Yeah this habit is pretty much the rule rather than the exception. People still object to the word “racism” because it’s applied to people who think other races are intrinsically different but don’t necessarily hate them.
Racist is a loaded word. Racists are horrible people - white sheet wearing, genocidal, murderous haters on the far end, and even on the soft end of common usage - hateful, ignorant and unwilling to non white people the benefit or the doubt. No decent person wants to be lumped in with that crowd.
So racism becomes a loaded word, even though racism can be less overt, more well intentioned but patronizing, unconscious and systemic - and just part of how our brains work unconsciously to quickly categorize and stereotype. Racism can also describe those hateful racists.
It would be nice if we had more shaded language to work with here.
Excellent post.
No more loaded than other words that deal with race and discrimination, that’s my point. Ideological hangups and the desire to distance oneself from uncomfortable truths…these drive what we consider loaded terms. It’s delusional to think its the words themselves that cause us to have these eternal semantic quibble fests.
The irony is that we do; it just automatically becomes loaded when it gains purchase in everyday speech. Case in point, “white privilege”. It refers to the benefits that come with being a member of the racial majority even if you’re not directly perpetrating discrimination against other races yourself. We now have the means to talk about racism without accusing someone of being a evil bad hateful person, and yet people still feel like others are trying to make them feel guilty and ashamed. At a certain point, you realize it’s not speech that is the problem.
Exactly! Really, it’s a gentle way of getting white people off the hook (as individuals). It’s basically saying “you’re not (necessarily) a racist. It’s not your fault, but, you might find it helpful to be aware that…”
But even this isn’t good enough for some of them! They bristle at even the tiniest suggestion that they’ve been enjoying structural, cultural advantages (yes, compared to certain others – that’s what “advantage” means).
Fine, forget it. You don’t like this gentle reminder, about something that isn’t personally your fault? Okay, then – you’re not going to like the alternative, though.
Two components to that:
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Granting them a partial point: it is often NOT used “in a gentle way” and not at all to get them off the hook. However…
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… too many hold the position that “if it’s not personally my fault, then I’m not responsible for dealing with it at all”.
To me it’s the exact opposite; it’s a way of making sure that the “privileged” person cannot get off the hook. I’d *rather *be called racist than privileged, since I can try not to be racist, try to show that I am not racist; but “privileged” is a status that can’t be rejected since it’s imposed from without. You might as well call someone “unclean” or talk about how they have “bad blood”. It’s an accusation that someone is born bad, and nothing he or she does can change it.
And it has the opposite effect than is supposedly intended. It encourages racism if anything; “If I am going to be called evil no matter what I do then I might as well actually be evil” to paraphrase an actual quote from memory.
That’s sort of my take on “benefit” (see post way high up above).
How do you suggest that a black person react if someone who isn’t black tells them, say, that they should trust and obey cops at all times because cops are there to protect and serve?
Sorry for not coming back to the thread sooner. Anyway, I’ll hope it was obvious that this was hyperbole but, yes, I have experienced it. No, I won’t quantify my anecdotal experiences. The internet is awash with the stuff, though, and if you haven’t seen it then you aren’t paying attention. And no, not in dusty corners that nobody pays attention to. It’s mainstream as hell.
Here, though. I googled “privilege allies” and this is what came up. The takeaway is “shut up and listen.”
There’s a link there to a comic called “white privilege, explained in one simple comic” that ends with “fucking educate yourself!” Another article that says, quote, “white people are constantly centered, nurtured, and coddled when it comes to conversations about race.” That sentence contains three links to three separate articles.
The conversation around privilege is meant to be in your face, abrasive, and confrontational. It’s meant to be offputting, to throw people off balance and out of their comfort zones. It’s like the old joke about being in denial.
Person 1: You’re in denial.
Person 2: No I’m not.
Person 1: See!?
Person 1: I don’t like the conversation about privilege.
Person 2: Well see, that’s how you know you’re privileged. Now go fucking educate yourself.
Like a lot of people in the thread, I certainly don’t have a problem with the underlying concepts that are addressed in terms of racism and bigotry. I do have a problem with any philosophy that dictates your social status based upon the circumstances of your birth, and for better or worse that is what the privilege movement does.
Hogwash.
I have “able-bodied” privilege. When I hear the disabled complain about lack of access and accommodation, my instinct is to say, “Knock the chip off your shoulder and quit whining about how unfair the world is.” I know this about myself. So I try to check myself whenever I have this thought. Instead of rolling my eyes, I try to imagine how hard it must be to get around in a wheelchair. Can’t I imagine being pretty pissed off if I couldn’t get access to a building where I’m scheduled to have a job interview? Of course I can.
If you are able to stop yourself when you have similar thoughts, then you are “clean”–or at least clean enough. But if you think it’s crazy to believe that your social position inculcates you with a certain mindset, one that makes you blind to certain everyday realities, then it is likely you will stink forever. Privilege isn’t a stain all by itself. It just foster a “dirty” mentality.
Currently I live in Fargo, ND. The percentage of the population up here that’s white is fairly large, and the percentage that’s any other race is fairly small. I’ve also worked in food banks and homeless shelters in many other places, and if all of them, I’ve encountered a cross section of the population, with all races represented.
You say that blacks are overrepresented among the homeless. I don’t doubt it. I never would have. But that misses the point entirely. As long as there are many white people among the homeless, it’s wrong to say that whites as a class are privileged. Those white people who are homeless are not privileged. That’s the point.
Or here’s another way to look at it. Everyone who has a supply of healthy food, sanitary drinking water, indoor plumbing, a home that protects them from the elements, and decent clothing is privileged. Immensely privileged. I have all those things and I have had them every day of my life. I am extremely thankful for this privilege and I work to help people who don’t have this privilege.
But most discussions about privilege ignore this meaningful way of determining who is and isn’t privileged, in favor of other false divisions, i.e. that whites are more privileged than other races, and so forth.
Not in very much depth. The article says, “From 1980-2011, the prison population in the Emerald City increased fivefold, from 315,974 to 1,537,415, according to the King County Department of Adult & Juvenile Detention.” Considering that 1,537,415 is more than double the entire population of Seattle, I’m guessing that Atlanta Blackstar does not check its facts very carefully. Beyond that, the article is mostly anecdotes of people saying they just know that racism is what causes the problems for homeless people, no data-based evidence that it’s really the case.
I’d say that they’d be foolish to do so because it isn’t so; the cops are there to harass and abuse them, not help them. But a lack of abuse isn’t privilege.
You are ignoring what I am saying. I don’t consider privilege to have anything to do with the attitude of the supposedly privileged in the first place; it’s about demonizing & dehumanizing the accused and trying to silence them. It doesn’t matter if someone has a “certain mindset” or not; the essence of “privilege” is that nothing the “privileged” do can ever affect it. It is all about defining someone as irredeemable, as intrinsically vile.
It has nothing to do with social position; someone can be starving or homeless or dead and still be called “privileged”, and therefore automatically unworthy of sympathy, respect or help.
If you live in a First World nation, you (no matter you skin color or sex or sexual orientation)are an order of magnitude more privileged than someone living in some of the Third world hellholes. Most poster here are Americans- that’s privileged. More than their race- by far.
I had a young, healthy person, who had changed their sex* call me “privileged”- until I pointed out i am old, with cancer , failing eyesight and crippling Arthritis. Yes, they had and will have problems- but to be young, American, with a supportive family, a paid for degree, a decent career, a life-partner- and healthy- who is privileged now?
- what’s the PC term now?
This might be how you interpret privilege, but it’s not how I use the concept, nor how the folks that I know use it.
Do you have a problem with privilege if it were only used in the way that I and ** monstro** use it?
I don’t understand the extreme reaction to being called “privileged”, as if it is the mark of Cain or something.
I like to travel, and as an American I have a HUGE advantage. My passport lets me in, with little hassle, pretty much everywhere. My currency is universally accepted and trivially easy to exchange.
It’s a privilege. By the raw luck of being born on a particular path of land, I have an ability to travel the world that is all but unimaginable to much of the planet.
Why would I feel bad about having this pointed out? It’s just a reality. I don’t have every advantage in the world-- I haven’t scraped together enough money to travel in several years. But I’m certainly better off than Bob in Bhutan who doesn’t even have a way to get a visa to half the planet.
It’s not about feeling guilt or feeling bad. But I do have a little patience when I’m stuck in immigration behind someone who is having a harder time than me.
I get what Der Trihs and others are saying. True, one can’t “do anything” about the cards one is dealt, but by being confronted with this “privilege” meme, one can be made more AWARE of one’s cards, and AWARE of how history/society/human nature has conspired to make some of your cards “better” than the ones dealt to others, for no good reasons.
What you do with this new awareness is up to you. Should you be “blamed” if you do NOTHING with it? Some posters to this thread think so. But I’m guessing that it’s nearly impossible to do nothing with this awareness. Somewhere along the line, one’s actions and behavior are going to be different than if one hasn’t gained this awareness. So, no blame necessary.
You know who also can’t get “off the hook”? People who are routinely discriminated against because of their race! Racism is also a thing that is imposed from without, and yet that doesn’t stop us from using the term.
You are projecting your own emotions on to the term. Having privilege in one aspect of one’s life doesn’t make anyone “bad”. It just means they are generally better off (in one aspect of one’s life) than others. That’s all it is.
Oh Lord. If someone is prone to think this way, they will think this way regardless of the terms we use. You realize this, right? I hope you don’t hold to this particular brand of nonsense.
Der Trihs, how would you describe the concept that (as one example) white people don’t usually have personal experiences with many of the challenges that black people face every day, and therefore may routinely misunderstand them? What word would you put to that concept?
I use “privilege” – if it were only used in this way, would you have a problem with it?
I think that would be met with much more eye-rolling and much more decisive rejection.
If the problem is the idea that I as a white person am personally doing something wrong by having the “privilege,” it’s much worse that you’re telling me I’m actively putting myself as a white person at the center of the world, isn’t it? I mean, same concept, but I have even more of an active role in it, so in the OP’s terms it’s even more of an accusation or even more of a suggestion that it’s something to feel guilty about.
I agree with Frylock. There’s no word that wouldn’t be objectionable, because the thing it’s expressing is so uncomfortable to a lot of people that even if they don’t have a rational way to articulate why the thing doesn’t exist, they don’t want to allow it to pass unchallenged. The problem is the suggestion that this phenomenon, whatever you call it, should be a problem that I care about personally. I can’t think of a single -ism-related concept that isn’t met with the same semantic or technical objections of the form “I don’t disagree that (group) is discriminated against, I just don’t think that (actual thing that would address discrimination) is the right way to go about it.”