Public Housing: Please Don't Blame the "Angry White Male"

Check out this novel way of understanding privilege and take particular note of what she says about understanding why poor white males are so angry.

https://www.ted.com/talks/eugenia_cheng_an_unexpected_tool_for_understanding_inequality_abstract_math


I like what she says about how this can help people understand why "poor white males" are so angry, and that understanding that anger is more productive than being angry back.

I want to emphasise this for anyone who has heard that ABC Radio documentary on Stainforth Court.

The people causing most of the trouble are the people in most need. They are the people who have faced the worst difficulties, who are constantly demonised and blamed for societies problems. It takes a lot to push a person to a point that all they can express is violence, and those people deserve our compassion the most.

Someone at housing implied that part of the problem is troubled males all grouped together. They even call it a "false community". Can you imagine how it would sound if we were to call a group of struggling women a false community? Or a group of immigrants? Or a gay community? It's insulting, and what's more it's not correct. The community isn't troubled because they are men, or that it is a false community, they are angry because they are grouped together and victimised as a group.

The way they psychologise these people that they clearly don't understand, and the way they want to socially engineer communities based on these erroneous assumptions makes me feel like I'm part of a social experiment run by university sociologists with little life experience of what these men are really going through.

After what I've been through I struggle with anger issues, and I'm a complete pacifist. I haven't seen half the hardship these men have seen. I can totally see how easily my own behavior could turn if put under the same kind of life-pressures a lot of these people face. The things some of these people have experienced would make some people wet themselves. On top of that they have to deal with it with no acknowledgement, and continuous discrimination to boot.

Have a little compassion for these people.