I’ve never said I was denied something based on the color of my skin. I may have, I may not have. I don’t know, and I don’t dwell on it. I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree, however, on the ‘victim by association con.’ Your argument assumes that victimization is a tangible, I-didn’t-get-the-job-I-deserved deal. My argument rests on the fact that true victimization permeates every aspect of life, from the way one thinks, to what one spends his money on, to what one eats or doesn’t.

Verdeluz: ‘Labeling it validates it, and by extension, “white resentment” lends itself a little too easily to the touchy-feely rebranding of bona fide white racism.’

That is very much on point.

My first thought was: find me this person. I have a difficult time devoting my train of thought to the micro perspective, even hypothetically, enough to ignore the macro reality. The white person who finds cause for resentment in the existence of affirmative action programs suffers from an unfortunately not uncommon myopia; s/he fails to see the myriad instances in which the tables are turned in favor of white people. And maybe, for the average white person, that’s not unreasonable- modern racism is sneaky, frequently subtle enough as to be deniable by the perpetrator and/or witnesses who find it inconvenient to address, and pervasive enough as to seem a fact of life. In the public sphere, it is only rarely that things are put in such blatant “because you are (insert race here)” terms. For people unused to having to deal with questions of race (that would be that macro white privilege), I suppose I can see why the affirmative action question sticks out.

The ‘white resentment’ discussion is something new for me. If such a distinction exists, it would seem to me to be indelibly linked to white racism in its focus on us-vs-them racial politics. White folks’ difficulty finding a job/buying a house/paying for a ridiculously expensive education is not caused by Black People Trying To Punish You For The Slaves Your Grandparents Didn’t Even Own!. With the understanding that it would be less than advantageous for Obama to push for honest discussion about why the resentment is misdirected, simply acknowledging the phenomenon was inadequate. Labeling it validates it, and by extension, “white resentment” lends itself a little too easily to the touchy-feely rebranding of bona fide white racism.

Not liking it.

Some whites are resentful because they believe they’ve been penalised by affirmative action in favour of a black person. The truth is that sometimes they’re right (Grutter), but sometimes they’re wrong. The conflation of white resentment and white racism ignores the fact that while the people who are right may actually be racists, the people who are wrong may not be.

There is no data for anecdotes, but based on the conversations I’ve had with whites I’ve grown up, gone to (graduate) school, played sports and worked with, I suspect that a good deal of white resentment is a reaction to the victimisation by association con that says that if one is black, he’s a victim–even if not personally. He is eligible to be a victim by proxy, on behalf of a relative, a friend or an acquaintance who’s also black. That’s nonsensical.

If whites who haven’t been penalised by affirmative action shouldn’t be resentful, why should blacks who haven’t been victims of racism feel aggrieved?

We don’t know that whites aren’t penalised for being white. You’re denying that they are because that impales your argument that their resentment is really racism.

As many times as I’ve been told on this blog that I can’t tell a group of people (women) that they don’t have the right to be offended by what happens to them, I can’t resist telling you the same thing. Not only don’t you have the right but you don’t have the standing. If you say you do because you’ve been denied based on the colour of your skin, then you should be well able to empathise with the whites you’re discounting as racist.

I have to get out of here now but later this evening, I will get into what I know causes white resentment.

Riddle me this. What do you think causes white resentment? And don’t start talking about how white people are getting penalized, because we know that isn’t true.

So … if the resentment that some blacks feel about their station in life isn’t justified, is that black racism? Or is this too reductive?

Is this even a serious question? Yes, of course it is.

Second, prejudice falls under the umbrella of racism.

Third, the vast majority of whites suffering from ‘white resentment’ have NEVER been adversely affected by affirmative action. They just don’t want to admit that what you call “penalization” is nothing more than the reduction (not removal, but reduction) of privileges whites have enjoyed for centuries. Yeah, I get it, it hurts, but it doesn’t make their position valid. (Besides, white women have benefited from AA more than anyone. Grutter is an exception to the rule.)

Your turn.

There’s whites who perceive they are personally having a tough time of it in their lives at the moment, and irrationally cling to blaming a cause that they know they can’t fix. This is racism indeed, but not so much bigotry. Just a terribly counter-producive way to think.

Then there’s whites that who have no particular personal problems going on, but have ominous fear, uncertainty and doubt clanging around in their noggin – and lash out with their resentment because it makes them feel good. This is flat out bigotry that is less correctable, in-grained and problematic culturally.

In the interim and for the sake of discussion, I think that white resentment and white racism are also conflated, often erroneously so. I think the two can be distinct and separate, which is to say that no, white resentment isn’t just white racism in disguise necessarily.

In the macro, America’s playing field isn’t level, but in the micro, there are white people who’ve never done anything to deny a black person a chance at living the American dream and have been penalised because they’re white. This is hardly abstract. This is precisely what Grutter v. Bollinger was about.

It’s presumptuous and unfair to interpolate that Grutter (and others like her) is racist because she didn’t want to be penalised for being white. If more people were honest, they’d have to concede that they could understand why Grutter would be resentful (if, in fact, she is).

Leveling the playing field by way of affirmative action shouldn’t be a zero-sum game. When it is, white resentment would seem to be reflexive, no?