privilege as a meme

Are there any articles on this written by POC? All I've seen so far is white ppl talking white privilege.

(and while I've often nodded along when reading articles saying that ppl should check their privilege but ... wow, actually being told to do so does not produce the desired effect, at least for me, this time)

Who told you this and what is the context?

In what context were you told to check yr priv? If you feel comfortable opening up about that.

Only irl conversation I've had about this has been w 2 other white people, one of whom was just drunkenly boasting his awareness of his privilege.

i think it's reputed only to work in 'safe spaces'

like twitter

lol at that image xp

godspeed yall

^

In what context were you told to check yr priv? If you feel comfortable opening up about that.

This was an IRL conversation with a friend of a friend (not someone I knew very well).

The issue under discussion was a recent event where: feminists in a town petition strip club to close down, it eventually shuts down for lack of custom, crazy twitter trolls start sending to death threats to the homes of people who'd organised the petition.

I started to think out loud about wtf is going on in the mind of the death-threaters; I was told this was trivia and to stop saying what about the men (those exact words) and trying to talk about mental illness without having qualifications, and ultimately 'check your privilege' (those exact words). I didn't think I was doing this, but the other people did. Quite possibly I was.

I felt rather as if I'd been identified pre-emptively as an anonymous badster with a twisted agenda, like we meet online frequently, which felt very uncomfortable in a face to face, non professional, social conversation.

I was told this was trivia and to stop saying what about the men (those exact words)

just so i follow right: you were told to check your privilege in a context where you were bringing up the thought process and potential mental illnesses of threatening people online?

hoos, stop focusing on the purported (white male) victim of privilege checking.

Hoos: yeah. And no, I have no qualifications to talk about mental health or thought processes of people who threaten others online, but neither did the other person in the conversation.

(NB it obviously doesn't matter very much if someone used a phrase to cardamon and it was awkward - that's hardly evidence that 'check your privilege' as a meme should be abandoned)

(Also this is in the UK, which complicates things seeing as the phrase is American in origin iirc)

regardless of anything else (i'm not rly getting it) just cause neither of you are qualified doesn't mean one of you can't bring up the point that neither of you are qualified

'questioning' mental health of people u don't know kinda a dick move anyway? fwiw i've said or at least thought things like "burn in hell" or "fuck off and die" or "we hope that you choooooke" etc and people like to call those sorts of things death threats so like

the flaw in this "meme" for me is that very often in practice (and outside those "safe spaces" where I imagine its use is more specific) it basically becomes yet another jargon of authenticity.

I think the safe spaces thing is probably crucial

yeah its unclear to me whether the privilege you're being invited to check here is
- in relation to focusing on the Threatener as opposed to the Threatened
- over the mental health aspect of the story
- invisible because there's even a privilege-based blind spot in the retelilng( i say that meaning well!), or
- maybe this was an invocation of the term that didn't quite fit
- or something else

Rechecking the privilege you were checking

can i renew this privilege for another three weeks, i'm not quite finished with it yet

Hoos: A and B from that list.

It's sort of, it's not like any official decisions about mental health policy, or strip clubs, or online abuse, were going to be made as a result of anything I was saying in that conversation. It rather felt as though I'd accidentally printed my thoughts in the LRB and was getting letters sent in. (But again: one example from my social world, which I'm probably biased in remembering, hardly says anything for or against the validity of the phrase 'check your privilege'.)

hey is your privilege running

better go check it

I'm still unclear on how "check" operates in that phrase. Is it like "keep your privilege in check"? or more like "acknowledge your privilege"?

body check iirc

slam that privilege into the boards

It used to be common to say prior inviting folks to a meeting or dialogue "... and check your privilege at the door" like one might do with a hat or coat.

give your privilege to somebody who will hang it up for you until you have to go home

commonly a precursor to checkmate privilege

privilege checkmate, i mean

When I read the phrase "check your privilege" (nb: I have never heard anyone speak this phrase) I cannot help but connect it to signs that say "check your bags and backpacks before entering" and a counter behind which stands an attendant who takes your bag and gives you a slip of paper with a number on it.

I'm still unclear on how "check" operates in that phrase. Is it like "keep your privilege in check"? or more like "acknowledge your privilege"?

― I got the glares, the mutterings, the snarls (President Keyes), Monday, May 5, 2014 11:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think its the former? that's how i've always understood it. but maybe i don't get how the latter = "check"?

it's definitely the latter. it's "take a minute to understand how your privilege is influencing your viewpoint here"

Why can't it be both

the former is the implied communication, the latter is the plausible deniability

it's definitely the latter. it's "take a minute to understand how your privilege is influencing your viewpoint here"

― k3vin k., Tuesday, May 6, 2014 12:35 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right--but when its being used as an admonishment it's "hey, your privilege was just influencing this in ways you weren't thinking about. keep that in check." but again, my experience with the stuff comes out of arguments in parks, so it was usually face to face arguments which tend to have a diff tenor abt them obv. different contexts.

I think it means "examine," Hoos, but I also think it's neither/nor since modern radical movements don't place the emphasis on defining one's terms that we did in the days of yore

ah, the meetings that stretched on until dawn

are we a feminist-socialist party or a socialist-feminist party? I logged no fewer than 12 hours of my youth in meetings devoted to this question

classic question

classic question indeed

Yeah, examine sounds good to me. Examine the context of what you are saying/doing, taking into account not only your perspective but the perspectives of those around you. Examine your interactions with those around you.

This is why that Princeton guy's paper is so unsubstantive. The entire thing takes place in his head.

wow i want to set fire to the "why i'll never apologise for my white male privilege" guy

Dig my crazy privilege, y'all. Check it OUT.

xp Places a high value on that apology

On a vaguely related note, and because I can't really find a better thread to ask about this in, but has anybody read Andrew Potter's _The Authenticity Hoax_? Dude writes for the Ottowa Citizen, I think, and has plenty of good points, but the book goes way off the rails in the section on politics to the point where he starts sounds neo-con, quoting Frances Fukuyama, etc.

I haven't read that, but I have read Nation of Rebels, which he co-wrote, and it kinda felt like a Vice-ish riposte to The Baffler in book form. Some good points buried under accurate-but-facile accusations of lefty hypocrisy.

Yeah, there's sizeable amount of that in the later book, too, including a part where he straight mocks anti-Iraq war protestors

Book was published in 2010, and I'm wondering if the Tea Party's inception would have merited a mention.

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/white-privilege/

Authenticity was mentioned upthread - can someone unpack?