I have empathy. But English words are mutable. And I also don’t agree with where language goes, but as said in Amadeus.
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Sorry if my elbows are out on this, but I get a bit chippy when people assume that just because I don’t go along with their upper-middle-class, sociology-department-derived agenda/terminology, that I must be arguing against the fact that racism has a continuing significance in American society. That is absolutely NOT what I am getting at. What I am getting at is that if you are an upper-middle-class intellectual type trying to convince a bunch of white high school dropouts that they’ve really got to acknowledge their “white privilege” you are completely and utterly barking up the wrong tree. A lot of people, frankly, just don’t give a shit about that. It more or less serves their purposes that their be a bunch of dumb, resentful, racist white folk out there. If you or I came up with an argument tonight that would sway most of them to the idea that black folk, undeservedly, have it even worse than them, by and large . . . that would be an utter catastrophe to those people. And those people are the people who are totally in love with the word privilege in this context. If you want your folks to “get” something, figure out something other than “white privilege” for them to get. Because that is a term more or less designed for them not to get.
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As an, ahem, [quote=“echines, post:147, topic:55143”]
high school dropouts that they’ve really got to acknowledge their “white privilege” you are completely and utterly barking up the wrong tree.
[/quote]
I respectfully disagree. If you need to check my poor white status, I’ll go grab some scrapbooks from my mother when I get home.
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There what is? There is my dumb, ineffective neologism that pretty much everyone has contempt for and that requires explanatory cartoons? Is that the “It” we’re talking about? If so, to hell with it, as I’m sure they’ve said in a whole load of movies, I’ll leave you to find them if you need them for validation. Personally, I don’t consider movie scripts to be the new versions of holy writ, but, hey, that’s fine if you do.
I never mentioned movie scripts.
I was raised as a poor ‘cracker’. I made good due to privilege.
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Cultural Marxists!
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Turns of phrase. I watch too much TV.
I don’t think your status really enters in. You could have been born in a refrigerator box: “white privilege” is still the product of a university sociology department struggling to find some way of jarring their indifferent undergraduates into engaging in their “racism, sexism, homophobia” classes. Having been there, done that, I’m sympathetic. But also having some sense of how people take a phrase like “white privilege,” I find myself rather hostile to insisting on new terms that make my point harder to win rather than easier.
Yes, a very nice still that I think I’ve seen around on the intertubes at some point in the past, but . . . um, point being?
My father still lives in a trailer. My brother lives in section 8 housing.
oh god the internet fury, it burns. Please delete this comment. It is so unnecessary
Do you think we would have even that if we weren’t white and attractive?
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So you’re not opposed to the idea of social justice but you’re concerned that the terminology used may be abusive and off-putting?
Describe it to your friends anyway you’d like, frankly. And if you make progress with people recognizing their privilege without ever using the word? Great! Good job! I don’t see a loser in that scenario. But there are a lot of people in the world working towards these goals, and they’ve agreed on terminology to describe the ideas they are dealing with. That ship sailed back in the early 90s, so you’re about 25 years too late to argue for a shift in jargon at this point.
Continuing to “have your elbows out” on this makes you sound like a concern trolley, and while that may not be your intention, it’s likely why people assume you’re arguing against them.
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WHAT “certain kind” exactly? Let’s be a bit specific here. There’s someone else here who is perfectly happy to say black men are “privileged” in regard to black women. In other words making it completely relative. You seem to stand for some kind of privilege standard of “a certain kind.” But what kind exactly? There seems to me to be a myriad of rather personal definitions of “white privilege.” Which is rather a wordy way of saying the term is bullshit.
[…white priv…]
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Continuing to defend the words “white privilege” in the face of their complete failure to persuade most people marks you as a person who actually enjoys having racists to kick around. Perhaps a nice lynching or three would really fuel the self-congratulation machine?
I can do more.
[……billionaire priv.]
So you are a concern troll.
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[…immigrant priv…]
I’m afraid I’ve totally lost you. You want me to validate you are a fine working-class-origin person? For what it’s worth: alakazam.
Continuing to attack the words “white privilege” in the face of a host of people who completely understand it and are willing to explain it in great detail marks you as someone incapable of processing new ideas and instead spends their time derailing conversations just to make people upset on the internets. Perhaps an image macro or three would really fuel the hatred machine?
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I guess the incredibly evil thing I am saying, is if you are white and haven’t exploited privilege, you are doing it wrong.
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