A Tribute to the Persecuted White, Hetero, Man

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Flubber
While I am here . . . I generally support the idea of affirmative action but I have seen a lot of weird stuff in the implementation that does not make sense

I have to agree with what you say.

I got into a Master of Arts program partially because the administration thought I was from Manitoba. (I was working there when I applied, but I actually grew up in Toronto). Having a Manitoba address made a small difference, although I will never know if I would have got in if I was living in Toronto.

The thing is the administration never bothered to check where I was actually from.

[SpencerH]

Lets not forget the brilliance that allows for advantages for a french speaking anglophone in Canada compared to an english speaking francophone.

[Shi Huangdi]

"I don't really think that feudal lunacy against peasants quite counts as persecution in the same sense as events like the Inquisition."

What the Hell? Someone murders you and it's considered acceptable, and that's not persecution?

In any case, it wasn't just the Normans. Much of the conquest came during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who sent forces and tried to impose Protestantism on the Irish people and ordered the lives of Catholic priests to be forefit. Elizabeth herself was very bloody and conducted many massacres in Ireland let by her servant Sir Peter Carew.

"*If* the Charles' had persecuted the Irish,"

They both did, but not to same extent as some of the other English. Charles I tried to brutally supress an uprising, in which there were some massacres. Charles II worked to destroy the Irish economy by banning the Irish from exporting wool.

"Unless you're telling me that James II's suspension of the penal laws was enough to undue all the ill-will generated by his father and brother?"

James II was a different person then the Charles', and James II had treated the Irish better then the Protestant monarchs. Also, after the William of Orange had come to power in England, James II went from France to Ireland and there was some hope he could be King of an independent Ireland.

"How convenient for you that they were essentially pretending to be Protestant."

Charles I was a protestant, though not much of a bigot and Charles II didn't convert to Catholicism until he was on his deathbed.

"This started out by someone trying to claim that the Irish weren't Northern Europeans on the spurious grounds that they had been "persecuted" by Cromwell. I made a passing comment on why I didn't think this was a legitimate grounds for them to be excluded. Looking back I realize this was not done too well as I said practically nothing about it as it so plainly silly to think that the Irish are not Northern European"

Che said the Irish were not considered White, but when he was doing so I think he was referring to their treatment in the United States. But the English most certainly did not see the Irish as anything other than barbarians and savages.

"But what I don't agree with, and I don't think most anyone else would either, is your claim that the "worst of it came before Cromwell"."

If I wrote that I mis-typed. I had meant to say the worst of it came during Cromwell. But don't claim the Irish weren't persecuted(or say they were with "reservation") or try to brush it off by saying they were supporting Catholic pretenders.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Lets not forget the brilliance that allows for advantages for a french speaking anglophone in Canada compared to an english speaking francophone.

What are you talking about?

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
and Paitkis, I thought I was the murderer of peoples, not the Turk, what happened?

same difference.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Flubber

If by "discriminate" you mean

"To make distinctions on the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit; show preference or prejudice"

. . . programs like affirmative action do that all the time while some posters talking about the "white male" do it all the time as well if they attribute some negative trait to white males

If you mean discriminated against in the sense of facing adversity that requires a redress well lets just say I am not crying a river for the plight of the white male ( and I am one). I do find some affirmative action programs to be offensive when they totally preclude a white male from getting a certain job ( I gace an example of a college that won't hire any male faculty for something like 10 years) because I believe it is unnecessarily restrictive and does not promote merit ( there would HAVE to be a couple of exceptional male candidates in all those years that were ignored). But in the scope of wrongs that go on out there . . . lets just say that there are bigger issues to get riled up over.

Affirmative action is necessary though to create more equal opportunities, and to create a more inter-racially proportionate work force and intellectual society.
When AA is used correctly, by aggressively seeking out equally qualified minority group members over qualified white men, then this is what I believe is legitimate.

[SnowFire]

What the Hell? Someone murders you and it's considered acceptable, and that's not persecution?

I think what DJ was getting at here was the difference between the assassin who kills you because it's his job and the zealot who kills you because he hates your (religion, race, etc.). Life sucked to be a serf. But it sucked in other parts of Europe too, and the anti-Catholic element wasn't huge.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Queen Elizabeth, who sent forces and tried to impose Protestantism on the Irish people and ordered the lives of Catholic priests to be forefit. Elizabeth herself was very bloody and conducted many massacres in Ireland let by her servant Sir Peter Carew.

News to me. As far as I know, one major thing that was nice about Elizabeth was that she didn't hate Catholics; but being that the Pope said any Catholic who killed her would get a free ride into heaven, a reasonable number of Catholics were out to get her. But she only executed Catholics for treason, not merely the crime of being Catholic- loyal English Catholics suffered no persecution from her. As a result (this is a stat I heard), she killed fewer Catholics in her 40 years of rule then Bloody Mary killed Protestants in the last 3 and a half years of rule.

(shuffle shuffle) Hmm... all I can find on this is that there was an Irish revolt, and it was surpressed. No particular mention of religious motivations on the English side. Maybe I'll check more on it later.

Anyway, not sure what this all has to do with the original thread topic, but it's more interesting.

[chequita guevara]

Snowfire, if you go to England, you should go on a manor tour. Ask to see their priest holes. Being Catholic was a crime punishable by death in Elizibethan England.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Tingkai

What are you talking about?

In federal jobs (getting them and advancement within them) french speaking anglophones have "a plus" compared to english speaking francophones. It may have been a factor in your universities decision. It was put in place in order to promote bilingualism amongst anglophones. The funny thing is that english speaking francophones from St. Boniface are classified as french speaking anglophones and get the benefit.

[Shi Huangdi]

"I think what DJ was getting at here was the difference between the assassin who kills you because it's his job and the zealot who kills you because he hates your (religion, race, etc.). Life sucked to be a serf. But it sucked in other parts of Europe too, and the anti-Catholic element wasn't huge."

Life sucked to be a serf, but it was particularlly worse in Irish. Maybe wasn't hatred that made it so the murder of Irishmen was legal, but then it was a view that the Irish were subhuman, which is equivelantly just as bad.

"News to me."

Good for you then, you learned some more history, because the info I gave on Elizabeth's treatment of the Irish is historically correct.

[orange]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Imran: you're being an idiot so I'll try to spell this out for you.

First, look at the stupidity of your statement that "urban blacks (hispanics, asians, whites, etc) don't get the education they need." Do you really think that all urban schools provide sub-par educations. Come off it. The quality of urban schools may be below average, but that doesn't mean that all students of urban schools fail to get the education they need.

Just because a person went to an urban school doesn't automatically mean "they aren't as educated."

From what I heard about American schools, the odds are that urban students get a poorer education, but that doesn't mean all of them are uneducated.

Do you understand this, or do I have to explain this like I was talking to a four-year-old?

Apparently you're the one who needs to be talked to as if you're a four year old, as you're clearly speaking out of your ass. Urban schools are an absolute joke in America, half the people would be better off attending K-4 and then working for the rest of their lives - they'd make more money in the long run. Philadelphia recently had to privatize the public schools because of absolutely horrendous failure percentages (something along the lines of 40-50% failure rate!) as well as the fact that inner city schools are more likely to experience acts of crime, and becuase local taxation is never enough to improve standards, many of the schools simply can't keep up with the rest of their state or the nation.

I live in Pennsylvania, and I guarantee if you take any random suburban/rural kid with 13 years of public schooling and have him take a GED or other standardized knowledge test, and give the same test to a randomly chosen inner city student, 9:1 odds the suburbanite wins by an astonishing margin.

And I'm not talking about these really smart public/private schools like the one Speer attends either. I'm talking inner city Philadelphia public schools.

[MrFun]

Great -- I answered Flubber's post, then he dissapears.

tsk, tsk, tsk

[Kirnwaffen]

I'm going to start off by saying that anyone who begins their post with so juvenile a statement as "You are an idiot" has severely weakened the credibility of the content of their post.

Now, to the discussion at hand:

Programs like Affirmative Action no longer have a place in our society for a number of reasons:

1. It simply doesn't pay to be racist in hiring practices today. Companies now look for the most talented people they can find because they cannot afford to have incompetent people running their operations. Capitalism is overtaking racism.

2. While quotas and the like are not part of AA, they are part of the mindset AA creates. All you must do is look at the recruitment programs at major universities and the military in the US to realize this. These institutes either openly use quotas or support some type of program to give minorities and/or women an edge over equally or better qualified caucasions and males. While this is not the intention or spirit of AA and other programs and laws like it, it has been the demonstrated effect.

[David James]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
"I don't really think that feudal lunacy against peasants quite counts as persecution in the same sense as events like the Inquisition."

What the Hell? Someone murders you and it's considered acceptable, and that's not persecution?

No, it's not considered acceptable. But that doesn't make it persecution either.

In any case, it wasn't just the Normans. Much of the conquest came during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who sent forces and tried to impose Protestantism on the Irish people and ordered the lives of Catholic priests to be forefit. Elizabeth herself was very bloody and conducted many massacres in Ireland let by her servant Sir Peter Carew.

Most of that, frankly, was amongst the nobility, who as we both agree weren't all that Irish. And this was only after the Pope demonstrated his supreme tolerance by excommunicating her, which led to the very real threat of assassination. But I suppose she should have done nothing, been assassinated or deposed and life would have been hunky-dory ever after.

"*If* the Charles' had persecuted the Irish,"

They both did, but not to same extent as some of the other English. Charles I tried to brutally supress an uprising, in which there were some massacres. Charles II worked to destroy the Irish economy by banning the Irish from exporting wool.

Would that happen to be the Ulster Rising of 1641? That would be the one where Irish Catholics went out and massacred Irish Protestants? And also acted as a catalyst for the Civil War which ultimately brought in Cromwell? Charles I had little choice but to attempt to put it down because even he would have recognized the danger that such events posed, as indeed was the case. But this isn't a case of persecution; it's a desperate bid to stay in power. It wasn't planned and it had no ideological basis. This goes back to my claim that Charles I was incompetant - he managed to piss off practically *everyone* in Ireland, the nobility and the Kirk in Scotland and the Parliamentarians in England. This is hardly the record of someone adept at the 'art' of persecution.

As for Charles II and banning wool exports, I can just imagine the scene in his Court;
Charles: " Esteemed courtiers; I really detest the Irish. How might we go about persecuting them?"
Courtier #1: "Sire, we could ban wool exports. That would really show them"
Courtier #2: "I disagree Sire; we should raze their monasteries and burn their priests at the stake, ban Mass and all idolitrous worship"
Charles : "I think not; banning wool exports sounds far more effective to me"

This is of course ludicrous. I suspect the banning of wool exports had far more to do with the political clout of Scottish and English landowners who kept sheep and wanted to protect their economic interests from cheaper Irish imports than it did any great hatred of the Irish themselves. Kind of like Bush and Canadian softwood lumber; I seriously doubt Bush hates Canadian lumbermen and wants to persecute them - far more likely that he responded to domestic interests. Now maybe Irish interests weren't sufficiently represented; no doubt true. But even that might not have been enough. Nor does it seem that the interests of English and Scottish wool consumers were considered either. My point? Stop seeing persecution at every perceived slight to the Irish.

"Unless you're telling me that James II's suspension of the penal laws was enough to undue all the ill-will generated by his father and brother?"

James II was a different person then the Charles', and James II had treated the Irish better then the Protestant monarchs. Also, after the William of Orange had come to power in England, James II went from France to Ireland and there was some hope he could be King of an independent Ireland.

James II was ...an idiot. He attempted to impose Catholicism on a weary population as well as build up his power. They had already been through Cromwell's attempt to impose a fundamentalist (Puritan) variety of Protestantism on them, and they didn't particularly want to see essentially the same thing happen again. Charles II, whilst I don't particularly like him, was shrewd enough to see that he walked a fine line when it came to religious matters, which is probably one of the reasons he remained a closet Catholic. His brother James didn't. James also seemed to have forgotten that it was Parliament that now had the ultimate right to decide the succession.

"How convenient for you that they were essentially pretending to be Protestant."

Charles I was a protestant, though not much of a bigot and Charles II didn't convert to Catholicism until he was on his deathbed.

Right, Charles I married a Catholic and Charles II was, as I said, a closet Catholic or pretended to be a Protestant.

"This started out by someone trying to claim that the Irish weren't Northern Europeans on the spurious grounds that they had been "persecuted" by Cromwell. I made a passing comment on why I didn't think this was a legitimate grounds for them to be excluded. Looking back I realize this was not done too well as I said practically nothing about it as it so plainly silly to think that the Irish are not Northern European"

Che said the Irish were not considered White, but when he was doing so I think he was referring to their treatment in the United States. But the English most certainly did not see the Irish as anything other than barbarians and savages.

I'm sure the Irish regarded the English quite highly as well

"But what I don't agree with, and I don't think most anyone else would either, is your claim that the "worst of it came before Cromwell"."

If I wrote that I mis-typed. I had meant to say the worst of it came during Cromwell. But don't claim the Irish weren't persecuted(or say they were with "reservation") or try to brush it off by saying they were supporting Catholic pretenders.

We obviously have different opinions as to what constitutes "persecution". I think that it was only really in Cromwell's era and to a lesser degree afterwards. I don't consider feudalism alone to be persecution.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Dissident
That is irrevelant.

There are no persecutions. I agree. Just because we haven't suffered means we we can't have the same rights as african/americans or gays?

Yes I mean rights. Becuase stuff in the other thread says we don't have the right to form certain groups.

But you are right. We haven't been persecuted because of race, only because of religion or nationality which is different.

You're sooo right. You know, I applied for a job as an interior decorator and was turned down!!!

But I'm going out right now to buy a do rag, because I have rights too.