privilege as a meme

"Steeped in" is not academic language and "white ppl who use ghetto as a pejorative & love saying the n word are prob racist" is not a concept that originates in academia

Unless my ability to read has completely failed me, I don't think that's in orbit you should be addressing there?

It has, I wasn't

i just said the spelling wasn't the point!

i made that post a couple of weeks ago. the tweet showed up on my timeline in response to a drunken tarantino acceptance speech in which the word "ghetto" was used in one of the few ways that would actually not be racially problematic. i just found it emblematic of a certain trend.

anyway the point wasn't to ridicule that particular person; it was one of many such tweets. it just struck me as the kind of take you see in the twittersphere where getting your feelings out on something takes priority over actually thinking it through, and reminded me of this thread

I believe the objection was to the use of "seeped in" where it should have been "steeped in."

― If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Wednesday, January 20, 2016 5:07 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just in the interest of clarity i wasn't questioning her point at all, just confused about whether or not "seeped in" was a thing people said or not irl

so uh did Macklemore kill the whole privilege thing for good, or just for a while

or maybe in like a year everyone will think he came up with it

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/29/sfsu-investigating-video-of-black-woman-confronting-white-man-for-wearing-dreads/

I know not to expect better from YouTube comments but fucking hell that last para :(

Two takes on a similar topic:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/earning-the-woke-badge.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/28/when-white-people-admit-white-privilege-theyre-really-just-congratulating-themselves/

kind of tired of the privilege terminology, it started as a sarcastic way to address the fact non-white ppl get denied basic rights and people who take it at face value and don't believe there's difference in how people are treated think the goal is to have white people treated like everyone else, to negate the "privilege" and it fucks up the dialogue

like getting rid of "white privilege", if you take it at face value and not as a sarcastic statement, would mean white people getting pulled over or searched for no reason, discriminated against when it comes to housing, etc.

"i'm white and people treat me like garbage, too! what kind of privilege is that?"

yeah well it's not because of the color of your skin, and that's the sole determining factor a bunch of ppl use to judge

i like woke

The original knapsack essay makes it pretty clear that privilege includes things that no-one should have ("I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine"), and stuff everyone should have ("I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race").

It's also not sarcastic - I'm really not sure wtf you're talking about here, mh.

(tho I couldn't read kingfish's second link, sorry if the answers are in there)

The word has now been recycled by people hoping to add splashes of drama to their own inconsequential obsessions

too real

It is, or at least cynical. Not getting treated like garbage is a basic right, not a privilege, but it's one that people not perceived as "white" are denied. The meaning is meant to convey that we need to get rid of that discrepancy by making sure people are treated equally.

On the flip side, people see "privilege" not as something people should have -- "privileged" is seen as derogatory, so there is a perception that's often unstated when people claim to not have a white privilege -- they have it bad in other social, economic, or geographic ways and assume they'd be afforded status if they really had privilege.

It's a good phrase, but people taking it literally and getting angered aren't noticing that the implication of the phrase is that the baseline for how we treat fellow human beings is very low, and white privilege is, in many cases, overriding that. Obviously the solution is to fix the baseline.

We might be at an impasse - I read a fair amount of stuff that discusses privilege (admittedly filtered through the tumblrs of two or three friends) and I've never seen anyone even suggest that all aspects of privilege must be withdrawn rather than redistributed.

(I imagine DJP will be along in a minute to discuss the notion of rights that can be denied)

I guess my issue is really with it being used more generally or as a shorthand for race relations as a whole, instead of referring to subtle actions (picking a resume out of multiple job applicants that has a more white-sounding name).

which, like you say, isn't the misuse your clued-in friends would be party to!

basically:
subtle discrimination based on stereotypes or internal bias -- white privilege

systematic discrimination, on its face, is a denial of basic rights and not subtle

could just be me tiring of people misusing the phrase. I'm not articulating this well and will leave it in more competent hands

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've never seen anyone even suggest that all aspects of privilege must be withdrawn rather than redistributed.

the closest I've seen to this is when dolts like Cenk Uygar were taking the FBI to task for not slaughtering the white Bundy militia dudes the way they presumably would have a Muslim or black group occupying a federal building

I get what mh is saying. The original knapsack essay is nuanced and explains ways privileged groups can develop blindspots, or benefit from discrimination without realizing it. This is obviously valuable. But people do sometimes talk about privilege in a way that's like, holistic rather than situational, like some people are just in general "privileged" and perhaps acceptable targets of resentment and i think it gets dodgier here. n.b. I've only seen white ivy league grad school dumbasses use the term this way, it's possible they just didn't understand the concept at all. Usually they'd admit to some sort of privilege and say they felt bad about it but then condemn people who didn't similarly admit they felt bad about being privileged. It was just a circular, unproductive kind of conversation and it seemed that way by design.

I also felt like when some of these people would go on about how "privileged" they were and isn't it so awful they were really just signalling they were rich and educated and it was basically bragging. This was probably unconscious on their part.

At a deeper level though it's a very good thing people are talking about inequality now even if the rhetoric they use has flaws and blindspots.

Weird that my 2nd link doesn't work.

Try this one:
-
"Admitting that white privilege helps you is really just congratulating yourself"

http://wpo.st/SX1W1

Which matches what Treeship was saying, sorta

Did we ever get this sorted

Guess

no, Guess jeans

Guesstures, the fun party game
from Milton Bradley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Q1jZ-LOT0

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2016/08/19/when-our-dream-school-had-no-space-for-my-son-i-panicked-then-i-confronted-prejudice-i-didnt-know-i-had/#.V7xz6Wf6vhm

Wasn't sure exactly where to post this, but I thought it was a good example of the limitations of the "privilege confessional" genre of essay/thought. Basically, white mom can't get kid into affluent public school she was originally zoned for (PS8 in Brooklyn Heights), is given the option of mostly black PS307 (though it will change because of the zone change), "confronts her prejudice" and realizes hey it's nice that they have all those things over there, but in the end doesn't choose it anyway, but rather a diverse but far more white public school in Boerum Hill. This individualistic "honest self-reflection" by privileged white people seems more like a conscience cleanser than a political awakening. Also, contains this cringeworthy paragraph:

Instead, I chose to send my son to P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill, a school with a more even mix of white students and students of color. It felt like a school where my son would be exposed to classmates truly different from him, but without the worries I couldn’t shake about P.S. 307. There, he could choose between chess or double dutch, gardening or African drumming, ballet/tap or hip-hop dance. It felt right.

these people disgust me

also, I agree that this is a good illustration of the limitations that people face when discussing privilege. Doing nothing more than tipping your hat to all the wonderful choices that are available to you, and that other people do not have access to, really does not do anything for the community at large. It just provides you cover for morally dubious decisions. If your first priority is to use every advantage and networking opportunity available to you, if that is the main driving factor in your life, then you are alienating yourself from the group around you and perpetuating the very privilege that you show so much fake concern about.

Privilege can only be attacked systematically. Nothing will ever be accomplished by thoughtful reflection and voluntary abdication.

true. In this specific example, tying local school quality to property taxes is one of the most pernicious structural problems spanning the US today.

i read an interesting story about the rise of private emergency rooms and how they are opening up in more affluent/upper-middle-class neighborhoods and hiring doctors away from (city) hospitals where they are needed and now i can't find it. and i don't know if this thread would have been the place to put it anyway. did i read it in the NYT? anyway, it was interesting. and it reminded me of the malcolm x quote about how you can't have capitalism without racism.

Actually, while I generally agree, I'm fairly certain that is not the case for New York City -- p sure funding is roughly the same per student citywide.

xp

yeah, I don't know a lot about the specific system in NYC, although it sounds like various neighborhoods or known for better or worse schools, don't know what drives that

Historical housing segregation is part of it. 207 is interesting in particular because the bulk of its old "zone" was a cluster of housing projects taking up a pretty small geographic area. It's pretty striking to look at the map when you see the differences in geographic size between the two old zones. PS8 is a little more complicated, it's in a rich neighborhood, but part of that neighborhood was poorer a few decades ago and so was the school.

But, you know, when you look at the map it's pretty clear they drew the 207 zone to take all of the projects and not a lot else.

I mean PS8 isn't really more complicated -- it's still the same issue, i.e. racial and income segregation of housing. One of the results is that the parents in the rich neighborhood are able to do a lot of extra fundraising and pull a lot of strings for their schools. Also more likely to be a non-working parent at home who has time to volunteer and organize, etc.

Yeah the parents at a selective middle school near my public middle school raised something like half a million dollars last year. We raised about $10k, and organizing the fundraiser almost broke our PTA.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/06/liu-brooklyn-campus-contract-dispute-faculty-union-tells-400-professors-they-will-be

faculty lockout at LIU brooklyn

Individual faculty members are taking to social media to talk about what it's like to lose a middle-class salary and health insurance overnight.

"This is terrifying," wrote Emily Drabinski, associate professor and coordinator of library instruction at the university. "We talk a lot about privilege in my circles, and the way that privilege insulates people like me from encounters with raw, brutal power, how terrifying and total it is, how people in power can make the difference between living and dying in instants. This is one of those encounters with brute power and its capacity to overwhelm and kill you on a whim. I live a pretty privileged life; I walk about the world as someone who really belongs in it. The police really do want to protect my well-being and my property, and with each passing year of accumulated middle class wealth, the entire economic system seems invested in ensuring my leisure-class pursuits of marathoning and working toward medallion status on my preferred commercial airline. Until it doesn’t. It’s a different thing to know in your body what that means. I am learning a lot this weekend."

yeahp a lot to learn here

The LIU situation is v shameful, and I think "privilege" is just about the last narrative that needs to be explored here, although I can see how that person might feel sort of bewildered and guilty enough to go that route. It almost makes privilege-checking sound like a tool to keep people in line -- "Shut up, you don't have it as bad as those other folks."

This is a really good example of a time when class analysis would be a lot more useful than "privilege" analysis.

who are the scabs - desperate grad students?