i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
The problem I'm currently having with the idea of privilege is it seems pretty reliant on the idea that whites apparently enjoy some sort of de facto rights and advantages that other races don't get, yet (depending on the country, I'm sure) other races apparently have overcome this handicap to become more successful than whites.
And, no one has tackled the question regarding other countries where white isn't the dominant race and how privilege factors in there.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
^^What metrics are we measuring the concept about then? Is it the idea that whites are just treated better, as race compared to all other races?
If so, that seems like some pretty heavy burden of proof that I haven't really seen solid evidence to support.
And that still doesn't address what privileges mean where we start applying it to other countries where there's nothing close to a pattern showing whites enjoy greater treatment.
Privilege is a social construct (if this phrase calls to mind the "science wars" feel free to laugh, but sometimes things really are social constructs, y'know). Talking about other societies confuses the issue; it is not going to be identical across all cultures.
Privelege is the idea that, the way the framework of society is set up, there are some groups that are more favored than other groups.
The best examples I can think of: When is the last time you couldn't get somewhere because you were stuck in a wheelchair? When was the last time you had to worry about reactions of disgust when you held your significant other's hand in public? When is the last time you had an absurdly hard time finding clothing that fit you right?
Some small, some big, All of those things are examples of privilege.
So I guess the idea is that due to your privilege you don't spend much time thinking about the issue, so you're less qualified to discuss it than someone who has to deal with it on a daily basis.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Now, if that IS what privilege means in the broadest of sense, then I think there are some major flaws with the idea.
Stuff like wheelchair access and finding clothes that fit is something that requires money invested by other companies or people to fix.
Things like race issues, or how some is treated regarding sexual-preference doesn't require money to fix, now you can limit it to the questions of race and sexual preference, but I think the concept seems to break down if scrutinized.
Now, it'd be absurd to say that I think "heterosexuals enjoy the same privileges as homosexuals" or "Latinos enjoy the same privileges as whites", those are obvious. What's been shown to be not so obvious is that "white, heterosexual, males, enjoy more privileges than anyone".
Now if "privileges" isn't being used as a case by case basis and is being attempted to establish that last thing I mentioned, then I think there are some pretty serious flaws in it as some sort of "blanket concept".
^^ That is the idea, as I understand it. You could say that privilege is the ability to hold these unnoticed prejudices and the unquestioned assumptions and not be troubled by them.
^ You can be privileged in some respects more than others.
And yeah, providing wheelchair access costs money. Making anything functional costs money, though. If you haven't supplied wheelchair access, you haven't paid as much as was necessary to make your building accessible to everyone.
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
I don't think the concept itself is non-existent, but I think it's sort of a poor way to look at something.
I spent some time last night looking around at several more sites that attempt to define privilege and finally came across what's generally agreed to be the foundation for this whole privilege nonsense, to which this person says is, "the standard resource on privilege" to which she goes about amending and adding her own touches and ideals as social justice crusaders are wont to do. This paper is considered the scholarly enough to be cited, just by looking at this. The reason I'm pointing out all these references and accolades to this article is proof to its seminal nature for this ideal of "privilege" and that I'm not cherry-picking something to strawman. Anyway, here it is:
It's only at the end do we see the vintage of this notion, which is 1988. It took a while for this thing to pick up steam and go, but eventually did.
As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage.
Notice this point here. She goes into it again a few paragraphs down in the essay.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.
She's lamenting that she wasn't guilted in the public school system at an early age. I'm pretty sure they still don't do that here in America. At least I hope they don't. But to her, this is a symptom of a "damaged culture." So what is a damaged culture?
My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them“ to be more like “us.”
Oh. So she means we're like every other major culture on the face of the earth except in one respect. The Chinese think this same way. The Japanese think this same way. The Eskimo thinks that their lifestyle is a morally neutral, normative, average thing. The Amish are defiant in this respect. The folks in the Middle East feel this same way. So what's that "one respect" that sets Western culture apart? We actually welcome people different than us into our melting pot culture.
Now I'm guessing that you're sitting there chuckling to yourself at what I just said. To which I invite you to go read up on how Westerners are generally treated whenever they attempt to emigrate to China or Japan. Or about how there are establishments in Japan that refuse service to non-Japanese, especially if they're Korean. Try taking your progressive ideals into the middle east with you, you know, the simple stuff where women get treated equally. Hell, walk into an Amish settlement and ask to raise a barn. If any of these cultures do accept your presence, it's only after the compromise that you conform, at least a bit, to theirs. This is not a horrible societal evil that Mrs. McIntosh seems to be implying here. This is the way cultures have been since the dawn of time.
So I guess the idea is that due to your privilege you don't spend much time thinking about the issue, so you're less qualified to discuss it than someone who has to deal with it on a daily basis.
I think?
Help me out here.
Possibly. Though, the problem I have with this line of thinking is it's apparently "There are inequalities and injustices in the world based on race, sexual-preference, belief, etc... we've created a system that attempts to fix that and also suggests you're less qualified to address the issue based off your race, sexual-preference, and belief".
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
Getting back to the matter at hand, the article is a pretty long read, so I've tried to pull out what I feel are the pertinent parts.
One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is not taught to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in the invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.
Here we go again with the phantoms that only she can see. Well, perhaps she enlightens us somewhere else in the article that I missed.
We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex.
Oh. So it just does. Well then, can't argue with that ironclad logic. Simple as that.
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects
I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way.
I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy,
I, I, me, my, I, me. This article couldn't possibly get more subjective. What we have here is a testament to one person's perception on a matter. This is article could, at best, be considered a philosophy. In the realm of fact or reason, it has no foundation or merit.
She's lamenting that she wasn't guilted in the public school system at an early age. I'm pretty sure they still don't do that here in America. At least I hope they don't. But to her, this is a symptom of a "damaged culture." So what is a damaged culture?
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
Nope.
Real effects that she is perfectly capable of seeing, and spends the rest of the article detailing.
Well okay. Could you can show me where in this article she cites anything of a valid scientific nature that supports her argument? I can't see anything cited at all. All I see is a subjective, impassioned idea put to paper. Everything is from her viewpoint alone, something she admits to many times. The was no collaboration with anyone else on this article. Just her. And me along with the western world is supposed to accept this as entirely valid?
Well okay. Could you can show me where in this article she cites anything of a valid scientific nature that supports her argument? I can't see anything cited at all. All I see is a subjective, impassioned idea put to paper. Everything is from her viewpoint alone, something she admits to many times. The was no collaboration with anyone else on this article. Just her. And me along with the western world is supposed to accept this as entirely valid?
It's sociology, it's almost always like that. And we don't go around denouncing Durkheim or Weber all the darn time.
And this is why we're not going to agree on this matter. You say that I am "privileged in some respects", and I think the entire concept of "privilege" is a load of horsedump. I realize that there's inequality and disparity along the ethnic lines in the western world, but I can't think of a more counterproductive way to fix this issue than by playing the blame game bolstered by a logic so broken and faulty that a five-year-old can poke holes through it.
I don't disagree that there is inequality and disparity among ethnic lines in the Western world. I don't believe that "playing the blame game" is going to help.
Clearly, however, we aren't going to agree on this matter, because you still insist that the concept of privilege is a "blame game", which it by definition absolutely isn't. Rather, it is a way to approach the problem of racism logically and explain how, in this day and age, racism can persist and prevail without being immediately denounced from all sides.
You are not even prepared to entertain the possibility that privilege is a thing. If white privilege is real, then there is a very real possibility that you would overlook it because you yourself would not feel its negative effects. This isn't an insult; it would not be reasonable for me to expect you to be aware of every instance in which you were not subject to racism when an African American or Latino individual might have been, not without you first entertaining the possibility that white privilege exists.
You have not done so. You outright refuse to do so, on the basis that a five-year-old could poke holes in the concept of privilege. If that's the case, then where are the logical arguments against privilege? I don't mean ones attacking some bullshit, imaginary, racist definition of privilege that constitutes a blame game or an accusation of assholery, which is a strawman and is indeed easy to pick holes in, I mean ones that address the concept of privilege that people who use the word are actually talking about - as in, the widely accepted usage.
These are not the same thing. They are quite demonstrably not the same. Earlier, you quoted the following passage:
What you need to realize is that we all have privilege to some degree: white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc. The hardest thing is to do is to get over your instinct to fight and say, “But I’m not like that!”
You interpreted this as meaning that "everyone is a fucking asshole no matter what culture you come from, how you were raised, etc." Which would of course be bullshit. But it's not what was actually said. At no point in that quotation did takanji claim that being privileged made you an asshole.
Now, I can see how you might have interpreted that passage in such a way if you read it out of context and are not familiar with the concept of privilege; the "but I'm not like that" does arguably suggest that having privilege makes you in some sense bad, if it is intended to be the reaction of a person familiar with the concept. However, this is not a reading that makes any sense in the context of the rest of the passage.
Simply put: you aren’t bad for having privilege, but not being able to give up your privilege is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card for bad behaviour. So, what, then, to do about it?
In my experience, most definitions of privilege will include a passage to this effect. I won't make any assumptions, but if there is some way in which this passage can be interpreted, in good faith, as meaning that having privilege makes you an asshole or suggests that you are to blame for discrimination in some way, I would like to hear it, because frankly such a reading is entirely beyond me, from where I'm standing. Right now, I cannot see how you can, in good faith, have gotten that reading out of that post, unless you dismissed the passage I quoted for whatever reason.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but my perception is that the reason you say privilege is a logically flawed concept is because you believe it to be a vaguely-defined quality which you are presumed to possess and which you cannot argue against without being presumed ignorant or bigoted. That is to say, I think you are interpreting posts such as TWF's one earlier as being a circular argument that follows this model:
If you belong to group x, you have privilege
Having privilege but not acknowledging it renders you incapable of talking about it.
Having privilege but acknowledging it makes you capable of talking about it.
You have privilege, therefore you must either admit it or shut up.
The flaws in such an argument are obvious; it is entirely circular. If that were truly the argument being made, we'd be looking at some kind of large-scale Emperor's New Clothes type scenario. But that is not the argument being made.
The argument being made is that, assuming that privilege exists, then because of the nature of privilege, privileged parties are not going to just notice all the ways in which they benefit from said privileges. This doesn't mean that privilege can't be defined or pointed out to you, or that you can't notice it if you look out for it, but it means that you will not have directly experienced it in cases where you belong to the group in question which is privileged. Or put simply, you will not have felt the direct effects of discrimination against black people first-hand if you are white. Because you are white. You will not have felt the direct effects of misogyny if you are male. Because you are male. It's not merely obvious, it's practically a tautology.
White Americans are half as likely to be unemployed as those of other races. There are almost three times as many African Americans living in poverty as there are white people. White people are less likely to go to gaol and less likely to stay there. Around ninety percent of women experience sexual harrassment in the workplace. It's been mentioned before here that most children's television series will happily portray heterosexual relationships, but won't touch the issue of homosexual relationships. When they do, complaints are inevitable; this is just expected. In a country that is supposedly secular, Diwali does not receive nearly the level of mainstream recognition that Christmas (as a religious celebration or a commercial event) recieves. If a man is assaulted, nobody ever asks "what was he wearing at the time?". I don't recall ever hearing the fact that a person was cisgender being treated as the punchline to a joke. If a white, heterosexual couple go out in public together, this action is not considered a threat to their safety, and they will almost certainly not be accused of flaunting their heterosexuality.
There are other ways we could account for these inequalities, of course. We could suppose that minorities (we cannot say "underprivileged groups" if we are to reject that concept) are simply underachievers blaming others for their problems, for instance. We could assume that groups subject to less discrimination, such as whites and men, are largely maliciously but covertly racist. Doing either of these things would be "playing the blame game". Talking about privilege is not playing the blame game.
It's sociology, it's almost always like that. And we don't go around denouncing Durkheim or Weber all the darn time.
Sociology is a science that as such is bound by the scientific method and adheres to that and credible academic standards. This paper by Mrs. McIntosh is an uncited, persuasive article.
Well okay. Could you can show me where in this article she cites anything of a valid scientific nature that supports her argument? I can't see anything cited at all. All I see is a subjective, impassioned idea put to paper. Everything is from her viewpoint alone, something she admits to many times. The was no collaboration with anyone else on this article. Just her. And me along with the western world is supposed to accept this as entirely valid?
Obviously I can't, because as you say, there is no collaboration and no sources are cited. It is, as you say, closer to a philosophical argument than a scientific one. And yes, she does refer to herself a lot. But what about the argument itself? Is she wrong?
Now I'm guessing that you're sitting there chuckling to yourself at what I just said. To which I invite you to go read up on how Westerners are generally treated whenever they attempt to emigrate to China or Japan. Or about how there are establishments in Japan that refuse service to non-Japanese, especially if they're Korean. Try taking your progressive ideals into the middle east with you, you know, the simple stuff where women get treated equally. Hell, walk into an Amish settlement and ask to raise a barn. If any of these cultures do accept your presence, it's only after the compromise that you conform, at least a bit, to theirs. This is not a horrible societal evil that Mrs. McIntosh seems to be implying here. This is the way cultures have been since the dawn of time.
So if everyone else does something, that makes it automatically acceptable?
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
One thing I'm really having trouble reconciling:
"White Americans are half as likely to be unemployed as those of other races. "
While TRUE for SOME races, isn't true of Asians, in America at least.
Asians are actually enjoying lower rates of unemployment, than whites.
Honestly, the fact apparently when we discuss "privileges" there seems to be an implication of "white privilege" at least makes me think there are some serious issues with how the term is used. I could accept something to the point of "Privileges are benefits and luxuries one group finds much more accessible than other groups," but much of the focus is making me think there's an unspoken, or heck, maybe just spoken understanding that "Privileges are things benefits and luxuries white people find much more accessible than any other group," and there's definitely a lot of research that would have to go into proving that was the case across the board.
Honestly, the fact apparently when we discuss "privileges" there seems to be an implication of "white privilege" at least makes me think there are some serious issues with how the term is used.
You seem to be the one bringing up white privilege specifically the most in this conversation.
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
Before I go into my response to you, Fouria,
White Americans are half as likely to be unemployed as those of other races. There are almost three times as many African Americans living in poverty as there are white people. White people are less likely to go to gaol and less likely to stay there. Around ninety percent of women experience sexual harrassment in the workplace. It's been mentioned before here that most children's television series will happily portray heterosexual relationships, but won't touch the issue of homosexual relationships.
Again I will say that I am very well aware of the inequality and disparity we still suffer in the western world. It appears to me that you keep reminding me of this social inequality in an effort to validate the concept of privilege. Poor education, poor funding for education, lack of employment, poor or lack of health care, a safe environment to live, a poor or nonexistant legal system, overcrowding in living areas and schools, a drug culture, racism, and sexism are just some of real world factors as to why these people's lives suck. It's not because of the convenient, intangible blanket term called "privilege" which if anything further muddies the waters on an problem where its solution should be crystal clear.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but my perception is that the reason you say privilege is a logically flawed concept is because you believe it to be a vaguely-defined quality which you are presumed to possess and which you cannot argue against without being presumed ignorant or bigoted. That is to say, I think you are interpreting posts such as TWF's one earlier as being a circular argument that follows this model:
If you belong to group x, you have privilege
Having privilege but not acknowledging it renders you incapable of talking about it.
Having privilege but acknowledging it makes you capable of talking about it.
You have privilege, therefore you must either admit it or shut up.
The flaws in such an argument are obvious; it is entirely circular. If that were truly the argument being made, we'd be looking at some kind of large-scale Emperor's New Clothes type scenario. But that is not the argument being made.
Yes, this is one of the issues I have with the concept. I'm not going to say that everyone who subscribes to the idea of privilege employs this manner of thinking, but I've seen a hell of a lot of those who do. If anything, I'm not accusing you of doing so.
You are not even prepared to entertain the possibility that privilege is a thing.
You are absolutely correct here, and I've outlined my reasons in this thread many times. I've even pulled out what's widely considered the origin of this ideal to show how my problems with this concept are inherent from the very source.
If white privilege is real, then there is a very real possibility that you would overlook it because you yourself would not feel its negative effects. This isn't an insult; it would not be reasonable for me to expect you to be aware of every instance in which you were not subject to racism when an African American or Latino individual might have been, not without you first entertaining the possibility that white privilege exists.
And we're back to where we were we started. Like you said, I won't even entertain the possibility that privilege is a thing and I think I've made a very reasonable effort as to why I find this philosophy to be flawed.
Obviously I can't, because as you say, there is no collaboration and no sources are cited. It is, as you say, closer to a philosophical argument than a scientific one. And yes, she does refer to herself a lot. But what about the argument itself? Is she wrong?
No, but it's not right, either. It's one person's perception on a social ill that is entirely from her perspective and her perspective alone. Nobody else was allowed to give input on this high and mighty concept she put to paper -- not even from the oppressed people that she feels are "unprivileged." Even so, this doesn't make it bad. Just valueless.
So if everyone else does something, that makes it automatically acceptable?
No, you I think you misunderstood my point. I'm not saying we're perfect, but the rest of the world compares very, very poorly to western culture's acceptance of outside cultures on this matter.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
I honestly really only have two problems with this whole thing.
One is that privilege defined as, essentially "white straight male people in America, on a statistic average, have it better than non-white non-straight or non-male people in America" should really be pretty obvious. I've known that since fifth grade or so (whenever we learned about Civil Rights) and I never really felt it a personal mark on me as an individual and don't think I should. I, on my part do my best to be as unbiased in my relations with other people as possible, regardless of their color, sexuality, or gender.
Two is that pointing this out does not actually do anything to help fix it. I suppose you could argue your average SJ blogger is hoping to "inspire" people to "get out there and do something" but that by an large does not seem to be the case. In fact, almost the opposite seems to be the case.
I agree that we have much room for improvement. But for Mrs. McIntosh to say that our culture is "damaged" because of how we perceive and assimilate different cultures into our own -- be them immigrants, refugees, or the like-- is ridiculous. She doesn't even provide a metric for what this damage is, so the reader pretty much has to assume she's comparing us to the rest of the world, and to do so will show her conclusion on the matter to be a load of crap.
Again I will say that I am very well aware of the inequality and disparity we still suffer in the western world. It appears to me that you keep reminding me of this social inequality in an effort to validate the concept of privilege. Poor education, poor funding for education, lack of employment, poor or lack of health care, a safe environment to live, a poor or nonexistant legal system, overcrowding in living areas and schools, a drug culture, racism, and sexism are just some of real world factors as to why these people's lives suck. It's not because of the convenient, intangible blanket term called "privilege" which if anything further muddies the waters on an problem where its solution should be crystal clear.
I listed those things because they are, quite literally, instances of privilege in action. Privilege is the culmination of multiple factors; it is not some nebulous, intangible property that certain groups possess because shut up they just do. When I talk about privilege, I am talking about precisely the kinds of things I listed.
Yes, this is one of the issues I have with the concept. I'm not going to say that everyone who subscribes to the idea of privilege employs this manner of thinking, but I've seen a hell of a lot of those who do. If anything, I'm not accusing you of doing so.
And thank you for that.
But I'm not interested in defending whatever some nut on tumblr might have said, and I have pointed out at least one instance in which you interpreted a blog post about privilege as meaning some inescapable quality that makes you automatically an asshole, even though this contradicted the post in question. Furthermore, you said that the concept of privilege itself was invalid, so I assumed that our disagreement was not merely over what use of the term was the "correct" one. If your complaint is merely about some particular use, why are you attacking uses of the term that are not logically invalid?
You are absolutely correct here, and I've outlined my reasons in this thread many times. I've even pulled out what's widely considered the origin of this ideal to show how my problems with this concept are inherent from the very source.
Do you believe that every idea that originates in a non-scientific context is without merit? If not, I don't see how your objections to the source of the term have anything to do with your complaints about its current use.
And we're back to where we were we started. Like you said, I won't even entertain the possibility that privilege is a thing and I think I've made a very reasonable effort as to why I find this philosophy to be flawed.
How can you declare it to be flawed with such confidence when you won't even entertain the possibility that it isn't, even as a hypothetical?
You are aware that African Americans are more likely to experience discrimination than white Americans. Do you believe that you have been discriminated against for being black?
Why does it have to be about "being superior"? Why can't it be about honesty, or compassion, or simply not being dicks to one another?
Personally, I think that is what most real activists do try to do. Most activism I have encountered, that is, social programs and the like, do do that.
It's different when you're given the anonymity the internet offers, because then you're more inclined to just lash out at anyone who doesn't agree with you. Plus, it's also much easier to white knight for every other group of people than it is to go out and actually do something to help any of them. I'm not saying that's deliberate--it's probably not, honestly.
From this you then get the convoluted chains of logic trying to justify not helping any of them (usually something along the lines of it being cultural imperialism). It honestly kind of saddens me since these same people could be actually doing things to help fix the problem instead of just pointing and yelling, which is what they're doing, in my own.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
" You seem to be the one bringing up white privilege specifically the most in this conversation.
Just sayin'."
Fouria brought it up eight times in his mega post. The Wind Fish actually called Forsythe's race into question because he was white.
This article is specifically titled "'White Privilege' Blinds us to change." Hell, it seems a great portion of the time the word "white" is immediately followed by "privilege". If I'm bringing it up, it's because it seems this conversation is pretty race-centric, and if even if no one is attempting to make the point that Fouria mentioned from a potential circular nature of topic, I'm REALLY having trouble that the argument isn't just kinda circular in itself, or at least, begging the question
And I find that an acceptable rebuttal to the idea that Asians enjoy the same "privileges" as whites, to an extend. There's still issues such as Asians enjoying higher graduation rates. Does this mean Asians have "privilege" over whites in the education system? OR is the assumption that they've overcome the "white privileged" system here?
If it's the later, what are we aiming for, exactly? Is it possible for us to achieve a state where "privileges" are a thing of the past? Isn't that what we'd usually call "equality"?
I'm really having trouble seeing this sort of "white privilege" as anything other than a convenient label for the collective problems of racism, education gaps, gaps in opportunities for people, unfair treatment based on differences.
Now, I'm not saying that means it doesn't exist, just that these issues are much more complex than "white privilege" is really equipped to address, or if "white privilege" is a way to make other's aware of these problems, what's up with the middle man? Can't we just skip to pointing out these problems and addressing what the actual cause of symptom is?
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Why does it have to be about "being superior"? Why can't it be about honesty, or compassion, or simply not being dicks to one another?
Well Corporal Forsythe noted that any non-Western country compares very poorly on compassion or not being dicks to minorities, and his point has not been challenged. So if we have to be even better than we already are, it leads to the question "How superior to everyone else do we have to be before we're good enough?"
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
If your complaint is merely about some particular use, why are you attacking uses of the term that are not logically invalid?
Because I find the definition of the term (as we are discussing it) to be logically invalid. It's like a house without a foundation. You can keep adding on to it, slapping new coats of paint on it, move it to greener pastures but it's still going to keep falling over. As for that particular usage I was complaining about, it's mostly because of the inarguable, self-perpetuating nature that both of us seem to agree is ridiculous. Anyway, I'll move on from it.
Do you believe that every idea that originates in a non-scientific context is without merit? If not, I don't see how your objections to the source of the term have anything to do with your complaints about its current use.
No. For instance, I'm a Southern Baptist Christian. I'm not a 7-Day Creationist but I do believe that the entire Bible is truth. However, I believe in an absolute adherence to the seperation of Church and State, and ne'er shall the twain ever meet, with science falling directly under the interests of the state. And with science, you have the scientific method. Whenever something goes on or changes in my government, I want to make damn sure that it is the product of rational minds and critical thinking. This excludes religion and untested, unproven, unscientific notions. The fact that there is a movement which erupted from one person's persuasive, uncited, single-minded, uncollaborated essay trying to push this notion on the public is at odds with rationality and critical thinking, no matter how nice and sweet it looks on the surface.
How can you declare it to be flawed with such confidence when you won't even entertain the possibility that it isn't, even as a hypothetical?
See above.
You are aware that African Americans are more likely to experience discrimination than white Americans. Do you believe that you have been discriminated against for being black?
Yes, I am very aware that blacks have and still do suffer discrimination. As for the latter question here, I'm guessing this was a typo and you meant to ask if I felt discriminated for being white.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
However, I believe in an absolute adherence to the seperation of Church and State, and ne'er shall the twain ever meet, with science and falling directly under the interests of the state.
I'm pretty sure falling is in the domain of physical law, not positive law. :p
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
Anyway, Fouria, if you have any more questions I'll be happy to answer but I think I've said everything I could possibly state relating to this discussion.
I have seen the term applied in an online context, but I don't think I've ever encountered it in the sense that certain races (or sexualities or genders) are automatically unwelcome.
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i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
The best examples I can think of: When is the last time you couldn't get somewhere because you were stuck in a wheelchair? When was the last time you had to worry about reactions of disgust when you held your significant other's hand in public? When is the last time you had an absurdly hard time finding clothing that fit you right?
Some small, some big, All of those things are examples of privilege.
(*Just trying to sort this through in my head*)
I think?
Help me out here.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
^ You can be privileged in some respects more than others.
And yeah, providing wheelchair access costs money. Making anything functional costs money, though. If you haven't supplied wheelchair access, you haven't paid as much as was necessary to make your building accessible to everyone.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
race, sexual-preference, and belief".
Nope.
Real effects that she is perfectly capable of seeing, and spends the rest of the article detailing.
But she didn't notice them before because she didn't look. People who feel their effects directly don't have to look nearly so hard.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Clearly, however, we aren't going to agree on this matter, because you still insist that the concept of privilege is a "blame game", which it by definition absolutely isn't. Rather, it is a way to approach the problem of racism logically and explain how, in this day and age, racism can persist and prevail without being immediately denounced from all sides.
You are not even prepared to entertain the possibility that privilege is a thing. If white privilege is real, then there is a very real possibility that you would overlook it because you yourself would not feel its negative effects. This isn't an insult; it would not be reasonable for me to expect you to be aware of every instance in which you were not subject to racism when an African American or Latino individual might have been, not without you first entertaining the possibility that white privilege exists.
You have not done so. You outright refuse to do so, on the basis that a five-year-old could poke holes in the concept of privilege. If that's the case, then where are the logical arguments against privilege? I don't mean ones attacking some bullshit, imaginary, racist definition of privilege that constitutes a blame game or an accusation of assholery, which is a strawman and is indeed easy to pick holes in, I mean ones that address the concept of privilege that people who use the word are actually talking about - as in, the widely accepted usage.
These are not the same thing. They are quite demonstrably not the same. Earlier, you quoted the following passage: You interpreted this as meaning that "everyone is a fucking asshole no matter what culture you come from, how you were raised, etc." Which would of course be bullshit. But it's not what was actually said. At no point in that quotation did takanji claim that being privileged made you an asshole.
Now, I can see how you might have interpreted that passage in such a way if you read it out of context and are not familiar with the concept of privilege; the "but I'm not like that" does arguably suggest that having privilege makes you in some sense bad, if it is intended to be the reaction of a person familiar with the concept. However, this is not a reading that makes any sense in the context of the rest of the passage.
Reading the post in full reveals this: In my experience, most definitions of privilege will include a passage to this effect. I won't make any assumptions, but if there is some way in which this passage can be interpreted, in good faith, as meaning that having privilege makes you an asshole or suggests that you are to blame for discrimination in some way, I would like to hear it, because frankly such a reading is entirely beyond me, from where I'm standing. Right now, I cannot see how you can, in good faith, have gotten that reading out of that post, unless you dismissed the passage I quoted for whatever reason.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but my perception is that the reason you say privilege is a logically flawed concept is because you believe it to be a vaguely-defined quality which you are presumed to possess and which you cannot argue against without being presumed ignorant or bigoted. That is to say, I think you are interpreting posts such as TWF's one earlier as being a circular argument that follows this model:
- If you belong to group x, you have privilege
- Having privilege but not acknowledging it renders you incapable of talking about it.
- Having privilege but acknowledging it makes you capable of talking about it.
- You have privilege, therefore you must either admit it or shut up.
The flaws in such an argument are obvious; it is entirely circular. If that were truly the argument being made, we'd be looking at some kind of large-scale Emperor's New Clothes type scenario. But that is not the argument being made.The argument being made is that, assuming that privilege exists, then because of the nature of privilege, privileged parties are not going to just notice all the ways in which they benefit from said privileges. This doesn't mean that privilege can't be defined or pointed out to you, or that you can't notice it if you look out for it, but it means that you will not have directly experienced it in cases where you belong to the group in question which is privileged. Or put simply, you will not have felt the direct effects of discrimination against black people first-hand if you are white. Because you are white. You will not have felt the direct effects of misogyny if you are male. Because you are male. It's not merely obvious, it's practically a tautology.
White Americans are half as likely to be unemployed as those of other races. There are almost three times as many African Americans living in poverty as there are white people. White people are less likely to go to gaol and less likely to stay there. Around ninety percent of women experience sexual harrassment in the workplace. It's been mentioned before here that most children's television series will happily portray heterosexual relationships, but won't touch the issue of homosexual relationships. When they do, complaints are inevitable; this is just expected. In a country that is supposedly secular, Diwali does not receive nearly the level of mainstream recognition that Christmas (as a religious celebration or a commercial event) recieves. If a man is assaulted, nobody ever asks "what was he wearing at the time?". I don't recall ever hearing the fact that a person was cisgender being treated as the punchline to a joke. If a white, heterosexual couple go out in public together, this action is not considered a threat to their safety, and they will almost certainly not be accused of flaunting their heterosexuality.
There are other ways we could account for these inequalities, of course. We could suppose that minorities (we cannot say "underprivileged groups" if we are to reject that concept) are simply underachievers blaming others for their problems, for instance. We could assume that groups subject to less discrimination, such as whites and men, are largely maliciously but covertly racist. Doing either of these things would be "playing the blame game". Talking about privilege is not playing the blame game.
Obviously I can't, because as you say, there is no collaboration and no sources are cited. It is, as you say, closer to a philosophical argument than a scientific one. And yes, she does refer to herself a lot. But what about the argument itself? Is she wrong?
So if everyone else does something, that makes it automatically acceptable?
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Just sayin'.
^ Doesn't mean we shouldn't be better.
Why can't we be like everyone else? Why do we have to be so superior?
I mean, why not try?
I honestly really only have two problems with this whole thing.
One is that privilege defined as, essentially "white straight male people in America, on a statistic average, have it better than non-white non-straight or non-male people in America" should really be pretty obvious. I've known that since fifth grade or so (whenever we learned about Civil Rights) and I never really felt it a personal mark on me as an individual and don't think I should. I, on my part do my best to be as unbiased in my relations with other people as possible, regardless of their color, sexuality, or gender.
Two is that pointing this out does not actually do anything to help fix it. I suppose you could argue your average SJ blogger is hoping to "inspire" people to "get out there and do something" but that by an large does not seem to be the case. In fact, almost the opposite seems to be the case.
Yeah, I got nothing.
But I'm not interested in defending whatever some nut on tumblr might have said, and I have pointed out at least one instance in which you interpreted a blog post about privilege as meaning some inescapable quality that makes you automatically an asshole, even though this contradicted the post in question. Furthermore, you said that the concept of privilege itself was invalid, so I assumed that our disagreement was not merely over what use of the term was the "correct" one. If your complaint is merely about some particular use, why are you attacking uses of the term that are not logically invalid? Do you believe that every idea that originates in a non-scientific context is without merit? If not, I don't see how your objections to the source of the term have anything to do with your complaints about its current use. How can you declare it to be flawed with such confidence when you won't even entertain the possibility that it isn't, even as a hypothetical?
You are aware that African Americans are more likely to experience discrimination than white Americans. Do you believe that you have been discriminated against for being black?
Personally, I think that is what most real activists do try to do. Most activism I have encountered, that is, social programs and the like, do do that.
It's different when you're given the anonymity the internet offers, because then you're more inclined to just lash out at anyone who doesn't agree with you. Plus, it's also much easier to white knight for every other group of people than it is to go out and actually do something to help any of them. I'm not saying that's deliberate--it's probably not, honestly.
From this you then get the convoluted chains of logic trying to justify not helping any of them (usually something along the lines of it being cultural imperialism). It honestly kind of saddens me since these same people could be actually doing things to help fix the problem instead of just pointing and yelling, which is what they're doing, in my own.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Not sure what to think of it, but it does happen. Sorry for replying to a page 1 post.