privilege as a meme

Mayer is a journalist - in media jobs, you're expected to use Twitter - it doesn't mean you have to Tweet a lot, but in a lot of jobs you'll be considered media illiterate if you don't know what kinds of things are on it.

The idea of cops using Twitter is disturbing.

Police are getting a little more Twitter saavy--at least in the case of the recent Philadelphia hate crime when there was a cop taking tips on Twitter that led to arrests.

educational privilege is causing a lot of problems at my workplace

Ayn Rand tells us that in a truly capitalist society, educational privilege would not exist. btw, the devil made me say that.

any sentence that starts "ayn rand tells us..." will not end well

you are a teacher yeh LL?

is 'educational privilege' like of the going-to-college-heard-of-moby-dick vs not, raised-in-a-home-where-parents-talked-a-lot-and-read-around-kids vs not variety?

yeah
and the resulting assumption that because the educated person knows something that "everyone" knows it

like how to write a formal research paper
guess what
not everyone knows that from birth

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-going-to-trust-societys-determination-that-he,37486/

you are a teacher yeh LL?

is 'educational privilege' like of the going-to-college-heard-of-moby-dick vs not, raised-in-a-home-where-parents-talked-a-lot-and-read-around-kids vs not variety?

what now

idgi?

I have no memory of posting that! Is it possible I butt-texted ilx? I am sorry!

i am choosing to read your butt's communique as "no fuckin lie"

if your butt was giving itself detailed instructions on how to manage this acrobatic feat it could stand for 'now flex leg.'

next fucking level

iirc

<iframe width="100%" height="124" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="//embed.wbur.org/player/onpoint/2014/11/24/living-hand-to-mouth-in-modern-american-poverty"></iframe>

u rc xp

butt-to-leg texts would certainly be next fucking level

http://liartownusa.tumblr.com/image/105804091140

didn't work?..

http://i58.tinypic.com/2e2qo1i.png

Catchy.

lonely girl just thinking baout #privilege

i've read that image like 4 times now and i still can't make sense of it

#privilege = -(understanding)*(violence + history of intentions), where (violence + history of intentions) ~ < (what you do understand to think)

she's thinking "what the fuck do the words floating in mid-air beside me even mean?"

guys i think the image maybe possibly just might be intentionally confusing as a goof

I lol'd but I can't help but wonder if that isn't the product of some anti-feminist clowning a random internet comment

guys i think the image maybe possibly just might be intentionally confusing as a goof

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Monday, December 22, 2014 9:18 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I lol'd but I can't help but wonder if that isn't the product of some anti-feminist clowning a random internet comment

― man alive, Monday, December 22, 2014 9:24 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

prolly

denial stage

maybe it is written by a trained iphone autocomplete

That said, isn't privilege something you have, as opposed to something you do "not understanding"?

That's part of the confusion.

privilege is not understanding having

#CheckYourNotDumbPrivilege

guys they aren't about more than what you understand to think, come on

image is def a goof -- that's what the liartown dude does.

NOW I believe you. Craphound. This one was comparatively subtle i.e. I'm making excuses.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/99-1-percent-income-inequality-class/

I can't say I've been overly impressed by most of the output of the Jacobin that I've read so far, but I basically agree with that editorial piece. The reactionary right constantly and happily uses arguments based on the gradations of social privilege as a divide and conquer strategy. The classic case would be pitting poor southern whites against all southern blacks.

Where it goes wrong is not acknowledging that the unconscious assumption of privilege by certain cohorts within progressive politics is a source of friction within the movement and such friction does tend to interfere with achieving political cohesion. Acknowledging this would have been easy, as would have been the obvious recommendation: pretend to be more unified than you are, and keep your 'eyes on the prize' because achieving the shared goals is worth paying that price. Instead, he doesn't face the fact that some progressives will pay a higher price than others to get where we all want to go, and they always will until these 'side' issues are effectively addressed.

http://socialistworker.org/2015/04/15/privilege-and-the-working-class

Really interesting! Otm especially on questions of class being eliminated from liberal discourse, and "privilege" being largely defined by and working for the ruling class.

Like the idea of privileges being hard-won victories by the working class that have been branded not as basic worker's rights we all share but pieces of capitalist pie we must fight over

haven't read this yet but is this going to be more 'class is more important than race' nonesense I've already read linked from jacobin

it's no gawker post

Socialist worker UK leadership covered up the rape of a young activist by a senior figure. People inside and outside the group who brought up the sexism which they face from their 'comrades' were fed this exact horseshit about distracting from the true class struggle.

None of the intersectional privilege theory ppl I know ignore class fwiw.

Didn't know rape was a privilege granted to senior socialists. Know now.

The article doesn't say it's a distraction, just that systems like racism and sexism function for the benefit of the ruling class. Working and middle class white men would have nothing to lose by casting off racism and sexism. They see women and minorities as their rivals do to false consciousness (cf invidious right wing rants of the tea party, who attack "privileged" welfare recipients and public sector employees... as if they're the ones who shipped their jobs overseas!) Normal cis het white men work to maintain oppression because they're mistaken, not because they benefit from it. If you want to get cosmic about it, no one really benefits from systems of hatred and inequality, which cut people off from one another and infuse distrust into social interactions. It's obvious these systems are worse for some than others but they only "work" for people who have an interest in maintaining a status quo where people are more afraid of their neighbors than their bosses. Even then, i think rich people are worse off being rich and living with hatred than they would be in a workd without prejudice and exploitation. These shitty self-perpetuating systems ultimately only work for themselves.

For me, the scandal of racism and sexism and other forms of oppression is that certain segments of society are treated unfairly and are disproportionately victims of violence and discrimination. The scandal is *not* that certain other people don't face these things. It's not a privilege to have a good life, that's how it should be for everyone. Reflecting on how I am personally not subject to so much bullshit my friends are subject to doesn't make me feel guilty for being complicit in a system that treats me relatively well; It makes me angry that the system doesn't work like that for everyone. Instead of checking privilege let's extend it to everyone. Whatever concessions the relatively privileged will have to make are drops in the bucket compared to what we all could gain. The only people who would be really giving something up are the predatory ownership class, and even then all they'll give up is money.

treeship 2016

Thanks i think.

Anyway, I've spoken a lot abotu this issue and probably annoyed people, so that's my final word on the topic. If I'm missing something, I think I am just going to continue to miss it because I've thought about this a lot over the past few years and keep coming to the same conclusions. I understand -- really understand -- how some voices aren't heard. I understand how obscene it sounds to say that a middle class cit het white male who is college educated is "also oppressed" if you are dealing with much more serious stuff than that. The system doesn't oppress everyone equally -- not even close -- and that is why so many fucked over right wingers still feel invested in it. They're afraid of falling further.

But just, descriptively, everyone is oppressed by capitalism, and no one benefits from being racist or sexist or heterosexist or transphobic. Maybe there are "relative" benefits, like in small scale situations you can score points with other assholes, but it's paltry nonsense, just petty invidious hatred. Or maybe you can use relative gender privilege to bully and control people, but that's not in your interest either, it just makes your life worse by preventing you from having meaningful relationships with others. My point is that one has any excuse for being racist, or sexist, or heterosexist, or transphobic. The New York Irish of the 1860s, my ancestors, were deluded when they thought that their class solidarity was with the plantation owners and not the emancipated slaves who they feared would take their jobs.

nah this is some weak bullshit

it's maybe true that recent online liberal media discourse over-emphasizes personal reflection relative to material/economic politics but this

If you want to get cosmic about it, no one really benefits from systems of hatred and inequality, which cut people off from one another and infuse distrust into social interactions.

is some weak shit. if anti-black discrimination exists and whites operate in a labor market with blacks, whites *will* benefit in the form of higher relative wages and higher employment. not just rich ones; working class whites and middle class whites, too. read about the end of new deal coalition. read about how unions contributed to occupational segregation. racist white working class unions prevented black ppl from getting good-paying construction jobs. not some fantasy villain "predatory ownership class," but the very working class we're all supposed to unproblematically have solidarity with!

i sometimes like jacobin but this is why marxism/anti-capitalism sucks imo, gives this lullaby solution of "just resist the capitalists." which is kind of meaningless and unhelpful advice for disadvantaged people trying to make better lives?

this is a much better take, from a better jacobin-affiliated writer: http://www.peterfrase.com/2014/06/stay-classy/

Appeals to class in the abstract neglect that the working class is always some particular working class, and it can be marked (the female worker, the black worker) or unmarked (the male worker, the white worker). Far too often, exhortations to reject “identity politics” in favor of “class” amount to an insistence that the unmarked worker be taken as the definitive example of the genre. Appeals to class thus degenerate into a kind of cultural populism, more comfortable visualizing the typical worker as a white coal miner rather than a black woman in an elementary school or behind a McDonald’s counter. Higher wages can be a “class” issue but abortion or police brutality cannot, because the latter are too closely identified with the part of the working class that is marked by gender and race.

Seems like unions discriminating to hog the good paying jobs is evidence of the divisive nature of dog-eat-dog capitalism rather than a failure of any class solidarity.