privilege as a meme

this is the thread of missing ahem...

i think there's a problem in assuming any given word or phrase has the power to make a person think the way you want them to think. you can't, even when it's something important at stake like having equal rights. all you can do is put yourself out there and hope people will listen. the listener is one the making the choice to listen, and if you act like that's not the case then you're going to get push back.

all i want to know is, if i do the dishes and take out the trash all week, can i borrow the car on Friday night?

this thread is pretty depressing and dumm tbh

despite my internet glibness i'm pretty aware of my privilege and actually use the term about myself all the time irl. it's obviously a vital lens to see the world through and understanding that your experiences and perspectives aren't universal is pretty crucial to civilized conversation with anyone smart who's out of undergrad. i m/l agree with the good guys/gals itt

the only time i *rme* a little at "privilege" is when it's used (exclusively on the internet ime, which i guess is why noted anti-feminist lagoon started this thread) not as an eye-opener but as a trump card, later in the conversation rather than earlier. i completely acknowledge that this is *plays world's smallest violin* but sometimes people who are privileged and are aware of their privilege and have made that known might come to a different good-faith conclusion, after careful consideration, than someone else. and that's OK sometimes as long as you keep in mind that your privilege may have influenced your thinking; it doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong or that your perspective is automatically invalid - its context and how it came to be just have to be understood

ok, this thread.

that's what I'm sayin

so just for the record i don't think "misuse is common", it's not an epidemic or anything and i don't feel oppressed

i mean

tbh this is the sort of thread that makes me realise why some people on the ~social justice internet~ are assholes about the word, it's borne out of pure frustration

you explain what privilege is, you explain that it's quite simple and it's not designed to be an insult, and that it's rooted in power relations not a judgment on you personally, and yet people - usually pretty privileged people - just go on and on and on trying to discredit the entire concept. and it's like y'know what fuck you it's not actually up to you to hijack or dismiss this concept.

and it's totally okay for people to be a bit "huh, what" when they first come across ideas like intersectionality and privilege etc etc because guess what that's our educational privilege that enables us to throw them around like they're nothing, but the pig-headed insistence that they're fundamentally unhelpful concepts deserves absolutely nothing more than an eyeroll

^ gets it

ok, this thread.

― ampersand cooper black (elmo argonaut), Wednesday, April 10, 2013 2:07 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's like...EXACTLY like every other thread where str8 white men (ALWAYS str8 white men, sometimes str8 white women) are faced with the concept of privilege and realise their assumptions might be a tiny bit challenged or that they might have to SIT THE FUCK DOWN for once

wait stop you're blowing my straight white mind, I might have to sit down

checking one's privilege is REALLY EASY to do and not a thing that should make you feel oppressed. it's like, idk, proof-reading to check that something you've written makes logical sense.

pretty sure lag**n orchestrated this thread as some kind of performative commentary of privilege in action

http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/4067210/2/stock-photo-4067210-red-and-white-checked-pattern.jpg

every time I open this thread I want to make a pun

I'm white btw

i'm white too btw

it's like...EXACTLY like every other thread where str8 white men (ALWAYS str8 white men, sometimes str8 white women) are faced with the concept of privilege and realise their assumptions might be a tiny bit challenged or that they might have to SIT THE FUCK DOWN for once

if you mean me with these few posts i don't think it's particularly fair. many people make assumptions or lack self-awareness, a difficult point to be righteous about.

when people say "check your privilege" do they mean it like "spot check" or like "coat check"? honest q.

the very last thing that happens when someone calls out privilege here is that anyone goes "ah no fair point I'll switch to listening mode"

Exhibits A - ZZ enclosed.

pretty sure that does happen, obv not with everyone on every thread and it's the people who keep yelling who control the discourse & memory of it.

when people say "check your privilege" do they mean it like "spot check" or like "coat check"? honest q.

obv it's the former -- like, "take a step back & look at who you are and your place in the greater universe vs. the people around you" -- but based on the reactions itt I think a lot of people are taking it as the latter

wait I think I just horribly botched the meaning of "spot check," what am I doing itt & in life

how would you even coat check your privilege

"I grant my social perks and boons to you, poor disadvantaged soul, for the duration of this conversation; if you return them unscathed there may be a tip"

Isn't that basically the plot of Trading Places?

I'll get me privilege

I made that pun already

how would you even coat check your privilege

by taking off your privilege and leaving it in a closet near the door.

LOL at Dan. "Here's a shiny quarter, young rapscallion, now run along!"

http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html

founding document iirc

lex i think the thread creators are not questioning that (straight, white, w/e) privilege is a thing, rather that the angle should be pointed inward rather than outward. beam, mote, etc.

go lex

i mean, self-examination is great and all, but sometimes people just have to be told a thing. this can be true even when they don't particularly want to hear it.

sometimes you tell people a thing and it doesnt do anything idk

i mean, self-examination is great and all, but sometimes people just have to be told a thing. this can be true even when they don't particularly want to hear it.

sounds in the spirit of the concept.

xp - well sure. no guarantee that pointing out privilege is going to accomplish any actual good. it probably makes some people more defiant and aggrieved.

but i'm not gonna suggest that the world should just shut up about privilege and allow all us good, nice, liberal, well-intentioned straight white men (speaking for myself) come to enlightenment in our own time, through unmolested introspection.

^ to

makes me think of some study i read about recently where they found that challenging peoples views actually made them harden their position, but im kind suspicious of that result cause i think its just measuring the initial reaction, and im sure we all have personal experiences of being confronted about being wrong by someone and getting embarrassed and mad and doubling down, and then later we lowkey change our opinion lol

but i'm not gonna suggest that the world should just shut up about privilege and allow all us good, nice, liberal, well-intentioned straight white men (speaking for myself) come to enlightenment in our own time, through unmolested introspection.

nobody is arguing this...

http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html

founding document iirc

― rather ugged man (zvookster), Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:55 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

i had seen this piece referenced in other stuff i've been reading but never tracked down the original. ty for this!

nobody is arguing this...

troo, i was strawmanning p hard there. nevertheless, i think that the discussion of privilege provides us with a nice opportunity to, you know, keep our privilege in check.

"the music of my race"

new album in the works

thanks for linking the mcintoch essay, zvooks

i'll throw up some choice quotes from the essay

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there is most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.

...

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow them to be more like us.

i'm glad to see that essay here

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.