Taylor, You Bitch!

I went to replace the battery in my electronic scale this morning when I realized it uses one of those button cell lithium types. I probably have every kind of battery on the market dumped around my place in bowls except that one and it took me back to something I think about quite a bit. It’s the idea that a society can be primitive or advanced and the question of how we quantify that.

I think the average person would consider us to be pretty “up there” – not quite Atlantis material, but certainly no Apocalypto. Still, I wonder how progressive our progress really is. What is the purpose of advancement? Is it about moving forward or is it about moving closer to a goal? Because if there’s a goal, what is it and how close have we really gotten?

When I look around at all of the incredible technology we’ve developed and the speed at which we’re evolving as a species because of it, there’s one frightening truth that stands out:

All of it can be negated by the flip of a switch.

We’ve progressed beyond the point of sustainability, because the technology we depend on to maintain and preserve life as we know it by and large requires power.

We always talk about resources and the fact that projections paint a dismal picture of what the future will be if we continue to consume things that are finite, but we only ever seem to speak of the loss of power in the context of science fiction.

When I say “power”, I’m talking about electrical energy.

In my opinion, mechanical energy is the only truly sustainable energy we’re capable of harvesting – and what I call sustainable isn’t to be confused with renewable. To me, renewable energy replenishes itself. That doesn’t make it sustainable.

Take solar energy, for example. It’s probably the first thing called to mind when you think of a renewable energy source, because like Annie said, the sun’ll come out tomorrow! But we’ve already seen a number of limitations to solar energy, the most obvious being that we don’t always have access to sunlight.

Renewable energy is fantastic and necessary, but when I call energy sustainable, I mean that it’s a source of power requiring nothing more than our power – manpower – and what we’re able to build from the natural world. Because those are the only two resources we’re guaranteed by logic to always have:

The planet we live on and ourselves.

If we lost either of those resources, this discussion would no longer be a discussion because there wouldn’t be anyone around to discuss it.

Ancient civilizations may have mastered engineering with a focus on mechanical energy because they weren’t advanced enough to utilize electricity and/or didn’t know what it was.

But which is more primitive? A society capable of thriving for hundreds or thousands of years without any of the electrical boons we require just to get through the day, or a society like ours that would collapse practically overnight if its primary power source were eliminated?

Which infrastructure is more advanced? Certainly not ours, given the destructive potential of something as absurdly simple as pulling a plug. I may be in the minority with this sentiment, but I think we’ve progressed so far that we’ve gone backwards – and not only in terms of technology.

Look at what happens when there’s a blackout. Things start to break down immediately. The food is gonna spoil! We can’t see in the dark! Everybody scramble for flashlights and supplies and eat like you’ve never eaten before while arguing with each other because you’re instantly enraged that you can’t watch Netflix!

Kill the power in the middle of a heat wave and old people start dropping like flies because there’s no A/C, and you better hope that generator kicks in at the hospital because a lot of folks in there are only alive thanks to the machines they’re hooked up to.

We know what happens when there’s no internet for five minutes. Imagine what would happen if it were permanent – if the internet stopped being a thing entirely?

Of course, it’s never as bad as all that and we make it through these dark moments by falling back on more primitive ways of doing things. Why? Because the more primitive ways of doing things are sustainable.

Doesn’t that make them better?

If we got the whole “progress” thing right, why do all of the solutions to modern-day problems resemble the past?

I’m not saying the advancements we’ve made are bad or that we shouldn’t have made them. I’m just putting it out there as food for thought that we may be shooting ourselves in the foot by continuing to move forward in ways that make us this dependent upon things that can be rendered useless this easily.

Indulge my stupid little mind for a moment and look around you. Take a walk through your house. Down the street. If we no longer had electrical power, how much of what exists in your environment would still serve a purpose? How much of what you own would still have any functional value?

Those things reflect the type of technology that will move us forward into the next phase of our evolution. Improving upon those things, taking cues from those things, is how we’ll refine ourselves to ensure we progress in a sustainable way.

Everything else is glitter. Breakthroughs that allowed us to grow too much, too quickly. Shiny luxuries that created needs to fill. Or maybe I’m just mad that I gave away my perfectly good mechanical scale for this electronic piece of shit that needs a fucking battery…

Let’s Play Smart: Deconstructing White Privilege (pt. 1)

I was sitting here, minding my ooples and banoonoos, going over the brief for a client’s project, when I came across the phrase vice white. The context made it unclear if this was a typo or a description of a particular color to be used in the design. My client wasn’t around, so I did what any good citizen would do and Googled it.

It led me to this…

White People Talk About Their White Privilege

I sighed because my brain, always itching for something to think about, should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque and instead, took a right turn at ooh, I wonder what this is. So I clicked on it.

Now this is happening.

Welcome to Let’s Play Smart where we ban together to take on society’s greatest debates! The rules are simple. Instead of weighing you down with stuffy, academic posts on subjects we’re all probably sick of hearing about, I’m going to tackle them with basic parallels and phrasing even a rock could understand and you win by not acting like you’re too fucking stupid to get it!

As the title of this post suggests, today’s game is about deconstructing white privilege. Many have tried and after reading the comments on that Vice blog, I see that many have failed. Not us, though! We’re going to work it out because we’re winners, winners, chicken dinners!

We’ll start with three teams:

The first team is for people who think white privilege doesn’t exist, the second is for people who think it does, and the third is for people who are on the fence about it or otherwise willing to give it more thought.

You know how game shows often have a challenge that eliminates one team right out of the gate? This was that challenge. The first team can leave because you’re already wrong!

I’m kidding. 

Not about you being wrong. About you needing to leave. You, in particular, need to stay.

What is white privilege?

To answer this oft-inflammatory question, we’ll simplify it. What is privilege in general? Forget dictionaries, friends. They’re myopic and tell you how to pronounce things. Yes. Dictionaries are that guy. So let’s ask a thesaurus!

Pretty intimidating, right?

Of course not. They’re words. Words you all know and understand.

Advantage is arguably the most common interpretation, but it’d be fruitless to assign privilege that identity across the board when it dons a variety of meanings and manifests itself in a number of ways.

Privilege is what we lean on rather than fight against. It’s dynamic. Fluid and limitless. And what exists as a privilege today may not be one tomorrow.

In one aspect or another, we’re all privileged – as individuals and as groups – and every privilege, great or small, makes our lives better in unspoken, unrecognized ways that sometimes add up to a remarkable existence and sometimes don’t. 

Because privilege guarantees itself.
Not the outcome.

Challenge #1:

Whoever you are, whatever you are, think of five privileges you have that aren’t tied to your race. Consider the implications of the synonyms I put before you in the image above and paint with broad strokes. This should be as easy as making a grocery list except the items on it are food for thought.

If you’re feeling strained, try flipping the question on its head and ask yourself what you’re thankful for, because everything you’re thankful for is a privilege. Everything you benefit from is something someone else on this planet may not have.

I can give you a list right now: I have friends. I have two hands. I can swim. I’m literate. I like vanilla ice cream – and yes. I just said liking vanilla ice cream is a privilege. It’s abundant, which means I have the luxury of desiring something readily available to me. That luxury makes satiating my desire easier and ease is a privilege.

That’s me challenging your understanding of the shape privilege can take. 

When putting a puzzle together, you start with the big picture because it gives you insight into what the individual pieces add up to. If you can’t expand your definition of privilege to appreciate the fullness of how it affects our everyday experiences, you won’t make sense of the picture our society has painted, even as it comes into view.

To say that white privilege doesn’t exist is to say that in a world of infinite privilege in infinite forms, being white was somehow excluded – and that’s dumb.

So the question isn’t if white privilege exists. The question is why it matters and why so many whites are socially conscious and self-aware about the notion of privilege except when applied to their race? That’s where the deconstruction really starts.

Congratulations! You made it to the next round!

What does white privilege mean?

We’ve briefly touched on what privilege is and what it can be for all of us, but what something is ain’t what it means. How does privilege manifest itself in our reality? How does it apply to our everyday life? How does it shape who we are?

What does it actually do?

Many users commenting on the Vice blog understood the answer to that question, citing examples of what being white has meant for them:

Unnamed: I feel like so much of my career has been about people taking chances on me, putting faith in me, etc. I have had basically four different careers—all really interesting and challenging—and I’ve gotten the chance to transition to each and show what I can do, based on people giving me those opportunities. I’m not blind to the fact that for many non-white people, getting a big break ‘on faith’ is essentially unheard of.

Andrew Litchfield: I’m a white male nurse. I work with many excellent African nurses, some who have more experience than me. I know that I’ll never be turned away by a patient asking for another nurse because I’m white. It happens to black nurses at least once a month.

Corey Reynolds: I’m a white male and I’ve had an employer tell me with a straight face “we don’t hire guys with beards or black people” in 2013. I had to shave. Black people can’t shed their skin.

Joey Gizzarelli: The effects are subtle. But it means that on meeting me, I’m assumed to be more intelligent and more trustworthy. To have had a better education, to have lived in a better area. I’m assumed to have better connections and resources, and therefore seen as more valuable. My mistakes and hardships are more likely to be attributed to chance and misfortune than to my abilities or character.

Iikka Keränen: As a pale-skinned immigrant from Europe [living in America], I have never been given trouble (or made fun of) for having an accent. I have never been accused of stealing people’s jobs or coming here to leech off the system. I have never been told to “go back to” wherever. People are interested and eager to hear about my ethnic/cultural background and don’t automatically assume it’s somehow inferior. People don’t run for the President of the United States on a platform of marginalizing me.

Beth Allen: My 10 year old son looks looks like the typical blond haired blue eyed boy – his best friend since kindergarten J is black. Our house is a second home to J – and our families are very supportive of each other. I observe how the bodega owner clocks J and doesn’t even watch my son (who is frankly much more likely to filch a candy bar). When I was growing up – almost exclusively black men (and women) in movies and TV had negative roles – the criminal, the druggie or the bum. I knew this on a conscious level and felt it was wrong. But when your perspective is parental, wrong hardly covers it. I worry about the impact of racism on J often – what is 18 years of extra scrutiny doing to his self esteem, self image. How is he being shaped by seeing his reflection in the media and films as largely negative – second class?

Zachary Stein: When me and a group of my friends are walking down the street at night, drunkenly screaming and laughing and staggering around, we NEVER even stop and worry about a police officer accosting us. Meanwhile, a group of black people engaging in the same behavior are going to get stopped because the police are worried about them “wiling out”. This flagrant disparity in treatment shapes whole swaths of society’s behavior unbeknownst to most.

Meanwhile, other users entirely missed the point:

Charles Lyons: More anti-White agitprop to prey upon White guilt.

There are a number of reasons for that disconnect. Most boil down to a lack of understanding the phrase white privilege and its intent.

The rest are symptomatic of a degree of racism that renders one incapable of recognizing the term in earnest and I’ll talk about how to spot the difference between the two later. For now, deciphering what white privilege means begins with declaring what it doesn’t…

• White privilege doesn’t mean white people don’t experience hardship.
• White privilege doesn’t mean white people don’t experience discrimination.
• White privilege doesn’t mean white people owe all of their accomplishments to being white.

Like the Wise Men of old, these three things come bearing gifts in celebration of your birth into the world of racial intelligence. Said gifts are wisdom, knowledge, and a potato.

Someone playing dumb would struggle with that list, fumbling about like a child pouring juice into a cup it has no business drinking out of in the first place because really, it was made for adults and smaller ones exist. Lucky for us, we’re playing smart!

Challenge #2:

Read the following comments from the Vice blog and match them to a point in the bulleted list that the quoted user clearly doesn’t grasp. Extra gold stars if you can match a comment to more than one!

Erik Shepner: This message that we (white people) are continually being bombarded with usually implies we owe it to others in society to degrade ourselves, that our accomplishments as people are null and void, and that we should live our lives in shame and guilt.

Craig Zacarelli: Back in the 1980s i got turned down for a job because I had a mohawk, it wasnt even one of those huge obnoxious ones. But the boss told my friend who worked there and tried to get me the job that i “looked like a punk rocker”. He was white, I was white. I also got fired from my fair share of jobs too. I never had anything handed to me just for being white, and i have never been able to take advantage of a situation because i was white.

Amy Turner: If “advantages” go to white people, I guess I must be black and color blind then! I lived in the ghetto til I was 21. I was one out of three white kids in a school that was all black and I WORKED MY BUTT OFF to move my kids out of the violent neighborhood I was living in. Was never “PICKED” before anyone else and all my superiors were black.

Andrew Roesch: Honestly I’d rather burn off my fucking skin than read one more thing about white privilege. I’d like to claim that it is an insult to anyone, white or else, that worked hard to achieve their goals.

Dylan Silver: So my question is if I have so called white privilege why as a senior in highschool were me and my bestfriend pulled over for being out “too early to not be ditching” Which we weren’t as seniors we got out at noon and this happened around 1 pm, then as I complied with the officers request for my id why did I get my face bounced off the dashboard of the car, put in cuffs and beaten at gunpoint for making an aggresive motion? I was in my seatbelt still and Complying with his orders…

Alex Brown: Nothing pisses me off like seeing someone say they got a job because of “white privilege”. The implication being, of course, that every unemployed white person must have just been particularly stupid.

Vi King: im so tired of hearing about this myth of white privilege. im white and it doesnt help me in my daily life at all. i went to college and still dont have a “good job”. i dont get tax breaks for being white. i dont get to ride in the front of the bus or go to the front of the line at the grocery store. in fact, being tall i always get asked by short people, mostly women, to help them get some item off the shelf or help them carry their heavy item to their basket.

What?

Since there were also comments suggesting that the concept of white privilege is somehow a personal attack, I’d be remiss not to mention that the term white privilege isn’t a criticism of white people. It’s an allusion to how white people are perceived and subsequently treated by their environment.

It’s the difference between the statement hot dogs sell well versus hot dogs are delicious. The former relates to the way the external world acts upon hot dogs while the latter would be a comment on the hot dogs themselves.

The phrase white privilege reflects a very basic observation: In America – and arguably many places across the globe suffering from the same historical influence – you’re considered better if you’re white.

So what does it matter in practice?
Better than what and how?

We’ll explore that in the next part of the game and face new challenges. Are you up to the task? Are you human enough to handle it?! CAN YOU STILL PLAY SMART?!?!?!?!

Let’s find out!

Que?

I was bored the other day and somehow ended up watching Univision for hours. It left me wondering a few things…

Why is everything terrible?

I don’t speak Spanish and I’m not Hispanic, so it could just be a cultural disconnect that every single thing I saw on that network – including the news – seemed like an intentionally bad parody of a real thing instead of a real thing, but I’m not sure.

I’ve watched programming from a variety of cultures around the world and short of technical quality, they all seemed good in spite of me having no idea what was going on.

I know there are tons of incredible Hispanic actors and I’ve seen some amazing foreign films out of Spanish-speaking countries, so it’s not like they’re incapable of creating quality content. Why does it seem like Univision specializes in tripe? Is it because it’s just an American network geared toward Hispanics? Did we do this?!

Why do so many of them look like white women who went under the knife? 

I’ve never seen that many faces that pulled back with noses that thin and brows that raised in one place before – unless you count pretty much every American television show about women over 30 married to rich men.

It wasn’t all of the women, obviously. It was just enough of them for it to be noticeable and jarring, like ants converging on a piece of candy stuck to the ground.

I’m not used to such a high concentration of overly-contoured, artificial-looking faces and the verdict is: I don’t like it. It’s like RuPaul’s Drag Race lost some contestants and Univision found them.

The male aesthetic wasn’t much broader. The appearance categories seemed restricted to pouty-lipped Calvin Klein model, elderly mariachi, or Puerto Rican Donald Trump.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something disturbingly deliberate about how everyone looks on that network. It’s almost as if it’s targeting a specific demographic.

Almost.

Why do so many of them look white in general?

Rather – is Univision the network equivalent of every pre-2000 music video to feature Brazil that somehow had no dark-skinned people in it in spite of Brazil having one of the world’s largest populations of people of African descent outside of actual Africa? The CW has a more diverse representation of color than Univision and that’s saying something.

I don’t know what it’s saying, but it ain’t quiet.

Why did I keep watching it if I wasn’t into it?

At first, I suppose I was fascinated. Not oh my gawsh, Pegasus works at Wendy’s and is real and flying horses shouldn’t serve food kind of fascinated. More like what is this… fascinated.

Then I entertained myself by muting it and making up my own narrative for everything, voices and all. Once I start doing that, there’s really no limit to how long I can watch something I’d otherwise hate.

What is Un Camino Hacia El Destino about? I have no idea! I don’t even know what that says. I’m guessing it’s something to do with destiny. But I know what I made the show about!

Luisa is a sweet, naive, aspiring nun who lives and works in a convent where she regularly sneaks about the grounds for fear of being caught going to the bathroom since pees and poops are a sin against God.

Carlos, Luisa’s love interest, is the in-house doctor who specializes in face lifts, replacing organs with inanimate objects, and being so for reals serious.

Marissa, Carlos’s mother, is a powerful matriarch running an even more powerful business with her right and left hands – namely, Luis and some other guy I’ll call Other Guy.

Luis is a top man at Marissa’s company, trusted to lead due in no small part to the roundness of his head, which is a very important trait in their line of work.

Isabela is a transsexual prostitute turned madam and international spy who spends most of her day trying to convince Carlos that she isn’t a man even though he’s so for reals serious that she is.

In the episode I watched, Luisa really had to pee, so she was hiding from the head nun, ducking behind potted plants, until a cute little plump nun caught up to her and tried to warn her that the head nun was going to find her if she didn’t scram.

Luisa freaked out, so the plump nun suggested that Luisa call the head nun on the phone and tell her that she’s traveling somewhere else to throw her off the scent. Luisa liked that idea, so she went to the lockers and asked some random chick if she could use her phone.

She called the head nun, spinning a tale about how she’s going into town and totally not trying to pee at the convent or anything, and the entire conversation took place while the phone was visibly on the lock screen, which made me wonder. Is Luisa insane? Was she imagining it? Yep! Because being bad with props isn’t nearly as interesting.

Meanwhile, Marissa was having a business lunch on the veranda with Luis and Other Guy. Other Guy was trying to convince Marissa that he should be the second in command and while Marissa agreed, she couldn’t ignore the fact that his head is too flat.

Other Guy continued to argue his strong points while Luis looked on smugly, eventually interjecting with a reminder that unlike Other Guy, his head is round and she knows it. It gave Marissa a lot to think about, but she was obviously rooting for Other Guy, so she went to see Carlos and begged him to perform his head-rounding surgery.

Carlos refused, remarking that replacing a man’s lungs with pottery and car keys is one thing, but head roundometry is so for reals serious. It’d be irresponsible of him to even try it. Marissa hugged him, agreeing to let the matter go, but in her eye was a look of cold calculation.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a show I can get into it!