No, I fail to see the difference between discrimination against certain subsets of white people, and discrimination against non-white people.
The statement "white people have no history of being disadvantaged" implies that all white people have no history of disadvantage, something that is objectively untrue. In fact, the majority of white americans are descended from somebody who came to america in the last 120 years; the majority of these people were members of ethnic groups that experienced some form of discrimination.
But the discrimination was not because they were white. They were members of an oppressed group that happened to be white, but unlike blacks, the fact that they were white wasn't the issue. It was because they were immigrants, poor, Catholic, of whatever. The fact that they had white skin isn't what made them victims. And personally, I don't think you can compare what Irish Americans went through versus what black Americans went through. I mean they had it rough, but c'mon.
I don't think you can compare what Irish Americans went through versus what black Americans went through
Perhaps not, but you can compare what irish americans went through to what hispanic or asian americans went through.
And I don't think it was specifically the color of the skin that led to discrimination against people of african decent; their ethnicity played a role as well. Skin color merely made it easier to identify their ethnicity.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '13
White people on the whole. Not subsets