US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5492

On July 19 2019 08:15 KwarK wrote:

These days all people of Northern European ancestry are in white club, but it wasn't always that way.

If we take it back to the start of the US the founders were a bunch of incel neckbeards who all got in a room and said "anyone who doesn't look like us, doesn't think like us, or is poorer than us isn't in the club". No women, no blacks, no Catholics, no poors. It's not a conspiracy as you're suggesting with the insiders conspiring to undermine the others, just the monopolizing of power. You didn't employ people outside the club in skilled trades because you already knew a guy in the club who could do it and everyone knows that everyone outside of the club sucks, etc. If you're in the club and mediocre then you can train as a physician, if you're outside of the club but amazing then you can't because everyone knows girls can't be doctors and the gatekeepers are all in the club. The business owners are in the club borrowing money from the bankers who are in the club and trading with the shipping magnates who are in the club.

That's why groups which today would be considered privileged (rich white women for example) were treated so poorly for so long (not allowed to vote etc.), they may have been white but they weren't in the club, it was pretty exclusive back then. The club monopolizes power because the club monopolizes power. Take the disenfranchisement laws I keep referencing. The chief of police and the election registrar are both in the club and as long as they're both in the club they're able to restrict the people appointing them to club members in a perfect loop.

Unfortunately it's quite difficult to completely monopolize wealth, especially when the excluded communities form their own little Ireland or whatever in Boston. If the club collectively says "no Irish", as they did, and the Irish all say "screw you guys" and make their own little place then eventually you run the risk of rich Irishmen which makes the club look bad because you can't have a club that's built on the idea that all the wealth and power is held by club members when there are outsiders with wealth and power. And so the club slowly expands, by the early 1900s rich Catholics are allowed in, as long as they're male and white. Later women are allowed in, as long as they're rich and white.

The 30s roll around and suddenly it's a difficult time to have all the rich white people dicking over everyone else all the time and there's a lot of people saying a lot of scary words like "revolution". The club can't throw open its doors entirely but what they can do is ease up on the rich requirement, while still enforcing the race requirement. By doing so they get a significant number of working class voters to effectively buy in to the system. As long as they believe that they're receiving a marginal benefit from the continuation of the status quo they'll prop it up, and it's becoming hard to prop it up without them. By this point white club is a pretty good name for it. Women and workers are allowed in. Hell, if you're rich enough you could probably even get away with being gay or Jewish, as long as you do it discreetly.

It's less exclusive than it used to be but it's still a pretty great club to be in. If you go into a bank to borrow money for a mortgage then you and the bank manager have an unofficial understanding that you're both in the club. He knows he'll have no trouble explaining why he extended a line of credit to John Smith to his underwriters because John Smith is a good club name. If you go to buy a house in a neighbourhood of club members you can rely upon being welcomed. The club is ingrained in the understanding of the world at this point, if a club member applies to be a manager alongside a non club member then it just makes sense to hire the club member, both because of your own bias and the bias of all your customers. Even if you're super progressive for the 1950s and know the club is a sham, you don't want your customers leaving. If you're in the club you have access to education, jobs, credit, investments, and resources that non members just don't have because all the people controlling those things are in the club.

The exact same still applies today. If I walk into a Porsche dealership and ask to test drive a car they're not going to mess around, they'll take a look at me and they'll recognize that I'm in the club. I look, sound, and dress like the kind of person who's in the club. It conforms to all of their internal biases, it's fine. It's the same if I go to a bank and ask for a loan, when I have to walk into a room of strangers and run a meeting, when I have an interaction with an elected official or a police officer. I'm given respect and deference because I've been born into a world where people like me get respect and deference and everyone understands that. I'm not ever going to worry that the police are going to give me a rough ride in the back of a truck because I know and they know that that kind of thing isn't done to club members. Being in the club means never having to prove your value to people. Obviously you can go the other direction, you can demonstrate that you have no value, but you've always got that great intro with your private membership.

White club isn't actively conspiring, we don't have meetings, it's the monopolization of power by the group in power through cultural conditioning.

Your presumption that Democrats are working against white club is false, as GH and MLK will tell you. Democrat strongholds are often the worst offenders when it comes to shit like school segregation which is a classic symptom of limiting access to education to club members. Democrats want all the social credibility of acknowledging privilege without any of the sweeping societal revolution needed to address it because at the end of the day being in the club is great and we'd all much rather feel bad about being in the club than close the club.

Asians aren't a homogeneous group. They're not in white club but if they're the right kind of Asian they can get honorary memberships. You're not letting the dry cleaners in but you might let in the guy who owns a chain of a hundred dry cleaners.

The overlap of white skin and white club isn't total but it's close. If your first language is Spanish, your English is heavily accented, and your last name is Gonzales then light skin isn't going to help that much. Alternatively if you're third gen Japanese American and middle class or higher than you're probably some kind of honorary member.

It's absolutely nothing like antisemitism for the simple reason that the Jews did not control all the money and power in Europe and use it to turn everyone else into a second class citizen. If you're not in the club in America you're a second class citizen. You're more likely to be arrested, you're more likely to be convicted, you're less likely to be hired for jobs, you're more likely to have your civil rights taken away, and so forth. None of that was ever true for the antisemitic ethnic Germans living in Germany.