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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3089 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 3, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I think of this as "definitely not a bum privilege" and I am conscious of how valuable it is for someone like me who is too disorganised to reliably be able to prove that they are not a bum on request - if you have it, people really do assume you are a respectable person having a bad day and wave off all kinds of minor irregularities (missing paperwork and being in the wrong place at the wrong time are the ones I take advantage of most often). It also makes people willing to do cheap favours like letting your child use an employee-only toilet.

But there isn't a simple cheap signal like knowing where your towel is that is unusually effective in generating definitely not a bum privilege - my suspicion is that it is necessarily anti-inductive in order to work. The key things that seem to make a difference are personal hygiene, vaguely normal physical appearance, broadly conventional dress (clean, non-ripped jeans and a T-shirt is fine - wearing a suit doesn't seem to make much difference beyond that), and accent (upper-class British is optimal on both sides of the Atlantic for different reasons).

Part of what the "white privilege" crowd in the US appear to be talking about is that black Americans need to do significantly more class signalling to benefit from definitely not a bum privilege than non-blacks. This is a little bit true in the UK, but not enough to be worth ranting about.

I don't think it's anti-inductive so much as it is about class. Wearing a pair of chinos and a dress shirt with dress shoes is generally more than enough: look like you just got off work at your white-collar office job.

Part of what the "white privilege" crowd in the US appear to be talking about is that black Americans need to do significantly more class signalling to benefit from definitely not a bum privilege than non-blacks.

That’s maybe/maybe not true, but IMO the bigger factor is that the same level of not-a-bum behaviors are a far more significant departure from AADOS cultural norms than from standard white American ones, whether blue or red tribe. Dreads, sagging, Ebonics, etc scream ‘good for nothing lumpenprole’ with good reason and a greater percentage of blacks openly engage in them when asking strangers to do small favors than do whites.

There are some liminal attires and behaviors, like jogging or wearing a hoodie, that are perceived differently depending on race.

That's probably a better description yeah.

The bum / not a bum perception IMO is based on behavior as much as appearance. Even before they really do anything, you can often just tell that they move differently. Most normal people out in the world are actively doing something, or appear to be relaxing or waiting for someone or something. Bums just seem to have a kind of restlessness and not knowing what to do to them.

They also seem to have a way of asking for things in excessively flowery language. Or with long explanations of whatever ridiculous situation they are supposedly in.

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