Quote :

" It's really not hard to understand: the existence of discrimination against some people, in a competitive world, equates to advantage for all others."

It's not hard to understand, it's just pointless. It's something to whine about.

Quote :

"The point of understanding privilege is to recognize it, spread knowledge of it"

What good does that do? Look at these two statements:
"White people have a privilege in getting a job"
"Black people are discriminated against by employers"

One of those statements puts into focus a smaller set of people who are actively racially discriminating. The other puts into focus a general third party who had nothing to do with the discrimination.

5/7/2013 11:37:28 AM

The point of getting the third party to recognize their own privilege is so that they recognize they are indeed benefiting from an injustice even if they aren't directly involved. That doesn't make them to blame for the injustice, but it makes the issue personal to them, so it no longer seems like a distant, abstract concept.

Some folks, on the other hand, can't handle that. They've convinced themselves that if they aren't personally racist then they've done all they can do, and the problem will just sort itself out if everyone does the same. Anyone telling them that we should all be aggressively fighting against the injustice is just some do-gooder busybody who's trying to shame them. Racism survives because of conspiracies of silence by people who know its wrong but don't feel compelled to actively fight it either in speech or action. The concept of privilege brings that injustice closer to the daily lives of the privileged, so they're more apt to fight it because they can no longer tell themselves that it's not their problem.

That's the weirdest thing about racism and similar ideologies, they are the only problems where people think that not talking about them will somehow solve them.


[Edited on May 7, 2013 at 11:48 AM. Reason : .]

5/7/2013 11:45:56 AM

Quote :

"understanding privilege is to recognize it, spread knowledge of it, and fight against all systems that create it"

Boy that sure is convenient to call them "systems". Let's just imagine society as big machine, instead of what it really is - made up of people.

If a black boy is being treated negatively by his teacher, it's not because of a system, it's because of an abhorrent action by an individual. If your account of the evidence is to be taken seriously, then it's totally personal.

A crony-capitalist system creates inequality with equal opportunity. Even if "neighborhood" schools were created with the worst racial intentions, the white kids who live in the bad neighborhood will get shortchanged on the teachers the same as the black kids. Regressive policies created after the civil rights era genuinely exacted their toll without looking at race. That's not the social issue it's being spun as. The plight of poor minorities is largely a consequence of the fact that they started out poor.

Look, I know history, I know that we had periods of:
1.) overt oppression of minorities
2.) a period of rising inequality without the overt oppression

Of course I will loose civility when you intentionally skew and contort these two very different issues. Hey, in the 1950s we had social programs that blacks could be flagrantly excluded from. Because of Era #1 they got a bad starting block. But in the context of #2, it's ridiculous to call that a modern racial issue like what you're doing. The privilege in the context of #2 is just plain money and corruption. But that doesn't sell a movement.

5/7/2013 11:53:28 AM

Quote :

"Boy that sure is convenient to call them "systems". Let's just imagine society as big machine, instead of what it really is - made up of people."

That's exactly what I'm imagining society as, a collection of people, who influence and interact with each other according to their mindsets, their inputs, and their ways of sorting the information they receive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_psychology

Quote :

"If a black boy is being treated negatively by his teacher, it's not because of a system, it's because of an abhorrent action by an individual. If your account of the evidence is to be taken seriously, then it's totally personal."

Why did the teacher treat the black boy negatively? Did that teacher invent racism herself in her own mind? Was it strictly handed down from her parents? Or is it possibly subtly reinforced in the culture at large in less-than-overt ways?

Quote :

"The privilege in the context of #2 is just plain money and corruption. But that doesn't sell a movement."

Nope. Discrimination of all kinds is very much alive and there are countless studies to show it. If you agree to go 1 for 1 with supporting evidence I'd be glad to start posting some. It's not just government, it's not just classism, the general public is still very prejudiced on multiple levels and it's exactly because they can point to the overt racism of the past that modern prejudice seems so dim if not non-existent. It also helps that privilege by definition means you're not subjected to those negative aspects, and so they are indeed invisible or imaginary from your perspective unless you actively look for them, either in daily life or in statistics and studies.



[Edited on May 7, 2013 at 12:04 PM. Reason : .]

5/7/2013 12:00:30 PM

Also not a surprise that right wingers are the most hostile to this kind of reasoning, it puts a bit of a dent in their unique-snowflake conception of the perfectly rational, perfectly independent ubermensch John Galt/Robinson Crusoe fantasy about what it means to be human.

[Edited on May 7, 2013 at 12:06 PM. Reason : .]

5/7/2013 12:06:02 PM

Quote :

"If you agree to go 1 for 1 with supporting evidence I'd be glad to start posting some."

No, I want to ask you how you reconcile these conflicting ideas in your head. It sounds like it's a very personal thing. It sounds like you have a message to the public that they are racist even though they don't think they are.

Quote :

"so they are indeed invisible or imaginary from your perspective unless you actively look for them, either in daily life or in statistics"

So do you think that every bias we know of through statistics is reflected in people's personal experience? If so, I think that defeats the "systems" view you're promoting.

5/7/2013 12:07:35 PM

Quote :

"The point of getting the third party to recognize their own privilege is so that they recognize they are indeed benefiting from an injustice even if they aren't directly involved. That doesn't make them to blame for the injustice, but it makes the issue personal to them, so it no longer seems like a distant, abstract concept."

Let me use another example. Let's take the Boston bombing. One way to look at this is to say "this was a tragedy and we need to stop it". Another way is to say "recognize your privilege of not being bombed". The first conversation would lend itself to conversations around why the bombing happened, and what we can do to keep others from happening. The second would cause much stupider conversations like "Do you want everyone to be bombed?" or "But bombings happen other places too!" or "I didn't have anything to do with the bombing!". Do you see how one causes useful conversations and the other causes stupid ones? It's because one conversation focuses on the people involved in being bombed or doing the bombing. The other places the focus on some removed third party. It's like trying to put out a fire by cleaning away the soot.

Privilege has some place when talking about why white kids might be more successful in school than black kids, but it's a waste of time to talk about it just to call people out because it offends them.

[Edited on May 7, 2013 at 12:16 PM. Reason : ]

5/7/2013 12:13:47 PM

Quote :

"Hey, don't defend your dogma; just demonize any dissent. It works for other religions, right? I'm not an MRA, unless that's your code word for anyone who doesn't buy Feminist claims without question."

You threw out a laundry list of unsubstantiated claims and clearly haven't done your research into neither the items themselves
nor what feminism actually is. Why would I form a "defense of my dogma" to that? You're not "questioning," you're incorrectly generalizing.

Also it's hilarious that you call yourself a humanist.

[Edited on May 7, 2013 at 12:37 PM. Reason : .]

5/7/2013 12:35:45 PM

Oh, so the burden of proof is on me to disprove dogmatic feminist claims? Sounding more and more like a religion to me. Let's throw in a No True Scotsman while we're at it. I specifically said which claims I find dubious and unsubstantiated; I'm not caricaturing Feminism.

Finally, what is is about anything I've said in this thread that makes it hilarious that I call myself a humanist? Do I have to accept feminist claims a priori to want equality for all people and place the elimination of suffering as the top moral priority?

Str8Foolish
All that is really nice regarding racism but I have to ask again what in the world it has to do with gender inequality. Why can't you frame an argument on institutionalized sexism in the thread about sexism? You seem to be trying to prove gender inequality by proximity.

5/7/2013 1:14:24 PM

you should know by now that Str8Foolish is absolutely and completely ashamed to be white. he curses his very existence every day because of it

5/8/2013 9:23:26 PM

White is the most shameful race to be.

5/8/2013 10:02:20 PM