privilege as a meme

this looks awesome: http://books.google.com/books?id=zZ1wcz366pkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://images.tandf.co.uk/common/jackets/amazon/978041566/9780415669641.jpg

that is, privilege as an unearned advantage that implicates you in institutional forms of inequality

Basically what Austerity Ponies says at the end. I differ from Jefferson in thinking that we don't have inalienable rights. We have rights that we believe in and defend but they can all be lost. That said, we have rights now, considered sacred and immutable, which we didn't possess 5 or 6 generations ago. Even white males, ironically, the ones most attached in America to 'traditional American values'™ wouldn't, most of them, be able to vote in Revolutionary era America; they're too poor to hold the franchise. Sorry if this is kind of a derail, but limiting the idea of privilege to just institutional forms of inequality seems arbitrary and I'd like to consider privilege from aspirational as well as negative povs. Plus, Americans talking privilege can seem globally a little myopic

Oh yeah, communist privilege.

http://www.salpetrieredesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/druzhba-holiday-center-hall-1.jpg

Dachas, holidays on the Black Sea, food...

privileges and rights are different things, tho! such that pointing out the difference is itself something of an idiom: "it's not a right, it's a privilege"

Tanned, toned, and distributed.

xp or vice versa. i think the usefulness of the term privilege is the implication of inequality. not rights, but special rights, yes, inherited and seemingly natural, but explicitly NOT universal

What do you call it when one has better access to what ought to be universal rights because one is white, male, or heterosexual?

just dude stuff

Privilege, indeed. The privileges of the aristocrats and Church (largely wrt taxation) were a leading reason for the French Revolution

i'm not sure i know what the privilege meme is now either. i thought it was people on blogs talking about privilege and how it should be checked, not the invisible knapsack. i don't have a problem with that except like what horseshoe said, "it seems imprecise as a way to fully describe how power and inequality operate in the world," but i get that it's more of a rhetorical thing than an all-encompassing theory. but now i'm a committed anti-feminist because i have questions about its usefulness. even though my questions about it are feminist imo. i don't like discussions and i should not read these threads.

see, I could see social justicey type people saying to one another about a third party "he/she needs to check his priv." But it shouldnt be the thing a person tells another person. That needs to be way more explicatory to have any benefit.

I've definitely heard third-person accounts of other people's callousness that have caused me to change my ways/mindset so I wouldn't say there's no benefit

i...think people generally use it (the exact phrase) with people who should 'know better' anyway? it's really not that confrontational (or it shouldn't be) - it's just saying "think about why you think that way"

i can see benefits and i don't think people should have to teach every troll that comments on their blog about why their behavior is bad

There's a definite overlap btwn ppl who use 'privilege' and ppl who want to call others racist or sexist but can't quite bring themselves to ... come out and say it? So you get declarative sentences ... weakened by the pause and the high rising terminal? They don't want to be held to justifying a direct allegation, so they settle for implication instead.

See also: "It is interesting that ..." signifying "It is racist / sexist that ..."; "some people itt," passim

That was me, since yr comment seems pointed. I was trying to be calm and not attacky but show that even in a thread where
ppl are ostensibly trying to learn about privilege, there was resistance to even acknowledging the problem, or being willing to work with the solution even if they werent comfortable with the fit. And I was posting mostly from a phone where it's hard to scroll back, cut and paste, etc.

Also just fuck you. It's hard to be the only person trying to explain this shit, when dayo and others went quiet for a while.

so itt it's been decided that ppl have to be less confrontational and accusatory when they say "check your privilege" but also "check your privilege" isn't confrontational or accusatory enough

sometimes it's fun to watch strangers getting pointlessly butthurt about things

check your butthurtness privilege

sorry io ;_; i had to go work!

There's a definite overlap btwn ppl who use 'privilege' and ppl who want to call others racist or sexist but can't quite bring themselves to ... come out and say it? So you get declarative sentences ... weakened by the pause and the high rising terminal? They don't want to be held to justifying a direct allegation, so they settle for implication instead.

See also: "It is interesting that ..." signifying "It is racist / sexist that ..."; "some people itt," passim

― boxall, Wednesday, April 10, 2013 7:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

oh come on - people deploy the word 'privilege' because it does land a softer blow than calling someone racist or sexist, it doesn't shut the conversation down i nthe way that calling someone those terms does. lol @ holding these conversation-extending strategies as a reason that we should be suspicious of people who frame the conversation in these terms. but if you only prefer hardman trolling, if you only get off when people actually do call you a sexist or a racist, i'm more than happy to oblige

also lol @ trying to draw a direct link between 'privilege' and the very general linguistic concept of hedging; hedging is something literally everybody does, every day, in every interaction they have with other people. it's called not coming off as an imperious asshole to those around you

xxp Aw don't sweat it, boo. Sometimes I need an irl witness for this shit tho. Lagoon straight social experimenting by even creating this thread which no doubt went exactly the way he predicted.

it's been remarkably civil and sensible, all things considered

I think most contributors did a reasonable job of avoiding the more obvious trolling posts. My mental killfile is kinda working.

haha regardless of lag**n's intentions i think it's generally a good thing that this stuff gets discussed out in the open and that there's a forum for it. i feel like a lot of air has been cleared already!

Anyway, people getting defensive about privilege is pretty dumb because if they bothered to stop saying LALALALALLA for long enough to learn about it, it is basically impossible by definition for anyone in a privileged group NOT to benefit. It's academic justification for it not being any individual's fault! We should all be going gladly to that well, because it absolves us of being responsible for benefiting from the qualities we did nothing to earn, up to the point where we start to recognize them and then it IS on each person to think it over from there.

i don't know how i feel. lagøøn said but particularly itt im more interested in how something gets chewed up by the internet and people and everyone talked about what they think about privilege instead.

it's like he totally lost control of the thread, what happened

The internet is people, so are the posters posting here. We just demonstrated the chewing up part for you; you're welcome.

yessssss i just added another layer of troll his troll and it took only one minute 18 seconds

happy to help

in orbit, I really appreciate your contributions to this thread and to ILX in general, just sayin'

^^^

it's been remarkably civil and sensible, all things considered

i missed some stuff in the middle today, but yeah good thread

io is good people, dayo has been added to the good people list (probably not already there because I don't always keep track of who's who and io took me out to a punk gig the last time I was in NY #HowTheInternetWorks).

I think the thread benefitted a lot from the change of focus that harbl mentioned, so for example I agree that the use of privilege that LocalGarda describes sucks and he agrees that the usage I described makes more sense, but we've punted on which of us has the universal experience - which seems appropriate.

i guess to throw a wrench in this, i don't think it's my place to tell any person (experiencing x oppression) how they should or shouldn't use this language, how polite or impolite they should be etc... like everyone always talks about it like everyone has the same exact goal, but that isn't true, not everyone is super concerned with "winning people over to their side" or "making the world a better place for our chldren's children", some ppl are just fed up and pissed, some people actually want the conversation to end, some people just want to be able to discuss this shit freely with other ppl who are like them etc -- it's not always about trying to win you over

and apart from that some people DO respond well to being yelled at, there's not one grand method that works for everyone

Anyway, people getting defensive about privilege is pretty dumb because if they bothered to stop saying LALALALALLA for long enough to learn about it, it is basically impossible by definition for anyone in a privileged group NOT to benefit. It's academic justification for it not being any individual's fault! We should all be going gladly to that well, because it absolves us of being responsible for benefiting from the qualities we did nothing to earn, up to the point where we start to recognize them and then it IS on each person to think it over from there.

fwiw i agree with this and most of what you've said on this thread. i just think that in practice others using the word seem to work from a different definition to yours, or with a different goal.

i also think the whole "straight white dudes" as a meme isn't that helpful - not in terms of myself by any means, but in the sense that plenty of underprivileged people (at least in uk/europe) are probably straight white dudes.

it removes concern for class which seems to be a key factor that excludes people. that was part of my argument about a cabal of people using the word - i can't speak for the us but ime in the uk i don't think i've ever worked with somebody who wasn't middle class, or came from a poor background, and i've worked with people of many, many diff racial and religious backgrounds.

i'm not trying to make some hierarchy of discrimination - i just think it's a point worth discussing.

also there are things like disability... again not related to someone's race or sexual orientation but a pretty majorly misunderstood and awkward thing to have to deal with, with quite a wide group affected.

this one neat solution that bigots hate!

i also think the whole "straight white dudes" as a meme isn't that helpful - not in terms of myself by any means, but in the sense that plenty of underprivileged people (at least in uk/europe) are probably straight white dudes.

it removes concern for class which seems to be a key factor that excludes people. that was part of my argument about a cabal of people using the word - i can't speak for the us but ime in the uk i don't think i've ever worked with somebody who wasn't middle class, or came from a poor background, and i've worked with people of many, many diff racial and religious backgrounds.

i feel ya man, and like i said upthread we don't really talk about class in america, so maybe privilege is one way of getting at that. but let me point out again that even 'underprivileged straight white dudes' accrue benefits just by being a straight white dude - they don't have to think too hard about going home alone from a late-night party, for example, they can assume that the vast majority of media and advertising is aimed at them, they can shop at their local convenience store without being followed by store personnel, etc. these seem like small things, but when youre on the other side and not privy just by virtue of who you are, they can seem very big. and they dont go away even for poor straight white dudes. now, if you'll excuse me, i'm gonna be lighting a candle for underprivileged straight white dudes

they don't have to think too hard about going home alone from a late-night party, for example, they can assume that the vast majority of media and advertising is aimed at them, they can shop at their local convenience store without being followed by store personnel, etc.

in the US is there like a negative stereotype of the poor white person? cos i can imagine some underprivileged white people (or just you know, less well off people of any racial background) being singled out based on how they look or looking like a stereotypically poor person.

also they may have to worry about being beaten up or whatever, like if someone lives in a particularly dangerous area.

they can assume that the vast majority of media and advertising is aimed at them

not necessarily, if you're particularly marginalised due to how much money you have.

sorry i'm not trying to do that thing of like "refuting" you, just sort of trying to see how money factors into the argument.

well i think probably the closest thing we have to a 'chav' stereotype or w/e is 'white trash.' i can't really tell you any more about that, except that eminem was one

again... you're pointing out situations that might deterioriate the benefits that accrue to someone by their basic identity in the culture, whereas most ppl in this thread have been pointing out that those benefits accrue ipso facto of their identity. sure, some poor straight white dude might live in a dangerous area, but that's not really comparable to the threat of sexual assault that women p much have to account for at all levels of society. i don't really get your point about not having money to buy products, pretty much all straight males (me included) can count on turning on the telly and seeing lots of voluptuous women selling things, can count on the protagonists and plots of movies revolving around straight white dudes, can count on women in these same movies being 1) beautiful and 2) sexually available to these same protagonists, etc. etc. i mean obviously there are exceptions, but society has been organized around lines that sort of assume the straight white male as its default, regardless of how advantaged or disadvantaged each particular dude may be

and let me point out that money can def be a mitigating factor, but these sorts of disadvantages follow non-SWD's throughout their lives. like, hillary clinton, one of the most powerful people in the western world, still gets her gender used against her when ppl want to take her down a notch: http://i.imgur.com/vPXCPWs.jpg

henry louis gates - a harvard professor! - gets arrested for trying to get into his own house after accidentally locking himself out. forest whitaker, successful & rich black actor, gets falsely accused of shoplifting at a nyc deli... why? does that happen to tom hanks.

what would make anyone think that economic and social class are not vital components to discussions of "privilege"?

flagging up one set of privileges ≠ minimising other sets

yeah for sure! if the conversation happens to get aligned along economic/social lines, and youre an 'underprivileged straight white dude' whos poor talking to an heiress, feel free to point out that yer experience is different. and if it the conversation gets aligned along gender/sexual orientation lines, remind yerself that yer experience is not gonna be universal.

what would make anyone think that economic and social class are not vital components to discussions of "privilege"?

well they were largely ignored on this thread and this is the second attempt at bringing them up.

flagging up one set of privileges ≠ minimising other sets

i agree with you.

but dayo said

that's not really comparable to the threat of sexual assault that women p much have to account for at all levels of society.

i'm not really trying to compare. i don't get why we would create a hierarchy like this? we have world aids day and world diabetes day, the latter doesn't denigrate the former.

i accept most of your post as it relates to gender and race - but my point is that the "straight white dudes" thing excludes class from notions of privilege, and sexuality raises a more complicated debate.

xpost yeah that's sort of what i was getting at.

if the conversation happens to get aligned along economic/social lines, and youre an 'underprivileged straight white dude' whos poor talking to an heiress, feel free to point out that yer experience is different. and if it the conversation gets aligned along gender/sexual orientation lines

isn't it also a big problem that "underprivileged" doesn't actually have a clear meaning or a sense of identity in the way that race or sexuality does, at least relatively. the fact we have to use inverted commas kind of gets at this. like, it seems another reason why that's sort of naturally excluded from the conversation, because no group of people is saying "oh hey i represent the marginalised and this is where you're wrong", the poor just aren't involved in these discussions at all as far as i can tell.

like there's a reason it isn't "straight rich white dudes" as a shorthand

well, race/gender are inescapable and immutable and attach to people regardless of their economic situation (and of course subject to those specific circumstances you brought up). it's not that economic class is naturally excluded, its that its relevance is more bracketed than experiences tied to being of a race/gender in western society.