Privilege Marginalization Semester Learning Contract: Fill & Download for Free

“If I’d accidentally jostled the Baronet Pettur in the street while I was still barefoot and muddy, he could have horsewhipped me bloody, then called the constable to arrest me for being a public nuisance. The constable would have done it, too, with a smile and a nod.Let me try to say this more succinctly. In the Commonwealth, the gentry are people with power and money. In Vintas, the gentry have power and money and privilege. Many rules simply do not apply to them.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s FearIt’s important to understand just what “white privilege” is.Most of the people I know who think it’s nonsense, including many family members, understand the nature of privilege solely as a function of wealth.In other words, they’re not rich, and some non-white people are rich, therefore white privilege cannot exist.White privilege is not about wealth, or even power. It is about the extent to which social rules do or do not apply to a person.One of the things that keeps coming up, over and over, with the Mueller investigation and all these guys getting locked up for white collar crimes is that they just have no concept of how much trouble they are in. Manafort in particular is just absolutely oblivious, or at least was until a judge sentenced him to actual prison.Their entire lives, laws were for other people. They knew that the laws existed, but they were never enforced. Not if you had the right quirks of birth: the money, the connections, the status, and the race. Other people went to jail. Not them.That is privilege.There are a whole host of social rules that do not apply to me because I am white.I am far less likely to be stopped by the police.I am far less likely for those rare encounters to turn violent.I am far less likely to face incarceration.I am far less likely to be suspected of petty crimes such as shoplifting.Nobody ever asks me where I am really from. Nobody ever suggests to me that I should head back to Germany. Nobody ever looks at me and wonders if I’m a citizen or illegal immigrant purely based on the color of my skin.I’m a lily-white Midwesterner.Some rules give me an advantage.I can own a gun. I can carry it openly. And that makes me a Constitutional Patriotic Free Badass Dude of American Constitutional Patriotic Freedom.Not so much if you’re black.If I, a lily-white Midwesterner said, “It all goes down tonight. It’s going to be a huge blast. People will be talking about this for years,” what do you picture? Could be a party, right?Go back and say it with a Middle-Eastern accent.I’m more likely to be rented an apartment. I’m more likely to achieve upper management positions in corporations. I’m more likely to be paid higher than equally qualified candidates of non-white ethnicities. I’m more likely to get called back for a second interview. I’m more likely to get an interview.Nobody asks me to buy something or leave at Starbucks, and nobody would ever call the cops on me if I didn’t.Nobody would call the police because I was sleeping in the student lounge of the dorm I lived in.Because the rules my life operates on are fundamentally different than if I were not white.A person of color in my law class grew up in a wealthy upper middle-class family. He once told me how when he was in undergrad, he was pulled over while driving his parents’ car. Despite the fact that his ID had the same last name as his parents’ vehicle registration and his actually pointing that out to them, they arrested him and impounded the car on suspicion that it was a stolen vehicle. They could have called his parents and asked. They could have checked if there were any reports of a stolen vehicle. Literally anything. Instead, these police thoroughly believed that a black kid around 20 years old had no legitimate reason to be driving a luxury vehicle.In that interaction, his life operated on fundamentally different rules than if I were sitting in the driver’s seat.It’s not just white privilege, either. I’m a white dude on top of it. I am the apex predator of this food chain in this country.I recently went to a joint meeting of the American Inns of Court. It’s a professional/social legal organization, where legal professionals like lawyers and judges get together, have a nice dinner, and talk about ethics and professional development.The speaker was a transgender white woman that I had heard speak at the continuing legal education meeting prior.This person was a high-powered attorney that represented railroads and trucking associations, and was very good at her (then his) job. When she came out as transgender and transitioned, she lost many of her clients, and ultimately she ended up changing jobs entirely into transgender advocacy.She had written a piece for a large national publication after Trump was elected, and her editor told her that the publisher had decided not to run it. She demanded to meet with the publisher. This publisher was aware of her personal history as a transgender woman.And yet the publisher proceeded to explain to her the way the world works, starting with his military service, in a textbook example of mansplaining. He called her “hysterical.” And this woman recounted how it hit her as hard as a physical slap in the face for the first time in her life.She would never have been talked to like this when she was a man. Had never been talked to like this as a man.She recounted how when she was a man and went and ordered a ribeye at the butcher counter, she always got a nice, well-marbled cut of meat. And as a woman, ordering the exact same ribeye, would get shitty cuts of meat unless she pointed and specified exactly which steaks she wanted.She recounted how in situations where she would never have felt physically unsafe as a man, she now feels physically unsafe as a woman.She had to work with a speech therapist to learn how to talk like a woman, in order to pass as a woman in society. She was appalled to learn that not only did she have to consciously change the pitch of her voice, she had to change her actual speech patterns. She had to learn how to hedge. A man will say, “We should go see a movie.” A woman will say, “Do you think seeing a movie would be a good idea?” She had to learn how to exaggerate certain comments, and how to compliment people in different ways.She’s still practicing speaking like a woman to pass as a woman. She thinks there’s a whole group of church ladies who are pretty sure she’s just been a pack-a-day smoker for thirty years. She notes that most people don’t question if she’s a woman until she speaks.She is the exact same person she was before she transitioned. Her personality, her education, her intelligence, all of these are the same. She points out that the difference is that her body matches her brain now.And yet, her entire world is sideways and upside down in how it treats her.The very rules by which her life now operates are different, solely because of her gender.In my hometown, there is very much a good ol’ boys club that look out for each other. The old police chief that used to be there knew what high school house parties would be broken up and kids ticketed, and which ones didn’t. Certain cars that didn’t get pulled over.That former police chief is now facing felony charges after a long battle to cover up his actions in covering up the drug problem of the son a local person of prominence, because a drug problem would have negatively impacted that kid’s chance of getting into a good military program. It’s pretty apparent that the mayor was willfully ignorant about it and enabled the cover-up, and then tried to punish the police captain who exposed it by refusing to give him a fair contract when the police and fire commission elevated him to interim chief and wanted to make it permanent.Certain businesses are left alone. Others find it harder to get certain permits.That’s privilege where I grew up.Many members of my family support drug testing welfare recipients. They thoroughly believe that there are makers and then there are takers, and that they can’t be privileged because they sit here and struggle to make a mortgage payment while others live high on the hog on their tax dollars. It sure doesn’t feel like a privilege to struggle to make a living and tightening the belt yet another notch.One of my aunts got angry at me once because her family grew up poor, but she doesn’t think they ever went on food stamps or any kind of assistance. They went and picked up extra jobs. She reasoned that if her family could do it, why can’t these lazy people?It never even occurred to her that some people might not have that opportunity. In fact, when I pointed it out to her, she vehemently rejected the idea. Nothing will convince her otherwise.A college friend of mine believes that if black people just cooperated with the officials, they wouldn’t be mistreated. He looks at the ones that get hyped up in the media as a few isolated instances of bad actors, not the norm. Nothing will convince him otherwise.They believe this because nothing in their entire personal experience has ever been otherwise.They have never been hassled by the police for being of a certain skin color. They have never experienced a situation where even cooperating with the police would still result in unjust treatment. They have never experienced a situation where they were denied a job because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. They have never experienced a situation where they were arrested or saw someone else being arrested for doing literally the same thing as others around them, and for the sole reason of their immutable identity.Not only that, but they don’t personally and closely know anyone who has experienced those things firsthand, or even seen them occur firsthand.The people where I grew up, the family I have that believe this, they will never have to have “the talk” with their kid about how to avoid getting shot by a police officer or how to take extra care not to be “suspicious-looking.”They will never worry about whether they will survive getting pulled over.They will never worry about getting arrested for doing the exact same thing as everyone else.They will never worry about getting marginalized for an attribute that has nothing to do with the content of their character.And they very likely never will, because that’s the nature of privilege.These hidden social rules will never apply to them or those they interact with on a common and regular basis. They will live their entire lives by an entirely different set of hidden social rules, and nobody will ever likely come along that will truly make them aware of it. Even my attempt to explain this to someone back home just to get their reaction, I was told that I was wrong. That there must be more to these stories of people. Something they did, or said. There was utter disbelief that this notion of hidden rules could exist.Because their only frame of reference regarding the very concept of privilege is a measure of wealth and the right to bend certain social rules that come with wealth, they interpret this concept only as “these people mean that because I am white, I make more money.” And since they don’t, as best as they can tell, it only computes in their brains that the concept must be wrong.There is an astounding irony that many of these exact same people who struggle to understand the concept of privilege will complain about how rich people get to use all the tax loopholes and can afford high-powered lawyers so that they never see a jail cell for the same crimes that would land someone like them in prison, but still believe that people of color who make the same complaints about them must be lazy people making it all up and playing the race card.This is the great blindness of privilege: to most people, their current perception of reality is what they fundamentally assume everyone else’s reality must be.Look at the generational differences between my father’s generation, the tail end of the Baby Boomers, and my generation, the first of the Millenials.My father’s generation could feed a family of four and rent or even purchase a house on minimum wage. College was a path out of poverty, not into it.Thirty years ago, the average person my age was paying roughly 12-15% of their income on housing.Today? The average person my age pays between thirty-five and fifty percent of their income on housing. I’m lucky. We pay about 30% for our housing. And my wife gets a stipend from grad school that covers some of that. And we’re not even living in the big city, where an unheated 8’x8’ tool shed is going for $1,000 a month.College tuition at the exact same place I went to undergrad was $250 per semester. Today, it’s almost $4,500 a semester. Minimum wage was $3.10; adjusted for inflation today it would be $11.38.It was possible to purchase a brand new car for two thousand dollars, and a decent used one for $200. My wife and I just looked at a decent used Subaru with 160,000 miles on it. $8,500.My parents and those of their generation? Many of them simply cannot conceive of a reality where that is true. No experience remotely prepares them to accept that they happened to be born at a perfect time in history where certain advantages were simply inherent in they system for them, and that those advantages no longer exist for me and those in my generation.But it does not change the reality that the rules that govern the reality of my parents’ generation simply do not function the same way in mine.This is why it is important to understand the nature of privilege.White privilege is just a subset of privilege.And there is absolutely, unequivocally no doubt in my mind that it exists.Edit and Standard Disclaimer:Sigh… I should have realized writing about this would bring out a certain segment of the population. Every time I write about this kind of stuff, it brings out a certain segment of the population.So, here’s the commenting rules.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, etcetera and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.This kind of nonsense:will earn a special place in the annals of mockery while they howl at the void.I’m done with warnings. If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose an ounce of sleep over it. Being a special kind of dick like the one above might earn you a place in the Hall of Shame, so I suppose if you plan to be a dick, you might as well go full out and make it worthwhile.Debate responsibly.Second Edit: A number of people have brought up two good points.Perhaps majority privilege is a better term. If I, a lily-white Midwesterner, went to certain areas of the world where I would be in the minority, I would not have the privilege I do have.That’s a fair point, and it goes to the implicit biases that even I have, which cause me to treat the U.S. and the Midwest in particular as the center of the world.Still, the fact remains that I am privileged where I live, and it is because I am white.Regarding white guilt. Several commenters, some who were allowed to stay because they weren’t dicks about it, some who found themselves on the other side of the airlock because they were, were all upset because their key takeaway was that they ought to feel guilty about the whole having privilege thing.No.That’s not the point.As I explained to User-10958878137529597270:This is a common response, this fear that if you have privilege, you have to feel guilty about it.Privilege is not, in and of itself, a bad or shameful thing.I’m not embarrassed by the fact that I am a highly privileged person. I have been blessed to have a position in life where I am comfortable, well-educated, and have a great deal of opportunity. I am under no obligation to feel guilty about that, or to give that up because others do not have the same opportunity.That’s not the purpose of acknowledging what you have.What now? How does this change anything?By being aware of it.By realizing that not everyone has this.By advocating for others to have it.By not just trying to be nice to everyone, but being good to them.By actively working to grant others the same kind of life you enjoy for free.By using your place of privilege to make the world a little better.By being aware that you can make the world a little better.Being aware of the nature of the place of privilege you occupy does not require you to have to take responsibility for the sins of your forefathers. Being aware of the nature of privilege doesn’t mean you have done anything wrong.You’d be amazed at how much it changes things just to understand the nature of the advantage you have in life.

That's will be my dream schools.VisionPreparing world class citizen who brings significant contribution to the society.School FacilitiesThere will be sports facilities like swimming pool, tennis court, football court, etc.There will be a high speed free wifi across schools.The laboratory such as chemistry, physics, arts, movie theater, will be equivalent as first to second year university degree. Including the laboratory for conducting students experiments (mini research projects).We provide dormitory for students and supervisor.The design of the schools is combination between futuristic and natural[1][2] .We will design most advanced libraryTeachersI will recruit best graduates to teach. The probabitation period is 1 years. I will use standard of Teach America[3] to recruit teachers, the acceptance rate of teachers must be 10-15%. I will hire only best teachers for all over the world. The salary will be five times of regular teachers in the USA as a base salary. I will recruit only the best and passionate teachers to teach with minimum contract of 4 years so that students will not burden when teachers live them. They cannot leave without very specific reasons. But they can take a break at any time if it is necessary.Teachers can propose for their independent training for teacher development to go anywhere in the world.There will be a teacher development program every semester.There will be an expert to teach extracurricular activities.Teachers have 2 month holiday per year so that they can enjoy when comeback to school.We will hire teachers expert in inclusive learning so that can help students with disability.Teacher: student ratio is 1:20Students 1000-2000CounsultantAs the main aims to give significant contribution to the society, there will be networking and partnership with world class leader such as: Bill Gates, Obama, Novak Djokovic, Oprah, Mark Zuckenberg, Adam D Angelo, and some Nobel Price Winner in Peace and Literature.Hopefully Richard Muller also willing to be one of school consultant.CurriculumThe main goals of this school is contribution to the society so that students need to create projects both individually or in a group that bring significant changes to society.We will design our curriculum. In addition, to help some students continue to prestigious university. We will use half of our curriculum align with Cambridge or IB curriculum to make it easy to implement.Every teachers and students will have 2 months holiday per year.1 semester only consist 4-5 month like in the university.School hours: 5 hours for the core curriculum each day. Negotiable hours for extracurricular activities.We will hire 5 curriculum experts in the specialities: international curriculum, social services, environment and sustainability, entrepreneurship, technology.Career DevelopmentWe will ask students what is their dream since the first day so that we can help them achieve their dream, but still able to give contribution to the societyWe will hire some experts in career development to help studentsWe will design meet up students and mentors so that they can inspire and learn. For example, somebody want to be chemist we will meet them with professor, somebody wants to work in creative industry like media and design we will meet them with Hollywood film makers, etc.StudentsStudents can be from everywhere. They will receive full scholarship to study here. For very wealthy parents they can pay or become donor in the school, but their sons/ daughter will not receive any further privilege. Everybody is equal.Students have diverse mixed group from upper class to marginalized community.Students will be assessed so that we will ensure diverse group in terms of intelligence and emotional intelligence to give pictures of how diverse society is.We will give a place for disable students and we will design schools become a home for themSocial Service and Students ExchangeEach year students as group need to design what contribution they will make to the society based on their interests and talents.They must started with what they can do near the school areas.Students must have students exchange for 2 weeks to 1 month each year to some lesser known country like go to Polynesians countries, Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Nepal so that they can learn other cultures and languages.500 students from all over the world can study here as students exchange for 1 semester.RulesNo discrimination in the school since students and teachers can from all over the world.Respect is a mustFootnotes[1] The 30 Most Amazing High School Campuses In The World - Best Education Degrees[2] 25 Of The Most Beautiful College Campuses In The World[3] Teach For America - Wikipedia

Yes and no, and somewhat no, but at least 50% yes.Honestly, it depends on what rural areas we’re talking about, and for what reasons those areas are ignored, if they are.I’m from one of those rural areas. The heart of flyover country. And of Trump Territory.I’m not a Democrat, but I am a Never-Trumper, and in the opinions of most of the folks where I’m from, that puts me on the left somewhere between Lenin and Chairman Mao. I’m one of the people who is trying to have these conversations with neighbors.Their number one complaint? They’re ignored and forgotten until they throw a brick through the window like Trump. People pay attention to them now. But they feel like Democrats, who are almost uniformly city people in their estimation, either ignore them entirely or look down on them patronizingly and condescendingly and refuse to listen to them.It’s not that they are opposed to progressivism. It’s that they feel humiliated.Democrats forget this at their own peril.Let me try to explain.First, understand the actually progressive history of rural areas.There’s an accepted notion that rural areas are just inherently backwaters resistant to change and so they vote conservatively, and always have.As Ira Gershwin once wrote, it ain’t necessarily so.The Progressive movement of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was primarily led by rural Midwesterners, particularly areas like Minnesota and Wisconsin. There’s a lot of this state with murals of Fightin’ Bob LaFollette on them. The Republican Party was an activist, progressive party for much of its history. That legacy does still live on in places like rural Wisconsin.It wasn’t just the sin and vice values voters, either, who voted progressively for the temperance movement. Organizations such as the Grange were certainly big into ethics and morality, but they were also focused on raising the quality of rural life, including rural electrification and road infrastructure, improved rural schools, and promoting agricultural efficiency.4-H clubs instituted competitions for youth to come up with more inventive ways to improve rural living and agricultural yields. My grandfather won a state soil judging competition. These organizations celebrated modernization and change.These were states that were leaders in creating public elementary, secondary, and higher educational institutions that were free or cheap for residents. UW-Madison created a “short course” college program for farmers to learn better agricultural practices at a bare-bones cost. Both of my grandfathers had degrees through that program. Even when my parents were going to undergraduate at a state school, their tuition was $100 per semester.These voters were concerned with democratic reforms, as well. It was rural progressives that pushed for reforms such as the referendum, the recall, the ballot initiative, the direct popular election of senators, and the civil service. They were concerned with income inequality, and pushed for reforms such as the progressive income tax and ending the laissez faire attitude towards corporate regulations. It was rural progressives that picked up McClure’s Magazine in droves, thanks to a reduced rate for delivery due to the U.S. Post Office and a good price for groundbreaking investigative journalism. And in reading McClure’s, they learned about how stacked the deck was for big business, and pushed for reforms to even the playing field.Even where there was traditionalist pushback, these progressive reformers were generally wildly successful in rural areas until only relatively recently in history.That said, those rural progressives were never particularly welcoming to immigrants, particularly those of color, and had a skeptical attitude towards civil rights at best. Women’s suffrage was a mixed bag among rural progressives, which is particularly ironic considering that women were some of the most vocal in pushing the temperance movement and the women’s vote was essential in delivering the 21st Amendment, a major Progressive Movement platform plank.And they were plenty hostile to urban dwellers, who they saw as decadent, impractical, elitist, snobbish, and out of touch with rural life. Rural progressives blamed urban big-business conservatives for monopolies and unfair trade practices that essentially controlled milk and grain and meat prices.Rural progressives tended to be Republicans. Urban progressives tended to be Democrats. The same basic fault line was present 120 years ago as continues to be present today: the urban-rural divide, and a resentment of city folks by the rural folks.Second, understand the more recent history of liberal (and even conservative) politics and its impact on rural America.Rural America has been beaten to hell, especially in recent years.Cities make up 5% of the country, but dominate in population and especially culture. Name the last television show that positively and fairly portrayed modern rural life. I’ll wait. Can you think of one? The few that even touch on the topic portray rural life as backwaters full of serial killers and dumb accents, or stupid and naive.You remember when the news covered the hundreds of people and $125 billion dollars in damage to rural Mississippi when Hurricane Katrina rolled through, right? Oh, maybe not, because it never got covered in lieu of talking about New Orleans. NOLA is culturally important. Waveland… not so much. Anyone who is not from within 100 miles of it, point to it on a map. Right now. Without using Google. I dare you. Tell me where it is.And yet, Waveland, Biloxi, and surrounding areas suffered substantially more catastrophic damage than the French Quarter did.Infrastructure in rural areas is no longer funded or maintained. Basic things city folk take for granted just don’t exist in rural areas, or if it does, it’s not reliable. Roads, even electricity sometimes can be shaky because it’s not maintained, because the county probably can’t afford it.Rural people generally have to do their own water, including wastewater treatment. You know how much a mound system costs, especially when you have to dig it up every ten years and replace it? You know much it costs to dig a new well if the old one is contaminated? Tens of thousands of dollars. Based on my current city water bill, which is high for the area I’m in, it would take me over sixty years to pay for the cost that my neighbors from where I grew up just put in to dig a new well and replace their septic system to sell their house.And that’s for government services; private ones? Forget about them.It’s not profitable to deliver packages to the ass-end of nowhere, for example. If my in-laws want to order something on Amazon, it’ll get delivered as far as their P.O. Box in town, anywhere from 30–45 minutes travel away depending on road conditions. The Postal Service only goes as far as a turnaround on part of the minimum maintenance road they’re on, five miles away.You want high speed internet? Your only option is satellite or maybe a cell hotspot, both of which are metered, limited connections, so no Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube… anything that consumes more data than basic email. And depending on your television market, you might not even be able to get satellite where you area, even if you don’t want cable with it and just want the internet. Why? Because that’s how the contracts are structured with satellite providers, who really want you to buy the satellite TV.A lot of these communities were built around a single or maybe two industries. Where I grew up, your options were pretty much dairy and crop farming or manufacturing. Both of which are utterly dying. Automation is taking over manufacturing, and giant agribusiness and factory dairies are the only way to survive anymore. My grandfather used to break even at $18/hundredweight for milk. (What, you think farmers sell it by the gallon?) That was twenty-five years ago. It’s up right now from recent years, at just over $18 per hundredweight for November 2019 contracts.Plus crop prices suck right now. You have to get more per acre every year just to break even. A couple bad years in a row and you’re just screwed. So, when some guy from Madison comes along and tells you that you have to put a line fence back that’s going to cost you five grand in lost crop, it hurts.You know why there have been more small farm foreclosures in the past five to ten years than ever? That’s why.There is a not-unfounded belief and understanding that free trade agreements and globalization has caused this.Fine, Democrats tell them. Just move. Go to the city. Unemployment is down right now: get a new job! You can sell the land and go do something else?But right there’s the real kick to the balls: where are you going to go if you want to leave and how are you going to get there?This, right here, is why the suicide rate in my home area has doubled to tripled, particularly among youth and farmers.Where are you going to go?Move to the city, like the urban liberals say we should? That’s what Democrats keep telling my people. Just move. Just move to Madison or Milwaukee because there’s plenty of jobs.Right, because most of my people have $2500 to throw at a security deposit and first and last month’s rent on a cheap place.Sell the land and the stuff on it? To whom? Some giant agribusiness corporation who will happily buy you out… for pennies on the dollar of the assessed value of your land and equipment? It’s not like the other small guy around the corner has the cash to buy your acreage and your cows and your aging equipment.Almost all of that property is mortgaged to hell anyway, because every bad year, every time that milk prices and crop prices are down, you had to take out another loan and refinance the old debt. Crop insurance is enough to maybe keep you from folding for one year. So, you end up taking out a loan against the value of the farm. Again.If the bank will give it to you. Credit is getting progressively tighter because things are leveraged more and more. You can’t sell the farm and fixtures and equipment and livestock for what it’s worth, or even what the debt on it is, because nobody will buy it for that. You’re stuck, because you’ll still lose your shirt when the bank comes after you for the remainder. And the bank might cut you off at any time. Or raise the interest rates.There are no good options.It can be really crushing. It’s why people drink themselves to death, or get into harder stuff. They’re trying to numb the pain half the time. And then you get a drug conviction or a DUI, and now you’re even less employable, and next thing you know, you’re stuck on welfare like the people that the media you listen to tells you are lazy and undeserving.It’s humiliating.And then they turn on the antenna TV and watch the national nightly news and hear the national message of Democrats on every nationally-broadcast television show and media outlet: they’re white, so they’re privileged.And they immediately think, “Fuck that shit,” because it sure doesn’t feel like a privilege to exist where and how they do in what feels like and is the margins of society in a lot of ways.Now, I’ve written at length about how that’s not what privilege means, but that’s not terribly well explained by Democrats to rural people, believe me. Certainly not to my people.And that brings me around to where Democrats are failing at speaking Ruralese right now.It’s worth listening to the complaints of rural voices. Really listen, not take what they say at face value or impose an urban understanding of the rural consciousness.I’m deeply frustrated with some of the answers to this question, which say Bullock is wrong because Democrats do work hard in those areas, but are shouted down because of white fear and nostalgia and that they really like authoritarianism because who doesn’t love a lack of choice and women git back in the kitchen and Jesus Haploid Christ, this is why you people are turning off my people.You know why they’re scared of multiculturalism? It’s not because they believe white people are superior. It isn’t. It’s because they probably lost a job, or knew someone who did, to an affirmative action hire. We can have a legitimate, honest discussion about whether or not that’s good or bad, but if you continue to ignore the fact that happened, you’re going to lose them. As they say in my part of the country, “don’t piss in my face and tell me it’s raining.”*Edit: I want to clarify, after thinking about it a bit on my way home, that this is a very regional-specific take and rural areas may be very distinct in this regard. The pocket of rural America that I’m from is relatively close to a bunch of moderately urban areas and within two hours of three different medium-metro areas. As a result, there is a lot more diversity. There is also a much different tradition to the area. The racism that exists is largely implicit bias and subconscious racism, not overt KKK-style terrorism. That’s not necessarily great, but it’s important to realize that it’s a much different form of racism and fear of multiculturalism than “Jews will not replace us.”There are other pockets of rural America that are a lot different, and are overtly racist. And those pockets are not isolated to certain parts of the country that have a tradition for that. St. Cloud, Minnesota has an appalling number of Confederate flags in the windows of homes and pickup trucks. There was an honest-to-God white pride rally earlier this year. An anti-hate listening session and anti-hate walk had to be called off because of legitimate threats and people who where threatening to hold a protest. A protest against people trying to end bigotry and prejudice. In central Minnesota.I have had some truly horrifying conversations with people that I otherwise respect, who have adopted an almost casual racism, and this has increased in the last three to five years. It’s clear when I press them on it that they don’t understand what they’re saying, and are repeating talking points in many circumstances. But it is alarming, and should be taken seriously.End edit.They don’t fear progress. I call shenanigans on this. Remember, they were the very ones looking for progress a century ago. They absolutely still do want progress.But the progress offered up by progressives is largely delivered with a side of “fuck your present existence; you better just learn how to do something else, and move to the city.” As explained above, even if that were what my people wanted, it’s not an option.Democrats aren’t offering them progress that helps them.What’s the modern equivalent of rural electrification and paved roads? What’s the modern equivalent of rebuilding rural America? What’s the Democratic plan for saving family farms, or easing the transition away from them? What’s the Democratic plan for stopping the slow, relentless march of Wal-Marts destroying the general store?Medicare-for-All? That’s great… if you’re anywhere near a hospital or your local one didn’t already fold. Student loan forgiveness? Awesome… except, probably nobody in your family or workplace went to college, needed to, or will be working in public service.What progress are you offering them?They just like authoritarianism? Horseshit. That is utter horseshit. I call shenanigans on this up, down, left, right, and sideways.You know what the biggest gripe that my people have is? That other people are coming in and telling them what to do who don’t know anything about the subject. They didn’t vote for Trump because he promised them less democracy. They voted for Trump because he’s a one-man government wrecking crew. The fact that he’s destroying the federal government, deregulating the daylights out of everything, sparking chaos on the world order, all of that’s a feature to them, not a bug. They don’t love him because they want someone who will tell them what to do; they love him because they think somehow he’s going to get rid of all the people telling them what to do.They just love nostalgia? Again, I call shenanigans. You know why my people have at least some degree of wanting to go backwards in time? Because at least two generations ago, they could survive on what we had.That’s what made “Make America Great Again” both so enticing to some and horrifying to others. It’s a meaningless glittering generality that allows anyone to impose just about anything on it. Most of my people associated it with a heyday when at least a guy could support a family of four on a regular wage. The fact that it was also a time when being anything but a white guy sucked donkey balls just doesn’t cross their mind.Yes, yes, I hear you screaming in the back right now about how that’s the problem. That’s a selfish attitude. Their mindset is “fuck you, I got mine.”And it is. Oh, hell yes it is. Most of them won’t admit it out loud, but it is. They’ll fight it because these are close-knit communities that look after their own. They’re not selfish when it comes to taking care of the people they know. But outside of that? The rest of the country? They don’t know those folks and don’t care to.But if you’re a Democrat trying to reach these people, take a step back and ask why that is.Yes, many of them are privileged in ways that they don’t understand. That’s a piece of it, sure. But it’s a lot deeper than that.I would like to think that a lot of the progressive voices on here who are constantly attacked over their identity and actually consistently marginalized would have some empathy here. I’m not saying sympathy. But empathy at least.Again, as I’ve written before:It’s disheartening the amount of time I have had to spend trying to convince urban and coastal progressives that the people I grew up with are not just bigoted, racist, homophobic, uneducated Republican slaves to Fox News. That we’re not just a lost cause to progressive policies.When I try to talk to urban progressives about learning to speak Ruralese and understanding rural values, do you know what I get? Scoffs. “What values? Like racism, illiteracy, and superstition?”No, Karen. We’d like to feel safe in our homes and actually get ahead from an honest day’s hard work for once. Probably the same as you.When I tell my urban counterparts that my people feel like their way of life is dying, do you know how many of them smile and say, “Good!”Now, I’m not going to pretend that rural ways of life are always idyllic or healthy. There are destructive generational issues that have haunted rural life. Alcoholism isn’t really viewed as a problem so much as kind of the norm. Case races with Bud Light or Coors are part of living here. There are lots of people trapped in abusive, destructive relationships because they got married young and had a couple kids before they really had life figured out. Egalitarianism for women is not awesome in some parts of rural America. Being gay or trans could be a death sentence, though it’s better than it used to be in most parts of rural America now.. . .There is plenty of hypocrisy and ugly to rural living.But there is also a lot of beautiful to it. There will be a meal train and a card signed by the entire community with whatever cash people could scrape into the hat if someone gets sick or someone dies. Move into a new house and someone will be around shortly with a casserole or hotdish for the oven. We’ll hold benefit nights for a family that lost a house to pick up the slack from the insurance, donate our gently used toys and children’s clothing to a less fortunate local family, or show up in crews with chainsaws and ropes to clean up the trees that come down in a storm. We’ll patch up the roof of the pole shed for the neighbor or rope up the cows that got out through the hole in the fence for each other. We’ll plow or blow each others’ driveways out in the winter, especially if it’s old man Holler who’s like 170 and the crazy fool would probably try do it and kill himself trying if someone didn’t.A farmer in Central Minnesota lately had cancer bad enough that he couldn’t harvest his corn crop, so all the other farmers in the area pitched in, brought their combines over, and brought it in for him.Folks care about each other out here.I was always taught as a kid that we had to look out for each other, because God knows nobody else will.Still think that our backwards ways are all without merit?And then there’s the whole “you’re voting against your interests!” thing. I’ll admit, I used to think that, as well. The 2016 election and subsequent conversations and reading honestly changed my mind on that.The people in my home area feel like liberals are elitist and condescending to rural voters. The most recognition my home area has received from Hollywood lately is Making a Murderer. (Side note, that was several counties over from where I grew up. That’s a whole different part of the state.)Democrats are not asking questions of my people. They’re not listening. They don’t even have to agree, they just have to make my people feel heard.If you can’t offer them something better, at least give them a good explanation as to why, and why that at least still is important to the values you both share.I love this little clip from The West Wing, where Jed Bartlett faces a dairy farmer who was angry about a vote Bartlett took in Congress on dairy prices that look money out of his pocket and hurt him. The farmer is mad about it, and wants to know why Bartlett voted that way, because the farmer is seriously considering not voting for Bartlett for president.What did Bartlett do? He owned it. He spoke to a shared value: we take care of our own, and we should be making the world better for our kids. And what does that have to do with the price of milk? Bartlett explains that voting for that bill would have made it harder for poor kids to afford it.You know what? My people can probably get behind that.But better yet: include them in the solutions. Maybe there could have been a better idea out there for how not to screw the farmers and still get milk to kids in poverty. My people are pretty creative, actually. You’d be amazed at how smart they can be, how inventive, how far they can stretch resources.So, I think Bullock is right, to an extent, that Democrats simply don’t campaign or message in a lot of those areas, at least not on issues that my people care about, or in eliciting their help in fixing the problems we all collectively face in a way that also helps rural people.They’ll talk to you about those things. They absolutely will. Pull up a chair and let them complain? Everyone loves to bitch about the weather and the state of affairs.But they won’t respond to outsiders coming in to tell them what they “really need” or what their interests “really” are. You haven’t earned that.They might even be skeptical at first of why you’re asking them about it in the first place; they’ve learned the hard way that these kinds of discussions aren’t really about getting their input or knowledge, but to gather data for some report somewhere. There’s a lot of lost goodwill that’s going to take some serious time and effort to rebuild.But start asking them questions. Real questions, not pointed, closed, leading questions. Start listening to them.I think that’s where Bullock was going with what he was saying.Now, I’m sure I’m highly likely to get a bunch of people who will comment here “But WHY?! They aren’t suffering as much as we are suffering!”Are there people who are much more marginalized than my people? Hell yes.Are there people who have a lot less political power getting crapped on by my people? Hell yes.Is the perception of how much they receive from the government differ entirely from the reality? Hell yes and then some.All of that is true.Doesn’t matter.It doesn’t.This is how they feel about it.Telling them they shouldn’t feel that way is like telling a person who is depressed to just not feel sad. It doesn’t address the reasons why they feel that way, rational or otherwise.You have to start by affirming the fact that they feel that way and digging into why, or they will never listen to you.As my people say: “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.”Keep that in mind as you approach strategy around rural voters in 2020, Democrats.This was long-ish and without pictures. Here you go.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.Same with whining about these rules and something something free speech and censorship.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly