privilege as a meme

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.

great posts from both treeship & flopson (that’s why this shit is so complicated)

have not read flopson’s linked article (too sleepy right now) but note two articles linked by mordy both engage in tidy localization/ blame of all problems of injustice/ inequity upon something safely differentiated from & “other” to the left: “right wing” and “capitalism”

which imo is great fantasy (i.e. fantasy that solution to problems of injustice/ inequity is just to identify real “villain” and simply fight against it: e.g. as flopson put it, “this is why marxism/anti-capitalism sucks imo, gives this lullaby solution of "just resist the capitalists")

“everyone is oppressed by capitalism” is in a way tendentious as “everyone benefits from capitalism”

imo concept of “privilege” is valid & useful but its overriding predominance in current political thought may be counterproductive & cause of conceptual/ political confusion among the left

but i’m too confused to articulate any better take myself

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!

isn't this an issue of people misidentifying their enemy (i.e. the new york irish's support for slavery paradox i mentioned)?

i'm not saying that working class people aren't racist, sexist, heterosexist, transphobic and the rest. in fact, they are often more invested in these ideologies than the owning classes. what i am challenging is the idea that they are the real beneficiaries of these ideologies. they are not, and their belief that they are is what causes them to be so attached to them. full employment for minorities wouldn't cause them to be unemployed; equal pay wouldn't cause them to make less.

also i guess i tend to blame "capitalism" -- a self-perpetuating system fueled by its own inertia that causes insecurity and distrust -- rather than capitalists, although the koch brothers certainly know what they are doing when they try to split the working class.

also i feel that there is a kind of false binary here, class politics or identity politics. obviously, different groups have different concerns due to the different kinds of oppression/challenges they face. but do all of these identity groups have contradicting interests? i don't think so. not necessarily.

they are not, and their belief that they are is what causes them to be so attached to them.

dont feel like googlin rn cos lazy, but isnt there research to suggest that people's happiness is in part tied to how well we think we are doing relative to our peers/society? the psychic salve of white supremacy is a real benefit for those who can partake in it. so the advancement of peoples once considered beneath them is a threat to their sense of status and place in the world.

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.

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, May 5, 2015 10:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

race was divisive long before capitalism iirc

what about the fantasy of the fantasy of capitalism being the sole route of all evil? obviously systems of oppression have existed before capitalism. the capitalist structure may not be to blame for the entirety of power imbalance and exploitation, but certainly is built on systems and processes that helpperpetuate those imbalances. if u are looking for an all or nothing single solution good luck

xpost mbison, interesting, but how much of a miserable fuck do you have to be to derive your sense of self-worth in your race? how privileged can you be if that's what you cling to?

i think this kind of resentment, borne of self-hatred, is something the right wing exploits and fuels. i don't think it has a real material basis and if it's revealed for what it is i think people might have a better chance of moving past it, or being shamed out of it because it sounds pathetic.

treeship how many white ppl do you know

it's no gawker post

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 5, 2015 5:13 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there have definitely been better gawker posts

white working class men do materially benefit from white supremacy and patriarchy, though—they don't have to compete equally with people of color or women in the workplace, and they benefit from the unpaid reproductive labor (giving birth and raising children, housework, etc) that women are expected to perform under patriarchy

what about the fantasy of the fantasy of capitalism being the sole route of all evil? obviously systems of oppression have existed before capitalism. the capitalist structure may not be to blame for the entirety of power imbalance and exploitation, but certainly is built on systems and processes that helpperpetuate those imbalances. if u are looking for an all or nothing single solution good luck

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, May 5, 2015 11:13 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm arguing against all or nothing solutions

FWIW i am not anti-capitalist but that's an argument for another day?

white working class men do materially benefit from white supremacy and patriarchy, though—they don't have to compete equally with people of color or women in the workplace, and they benefit from the unpaid reproductive labor (giving birth and raising children, housework, etc) that women are expected to perform under patriarchy

― 1staethyr, Tuesday, May 5, 2015 11:30 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^what i'm saying

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

― oppet, Tuesday, May 5, 2015 6:07 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ehh, i have definitely seen some do so, i think you take this a step too far. but for the most part, i think people have a weird POV of how class & race for example intersect.

current afropessimist lit argues (and forgive me if I convey this poorly) argues that there is a difference between class conflict and race, which is not a conflict in the sense of being conceivably "solvable" in the current paradigm. Race is instead an antagonism—quoting frank wilderson here: "To put a finer point on it, structures of ontological suffering stand in antagonistic, rather than conflictual, relation to one another (despite the fact that antagonists themselves may not be aware of the ontological position from which they speak)."

Think of it in terms of philosophy, how western civilization is built on the idea of a 'slave class'—the creation of surplus labor—and how today's prison industrial complex essential provides free surplus labor. the afropessimist argument suggests that there is literally no resolution within a current system; that race is not a conflict which can be resolved gradually but through what fanon called the 'end of the world' or the end of the current system.

im not sure i can adequately explain the theoretical grounding for this frankly, i'm somewhat new to studying it, but in essence it repositions the "class structure" as classical marxism conveys it to suggest that as long as society prioritizes whiteness, that blackness is what they call the "state of social death"—that the rational logic of succeeding within the system forces people to "above all, don't be black"—all class conflicts are built on top of this racial antagonism

xp mbison, i know lots and lots of white people.

a lot of them are racist. not always maliciously, but sometimes they'll have weird, essentializing/reifying attitudes about race that make me uncomfortable. it is impossible to live in this society and not have to reckon actively with questions of racial difference, confront prejudices, whatever. at the end of this process, though, i don't think most people i know come away feeling happy that so much of the black experience in this country is still marked by discrimination, poverty, and even -- as ta nehisi coates put it recently -- plunder. it's a national disgrace.

if people do feel that way -- that they are OK as long as someone else has it worse -- why do they think that? is it an essential part of human nature to be status conscious in that way? could there be a way of conceptualizing ourselves and our relation to the social in non-hierarchical terms? obv idk, but that's the kind of question that seems interesting and possibly productive to me.

nb I believe Wilkerson would actually resist the current "intellectual protocols aligned with structural positionality...—that is to say...the academy's ensembles of questions are fixated on specific and "unique" experiences of the myriad identities that make up those structural positions. This would be fine if the work led us back to a critique of the paradigm; but most of it does not....[etc etc] This is how left-leaning scholars help civil society recuperate and maintain stability. But this stability is a state of emergency for Indians and Blacks."

IDK it's a very interesting book, plus its about movies

ugh that should say "Wilderson"—sorry dumb autocorrect

white working class men do materially benefit from white supremacy and patriarchy, though—they don't have to compete equally with people of color or women in the workplace, and they benefit from the unpaid reproductive labor (giving birth and raising children, housework, etc) that women are expected to perform under patriarchy

― 1staethyr, Tuesday, May 5, 2015 11:30 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess, but don't they suffer because their partner will resent them? they get the better end of a shitty deal, no question, and i can see how framing it in any term other than oppressor/oppressed can be seen to minimize the oppression women suffer under patriarchy.

no question about it: working class men oppress women under patriarchy, and they do it for what they think are their interests.

what i am saying is that maybe there is a larger interest in breaking down these hierarchies and maybe thinking about things that way will be more constructive. who is happier: someone who is sexist and fearful of women (like an MRA) or someone who isn't burdened by prejudice?

apropo of nothing maybe, i think there's a convincing argument to be made—probably not by me, but silvia federici for instance has delineated some of it—that the rise of capitalism was dependent on the subjugation of women and people of color, and that modern western conceptions of gender and race were forged in and as justifications for early capitalism. which imo makes any denunciation of "identity politics" in favor of "pure" class politics questionable

yes. that is what i (hope i was?) conveying

any denunciation of "identity politics" in favor of "pure" class politics questionable

this would be dumb. of course it's questionable. all of this stuff is linked together.

my position is basically the same as federici's fwiw.

modern conceptions of gender and race definitely have a historical basis because there is no other possible basis. but that's exactly why they can be resisted and overcome.

ok have to sign off for the night. c yall

you're ignoring my post, or maybe i'm not explaining it well but: race can't be simply 'overcome' w/in the current system. i mean at least according to the afropessimists. who ... i think might be right.

who is happier: someone who is sexist and fearful of women (like an MRA) or someone who isn't burdened by prejudice?

i mean, yes, sure, a bigot is probably "unhappier" in some existential or deep-down-in-their-heart-of-hearts way than a non-bigot is. and i get that this is a well-intentioned call for empathy and a loving nature toward "the oppressor". but do you get that this is essentially calling for priority of white men's feelings over the actual material well-being of everyone else? and that when this type of argument comes up over and over again in conversations about oppression it begins to seem like the people making it just don't want to deal with oppression?

but do you get that this is essentially calling for priority of white men's feelings over the actual material well-being of everyone else?

i don't really think that's what i am calling for at al. this is what i said:

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.

also i don't even care about empathy for the oppressor. fuck racists and sexists. who cares. all i am saying is that they are deluded.

but how much of a miserable fuck do you have to be to derive your sense of self-worth in your race

speaking as someone who has felt bad about their race their whole life: fuck you*

*not really, i know you're a good person but think about how that sounds for a minute

i am 37 years old. i have maybe 3-4 vivid memories of being 6 years old, one of which is of an entire busload of children chanting "go back to iran" at me and my sister and the bus driver laughing

i'm not sure what i wouldn't give to derive some sense of self-worth in my race, and i certainly don't feel like a better or stronger person for not deriving any of my self-worth from my race

i know this is quite tangential to what you're talking about treeship, but that post and the "how privileged can you be" part really made me see red for a second. blame the six year old in me. :-(

sorry, the late great. that's not what i meant.

people should feel good about who they are, proud of their backgrounds, etc. i was talking about people who feel like their race is better than another person's race.

no problem, i know that's not what you meant. i need to think before i post.

dang yall

tomorrow i'm in this one

i got in a huge fight with my best friend a while back (we have since made up). we were talking about race and politics, and my friend, who is white, started arguing that people of color are complicit in their oppression because they persist in seeing themselves as "people of color". he continued to argue that if people of color were to adopt a post-racial mindset (which i suppose means a white mindset) many of their problems would disappear. i told him that i thought nothing was so emblematic of white privilege as the conceit that people need to get over race, and from there, well, shit went downhill really fast.

treetop, i think i had a PTSD rage flashback to that argument and confused what you were saying with what he was saying. i know that's not what you're saying.

whoops autocorrect lol

that sw article is a crummy intellectual genealogy in that you get no idea why people were arguing over or passionately attached to different ideas and what drove them and why they embraced some thoughts and shunned others.

http://cdn-img.easylogo.cn/gif/142/142028.gif

who is happier: someone who is sexist and fearful of women (like an MRA) or someone who isn't burdened by prejudice?
― Treeship, Tuesday, May 5, 2015 10:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You keep referencing this idea that people who engage in oppression must be unhappy, certainly more so than those who have embraced some egalitarian mindset. This feels like an opportunity cost kind of argument? To which I'd argue that they don't know what they're missing and can hardly be considered as suffering for their actions an beliefs

^^^this goes too far the other direction. Men for example do suffer bc of patriarchy ... In both ways that can be obvious to them (even if they don't see the entire structure of it) and ways which are not

They just benefit from it too

yeah that's a good way of phrasing it deej. it's not either/or, it's a trade off. by casting off sexism, men might have more to lose than just their chains, but they will also lose their chains...

This is a bell hooks line iirc