Why John Scalzi is wrong about White Straight Male as a dificulty level

[dbroussa]

Recently Hugo award winning author John Scalzi wrote a blog piece about how to explain "white priviledge" without using the word priviledge.  His basic point is that if life were a video game that being a Straight While Male would be like playing on the Easy difficulty.  I disagree with him on a number of levels most notably the level of

Comments

[selenite]

I tend to think of it in GURPS terms--various social attritutes give you disadvantages.

The problem with the issue is that regardless of how you describe the problem there's going to be disagreement over the remedies. A lot of people think just acknowledging the problem exists means you should accede to their proposed solution. Doesn't follow.

Sure, lots of black boys get a raw deal in the USA. Admitting them to colleges where they don't have the academic background to do the classwork makes things worse, not better.

[dbroussa]

Very true...from my standpoint my thinking is that what matters more than the social aspect are things like money, willpower, intelligence. Not to mention that just being born in the US, no matter the race or wealth, is a HUGE advantage against the rest of the world. Here, even if you are dirt poor, you will get an education, have access to fair and impartial courts, have police that are generally uncorrupt, have fire service that will put out the fire no matter if you have paid your taxes or not, and have a national gov't that, for the most part, leaves you alone and lets you succeed or fail. Compare that to most nations and being American is not just a lower difficult level...its like we are playing chutes and ladders and everyone else is playing russian roulette