NB4 the infamous “Privilege Checker”.
Everybody uses their own meanings and translates everybody else. This is what the discipline of semantics means. We start by defining our terms, as we interpret them. FWIW I typically use definitions which have at least some historical precedent.
I said why in my previous post. Because terms like “racism” and “bias” say exactly what is the problem, while “privilege” requires re-tooling a word which almost-but-not-really means this. There seems to be a huge push to make a dumb buzzword out of this.
Eh, that is a long complicated answer.
Let’s just say that there are positive and negative stereotypes for Jews. Those who can pass and are pragmatic about it are white sometimes and Jewish other times. Those of us who can’t avoid living in places with negative stereotypes of Jews.
There is certainly antisemitism. I’ve been called some interesting things before, but I’m visibly Jewish and I have to say, the amount of antisemitism that hits me is an order of magnitude less than the racism towards black people. And where my people get the positive stereotype of being good with money and smart, black people only get being good at sports. I think we won the positive racism category.
In this particular case “privilege” is jargon. Much like there are probably better, more appropriate ways to describe things in other fields, people in those fields have settled on specific words that may or may not have perfect analogs to those outside their field.
For example:
The term “male privilege” does not apply to a solitary occurrence of the use of power, but rather describes one of many systemic power structures that are interdependent and interlinked throughout societies and cultures.
Sure there are other ways of saying that, just by defining it, I’ve shown a rather lengthy version of it. But people who are discussing systemic injustices have settled on “privilege” as the way to define that.
Arguing that the dictionary definition of “privilege” doesn’t align with this thought is a prescriptivist argument. Since we’re talking comics-based definitions of terms, here’s one with some thoughts on that:
http://gguillotte.tumblr.com/post/108974105815/coldmorningsun-bidyke-robothugscomic-new
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It’s not about who thinks racist thoughts - it’s who’s immune from them. That’s the privilege: that no one thinks I’m a bad driver, or dangerous, or cheap because I’m white. They might think those things about me personally, but not because I’m white.
That said, I’m sure there are stereotypes about white people, too. I think we are mostly in agreement about the important parts of all this. Racism sucks. Classism sucks. Etc.
I defend the white privilege checklist because it had such an impact on me. There were many things on the list that had never occurred to me before I read it. Things that are perfectly natural to me but are denied to others. It opened my eyes to systemic racism, and I hope that it will help others see it too.
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In Finland it’s an advantage to be a minority when applying for second or third degree education. Not sure if that counts.
Or simply a new use of a word, which happens all the time, even if you weren’t aware of the new usage…
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And when you’re beat up by white anti-immigration skinheads, is it much of an advantage?
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Some of us have settled on it. Meanwhile, some of us find it cringeworthy.
Not necessarily, I prefer using language programmatically, treating it simultaneously as both structure and data. It is less ambiguous if people simply use previously agreed meanings, or create new words instead. People seem to assume there is a maximum word count to English which necessitates recycling (overloading) them.
But thanks for recognizing what bugs me about it, instead of instantly assuming that I must be in denial about racism!
You’ve previously stated that you’re a person of color without being specific. I doubt anyone that knows that would say you were in denial of racism.
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Apart from one of the schools being the police academy, not really.
It’s not even that new a meaning, considering it’s used in the song I posted earlier in the thread.
real privilege, it will take your problems all away
It came out in 1994 so it was presumably used in this way before then.
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It may be worth acknowledging it, and its effects on where we are now, however. Vis a vis China Miéville, I dunno about cis (or care), but you do know he’s pretty white looking male and middle-class, right?
(also a brilliant writer and staunch commie 
)
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There seems to some controversy about this. There was certainly a lot of anti-Irish sentiment in the British isles, but in the US… it’s more questionable. See:
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I don’t know about you, but I was hired on my merit badges
(Even being born as white trash, being 6’3" and having a bland vocabulary basically means I get a +5 broadsword of life)
(I.e. people remark, “you sound like you are from… Nowhere?”)
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White privilege is a stupid idea. Full stop. Blacks were discriminated against. Because of that white people on average had access to a bit more that they would have otherwise. Does this mean that every white man in 1950 was privileged to a home loan simply because he was white? Does this mean that in 1990 every white kid got a job on wall street simply on account of his melanin levels? This is stupid and completely disrespectful of the experience of poor and working class whites. To upper-middle class white folks who have absolutely nothing to lose ( and are certainly not offering to sacrifice anything), this is a fine little fiction. To white people who have had to struggle all their lives the notion that their lives were ones chacterized by privilege quite rightly pisses them off. You, maybe, have led a life of privilege. Don’t try to tell that to some shmuck who has worked all his life and gotten nowhere. Your next privilege might be a sampling of America’s great emergency care system. And, frankly, it’d be past time.
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I’m not sure what Usain Bolt is supposed to represent in this analogy. It would appear you are saying blacks being denied certain rights is actually an attempt to make things more fair. I’ll bet that was not your aim, so choose your words more carefully (which is ironic, as you are making a stink about the proper use of the word “privilege.”)
So it seems your beef is with use of the word “privilege”-- do you have a better term we could use? English is rife with examples of words being repurposed or joined to denote new meaning. I think in this case it is acceptable, if not perfect.
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Hey, know who is statistically way worse off than poor and working class whites?
Poor and working class people who are not white.
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Uh-oh, you said butt-hurt… Here come the warm jets butt-hurt police…
