privilege as a meme

Reminds me of something from Jay Haley's dated but great satirical essay on pschyoanalysis:

To phrase these terms in popular language, at the risk of losing scientific rigor, it can be said that in any human relationship (and indeed among other mammals) one person is constantly maneuvering to imply that he is in a “superior position” to the other person in the relationship. This “superior position” does not necessarily mean superior in social status or economic position; many servants are masters at putting their employers one-down. Nor does it imply intellectual superiority as any intellectual knows who has been put “one-down” by a muscular garbage collector in a bout of Indian wrestling. “Superior position” is a relative term, which is continually being defined and re-defined by the ongoing relationship. Maneuvers to achieve superior position may be crude or they may be infinitely subtle. For example, one is not usually in a superior position if he must ask another person for something. Yet he can ask for it in such a way that he is implying, “This is, of course, what I deserve.” Since the number of ways of maneuvering oneself into a superior position are infinite, let us proceed at once to summarize the psychoanalytic techniques as described in the three volume study.

However, in the culture where I come from, people talk about "the police mentality" and then go on to talk about the whole "oh, one bad apple" trope whenever the police do something terrible, as if these things are totally disconnected from and independent of the systems of privilege they support. And if there *is* a problem (which there really isn't, because if you just "talk more nicely to the police", it will go away) then it is *just* "the police" and "that one bad apple" which needs addressing, rather than looking at the corrosive system of race and class privilege and their our parts in it.

― MU-MU is and is not a theorem of the JAM-System (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, December 25, 2013 9:46 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm struggling to understand your meaning here, not zing you--i don't know you well enough to know what gets under your skin, but my claws come ready when i see my friends here sneered at, so i apologize for my tone. i don't come in here to lob snide grenades.

i think i might have found where our wires are crossed here--aimless suggested that your initial story about your brother might have said more about the mentality of cops than it did about anything else, and you argued that the racial and class privilege (even if you were just 'passing,' as i do, for something other than you are) involved in the situation played a bigger role than the attitude of a single policeman.

where i screwed up was in directing my reply & it's tone about the codification of police attitudes to you alone--what i was getting at was that, just as you seem to be saying here, the systematization of white supremacy and classism into the culture of policing is the relative problem to be solved here--or if you like, "the mentality of cops," is the problem, not "the mentality of a cop."

TY, hoos, for considering me a friend on ilx.

Not long after my most recent post to this thread I discovered I was operating in the dark in regard to Branwell, who I now know is a long time ilx poster under other names, who has recently returned to ilx using this name. Ironically, I was considering pointing Branwell to search out and possibly revive old posts made by the name she used before, so she could see that the issues she has been raising are not ones that have gone undiscussed here. As it happens, we've talked past one another many times before.

zach otm. I feel like this post really captured my feelings on the usefulness of online activism: http://darael.tumblr.com/post/58579735938/online-activism-changed-me-from-a-woman-who

http://25.media.tumblr.com/2c1d27bcd76b5c20bda21f7002a169da/tumblr_mym0lufAx51s71q1zo1_1280.png

i'm pretty new to social justice twitter squad, what twitters should i follow for race, gender, LGBQT, econ whatever discussions?

@pushinghoops

Off the top of my head:
Kiese Laymon
Darnell L. Moore
Brittney Cooper / Crunk Feminist Collective
Gradient Lair
Molly Knefel
Ned Resnikoff

Crunk Feminist Collective

does this include mikki kendall? love her.

nvm she's at hoodfeminism

karynthia (mikki) and blackamazon were my first two thoughts but only bc i'm not on twitter and i just know they blew up this year. BA's tumblr is what turned me into an annoying self-righteous SJW in the first place, always love her writing

yeah i follow both of them already! im not on tumblr but just got on twitter in a real way the past few months and kinda rabbitholed into SJ, mercifully

otherwise it wouldve been the same ed reform arguments everyday

@caulkthewagon
@tressiemcphd
@aurabogado
@babeeeinstein
@andreagrimes
@melissagira
@susie_c
@e_stoker
@The_WPCA

Only time Aura Bogado has ever appeared in my Twitter TL was when she insulted Jamelle Bouie's (I think it was him) interracial relationship during a spat, which left a sour taste and definitely deterred me from ever following her.

xp Oh good ones. I like Melissa Gira Grant.

So this blew up on twitter and I just learned about it today, thanks to #reclaimintersectionalityin2014, which I didn't understand the facts behind until I followed the twisty ball of string to this synopsis:

http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/71842333716/i-cant-think-of-any-high-profile-white-uk-feminist

And for reference, apparently this is the first exploration of intersectionality, written by a Black academic feminist in 1993.

http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/71842333716/i-cant-think-of-any-high-profile-white-uk-feminist

Sorry, that second link should be http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/files/socialdiff/projects/Article__Mapping_the_Margins_by_Kimblere_Crenshaw.pdf

...which is a 60-page PDF, just sayin.

Only time Aura Bogado has ever appeared in my Twitter TL was when she insulted Jamelle Bouie's (I think it was him) interracial relationship during a spat, which left a sour taste and definitely deterred me from ever following her.

― Murgatroid, Thursday, January 2, 2014 5:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i honestly don't follow her any more because i'm not a fan of lots of the things she says (my interview with her turned into a fight), but i think she's a good follow to get a feel for what's out there

i never saw that jamelle bouie thing though, thats nasty

with that in mind

@jbouie

caulkthewagon is my old skool occupy boston homie robin i recommend her to all peoples

https://twitter.com/WhiteFeminist

lol

@tressiemcphd

she is amazing, she is my favorite writer about anything right now, also she has RT'd me like twice yayyyyyy

no whey jeal

Meh at @whitefeminist. I really have little time for humor based on mouthing oppressor logic. The worst is when people jump in my twitter mentions with that type of shit.

@bad_dominicana has been a favorite lately.

I like @The_WPCA cause they kinda hit at the same target-area @whitefeminist does, in a funny way, but critically

no whey jeal

― creating an ilHOOSion usic sight and sound (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, January 2, 2014 12:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes guey!

ps thank you hoos and in orbit for the recs. ive seen many of these in RT and there was a piece i read by kiese earlier this year that knocked me on my ass.

in fact it mightve been linked on ilx, probably because i read like 5 things ever.

Thumbs up, he's amazing.

I haven't read his novel but the book of essays is phenom and includes an exchange of letters with some other remarkable men/writers.

And for reference, apparently this is the first exploration of intersectionality, written by a Black academic feminist in 1993.

lbr intersectionality has been 'explored' at least as long as black women have been writing about feminism

I just grabbed that from Mykki yesterday, who said "You do realize that intersectionality is a legal term created by a Black American woman right?" and linked to Mapping the Margins a bunch of times. Maybe "explored" was a bad/inaccurate term, sorry about that.

Sorry, MIKKI, not to be confused with Mykki Blanco, who I once had to see while on a date.

i read some of her stuff in law school but i didn't know she invented that word

Need to also recommend @suey_park for AsAm and AsAm Feminism issues

she cited this 1989 article of her own in the footnotes of mapping the margins http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Crenshaw%20Demarginalizing%20Intersection%20Race%20Sex.pdf

xp

on that, suey park is unstoppable

fyi that last article is a lot more boring and talking about cases. i was just wondering when the word was first used. kind of like when jaymc tried to find the first use of 'gaydar'. i'm sleepy and i had wine.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15979/hood_feminist/

Everyone wants to be an “expert.” And it’s much easier to get paid for being an “expert” on people who can’t speak for themselves. But Twitter makes it impossible to ignore the voices of the people you’re talking about. You can’t be an expert on those people when those people are at the table with you.

...the some voices of the people you’re talking about.

Just a reminder, but while these voices being cited presumably speak from a much more direct and intimate experiences than the pseudo-"expert" being derided here, but it is always dicey to elevate any one voice or any subset of voices as the voices of "the people". Twitter does not yet represent the "voice" of everyone, but only those who tweet.

Twitter's breadth of participation may mark an improvement on the status-quo ante, but it is hardly universal, yet, and if it were, it would be so diverse and cacophonous as to be nearly impossible to encompass or to summarize.

/captain obvious

There's a hugely bitter debate within UK feminist Twitter / blog circles about the use of the term intersectionality at the moment. One side, which is primarily made up of white middle-class established journalists rejects the term as divisive and too academic. The other sees that as an attempt to police / remove one of the tools created by women of colour to address their own oppression.

Yes I stumbled on that and it took me a while to untangle the beginnings of it.

I thought this bit was helpful? Red Light Politics captured and explained some tweets that seem to have been pivotal.

http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/71842333716/i-cant-think-of-any-high-profile-white-uk-feminist

A-ha! I read that the other day and couldn't find it again. Thanks!

It all kicked off again after that post was written, i think, following a radio debate between Caroline Criado-Perez and Reni Eddo-Lodge:

http://i.imgur.com/9DZsmhN.png

Criado-Perez responded to a statement about high-profile white feminists struggling at times to deal with their own privilege by focusing on the idea that intersectionality was being used as a tool to abuse her and her friends.

It has been going on for ages. The UK doesn't really have a plurality of mainstream outlets for feminist discourse in the way the US has kind of developed so there's a lot of focus on a relatively small group of like-minded people who write (or have written) for The Guardian or New Statesman and have a high social media profile. They tend to be journalists rather than people with an academic or campaigning background. Over the last year there's been a number of occasions when quite a few of them (Caitlin Moran, Suzanne Moore, etc) have responded very badly to being called out on questionable assumptions relating to race / trans issues and have hit back by accusing people of using intersectionality as a stick to beat other women with.

from a uk perspective i follow @renireni and @judeinlondon and a few more. there are plenty more i wish i could follow but the volume would get overwhelming. i should probably just create a list or something.

not sure which has been less edifying, white liberal journalists being snide about the "intersectionalists" all year or telling black women they're not doing it right (and still conflating it with internet abuse, ugh). the bigger picture is so much more heartening though, it's pretty obviously ~the future, ideas that in 10 years will be completely mainstream. i've found intersectional twitter extremely inspiring and interesting of late.

My take-away was that white feminists were objecting to other, less prominent white feminists using intersectionality to punch upward at them? Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of intersectionality, I think. People like that have to realise that there is always a context where they will be the privileged person in an interaction, no matter how much abuse they personally have suffered or how little money they might have in the bank. OTOH someone else Lex and I both follow, a v. v. smart woman of colour with little formal education, was basically shat upon by a black female academic for wanting to talk intersectionality issues because she hadn't read essay X or book Y. Wanted to throttle the academic, really, for doing exactly the thing she purports to be schooling against.

it's not all sort of happy-slappy