Irish White Privilege......Yeah

Not having said anything about guilt, I have nothing to say about that, but my main reason for opposing it is that in an Irish context it is a complete nonsense, and harmful to societal cohesion.

That may be justifiable in the United States' context, where laws and much of society - including the northern states albeit to a lesser extent meant the whole system was designed to prevent black people from succeeding in society. Red-lining was a reality in Chicago for example:

But the racism that exists/existed in Ireland was simply a variant of the racism white people encounter in Asia and in some parts of Africa. Not acceptable, but nothing like what "white privilege" meant in America.

And the claim that the Irish in Ireland are favoured by dint of their skin colour - well, to a Northern Ireland nationalist who was born before the troubles began, that's really quite a stretch of the imagination. The children of wealthy African families studying in the UK or Ireland were far more privileged than any of us were.

And who knows how many of them came from families who made their money through the slave trade? It wasn't white people (and it certainly wasn't my ancestors!) who went into the forests in Africa to capture slaves for the slave trade. WTF do Africans get a pass on that? Because of their skin colour??

How about you answer the question, you said there are radical activists in the Teaching sector, we have had radical activists in the past in Irish classrooms, what if the figure was 5% or 10% of the teaching profession were radical activists, do you not think children should be protected from them?

Well who is anyone to tell anyone anything? I don't see why your logic of believing that nobody else has a valid right to opinion on education cannot just as easily be turned on you. Ultimately I can just as easily say, who are you to dismiss the lived experience of those (including children) who see others benefit from privileges that they don't? And even at that, the curriculum doesn't just talk about privilege on the basis of ethnicity, but also other types of privilege — the point being that its a multi-dimensional concept wherein a person can benefit from certain types of privilege while also not benefiting from others. A black male benefits from male privilege, an able bodied Indian female benefits from able-bodied privilege, a wealthy person in a wheelchair can benefit from class privilege.

So it's not about telling children that they are just privileged and that's that — it's about acknowledging the privileges they have and also exploring those that they don't. It's not shame or guilt at all — it's the recognition that different people encounter different obstacles in life on the basis of certain characteristics and circumstances. It's the antithesis of division.

As for the teachers thing, I'm not entertaining this. If you want to push an idea that the existence of teachers with more radical views than others (bearing in mind, that also applies to teachers whose views are on the Right) is widespread enough to be considered a pressing urgent risk to our society then by all means you go ahead and compile the evidence to show it and start another thread.

I'm not forcing a "belief system" on anyone any more so than children being taught about and encouraged to show kindness, decency, manners, respect, tolerance, caring for others, gratitude etc or any other social skill or good personality trait is the imposition of a belief system. We expect schools to teach and encourage these things. Understanding privilege is part of the very same thing.

And privilege isn't about telling children they are privileged, it's also about helping them to understand the ways in which they might lack it. That's a powerful thing. A lot of people who grew up gay in this country might have had a better time of life if schools acknowledged and encouraged students to understand the social and familial obstacles that young gay people faced versus young straight people. Having grown up, and now having heard many of the sad stories of gay friends — I certainly think I would have benefited from better understanding the obstacles and challenges they faced that I didn't because I wasn't gay.

But yeah, I guess I'm a big scary Leftie who wants to tell white kids they should be ashamed of who they are and immediately seek penance.

We are talking about skin colour privilege here, not the privilege of the tiny minority of kids who go to the most expensive private schools in the country….you may have missed the title of the thread.

Do you think so we should remind black kids that they are privileged to be here in Ireland and they should be grateful for that privilege and they should be reminded of that all the time in every school in the country?

You think it is disgusting to separate kids on the basis of their skin colour to tell them and remind them of their privilege, yet you also, simultaneously think that kids on the basis of their skin colour should be separated and reminded of their privilege.

Ya, you can't be taken seriously.

If this country treated people as equal, you'd be right. But you know as well as I do that this country treats people very differently depending on their skin colour.

So it's your belief that Ireland is systematically racist?

Ever spoken to someone who has travelled around Africa? You'd experience the same, do you think Africans are inherently racist?

The problem is you're claiming there is no connection between the two concepts of unearned benefit, and guilt. You're advocating to legitimise the radical concept of "privilege". Unearned benefits that we have access to that others don't. That's all, right? No harm. There is two major concerns I have with this though.

It's weird to pretend that recognising the unearned benefit is of no importance, it's meaningless. It's just a statement, so why deny it? Humans clearly associate guilt with unearned benefit - survivor guilt for example, where humans feel shame for surviving when others did not. You're really concerned to argue for the concept of "privilege". It's important to you that it be recognised and legitimised rather than treated as the crank theory it is. It's just academic right? You're essentially trying to reinforce to that survivors really were incredibly lucky to have not died, while pretending you're not trying to induce survivors guilt - as if there is no connection at all. That's very suspect to me.

The other issue with "privilege", particularly where it comes to "being born in a developed country" is that it is not unearned privilege. It was earned. It was earned by our parents, and their parents, and their parents before them. Just as we try to earn it for our children today. There is no "privilege" about Ireland being one of the better places to be born - our ancestors earned that for us. And they didn't listen to people who tried to make them feel guilty about it.

Start another thread about them then….jesus, are you just going to repeat the same thing over and over!!! This thread is about Irish White Privilege specifically…the clue is in the title to the thread. Start one on male privilege, which is also mentioned in the NCCA see how that goes.

And you wonder why people are sick and tired of this woke nonsense.

Fair play to you. Where I'm from (Bray), we didn't. The doctors in hospitals (all GP's were white) mostly tended to be white or Indian-Asian back then, if memory serves correctly.