privilege as a meme

Grow up poor- not an excuse or even mitigation go 2 prison 4eva
Grow up rich- oh noes someone think of the childrereren

gets it

I am generally not in favour of sending children to prison for nonviolent crimes unless it can't be avoided. From the sound of it, his parents let him drink and drive from the age of thirteen and raised him to have an almost sociopathic disregard for the consequences of his actions. Therapy seems essential. It should also be the punishment for kids from poor families who are put in the same situation. The fact it is denied to them is more outrageous than the fact it's given to him.

deathrow the parents imo

the kid too

sharivari otm

yeah ShariVari otm

that said

no way this kid isn't going to be a psychopath (if he isn't that already)

you don't kill four people, get away with it, and not end up mentally damaged in some profound way

obviously there's a high chance he'll have some kind of trauma, but there are plenty of ppl who kill ppl without suffering profound mental damage e.g. military

^ sarcasm? i can't tell

no one should ever have to go to jail for anything

I don't even know if this is the right thread for this (because I'm not sure I properly understand the meaning/purpose of this thread) or if it should be on the race thread, but really:

https://medium.com/get-bullish/a5e5f4e9132f

"Life Hacking" = brutal assertion of race, class, etc privilege.

"check ur privilege" lol

Great story about the post office. That guy sounds like a real pice of work. Actually feel a book or documentary on the incident would be worth making but I suppose an article will have to do for now.

How to tell when someone has not read beyond the first three paragraphs of a piece. *sees screen name* Never mind, what was I expecting.

That's so good, I like that article! My littlest brother is totally that guy and I know other ones too even without the wealth inequality of the author.

yeah i have friends like that who think (1) that they have unlocked the secret to day-to-day life and (2) when they do it it is scandalizingly charming in the same way a rude joke

The most polite phrasing of their worldview is "It can't hurt to ask."

i hate the degradation of the term 'lifehack' into 'oblivious dickhead behavior'

Yeah, reading the article, I just thought "this is my brother" (this is people I went to school with, people I've worked with - and therefore, probably in ways I'm not even aware of it, *myself*!) all over. That whole "Oh, but bending the rules, just this once, just for little me" (and the false humility often gets trotted out as often as the entitlement) followed in quick succession by "ha ha, I can't believe everyone doesn't do this! The FULES! I am so clever and smart and funny and this is why I have nice things."

So my reaction is totally a wince, but also a recognition.

I do however think you should use the heck out of what ppl are willing to do for you when it's punching up. Like most things.

punching up?

directing your taking-advantage-of upward, rather than downward

the powerful rather than etc

that was one of jesus's parables iirc

It's not always easy for people to work out when they're punching up which I think is where a lot of this stems from - people thinking they're gaming corporations or institutions when they're just making things harder for service staff and other customers (though I am sure this does not apply to in orbit).

yah it seems like an awful complicated equation
much easier not to use ppl at all

otm

this stuff's supposed to be abt bending the rules of technology to get what you want

not bending people

"It can't hurt to ask" is fine where "no" is an acceptable response.

yeah, disgusted lol at "social hacking"

I think anyone who has working in retail/service knows it's not just white men who do this kind of thing

but yeah, the businessman/suburban dude dropping into a city p.o. with the "Can't you people see that I can't stand in line with you all day. I have actual things to do!" attitude is something I've seen before.

Yeah, I don't know that "punching up" is applicable in this specific kind of behaviour as discussed in the linked article.

Because it's not actually the *asking* that is where the privilege is located. It's the sense of entitlement behind the asking, and also the knowledge that in cases of "rule-bending" there will be no serious *consequences* beyond just a "no". Bluffing his way into a private party and essentially stealing a game of ping-pong (which, presumably they would have had to pay for, had the party not been in process) did not result in arrest for trespassing or prosecution for theft, and he never felt any danger that it would, it was just "japes and a fun life-hack". That assumption of "can't hurt to ask" where many, many people do experience problems, for even asking, that's exactly what privilege is in this case.

i long for the days when "life hack" meant cutting a juice bottle in half and using it as a desk tidy.

"Handle so, dass du die Menschheit sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden anderen jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als Mittel brauchst."

It's the kind of thing my brother used to do in NYC, and he used to rope me in as his companion in "put on a suit and see where we can bluff our way into" which was fun and games and a bit of a thrill. But then his behaviour started to cross some lines.

I remember one night he wanted to catch a taxi from his midtown workplace to his home uptown. He had tried to get cash out of a machine but I can't remember if his card was denied or the machine was broken - this was the 90s so there was no paying by card, and I had lived in NYC about a year, but even at that point I knew you could not pay for a taxi with a cheque. Still, he insisted on getting the cab even though neither of us had any cash, maintaining it would be fine. We got to our destination, my brother pulled out his chequebook, and the cab driver did not think this was fine, in fact he understandably freaked out and called the cops.

The cop came over, and my brother gave him this spiel carefully mentioning about how he had taken his sister to dinner at (expensive club) then gone back to his office at (investment bank) and couldn't get any more cash, oh, what a spot of bother. And I was shitting bricks, thinking we were both going to get arrested, when, to my surprise, the cop looked at the taxi meter, pulled out his own wallet and said "OK, tell ya what, I'll pay the cash fare, you write the cheque to me, everything will be fine."

And everything *was* fine. And, as I, frankly astonished, followed my brother back to his flat and asked him what he had just thought he was doing, he simply shrugged and said "I knew the minute the cop turned up, and the cop was white," (the taxi driver was not) "that there was nothing to worry about." That this was very specifically *not* a case of "can't hurt to ask" - this was his tacit understanding that the fact of being white, and the fact of being the class that worked in investment banks and went to posh Ivy League clubs for dinner meant that rules of not passing bad cheques and not getting into cabs you can't pay for and not arguing with cops just did not apply to him.

I always wanted a word for that attitude, that expectation, and "privilege" is a perfect fit. Expecting to jump the post office queue ~just because~ is a very minor step along that spectrum which also has crashing a ping-pong party on it, but this is the name for that thing.

Your brother understands cops' mentality very well.

yup. cops.

Cool bro story

arrest a poor person = very little chance of blowback
arrest a rich person = a good chance my ass is fucked, so why buy trouble?

great post branwell.

How to tell when someone has not read beyond the first three paragraphs of a piece. *sees screen name* Never mind, what was I expecting.

Keep fighting the good fight.

The twist is this, though:

Neither my brother nor I were, at that point, rich. Both of us were unemployed and mooching.

He didn't work at the investment bank; he had done some consulting work there and still knew the door codes. We didn't buy dinner at the posh club; we blagged our way in and cadged nibbles and put drinks on someone else's tab. We did not have the money to cover the cab fare; we blagged it, and were aided and abetted in that blagging by a cop.

"Rich" is this idea that people have money, and money can buy your way out of things. We did not have that. What we had was racial privilege and class privilege: we looked, and sounded like, and therefore passed for being a certain kind of people. Therefore others treated us as if we were. Had we tried those tricks while having a different colour skin or a different accent or different references we would not have got away with it. Had *I* tried those tricks without my brother being there, *I* would not have got away with it. Being "under the protection of an apparently powerful man" extends an aura, while at the same time making one aware that it is someone else's power, not your own. Being *aware* that all these things - race, class, gender - provided a kind of protective influence, that is not extended to most people, that is the quality that we are discussing here.

Not "understanding the mentality of cops".

But, what you are describing in your longest paragraph is "the mentality of cops", who are very sensitive to these sorts of markers because they act as some of the primary custodians of social privilege. We agree, but are using different language and employing perspectives on the same thing.

...that is the quality that we are discussing here. Not...

Interesting use of 'we'.

Did I say "we"? How silly of me! I'm totally by myself here and I've ~no idea~ how other words keep appearing on the thread!

Good night, Aimless.

Spelling it out, my point was that by directly quoting me in regard to what 'we' are not discussing, you quite clearly excluded me from 'we'. Except you left, and therefore cannot see my point now.

Oh yeah sorry to comment and leave for the day, I just meant that getting one over on the system, where that means a "system of oppression" instead of "the system that primarily serves me and people like me," is sort of appealing in what I guess isn't a very defensible way when I try to extrapolate.

"It can't hurt to ask" is fine where "no" is an acceptable response.

Yes, sort of, but everyone's threshold for saying no is different too, and sometimes ppl will try to accommodate a request when it's more trouble for them to do it than it is for you to NOT have it done for you. Learning to say no is a nice skill that it's helpful to have but not everyone feels equally free to use it--and there are some people who will ask and ask (and take and take) as long as no one says no to them and holds to it. In my mind, that's the genesis, and then add in the massive entitlement of wealth/class/race/sex privilege and you get that article.

The next level is when someone does say 'no' to them and they ask to speak to a manager/ threaten to call customer care and then stand there smirking as the one saying 'no' is overruled.

Being *aware* that all these things - race, class, gender - provided a kind of protective influence, that is not extended to most people, that is the quality that we are discussing here. Not "understanding the mentality of cops".

― The Manics: Very Welsh, Much Working Class, So cialist (Branwell Bell), Tuesday, December 24, 2013 8:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You do recognize that the fact that the protective influence you're (you indeed! note how your royal we is resoundingly unechoed in following comments) discussing here is made systematically problematic ~through its codification in the culture of policing~, right?

Like, "understanding the mentality of cops" is part and parcel of understanding how these things become our norms, if not among the most important part--most of our cultural institutions don't walk around with guns and a wall of silence prepared in case they kill you.