White Privilege

They might taste better for all I know. My aunt was Ukrainian mother/Polish father made excellent perogies. I wouldn't know the difference. I do know the ones from Winnipeg are better than the stuff we get here. The Ukrainian church and the cultural centre sell them here. They are very good. 
No sour cream in the fridge. I didn't use butter but I had pasta sauce leftover and that was good too. 
Do you eat holupchi? Cabbage rolls with rice and meat? What about borscht? Do you make have it cold or hot or with sour cream? There are so many Poles and Ukrainians where my parents are from that honest the two cultures mixed in the city after a while and I am not sure that anyone cared anymore. I could be wrong though. I was never taught to think any less of a Pole as my favourite Auntie was Polish. I loved her a lot and she made me my first scrapbook. She was amazing! Her son with my uncle just got married 2 years ago (he is 50 and so is his wife). i wish they had married years earlier but they just met about 4 years ago. 
I do my best to preserve my heritage and identify as a Ukrainian Canadian. My dad does not, though. He is "just Canadian". Whatever works.

You're singing my song! 

well it's a better direction than it was going

jayfab! (Hope this tagging works) Don't make me hungry! I've been trying to experiment with reducing the heaviness/high fat in traditional Polish recipes. Middle European food tends to be unabashedly full of butters, oils, and rich meats, which are decadent, but not great for the ticker. Related: As Poland's wealth grows, and living standard increases, it would be interesting to see if a vegan movement gets some mileage there, and if so, how foods and habits get reinvented.

Delta Dawn Don't tell anyone, but I'm not a beet person. My Mom makes borsht cold, and I was never a fan.

Apologies for the thread drift.

I don't think stores need to be government run. Where we lived previous to this, the problem wasn't that stores didn't want to operate in poor neighborhoods. The problem wasn't crime, the problem was that city code was set up in such a way that it was easy to run a bodega and it was impossible to set up a proper grocery. DC's 4th Ward had something like 70,000 residents and one grocery store a decade ago when we moved to the suburbs. There was a McD's, though! So guess what was easier to get to. 

My suggestion would be that cities where access to quality food is a problem in certain areas should rewrite specific portions of the city code so as to promote the establishment of proper grocery stores, provide tax incentives for it, and ensure public transportation is adequate to the area. They could loosen the restrictions on parking lots/decks, reduce the real estate taxes, things like that. I think in DC, the bigger obstacle to really establishing a solid food supply to some neighborhoods - especially out in the 7th and 8th wards which are even less affluent than the 4th - is less about shoplifting and more about architectural and building restrictions, as well as the tax burden. 

I would also support public funding for initiatives like cooking classes for adults and youth, and using facilities such as public school kitchens as a venue. Given some time and some promotion, I think a neighborhood that is traditionally accustomed to having poor food access would embrace better food access.

I know some stores in food deserts have tried stocking better food and failed, but I think that there's a cultural issue there - just because you have a zucchini in the store doesn't mean that the people who are used to buying cans of beanee weenee are going to suddenly start buying the zucchini. So you have to encourage and teach people who haven't traditionally been encouraged and taught in this direction.

Addressing your first paragraph---

The thing that we often see, read about, watch on TV is that the "white" people are always to blame for the oppression of other cultural groups. When is it the responsibility of those same groups to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make them a better life rather than continuing to feel that they are stuck or underprivileged???

In construction, bids are favored for the "so called minority groups". Government contracts favor "cultural" companies over equally qualified all white companies.

There are scholarships that are available to blacks only, but if any other "white" scholarship was to exempt blacks, there would be lawsuits the minute it was discovered.

I view more favor and privilege to African Americans than for women!

In many cities nationwide, whites are the minority!

Yes, there are bigots, racists and there is existing racism in places throughout the U.S.


Not living with rose colored glasses on, but I do ask, when does the responsibility for each person become their own?


I work with someone who is very white privilege--her views are that her kind are superior (her views all stem from her religion and her age) and it sickens me--but it does not have impact on the way I view things.

Galompkis are similar ( the same? ) as holupchi

It's called everyday life. Same line of thinking to say why is there a BET channel.. Well because until recently every channel was the white channel.

There is a reason that we have women's month and black history month and so on. It's to finally represent the underrepresented.

Ah ok. Yeah we like them a lot. We do this as a team. One cores. One boils. One makes filling. One rolls. I don't interfere with anything but I do 100% of the rolling. I am an expert roller. I know how much filling and how to treat the cabbage. No one questions. Now the filling? It's "rice, meat, fried onion and salt/pepper?" I don't know. I don't make it so I have no idea. I should probably learn because one day it will just be me making them. Love them, though! I like them hot and cold. Do you cover with tomato sauce? Soup? Other? We find we like tomato soup the best. They cook for 2 hours on 300 maybe? Maybe lower. Have to ask my dad. He would know.

Living outside of DC and being a fed-worker family with three people in the family and most of our friends working for the government or for contractors - it is absolutely 100% true that there are set aside contracts for minority owned businesses. If you are, like, a black disabled woman lesbian veteran and you own a contracting firm, you will rarely go without work. This is absolutely true. However, the set-asides are rarely the large and lucrative contracts. I am familiar with about half a dozen large fed IT contracts in the pipeline - billions of dollars per contract - and none of the big contracts are set-asides. They are going to be bid by the large, traditional contracting firms that dominate the market. Those big firms are mostly run by white men. They are the ones with the large-scale, long-duration, high-dollar projects.

If you really look at where the power is in contracting - it's not in the minority owned firms working the set-asides. It's at Lockheed, it's at General Dynamics, it's at Northrop, it's at BAH. There are zero minorities on the executive-level at the company where my husband works (a top 10 contractor). None. Some women, even some younger women. Which is awesome. But I am not laboring under the misunderstanding that those set-asides really shift any of the power away from white men.  


I live in one of those places where whites are the minority. My daughter's school is about 28% white and about 30% limited English proficiency. As compared to my public school system, which was about 99.999% white and certainly nobody from another country ever.

In my opinion, when the playing field is really level, then we can say that the responsibility for each person is their own. But I don't think we're there. 

My kid has two well-educated parents who work jobs that allow us both to be home with her every day. We help her with homework, read to her, and provide enrichment opportunities where we're able. I promise you that she has advantages over the child who sits next to her on the bus but who goes home to an empty house for three hours until her single mom gets home from her job at Walmart, and when mom gets home she can't help much with homework anyway because she moved to the US from Pakistan, where some girls never get an education at all. So I am also not laboring under the misconception that that little girl's success is all on her. Part of her success is on me as part of her village. Part of her success is on our neighborhood school as the only real venue she has for information. And if she is eligible for a scholarship that my daughter isn't eligible for, that is fine with me because I guarantee we had a million opportunities the other little girl never, ever, ever had. So no, her success is not all on her and I'm not going to try to put it there. 

I am in graduate school and there are a number of available scholarships. A good number of them are minority scholarships. The reason is that I am in an MLIS program and a lot of organizations that provide scholarships see that Hispanics, blacks, Asians, and American Indians combined make up only about 12% of MLIS students - and want to see the demographic of professional librarians reflect the demographic of the patrons they serve. I am not eligible for those scholarships because I am part of the demographic that already dominates the field. I do not improve the diversity of the field. And the reality is - that's okay. There is a bigger picture than just me. I see the benefit of increased diversity in the profession when I am working in the library because the whole staff looks like me but the patrons don't. I am quite confident in my ability to find work in the field, and that can coexist just fine with the benefit of increasing diversity in the field as well. 

Just my two cents' worth.

ummmm?

I have long been aware of the privilege that being born into middle-class America has given me. I volunteer at our local homeless shelter and the difference in expectation and attitude is amazing to me. I expect that if I have a problem, I will work to solve it, and eventually things will be better for myself. I expected that if I worked hard I could on a standard of living that I wanted. Many of the homeless I have encountered are multi generational poverty victims. To them, life just seems to happen, good or bad. The idea of setting goals and working towards them and making life happen as they want it to happen is totally foreign. This is when I feel very privileged. I was privileged to be born in a family where I learned an attitude of work to achieve.

As far as white privilege, my being born into middle-class America is probably a part of that. But I often fail to notice because my own family has so many races mixed into it. Do I feel guilty? I probably do but only because I think everybody deserves the same chances that I have had.

pyccku ... Yup, I am jealous! My mouth is watering.