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.

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.

Except no silencing of dissent occurred - I disagreed with the content of your dissent by presenting my own perspective. You then "silenced my dissent".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

wow.

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).