It’s bad enough when people don’t read an article before jumping into the comments thread. But it takes a special kind of willful laziness to fail to look at a six panel comic.
9 Likes
So what? If I were to come up with a class of people undoubtedly worse off than black men, would that make black men privileged? Or would that be a pretty stupid use of that word?
Is that the short Icelander who married Matthew Barney? I hate that guy.
1 Like
Privilege comes in many forms. Able-bodied people statistically have it easier than disabled people. Straight people statistically have it easier than gay people. Men statistically have it easier than women. Rich people statistically have it easier than poor people.
So a straight black wealthy able-bodied male could be said to enjoy a certain level of “privilege” compared to his gay black destitute disabled female counterparts, though he’d still be statistically worse off than his straight white wealthy able-bodied male counterparts.
8 Likes
Done and done. If you are willfully dismissive of where you are on the scale, there is little that can be done.
Life sucks for everyone. Life sucks harder for other people.
3 Likes
Illuminating you is probably a Sisyphean task, but maybe it’ll help someone else.
The idea of describing the unearned advantages a person experiences compared to others based on a wide variety of factors is what the term “privilege” is referring to. So, yes, black men (as a group) do experience privilege over (for example) black women (as a group) because they are male and our society tends to reward that. You can have many different privileges afforded to you, even if you don’t obviously benefit from all of them.
As an example, here are some of the privileges I know I enjoy:
I am white
My family was decidedly middle-class
I’m straight
I’m male
I’m not disabled, physically or mentally
As Scalzi says, I’m pretty much playing the game of life on easy mode. Are there places I could be more privileged? Surely. My family wasn’t rich. I didn’t have college paid for by my family. I wasn’t granted admission to a school based on the past benevolence of my family. But those are relatively minor disadvantages when it comes to examining the difficulties other people face in life.
These overlapping privileges are referred to as intersectionality. This is pretty much the inflection point that marks the shift from 2nd to 3rd wave feminism. In a nutshell, when feminists realized that they were making progress in improving equality for women, it was noticed that some groups of women were making progress faster than other and that it was pretty clearly divided along racial lines.
You’ll frequently see people (even in this very thread) claim that the concept of white privilege is bullshit because it lumps all white people together. Intersectionality is the answer to that charge, and it’s been around as long as the discussion of privilege itself, but it’s not as widely talked about. People like an easy way to brush off uncomfortable ideas, I guess.
13 Likes
I like that quite a bit. As a data wonk it makes perfect sense to me, but I still don’t think my friends and family would ‘get it’.
Perhaps I am wrong (hopefully I am!!)
1 Like
interestingly, california is majority hispanic, and texas is soon to be. texas’s GDP about equal to canada’s, and california is larger still.
the benefits of being the majority don’t necessarily flow down from an entrenched minority. (and, there are plenty of places where that seems to be the case. ex. the middle east with its sunni, shia divides. )
my belief is it’s probably more about money and racism more than majority and minority.
2 Likes
All you are doing is hijacking a word that already has a common meaning, unnecessarily loading with a technical meaning, and the complaining when people interpret your use of the word. No one cares about your specialized use of the word. Privileged means privileged vis-à-vis most people. Saying the top portion of the bottom 2% is privileged vis-à-vis the bottom portion of the bottom 2% is stupid. It is a stupid and pretentious use of the word. I know trying to enlighten you on the proper use of language, and how nuances in the meanings of words matter, and how sociologists and amateur sociologists hijacking commonly used words for their own little games is kinda heinous–I’m certain there’s really no point in arguing with you on these points, but someone else just may read this.
Yeah, sure, being the beneficiary of having many generations of ancestors who weren’t subject to systematic and institutionalized racism is totally the same as not having a peanut allergy. /sarcasm, in case you were too fucking stupid to figure that one out
3 Likes
I am totally sincere on this. And I am not being ironic or a jerk.
Can you explain in declarative sentences what you mean?
1 Like
This usage of “privilege” is the only way I’ve heard it used for years in daily conversation, with the exception of people who object to it on ideological grounds.
3 Likes
Well if what you want your friends and family to “get” is that black people have been systematically oppressed and unjustly attacked, murdered, incarcerated and tortured over the years, and that all that a) isn’t quite over and b) the effects of past abuses aren’t quite over, you might stand a chance. If what you want your friends and family to understand is some stupid new meaning for the word priviledged, and the fact that even the homeless should be wallowing in white guilt where appropriate . . . well I think your friends and family would be somewhat justified in their contempt. And I think anyone who would let their idiotic neologistic use of the word “privileged” stand in the way of people’s better understand this issue eminently deserves that contempt. That is the sort of person who cares far more about the pose you are striking than the actual issue.
unfortunately, this is not enough. systemic inequality can’t be resolved by simply pretending we can treat everyone as equal.
imagine a race. ( oh look a pun. ) some runners were held back, some were given lead weights, others were allowed to do their own natural best. now, half-way through, everyone is now declared equal. sure, some people will “catch up”, if they try really hard. but… anyway, you can see the point.
what’s fortunate is that life is not a race. it’s NOT a zero-sum game. all lives are improved when opportunity is increased. there’s more art, more economic activity, more… everything. life is richer because more people are able to contribute to their fullest.
when we do have fundamental disadvantages built into the system, there’s nothing wrong at all with helping people to catch up, and join the pack at the front. in fact, it’s necessary.
4 Likes
You travel in pretty restricted circles, Owl. Privilege until quite recently was most often used as a synonym for “wealth” and the advantages inherent in wealth. That’s the sense of the word that gets people’s hackles up when you use the term “white privilege.” But look it up: if you can show me that the words “privileged” and “privilege” were most often used in common parlance in relation to race, I’ll count myself a foolish non-owl. But I very much doubt you can.
Not definitive, but there are 108 million Google page results for the word “privilege.” Less than a million for “white privilege.”
oklahoma?
1 Like
This canard is getting repetitive. Once more, perhaps.
Privelege isn’t the absence of all struggle. Life ain’t unicorn farts and puppy rainbows for ANYONE. Privilege is simply the absence of certian kinds of struggle. Like the absence of having to prove yourself the equal of a white man in a world that presumes you aren’t.
To pretend the people pointing this out are talking about something completely different and ridiculous is pretty much the definition of a straw man argument, so stop. Collaborate. And listen.
10 Likes
SSHHHHH!!! PERHAPS!!!
it may have gotten lost in the depression and the direct relative convicts fleeing justice
1 Like
You’re arguing from a prescriptivist use of language, and that’s not how language generally works. In this case, as I’ve already said, “privilege” is jargon. It’s useful shorthand to avoid saying “the sociological concept that some groups of people have advantages relative to other groups.”
By your logic, I should be off raging on networking forums that the use of the terms “connection” and “handshake” are overloading terms that already have useful meanings outside the networking world, when all they’re doing is acting as shorthand for the idea that two computers would communicate with one another over a previously agreed upon protocol using one-way transmissions to simulate an always-on physical pairing.
This is the other major misunderstanding that waaaay too many people have about the idea of privilege. Where has anyone on this page suggested that you or I should feel guilt for any privileges that we may be experiencing? It is a useful lens through which to view the world around us as we try to understand the systems in place that perpetuate injustice in the world.
4 Likes
