All other things being equal? How could you say that? It would be impossible to wrap your head around it, really, because being non-white implies a completely different cultural background. That extends to your children, your parents, your background, etc.
I don’t have any idea of my life would be “worse” if I were black. Sorry, but that kind of commentary sounds a bit like a white lady cluck clucking over poor life of brown folks.
Finally, if I were a black female in the teaching field, that would be a +1. If I were a black male, +2.
Your post seemed to argue that no one should suppose prejudice exists absent some kind of physical evidence, the real world doesn’t work that way.
I agree with you in general, but having seen it from the other side I don’t have time to get inside everyone’s head. If you treat someone more harshly than others or so outside social custom they will assume some kind of ism. Humans aren’t robots, sucks eh?
Yes, so why should I automatically assume that when someone says they are oppressed that they actually are? They think they are, but are they really? Or are they just seeing prejudice where apathy and lack of consideration would be the better explanation?
I don’t think it’s wholly imaginary, but I have had occasions where someone was rude or dismissive toward me in public, and I wondered if I were black if I might have immediately jumped to the conclusion that the other party was racist rather than just being a jerk.
I believe white people do indeed have “privilege”–if only because they are the majority and anyone who is the majority enjoys benefits over those who aren’t. Case in point: That use of “we”. People on the board use it in crazy ways all the time and it grates.
But I don’t really like the commercial. This is a topic that doesn’t lend itself to a 30-second commercial without provoking hostility and defensiveness.
There’s a concept called intersectionality which (sadly) tends to get a lot less press than flat privilege theory. Basically, it recognizes that different things affect people differently based on their specific societal situation. In certain areas of New York, for instance, there are definite societal advantages to being Jewish; in other areas, being Jewish is a disadvantage. Abused women are sometimes blamed for inviting the abuse, while abused men are sometimes blamed for not being strong enough to defend themselves. Homeless women and girls are at a far higher risk for sexual assault than homeless men and boys, but there are many more women-only shelters and resources than there are men-only.
The idea that you can easily integrate across all of these scenarios, come up with a single advantage metric, and then apply this to individuals is clearly ludicrous. It’s as reasonable to say “You are a human, therefore you live in Asia.”
White privilege is a thing, yes, but it is not the only thing, and in many cases, it’s not the most important thing.
I’m reminded of David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” speech. He wasn’t talking about white privilege, but it nonetheless sums it up nicely.
Water is white privilege. It’s what we live in, and never notice. White privilege is being white and thinking that “white privilege” is bullshit because you perceive the way you are treated as “normal”. It IS similar to “pretty” privilege. Pretty people grow up thinking that people are generally nice, because people are generally nice to them.
I never cease to be amused at people who reflexively deny white privilege because they’re white and their lives aren’t effortless. Nobody said that being white makes life easy. Just easier. And no one is asking you to feel bad about being white. If that’s what you think, then you’re purposely not listening. You are, in fact, exercising your white privilege by simply refusing to think about it. You don’t have to, after all. S’nothin’ to you.
What is it about it that you think is fair, and how do you think saying it is unfair is not a critique? Not only have you freely chosen to move to a predominantly white country, Renaissance Faires and Medieval lit are specifically about European history and culture. That’s like a WASP attending a Congo Indigenous Culture Festival or a Hindi literature reading group, thinking it is unfair that there are an abnormal amount of blacks or Indians present.
Anyway these our nations were founded on the sweat and blood of our forefathers, not so we should feel obliged to feel uncomfortable or excuse our ways to accommodate others that have freely chosen to move here.
You’re not taking into account that if you had been born a black male or black female, your chances of being a teacher would be smaller. You would have faced cultural and peer pressures growing up to do something else with your life. You would quite likely have spent some of the time you worried about your studies worrying about your hair. You would probably have spent some of that valuable brainpower on code-switching from AAVE to Standard English on a daily basis. You might have had your resume tossed sight-unseen by some, because of your “black name” (which is illegal discrimination, but good luck proving that).
If imagining yourself being born as a different race or culture is impossible to wrap your head around, your lack of imagination is the problem. You’ve never imagined, “What would life be like if I were ________?” Where the blank could be black, or Latina, or gay, or a boy, or a dog (etc)?
Christ, it’s like the Civil Rights movement never happened. Do you think that black slaves came to America of their own free will? Do you think that their descendants should freely go back to Africa (where they have no citizenship, no knowledge of the language, and no known family) if they don’t like it here? The non-whites in America have every right to be here and to stay here and to be treated absolutely fairly.
If you’re going to pull the “we were here first” card, then shouldn’t whites be subservient to Native Americans?
Is it just me, or does this sound awfully patronizing toward African Americans? Worrying about your hair – seriously? And as for “code-switching,” there are plenty of successful people growing up in multilingual households; if anything, I’m convinced a multilingual background enhances mental acuity, not detracts from it.
I’ll not comment on the patronizing but I had absolutely no fucking clue about hair care for women with “hard” hair, and you probably don’t either until you’ve seen jellied scalp. There is no reasoning, no logic that will stop the madness, in a post apocalyptic situation I fully believe my wife would learn to synthesize lye so she could straighten her hair. Her friends say what a shame your son got hard hair, oh well.
Jellied scalp, that isn’t the chernobyl of straightening accidents either just a routine slip up.
OK, but in fact I do not care if you have a conversation with me, or ignore me, you may think I do because you may believe that I would be honored that a person such as yourself would talk to or hire me, but no, I am just happy that you are not following me around the room in fear that I might steal something.
First, I want to thank you for your long, thoughtful post to me, and I’ve been thinking all day about how to respond to it. But this one is easy: part of my long response to you was going to be an aside about how the obnoxious “privilege bingo” concept goes hand-in-hand with the obnoxious use of “privilege” or other essentialist arguments to shut down conversation. Your example here is perfect: while the person you’re responding to is completely wrong in their implications about the significance of a black president, your response to them has done jack shit to further dialog.
Lemme see if I can respond more fully to your more thoughtful post above now :).
Not so sure. I grew up dirt poor with abusive parents. I didn’t graduate high school the ‘traditional’ way. I had a wealthy father, but he was absent financially. I paid most of my college. To be honest, the greatest financial pressure I ever had was having a kid, and that was my own doing.
There’s such a thing as poor white people. Our neighbors were methheads. I used to take back cans for food change. I had a parent incarcerated from ages 3-6. Sometimes we didn’t have heat. Whoop de do.
And when I say, “hard to wrap my head around”, I mean there are so many damned factors that go into being successful that I can’t figure out what life would be like if my parents were black, my brothers were black, my everything was just different. Hell, I’d probably eat pork right now! I can’t imagine eating pulled work without vomiting. I understand that being black means you’re going to have some things rougher, but your overall quality of life shouldn’t be shaped by other people’s hangups.
My chances of being a teacher were pretty small when I was younger, if you want to talk stats. But I had the drive to keep going and I’m proud of that. I do know that white female teachers from the Midwest are a dime-a-dozen and schools like minority and/or male teachers for new blood. We’re one of the few groups where affirmative action may affect us negatively.
Quite often I wished I were part of a Latino family. They seem to be a lot closer than white ones. I envy that.
Finally, code-switching isn’t limited to minorities…and it hardly wastes brain power. It’s natural.
Okay, mister nyx. A few silly and irrelevant asides in your post set aside (really, you think it’s helpful to tell me that breasts don’t make someone a woman? huh), there was a lot of good stuff in your post, and I appreciate it and how it makes me think. Unfortunately, perhaps, it does a lot to solidify my distaste for how the word “privilege” is used.
Let’s start with where we presumably agree, though.
When you’re discussing oppression, or any subject, it’s helpful to hear from people with different experiences and different perspectives. People who have unusual experiences often ought to be doing more talking, whereas people with more common experiences ought to be doing more listening, all else being equal, since the unusual experiences will be novel to the folks with common experiences, while the reverse isn’t as true. And people with experience of the subject at hand (whether that’s oppression or another subject) ought to talk more than people without experience of the subject at hand, for the same reason.
This applies whether we’re talking about sexual assault (in which case someone who’s experienced it will probably have more to add to the conversation), or copyright violation (in which case a professional musician might have more to add to the conversation than a non-musician), or French cuisine (in which case the person who’s lived in France will have more to add to the conversation than someone who hasn’t) or high finance (in which case the guy working on Wall Street might have more to add than the person who doesn’t work on Wall Street).
Notice something with the examples I’ve given: it’s not privilege that leads to someone needing to listen, it’s ignorance. In some cases the more privileged person (the person who’s gotten to travel, who works in high finance) is the person who should be doing more talking; in some cases they’re the one who should be doing more listening.
Note also the use of “might” above. That’s because experience and perspective are NOT the things that lead to good conversation. What leads to good conversation, I think, are coherent knowledge and informed opinion.
They’re closely related. A particular experience can definitely lead to a coherent set of knowledge about a subject. A particular perspective can definitely lead to informed opinions about a subject. But experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for having coherent knowledge, and a particular perspective is neither necessary nor sufficient for having an informed opinion.
You get no sympathy from me here, for two reasons.
First, there IS no “straight perspective,” any more than there’s a “gay lifestyle.” It’s essentialist twaddle to suggest otherwise. Although there may be commonalities, you cannot know before you listen to someone whether what they’re saying is what someone else has said to you before–and those eyerolls will absolutely get in the way of good listening on your part.
Second, even if you’ve heard it before, so what? You’ve got an unusual experience, and people with a more common experience are going to say the things their experiences lead them to believe. This happens for everyone in the world, since everyone has some unusual experiences. Deal with it–it’s part of the human condition.
You’re noticing something else: you’re noticing that many straight people view gay issues differently from how you view them. Your viewpoint on gay issues (inasmuch as you refer to issues of gay people living alongside straight people) is not privileged by virtue of your gayness. You don’t get a special “I’m right!” card to play in discussions of gay issues, and for the love of Christ burn that bingo card, because playing it makes you look like something I can’t say out of the pit.
A terrible, terrible, conversation-corroding assumption. There are excellent, principled reasons to believe that the government should leave marriage to the private sector, issuing civil unions to all (and I say this having experienced both secular and government marriage, so I know what I"m talking about ). By calling it “ridiculous” and by believing that a person can only say so if they’re unaware of privilege, though, you shut down conversation through the use of a pernicious ad hominem.
). By calling it “ridiculous” and by believing that a person can only say so if they’re unaware of privilege, though, you shut down conversation through the use of a pernicious ad hominem.