The prevailing opinion on the subreddit I got this from is that the problem is with the word 'privilege' which implies an advantage when the reality is more of a lack of disadvantage. I tend to agree with that as most vitriolic rants against white privilege seem focused on personal struggles, which everyone has, rather than understanding that it means white people in America are generally the vanilla, placeholder, default that no one projects much prejudice onto.
This 'toon is also about privilege, but speaks in terms of class rather than race :
http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
This reminds me of a really nice analogy someone told me about why people get upset when someone "gets more rights." Let's say everyone in the world gets a cookie. You, a middle class white man (for simplicity's sake), get a nice full chocolate chip cookie. Your neighbour, however, is black, and even though you two are otherwise identical in every way, he only gets half a cookie. This is pretty good, you think. Everyone has one cookie. Seems reasonably fair. Until someone else comes along and says, hey, that it isn't equal at all. So, they give your black neighbour another half of a cookie. To you, your neighbour has two cookies, and you still only have one. That isn't fair at all! But what our protagonist has failed to realize here is that it's not about how many cookies you have, it's how much cookie you have in total. I love that intersectionality is gaining traction. The size of your cookie is not your fault, but it is important we can recognize and acknowledge our privilege and help shoulder some responsibility for those who were given a smaller cookie.
I like the monopoly analogy. You, white guy, started a game of monopoly. Your friend, black guy, came into the game about 10 turns after you started. Yeah, you both are playing now, yeah there's still some property, yeah you both technically have a chance of winning, but those 10 turns are probably going to screw the black guy over.
The lack of context of this article has been bugging me all night. It's not hard to dig into the empirical grab bag of facts and figures related to race in order to come up with countless concrete examples as to how and why white men have it easier than everyone else. I've done it countless times. These conversations are usually not about "privilege" per se, they're about equality and justice and they usually devolve when "what can be done about it" comes up. A semi-reasonable person can look at the socioeconomic status of minorities vs. the socioeconomic status of us evil white oppressors at the top and acknowledge that we've got a leg up. But "white privilege" rarely comes up in those discussions until someone uses it to nullify the arguments of someone else. "You lack the moral authority to have an opinion" because white privilege. "I don't have to listen to your facts" because white privilege. "Your argument is invalid" because white privilege. "White privilege" is a shorthand for dismissing another person based on their gender and skin color. Once you use the phrase, you're no longer debating the facts, you're debating the moral authority of the combatants and an argument of logic should be immune to its participants. I first encountered the phrase "white privilege" in '98. I was putting my girlfriend at the time through grad school to be a social worker. Her instructor was decrying the persecution he faced because of his religion and the tribulations his guru, Osho, experienced at the hands of the patriarchy. He began to describe the stunted life of a poor immigrant, forced to wander the seas after his philosophy of love and universal understanding was disregarded in Oregon and he was persecuted in the courts... My girlfriend raised her hand and said "You mean Rajneesh? That guy who collected Rolls Royces and poisoned a salad bar to swing an election so they could take over a town?" The teacher immediately decried her position as one of "white privilege" because obviously someone with such lily-white skin couldn't understand the tribulations of minorities in the United States. My hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid. That was going on 20 years and I have yet to see a discussion of "white privilege" not used as some form of "I don't have to listen to what you're saying, you're white." Which, let's be honest, changes nothing. I'm never going to stop being white. I'm never going to stop having white privilege. But every time someone decides that not only are my thoughts and opinions irrelevant because of it but that I somehow haven't been responsible for the things that are right in my life, I care a little less about people without white privilege. I still believe everything I wrote here. I'm all up in the concept of white privilege and why it should be reduced. Unfortunately everyone I've ever discussed "white privilege" with wants to use it as a rhetorical wild card for "STFU." And that's never going to change anything.
That's weird because I've had the exact opposite experience, where I've never seen it used as a way to shut someone up or tell them that they shouldn't have an opinion. I've seen white people who have had their white privilege pointed out claim that the descriptor was used to tell them to shut up but usually when I read the discussion it becomes clear that it wasn't the case. The problem is that the term is usually used in the sense of "check your privilege" (not always using those words but the meaning is the same) and people on the defensive tend to interpret this as a: "Shut up, you're not welcome to speak on this topic". When in reality CYP is pretty much only used to say that the person is missing vital data that can inform their position and only if they took the time to learn and listen about what they're missing then they'd have a fuller basis to work their opinion from. If anything, it's an invitation to talk on the topic, once they understand enough about the topic to talk meaningfully about it. I don't doubt that there are people who have used it in the way you say but in my experience it's far from the majority. Usually the term is used in the scientific sense and is just describing a very specific phenomenon. I've always wondered why privileged people got so defensive over the concept of privilege and originally I thought it was the terminology, but if you use "advantage" and "disadvantage" you get the same problems (just see some of the comments in this thread). Now I tend to think that the problem is that being privileged means that they are often sheltered from ever being lumped within a specific group, especially one that has negative traits associated with it and is so fundamental to their person, so when they hear "white privilege" they think, "Fuck that, I'm an individual, you can't lump me in with all other white people". For most minorities being seen as a "representative" of your group is a daily experience so they can't see why privileged people would be so hostile to it, unless they were actively bigoted. So we end up with a bit of a mess where people are defensive, upset and angry, and arguing over semantics rather than accepting the privilege they have and working to improve society.That was going on 20 years and I have yet to see a discussion of "white privilege" not used as some form of "I don't have to listen to what you're saying, you're white." Which, let's be honest, changes nothing. I'm never going to stop being white. I'm never going to stop having white privilege. But every time someone decides that not only are my thoughts and opinions irrelevant because of it but that I somehow haven't been responsible for the things that are right in my life, I care a little less about people without white privilege.
Do you see what you just did? I, as an individual, said "This is my individual experience." You, as an individual, said "statistically, your individual experience is invalid." In other words, you're arguing that things I have personally experienced do not matter because your generalization of the subject disagrees. Every argument you make deprecates my experience. You aren't even putting up data - you're effectively saying "your experience is a corner case, stop talking about it because it's not valid because the preponderance of truth is on my side, trust me on this." You're doing exactly what I said has been my experience. And here you are, not even acknowledging me or my experience, but choosing instead to have a debate about a straw man. You aren't talking to me, you aren't talking about me, you're saying "here's this construct that I'd prefer to discuss so that I can disregard your opinion." Effectively, you've taken an individual, discussing an individual experience, and sweeping it up into the exact same broad "STFU white boy" conversation that I opened my point by decrying. Do you see why you can't do that and have a reasonable discussion?Now I tend to think that the problem is that being privileged means that they are often sheltered from ever being lumped within a specific group, especially one that has negative traits associated with it and is so fundamental to their person, so when they hear "white privilege" they think, "Fuck that, I'm an individual, you can't lump me in with all other white people".
No, I simply described my own experiences and tried to start a discussion on why we might have had such different experiences. And don't forget that this whole topic started with someone describing their experiences and understanding of privilege, which your post set up to "invalidate" (to use your understanding), and when my own experiences aligned with the author's, you "invalidated" mine by saying that yours are more important and relevant, and that I should just shut up. However, I'd argue that a better approach would be to just accept that nobody here has "invalidated" any one else's experience. Different experiences have been presented and a more productive way forward would be to discuss it and figure out why there is a discrepancy. I'm simply saying that I agree with the author, which is that the concept of privilege causes people to become defensive and can often lead to a misunderstanding of how the term is being used. Again, I've done nothing at all to reject your experience. I'm simply saying that my experience disagrees with yours and it would be interesting to figure out why. I'm beginning to see that my comment about people who claimed to have been told to "shut up" in discussions of privilege are usually misrepresenting the discussion is once again confirmed, and I agree that it makes reasonable discussion difficult but I suspect that's not what you meant. And just to be clear, since we're intent on throwing about terminology specific to a certain context without concern for that context (like "invalidating" and "experience"), there is no universal rule that says experiences should be valued and never questioned. The reason why we are supposed to be careful not to invalidate the experiences of minorities is because they live in a world where they are told and forced to shut up, where they don't have a representative voice in major decisions that affect them, and because we have a history of making very bad choices "for" them. If a racist comes along and says that their experience of black people is that they are stupid and thieves, then damn fucking right we should be "invalidating" that experience by pointing out that their views are incorrect, misunderstandings, that reality disagrees with them, etc etc.In other words, you're arguing that things I have personally experienced do not matter because your generalization of the subject disagrees. Every argument you make deprecates my experience. You aren't even putting up data - you're effectively saying "your experience is a corner case, stop talking about it because it's not valid because the preponderance of truth is on my side, trust me on this."
You're doing exactly what I said has been my experience.
And here you are, not even acknowledging me or my experience, but choosing instead to have a debate about a straw man. You aren't talking to me, you aren't talking about me, you're saying "here's this construct that I'd prefer to discuss so that I can disregard your opinion."
Effectively, you've taken an individual, discussing an individual experience, and sweeping it up into the exact same broad "STFU white boy" conversation that I opened my point by decrying.
Do you see why you can't do that and have a reasonable discussion?
kleinbl00 blocked me but still wanted to reply to me comment, so I guess I'll have to respond by replying to my own comment. Except no silencing of dissent occurred - I disagreed with the content of your dissent by presenting my own perspective. You then "silenced my dissent". Except no dismissal occurred. I don't think you can rewrite events, especially when they are still visible to everyone just above. I disagreed with you, presented my reasons why and gave an explanation as to why we might have had different experiences. Instead of pursuing the discussion, you started co-opting terminology to try to silence disagreement and then literally silenced disagreement by blocking me. At no point have I argued you deny the ideas behind privilege or anything like that, so I'm not sure what you rant at the beginning is about. The only explanation seems to be that you're feeling really defensive and so you're re-asserting that you're basically "not a racist" in hopes that that means everything else you say gets accepted. It doesn't. It's cool that you're not a racist and that you accept the scientific fact of privilege, etc etc, but it doesn't mean your understanding of how "privilege" is used in common discussion is correct. This exact discussion cements further the fact that people aren't telling you to "shut up" because I quite clearly didn't say or imply such a thing, yet it's the message you got. I haven't "struck a blow" for anything because that's not the purpose of Hubski. The appealing aspect of this community was supposed to be that it entertains discussion and intelligent responses, and that's why I presented my perspective. I honestly was not expecting such a defensive response from you. Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I presented a disagreement of experiences and thought I'd present my reasoning as to why that was the case. I didn't realise this was supposed to be a competition where we "win" points in a "debate" for making certain points. I was just hoping to learn more about the common attitude that you expressed. What is your argument here? That "invalidation" is always bad even in extreme circumstances? I'll wager a guess - I didn't expect you to be so defensive and if I had known I would have accounted for it in my response. As such, you're going to claim that I had either accused you of being a racist or drawn an equivalence between your position and that of a racist's? If so, no, that's not how analogies work. I was criticising the general claim that 'experiences shouldn't be invalidated' by presenting a case where it should be, and arguing that there is no reason to think your "experience" shouldn't be "invalidated" either (I'm continuing to use your co-opting of the terms there for continuity but it's getting a little silly to draw parallels between your uninformed opinion on an issue and the discriminatory life experiences of minorities).Let's be clear: I argued (not with you) that my personal experience about the discussion of "white privilege" is that the phrase is used to silence dissent, not improve dialogue. You responded by silencing my dissent. When I pointed out that you were silencing my dissent, your response is to say we should just agree that my dissent should be silenced.
I stated up front that white privilege exists, and that white privilege is a problem, and that the way people who discuss "white privilege" is doing nothing to resolve the issue. In other words, we're about 90% in agreement on the basic issue, our sole point of dissent is in the couching of the discussion. However, since you couldn't dismiss that with Pat Answer #2, you chose to dismiss everything I had to say.
The white privilege is mine. It will continue to be mine. As a white male I hold all the cards and will continue to do so until the overwhelming majority of us white males choose to give it up. Rhetorically, you can convince yourself you've struck a blow for good here. Realistically you're reminding me why people who want to talk about "white privilege" shouldn't be entertained. In other words, you destroyed a discussion in order to reinforce your own dogma.
Race relations are changed one person at a time. I don't know your race or gender and I don't care to guess. I'm a white male. Your rhetorical style might (might) win points with people who already agree with you but they aren't the ones who need convincing. Me? we already agreed about the basic problem and I'm about to mute you because of your patronizing attitude.
wow.
Let's be clear: I argued (not with you) that my personal experience about the discussion of "white privilege" is that the phrase is used to silence dissent, not improve dialogue. You responded by silencing my dissent. When I pointed out that you were silencing my dissent, your response is to say we should just agree that my dissent should be silenced. Did you ask? Did you read my linked discussion? Did you even so much as ask a question of me? HERE'S WHY IT MATTERS I stated up front that white privilege exists, and that white privilege is a problem, and that the way people who discuss "white privilege" is doing nothing to resolve the issue. In other words, we're about 90% in agreement on the basic issue, our sole point of dissent is in the couching of the discussion. However, since you couldn't dismiss that with Pat Answer #2, you chose to dismiss everything I had to say. Which is fine. I'm sure you feel justified in your actions, I'm sure you're satisfied at your rhetorical skill, and I'm sure that you're pleased to strike another small incremental blow against injustice. BUT. The white privilege is mine. It will continue to be mine. As a white male I hold all the cards and will continue to do so until the overwhelming majority of us white males choose to give it up. Rhetorically, you can convince yourself you've struck a blow for good here. Realistically you're reminding me why people who want to talk about "white privilege" shouldn't be entertained. In other words, you destroyed a discussion in order to reinforce your own dogma. Race relations are changed one person at a time. I don't know your race or gender and I don't care to guess. I'm a white male. Your rhetorical style might (might) win points with people who already agree with you but they aren't the ones who need convincing. Me? we already agreed about the basic problem and I'm about to mute you because of your patronizing attitude. wow.However, I'd argue that a better approach would be to just accept that nobody here has "invalidated" any one else's experience.
Again, I've done nothing at all to reject your experience. I'm simply saying that my experience disagrees with yours and it would be interesting to figure out why.
If a racist comes along and says that their experience of black people is that they are stupid and thieves, then damn fucking right we should be "invalidating" that experience by pointing out that their views are incorrect, misunderstandings, that reality disagrees with them, etc etc.
Says you, soon we'll have all the mixed babies and they're all gonna be super hot and everyone is going to look like they're somewhere near the equator and race problems will be over and the world will be, like, 25% sexier whether white males want it or not, KBhold all the cards and will continue to do so until the overwhelming majority of us white males choose to give it up
That seems to be the problem with intersectionality in general. People pay lipservice to class, but in practice they're mostly focusing on other forms of identity politics. Instead of focusing primarily on the most unifying vector of intersectional privilege the more divisive demographics are emphasized, even those that don't have the same impact. Especially gender. I always find it mind-blowing that the same exact statistics we use to demonstrate that black people are oppressed or at least disproportionately impoverished, when viewed in terms of gender, are portrayed to mean exactly the opposite. Increased incarceration rates and prison sentences for men indicates inherent or socially imposed male violence rather than a system that discriminates against men, but when they're black it's the opposite. This is clearly insane because they're for the most part literally the same people. So a black man is discriminated against as a black person but not as a man? Even though it's mostly black men that wind up in prison or get shot by the police or turn to crime because of lack of other prospects, that demographic conveniently disappears from the narrative. I can't help but suspect ulterior motives when the same people that ignore class completely in their arguments also insist on moving the goalposts for what constitutes oppression based on what fits the proposed axis of privilege that the model is based around. Personally, I would think that an increased focus on class would be more beneficial to racial equality than focusing more on race. Having racially biased categories for permissible activity, behavior, and expression is what got us into this whole mess in the first place.
I shared it because I thought it was an interesting perspective on the topic from someone who's seen little in the way of tangible privilege. And she even gives criticism that I can relate to as a poor, working white person. Apparently mentioning the topic becomes a referendum on its merits though. I'm not saying this to you specifically because I don't agree with you or whatever, I'm just disappointed with the replies as a whole and I'm tacking this onto the last one that seemed reasonable.
It's a worthwhile discussion and one that we, as a culture, need to learn how to have. Unfortunately "you don't agree with my argument" doesn't mean "you don't understand my argument" and most of the discussions around the phrase "white privilege" conflate the two. I know I certainly thought I understood prejudice as a "disadvantaged" ethnicity. It wasn't until spending time amongst African Americans that I realized that while I might have a better idea than most middle class white men my understanding was woefully incomplete. Unfortunately the whole "white privilege" discussion is usually some form of "you lack the moral authority to have an opinion" rather than "here's a perspective you haven't considered" and the Internet isn't helping that. Even perspectives like the one linked above tend to deprecate any individual experience by demonstrating that on average, white people have it better. End result? Whoever deploys the argument is saying "I hereby nullify your individual experience through averaged demographics."
Bringing up privilege shouldn't completely shut down a discussion, but rather give context to it. The context is important, because when people are making an entire argument related to a pretty big issue based completely on their own experience... well, anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much. Even when you get a room full of people who decide to make an argument based on a collection of personal experiences... the plural of anecdote is not data. Data, though, provides a much better basis for large-scale decision making when stakes are high. I'm not trying to defend the rhetorical strategies of people on tumblr or buzzfeed (or anywhere else on the internet)- I'd tend to disagree with comments about people using and framing discussions of privilege/intersectionality for their own pre-determined ends.
I agree with you here. Additionally, I think one heuristic that could help people get on board with the idea of privilege is to look at race/class/gender/ethnicity in another country. Take just about any East Asian country, for example. Often, Americans interested in social justice will immediately try to overlay American race relations on places like Japan or Korea, pointing out that Hollywood actors are popular there and the US military presence. Upon a closer look, though, it becomes really apparent that the ethnic majority straight males in those countries run the show and have a great deal of privilege; Western whites just tend to be on top of the minority heap but are still disadvantaged in those societies. From there, you can see that white privilege isn't a universal inherent to being white, but depends on the environment you're in. There is in fact Han privilege in China, and it's just as problematic for minorities there. I think a lot of the resistance to the idea of white privilege is the innateness that seems to come along with it- people don't want to believe that they are inherently "bad" or in living an unfair life.But that's just the point - if the whole argument is that individuals can't see their privilege, and they answer with a personal anecdote, you're not going to advance the argument by taking the individual experiences of the person entirely off the table. The appropriate tactic is to relate the individual experience to the demographic, not dismiss it.
But that's just the point - if the whole argument is that individuals can't see their privilege, and they answer with a personal anecdote, you're not going to advance the argument by taking the individual experiences of the person entirely off the table. The appropriate tactic is to relate the individual experience to the demographic, not dismiss it. Data, as you're using it, is ample and abundant. It's pretty much impossible to dismiss and the people who are arguing the data are not going to be swayed by an argument of privilege; they tend to be the ones arguing that black men go to prison more often because blacks are inherently more violent and that discussion requires an entirely different strategy. The whole problem with "white privilege" discussions is that they are wielded by people who want to say "the plural of anecdote is not data" rather than "I hear what you're saying, but here are the problems you didn't face growing up regardless of how shitty your life was."
I look at my life and I think, "My god, I am SO LUCKY. I am SO PRIVILEGED." But if someone else looks at my life and said "You are SO LUCKY. So PRIVILEGED", my first response would be the same as anyone's: "Fuck you. That's not your fucking place to say. You don't know ANYTHING about me or my life or what I've had to struggle with." And I would be in the right to think that, though not to say it. The word "privilege" is a failed experiment, despite the fact that I 100% agree with the truth underlying it. If you have to keep explaining a word over and over and over... assuming the person you say it to hasn't already punched you in the face for being an asshole... then the word is not doing its job. Its job is to communicate a concept succinctly, and it is failing by conveying the opposite, making people angrier, less receptive, and at best, guilt-ridden for something they were born with. Is that what we should aim to do to people?
It seems very dangerous to me to call something a failed experiment because people are too stubborn to learn the lesson from it. Couldn't you apply that logic to scientific outreach concerning vaccinations or climate change? There's a reason there's a documentary called An Inconvenent Truth.
Well I wasn't intentionally trying to frame it in the context of actual experiments or science, but if you want to think of it that way.... it would be pretty atypical for the framers of an experiment to respond to an unexpectedly bad/distracted/statistically non-useful outcome with "WELL. It must be the people that are flawed!" instead of "Let's redesign the experiment and try again". Atmospheric CO2 is at 402.80 ppm.
But the experiment itself is a bad analogy. The experiment has been done, now we're trying to share the results with the non-scientist public. Certainly it's important to discern more or less effective ways of doing that communication, but it doesn't affect the result of the experiment.
It's not just the word. A huge part of the problem is assuming level of privilege based on surface-level demographic information. You may assume that a given individual is privileged because they're white and male, for instance, but what if they're mentally ill or physically disabled? Is a healthy black woman more or less privileged than a homeless disabled white veteran with PTSD and one leg? When you're talking to someone online and you know that they're white, do you then assume that they're also healthy and have a place to live? The problem is assuming that you know about someone else's life with only the most basic demographic information at your disposal. The problem is that we should be promoting humility and tolerance rather than arrogance and judgement.
In this and most contexts, I do tend to use the dictionary definitions of words (no sarcasm intended). One does not need to have one's own personal definition of the word to make this argument. Few people residing in a group (here identified as "white") that is comprised of hundreds of millions, if not billions, would look at any of the following definitions and think to themselves, "Yup! Other people would definitely be within their right to say that about ME! Hot DAMN, I am TOTALLY the top of the heap!". I wish I could come up with a better word; "intersectionality" is such a tone-deaf intellectualism that it will never catch on with the people whom it most needs to reach. To the bat-thesaurus!
To paraphrase Steinbeck, Americans seem much more likely to characterize themselves as "temporarily de-privileged millionaires". We all see what we don't have, and we fret about the possibility of falling lower in the hierarchy. The reactions of a broke-ass white person, to have a life of worry over bills, impotence in the face of shitty bosses, bad treatment of their kids from the public school, characterized to them as "privileged", is just -- I mean, I just would not go telling someone who has had a hard life, but maybe not the hardest, that they are "privileged". Being technically correct doesn't make it a kind thing to do to someone. noun
1. a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most
2. a special right, immunity, or exemption granted to persons in authority or office to free them from certain obligations or liabilities
3. a grant to an individual, corporation, etc., of a special right or immunity, under certain conditions.
4. the principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities.
5. any of the rights common to all citizens under a modern constitutional government
6. an advantage or source of pleasure granted to a person
Agree. Nobody wants to hear the smarmy, "Well it could be worse" response. "Oh your mother died from improper diabetes care in the bass-ackwards Allegheny hospital system? Well it could be worse. You could be BLACK." Jesus. Applied on the individual level, which is truly the only place that changes anything, the "white privilege" approach is appalling. At a certain (higher) class level in society, it functions as a progressive tax on moral superiority, but below a (still pretty high) income and class level, it's a regressive bludgeon. I really think it is not that a broke-ass white person can't think critically (and I don't think you said that, I'm just clarifying), since mostly they can, and maybe a few can't, but more importantly, they've got other shit to worry about in their lives that takes precedence over making space in their brain and time in their daily activities to develop a nuanced and informed view of racism in post-9/11 America. You have to take care of people's basic survival needs and health problems and fears for their children before you expect (keeping in mind that "expecting" is SUCH a class-privileged stance) them to want to sit down and talk about "What The Confederate Flag Means to Me" with a black person. (I just thought of the best argument against me, but I have to go get a haircut.)
I'd say that's mostly because the problem here is that we're focusing on the wrong demographic information. We shouldn't care what race or gender or sexual orientation someone is, we should only care whether or not they need our help. We don't need a social stratification narrative in order to bring help to people who are in need. That does more to fuel outrage culture than it does to actually help anyone.
Who exactly are you talking about anyway? Who thinks of things in terms of social stratification? Because intersectional feminists are a pretty tiny portion of the population and aren't really even remotely what I'd call mainstream.We need to persuade them. Right now, they think of things in terms of social stratification, and so we have to play in that ballpark, because they refuse to play in ours.
Why? This is a terrible strategy in my eyes. Letting your opponents dominate the conversation without ever challenging your narrative doesn't get you anywhere.
Privilege is a little more more than just "lack of disadvantage" - that's definitely part of it, but it's also having your arbitrary and unchosen characteristics being actively viewed as a positive and make you more likely to be hired, respected, etc. Researchers have a good name for when people accept that others are disadvantaged but are reluctant to accept their own advantages, and it's called "half blindness of privilege". There's a really good paper on the topic here: Group Dominance and the Half-Blindness of Privilege. Some key points from the paper: and The fact that group differences in identity salience were found whether the subordinated groups were numerical minorities (e.g., lesbians, gays, and bisexuals) or were not (e.g., women) indicates that it is not numerical status that makes groups socially normative or noticeable (see also Pratto et al., 2007). In fact, several processes might contribute to greater subordinated group salience. Because of segregation and under-exposure to subordinates in the media, all subordinated groups, including women, might be rare in people's minds. In interpersonal interactions, individuals’ subordinated identity is called out and assigned blame through stereotypes and prejudice. Also, all of the subordinated groups considered here have also built identity-positive social and political movements that could also make such identities salient and have positive significance. Group identity was less salient to dominants, so their own experience may make dominants wonder why subordinates are so interested in group identity. As DuBois (1897) highlighted, the privilege of having dominant identity is not having to be aware of the identity, nor of the privileges that identity brings, nor having to repair either. In fact, because dominant identity is so normative, it may be easier for members of dominant groups to understand their group identity in contrast to subordinated groups. That is, dominants may use subordinates as a reference point to make clear who they are by identifying who they are not. Doing so is likely to emphasize difference and divisions between groups, and to invoke negative stereotypes of subordinates.The prevailing opinion on the subreddit I got this from is that the problem is with the word 'privilege' which implies an advantage when the reality is more of a lack of disadvantage.
People—and even researchers—refer to groups whose identities are problematized and whose social positions are problematic as “underprivileged,”“disadvantaged,”“stigmatized,” or, rarely, “oppressed.” Contrasting groups are rarely described—let alone in the terms that designate their superior social position—as privileged, advantaged, legitimate, or oppressor. This practice of marking the “problematic” group reveals that the unmarked situation of dominant groups is assumed to be normal. Such a stance is only half-blind concerning group privilege, because although it focuses attention on “problematic” groups and may acknowledge group inequality, it does not acknowledge the social position of the referent group as privileged. The phenomenon we address in this paper is half-blindness to privilege—the acknowledgement of social inequality with the implicit assumption that dominance is normal. By taking dominance as normal, superior social positions and greater power do not seem to be privileges.
In every sample, participants rated subordinated groups’ status substantially lower than dominant groups’ status. From this finding we can conclude that participants do perceive group inequality. However, recognizing inequality is not the same as recognizing superiority as privilege, as our other results show. Dominants reported relatively low awareness of their dominant group identities. This result helps to explain why from dominants’ viewpoint, their group's situation is normal, not privileged. Consistent with the idea that being a dominant group member is an implicit norm against which other features contrast, subordinates rated the salience of their group membership higher than dominants did. From subordinates’ viewpoint, their situation is not normal and neither is group inequality. For this reason, subordinates are more likely to view group advantage as privilege. Findings like these are not limited to college student participants. In a national random sample of the U.S., ethnic subordinates rate their racial identity more important than Whites do (Hartmann et al., 2009).
This is a generalization. Typically, generalizations made about entire ethnicities are considered bigoted, which is exactly why people have a problem with the term "white privilege"....which everyone has, rather than understanding that it means white people in America are generally the vanilla, placeholder, default that no one projects much prejudice onto.
Generalisations made about minorities are usually considered bigoted because they're untrue, insulting and harmful, not simply because they're generalisations. If I say that veterinarians tend to like animals, that's a generalisation but not bigoted in any way. If I generalised a negative trait, like athletes tend to smell like sweat when they're working out, it's still not bigoted. When people say "white people have white privilege", it's mostly a claim about a societal norm and not always specifically about an individual person. But even if we want to analyse it on an individual level, we still have a claim that's difficult to argue against. For example, saying white people have white privilege is to say that white people usually don't get pulled over for "driving while black". It's a generalisation, sure, but it's hard to imagine a situation where a white person has regularly been pulled over because he looks black. Similarly, I don't see it being a common occurrence for white people to be systematically filtered out of job prospects on the basis of having black-sounding names, because generally they don't have black-sounding names. When you remember that "privilege" is a very large set of these attributes, even if you think of outlandish and rare cases where a white person might fall victim to them (maybe in the dark a white guy looked black in his car and a cop pulled him over, or maybe the guy was named after his mother's favourite literary character which sounds like a stereotypically black name and it affects his job prospects), the fact is that these freak chance events are exceptions to the general rule of their life. And that's why it's essentially impossible for a white person to not have white privilege (especially in societies where this discussion tends to take place and often even in other societies).
Holy... you assume all white people have "white sounding names"? Damn, I thought hubski was supposed to contain thoughtful and introspective discussion. Disappointing. Seems more like another authoritarian left hangout. You're making all kinds of baseless broad assumptions here. Are you completely blind to that?
It's a little fresh to make all these claims after a single comment.
I can break out the dictionary if you're having difficulty with the meaning of what was said, but I suspect you're smart enough to figure out phrases like "common occurrence".I don't see it being a common occurrence for white people to be systematically filtered out of job prospects on the basis of having black-sounding names
You'll have to expand on this. How does "it's not very common" translate to "all white people"? And did you read my final paragraph where I explain that exceptions in some aspects of privilege doesn't affect the large set of privileges as a whole? What was your argument against that? Well they can't be baseless as I backed them all up. But Hubski is supposed to be a place for discussion, not baseless accusations like the ones you're presenting. If you're making a claim then back it up. It could be that you've misunderstood something I've said, like the black-sounding names bit, and I could correct you like I've done just above.Holy... you assume all white people have "white sounding names"?
You're making all kinds of baseless broad assumptions here. Are you completely blind to that?
It doesn't appear to me that mrsamsa assumed that all white people have white-sounding names. mrsamsa implied that they are perceived not to have Black-sounding names.
White people is not an ethnicity, it's a broad category and is broken up into ethnicities. Cornish, Irish and Italian etc. are ethnicities. When generalisations are bigoted you can explain how they are bigoted. So how is this generalisation bigoted?
Cornish. Not familiar with that one. Well, the assumption that white people are inherently privileged is a sweeping generalization. In your original post, you claim that people are confusing the experience of an individual with the overall experience of white people in general. What I am saying is that applying this concept of "white privilege" to the entire demographic of white people is an over generalization. Perhaps you're right in that this isn't outright bigotry, but it certainly gets used for bigoted ends. Unfortunately, it's a difficult topic to discuss. There are many things that I would like to say about it, but honestly, many things that I have to say can in turn be interpreted as "racist" depending on whose listening and I really don't want to pick a fight, but I feel that's what would inevitably happen if I elaborate any further.
The article is nonsense. I'm not going to walk on eggshells my entire life because someone somewhere thinks that systematically I've "got it better". The mere thought makes me shutter. Believing that all white people somehow "have it better" is sheer intellectual blindness. The article completely ignores the fact that there is all kinds of oppression WITHIN white ethnic groups. No one ever mentions that because they all subscribe to the myopic idea that it's "white against all". Ridiculous.
Bigotry implies malice. White people are the default in this country because we're the majority and we're all over every media. Did you honestly consider I wrote that as a native Australian man experiencing America? Nope, you probably assumed I'm a white guy, it's a safe bet and it's the right answer
Ah yes, if only those ignorant white people understood what privilege means they would stop being so damn racist. This whole thing is pointless and condescending. Everyone knows what it means, they disagree with how relevant it is. Everyone has different problems and grossly over generalizing them isn't useful. More importantly, racial and gender privilege is absolutely dwarfed by class privilege. Those are my thoughts on the matter anyway, maybe I'm just a bigot.
Well yes, actually: if people who benefit from structural prejudices were able to see the ways in which they benefit from those systems along with the flipside detriments, then we might get more people within the dominant groups self-reflective enough to question whether their own behavior feeds into the systems of prejudice. On race and gender privilege vs class privilege: it's very easy to ignore the privilege you have in favor of the privilege that you don't. Class is a large problem, but class issues cannot be easily separated from race issues when white america spent more than a century after ending slavery baking systemic racism into the economic foundations of the country.
John Scalzi made a post a few years back that's also useful.
There are a hundred things I could write here about my life, but IMO, the people on the internet who use words like ?privilege" don't care about debate. They just want to yell and scream and feel important. Maybe if I feel a bit less snarky after the gym I'll write something.
White privilege has white people as the focus because white people are the focus in the societies where white privilege matters. It's kind of poetic.
It's kind of circular reasoning, which most advocates of ideas that invoke special pleading (e.g. white privilege) are prone to commit. The idea of white privilege doesn't simply describe racially-based advantages and disadvantages -- any reasonable person can see the obvious disparities. It does more than that by assigning blame for such disparities to individuals of the advantaged group based not on individual circumstances but on group characteristics over which they had no choice or control. It's the same species of idea that asserts all white people are racist simply due to their race, and black people therefore cannot be racist. These types of ideas have very little (if any) appeal in terms of their logical or rational capacity to convince because they were never crafted on those grounds. Nevertheless, they seem to have a much broader appeal on rhetorical grounds, where convincing someone of a proposition is very much like a religious conversion experience. In short, these ideas tend to position themselves toward the unfalsifiable end of the spectrum and, as a result, become nothing more than doctrinal statements identifying the good guys from the bad guys -- you're either with us or against us.
Of course you haven't because how an ideology self-identifies versus how it applies its principles is rarely the same -- that's the nature of ideological thinking. It's like asking Fox News to be consistent with its claim to being "fair and balanced" while expecting them to compromise their core ideology for the sake of being "fair and balanced". That will never happen because what they preach and what they practice can never square with one another. Their goal has never been to convince but to win at all costs. And to suggest that the Left is in any sense less prone to this instrumentalist bullshit is pure fantasy. They engage in the exact same rhetorical slight-of-hand as do the right-wing fear mongers. It's really a shame. The Left (at least historically) has marshaled fact and reason as a basis for their social, economic, and political critiques. Nowadays, such requisites are seen as suspicious or status-quo capitulations that invariably compromise the party line. Truth is now a matter of beating the royal crap out of your opponent rather than demonstrating the persuasive merits of the better argument.
I'm neither defining nor forming an idea of what white privilege is or is not. I'm describing how that idea has been used by those who believe it to be true. It's an idea that pathologizes the behavior of a particular demographic group by categorically putting members of that group on the couch without any consideration for the diversity of behavior or beliefs among those within that group. It's more commonly known as stereotyping.