privilege as a meme

oooh

Should fewer white men aspire to be doctors? Politicians? In almost any field, it would be better if there was more diversity, and I think it's good for employers or publishers to take proactive steps to ensure this, but as for individuals you only get one life. If you want to write, write.

Another concern I have is that this sort of noblesse oblige, stepping aside to give minorities a chance, seems a bit patronizing. It's also not the kind of thing that will lead to a real solution for inequality because it depends on people voluntarily foregoing their own self interest.

I think it's a big leap to go from "my perspective is limited by my experience. I should work hard to understand the perspectives of people whose experience of this society is different from mine, especially those who experience oppression" to "my perspective has no value at all. It's totally corrupted by my own privilege; however unwittingly, my agency is always a force of oppression in some abstract way." The former I think is what Peggy McIntosh (who I met - she was v. nice) was getting at when she coined "privilege" in the way we use it now. Checking privilege for her is a way of peeling away the assumptions and arrogance that prevent understanding. It's about shutting up and listening, sure, but not shutting up forever. The latter seems like the thinking that underlies these people who say they aren't going to publish anymore. It feels less nuanced and also more cynical in terms of the level of understanding it believes is possible to accomplish.

It's just a way of psyching out the competition. "The marketplace is totally unfair to me, we can't possibly compete on a level playing field because of centuries of structural oppression, therefore you should quit."

Some of the "not publishing anymore" screeds read more like pleas for absolution, from people who want to very publicly disown their relative race-/class-/gender-based power in a fairly easy way.

It's a lot thornier and more difficult to think about ways of actually listening to/engaging with/supporting those without structural privilege, and doing so in a way that actually creates a more equitable society and isn't patronizing and belittling to voices outside of traditionally powerful groups.

It's fine if you want to make a public showing of throwing away your power, but don't confuse that with actually empowering others.

Can't throw away your power, I thought the whole thing about privilege was it's something ascribed to you that permeates your existence whether you are "one of the good ones" or not. Psyching out the competition maybe but maybe that's too cynical. It does comes across as incredibly patronizing and self-serving, not really helping anyone but the one person.

And if it actually works or means anything, then being able to easily opt out of your privilege is just another privilege.

100% agree that you can't throw away your power, should have used quotation marks on "throwing away" in my post. My point is exactly that it doesn't work--by giving up publishing your writing, you are not in any way changing the power structure of the publishing industry/society. Random white liberals opting out will have no effect on the number of PoC/women/trans writers getting publishing deals and writing opportunities.

Public opting out or hand-wringing does successfully make attempts to be an ally all about the writer and their enlightened "magnanimity" though, which, like I said easier than the work of engagement/listening/support of those without those privileges.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/05/hurtful-things-said-to-people-with-chronic-pain/

innocent assumptions can do a lot of unintentional damage

― j., Saturday, May 9, 2015 10:54 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

http://inspiredbydis.com/2015/06/things-never-say-disney-bride/

“I can’t afford to come.”

on the list of things to never say to a disney bride.

fwiw i'm too drunk at present to weigh in here thoughtfully but heavens am i glad this pov is getting more measure here

drunk is the perfect time to finally explain urself

It's fine if you want to make a public showing of throwing away your power, but don't confuse that with actually empowering others.

― intheblanks, Wednesday, 10 June 2015 16:11 (Yesterday) Permalink

Wasn't this being done anonymously

I guess my objection to the logic of quitting is that nothing you do is actually "neutral" including abdication of responsibility which often merely increases strength of status quo

^^ this was the point kieron gillen made in a blog post i read today, will see if i can find it--that in essence the people who would obstain are gonna self select as actually people who have considerably more subversive (such as they are) points of view while those aligned with the status quo would continue apace.

the okay lack all conviction

That's the one I posted, Hoos (I do also have things to add, but busy during work)

oh sorry how have i managed to do that like 3 times in the last week smh

Follow-up

LOL the cherry on top of this, people writing response articles, actually now clogging the signal with noise about how they should maybe not be making noise.

Not going to read any of these out of pity for the writer.

This is like the intellectual/socially-respected equivalent of street miming.

things white men should never say to disney brides

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/08/ok_so_what_would_convince_you_that_racism_is_real/

that is the worst thing i've read all week

^

Really? I happily read it twice but that might be because I'm considering how firm to be w my boyfriend about his racist, misogynistic, homophobic cracks and how he always wants to "discuss" these things with me.

i liked the part where the white girl was like "oh so because of privilege i'm not allowed to have an opinion on anything ever" because that's pretty much how every IRL conversation i've had with a white person aboot white privilege has gone down

what's wrong with being a master p fan

The woman in the story didn't make any "racist, misogynistic, homophobic cracks."

internalized ideas about race and basing your life off those assumptions kind of harder to "debate" than outright racism though. which are already pretty fucking bad

read this piece instead: Rolling 2015 Thread on Race

^that's much better piece

"Eventually I felt good enough about where we’d gotten, the progress we’d made, to go upstairs and sleep with her."

That piece is much better if you skip the whole first half imo

You mean if you pretend the guy's not a self-aggrandizing, terminally head-up-own-ass piece of shit?

"It was a summer of fucking and civic unrest, and of thinking about 1981."

tbh wd have to read salon piece more carefully to really disentangle the things in it i disliked (& unable to put in effort right now)

it’s not the predicament in general he’s talking about, which is important topic, but rather his personal articulation of it

for one thing (admittedly from just cursory reading), his angst as written seems to revolve too much around his own carefully constructed/ protected/ threatened/ narcissistic self-image (including cinematic parallel & identification with obama, no less, re their ‘white woman’ relationship issues)
rigorously distinguishing himself from what he calls ‘“real” white people’— unenlightened racist masses, flattened into crude undifferentiated stereotype, all of whom he keeps hermetically quarantined, away from his life & any dialogue (until his encounter with alien white girl, who somehow got past the "gatekeepers")

i mean there’s some self-deprecatory self-awareness in saying “somebody who didn’t get radical race shit, somebody who never would have made her way past the gatekeepers and into my little precious elitist smartypants cool white kid circles”— but he really means that, too

piece linked by djp & this one address v similar terrain, but by their conclusion, one seems to me an instance of necessary, difficult, painful, imperfect, yet productive/constructive dialogue; whereas the other seems to foreclose that possibility, to discount it as not worthwhile if imperfect (is too hasty & maybe eager to do so-- maybe safer/easier to keep gates closed)

You mean if you pretend the guy's not a self-aggrandizing, terminally head-up-own-ass piece of shit?

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, July 9, 2015 7:04 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're way more insufferable on here because you're all these things but wouldn't even dream of trying to cross a bridge.

anyway it seems to me like the main reason a piece like that would draw ilx ire is because of narcissism of cool-white-dude differences.

^^^^

not the only reason but his downness is vmi evidence

drash otm

I got to the Master P diss, thought, "This guy is corny," scrolled down and saw that it was the "Go the Fuck to Sleep" guy, who came off as such a terminal d-bag on the Combat Jack show.

I wonder if he had sex with that woman? Seems like he should have mentioned it a few dozen times in the article if so.

it's ok to talk about the sex you have

It's not ok to bully and belittle your girlfriend under the guise of "social justice education."

"They both looked at me like I was that dude Paris and they were the goddesses laying claim to the golden apple that started the Trojan War."

Yeah, a mythic beauty contest, cool comparison.

Even more than that shit nothing in the piece indicates he thought his gf might have something valuable to say on anything ever. She was just a "not quite there" well meaning white girl to him

It's not ok to bully and belittle your girlfriend under the guise of "social justice education."

― Treeship, Friday, July 10, 2015 2:40 AM (21 minutes ago)

let alone write a shitty thinkpiece using her as an illustration of everything wrong with "white people" while slyly suggesting in basically every paragraph that none of those things apply to you, the enlightened superior man

yes, treeship otm

& j.d. too