don't think such systemic discrimination, on net as it were, really exists. On the personal level no doubt it happens; and if there was a white teacher who was actually bullied for being white, then yeah it would be fine for him to express pleasure if that was no longer the case if he became a teacher in the same school. However I think the difference between the general level of prejudice towards gay students (whenever he was kid) was probably so vastly greater than the equivalent for whites that there is a difference in kind not just in degree.

Well the point is that I don't think such systemic discrimination, on net as it were, really exists

Do you mean systemic discrimination in general, or in this particular case. I can respect the former opinion, but the latter is demonstrably false.

On the personal level no doubt it happens; and if there was a white teacher who was actually bullied for being white, then yeah it would be fine for him to express pleasure if that was no longer the case if he became a teacher in the same school. However I think the difference between the general level of prejudice towards gay students (whenever he was kid) was probably so vastly greater than the equivalent for whites that there is a difference in kind not just in degree.

These two sentences seem to be in contradiction to each other. If the teacher's personal experience would make it ok, than the general level of prejudice is irrelevant. Also, I feel you completely sidestepped my earlier point:

We shouldn't expect a white guy that got bullied [...] to say "well, I guess the general levels of prejudice against me weren't as bad as they were for gay people" any more than we should expect a gay person to say "well, I guess the general levels of prejudice against me weren't as bad as they were for black people", etc.

The very idea of anyone being expected to behave this way seems absurd to me.