One thing I agree with is that it is a terrible term, one that I would never use.
That’s what I was trying to articulate with my commentary about the baseline upthread, although apparently not very successfully.
Generally speaking the common usage of “privilege” when not talking about racial stuff, is some sort of out-of-the-ordinary advantage or treatment that someone gets. It doesn’t necessarily mean undeserved or undue, just a deviation from the norm in a positive way.
But because someone has some kind of mistreatment or deficiency of some kind doesn’t mean that people without that mistreatment or deficiency have privileges that someone else doesn’t have.
Let’s take the ability to walk as an example. Most people can walk. Some are privileged to be able to walk really fast, like a competitive race-walker. But to go around and talk about the vast majority of people’s “walking privilege” because there are people in wheelchairs is silly. It’s not a privilege, it’s just the norm.
I realize to some degree, it’s relative- to the person in the wheelchair, it might seem like walking is a privilege, but if you tell a normal person that they’re privileged to be able to walk, you’re going to get a funny look, because (and here’s the point) being able to walk isn’t generally considered to be a privilege, but just a commonplace, mundane, everyday activity.
And I realize that’s the point of the term; it’s about the relativity of it all. But using the term “privilege” is just godawful because it brings in all sorts of baggage and implications that may or may not be intentional. And when you throw a racial qualifier in there, it just gets worse.
It’s exactly the point that it’s a privilege, a commonplace, mundane, everyday privilege to be able to walk when others can’t. And if we can’t imagine that others can’t, if we can’t look around us and see it because no one around us can’t walk, we have no reason to design accessible bathrooms and ramps and doorways.
Correct, I agree that privilege doesn’t necessarily mean undeserved or undue.
I disagree that it means deviation from the norm. There are privileges that are the norm. For example, you and I have the privilege of being able to live in our homes, and work where we choose, and watch whatever we want on TV. Prisoners, meanwhile, have lost those privileges.
Since (as I argued above) a privilege can be the same as the norm, what you’ve just said here doesn’t follow. In fact, since what a privilege is is “access to a good which not necessarily every person has access to,” when some people are mistreated as a matter of course, those who are not so treated have a privilege that mistreated person doesn’t have.
“It’s not a privilege, it’s just the norm.” My comments above are arguing against this dichotomy. I think what you’re saying as a whole is based on making a dichotomy between privilege and the norm, but I don’t think such a dichotomy is born out by an analysis of the way the term “privilege” is actually used in everyday contexts. Even setting that aside, presumably you want to understand what people do mean when they use the term, whether they’re using it in the same sense as the everyday sense or not.
Why does it matter whether it’s “generally considered to be a privilege”? The point of the observation is to point out something that is true, which hadn’t been “generally considered” before.
One should not conflate the concept of privilege with the concept of undue privilege.
In general, someone who urges you to check your privilege is not necessarily thereby telling you you have any kind of undue privilege. (Of course individual scenarios may vary in this regard, but I’m speaking to what the locution means most broadly. One should assume it does not mean “undue privilege” unless context makes it clear that this is intended.)
As some of the first commenters in this thread said–the idea isn’t that you shouldn’t have those privileges, i.e., that they’re undue to you, rather, the idea is that everyone should have them, i.e., that they’re due to everyone.
What’s the third choice?
I wouldn’t ever want to “choose” to be gay, simply because being straight is a core component of who I am. Just like anybody who isn’t transgender wouldn’t want to “choose” a different gender. But I get the gist of what you’re asking.
My answer is that there’s two components of being black, right? You seem to only be talking about the color of one’s skin. If that’s the only part being considered then by any reasonable definition, being black is an advantage, not a disadvantage.
Class and family background are a lot more important than race.
Who do you think will have an easier life, Obama’s daughters or two white girls born to a single mother in Appalachia?
If I could get the advantages of having black skin, I would.
Preferential treatment in college admissions.
Hesitation on the part of police to shoot me, since their career will be ruined by it even if I’m in the middle of assaulting them.
First to get hired and last to be laid off due to fears of racism accusations by employers.
Preferential hiring by the government and affirmative action in general.
But if you wanted me to be reincarnated as a black person with all the cultural baggage that entails I would be afraid. I wouldn’t want to have a 70% chance of being born to a single mother. I wouldn’t want to live in an area that has high crime. I wouldn’t want to be raised in a culture that actively rejects education and embraces criminality.
Not every black person in this country is raised like that, but many of them are.
In short, I’d rather be reincarnated as Oprah Winfrey or Barack Obama’s black kid than by a poor single parent who happened to be white. But my decision would have nothing to do with skin color when I am reborn, and everything to do with the quality of life that I would have due to how I would be raised and the opportunities given to me.
Back to the video game analogy, or the classroom paper throwing analogy: I want to play on the easy setting. I want to be in the front row. Sure, who wouldn’t. But the row’s aren’t assigned by race. They haven’t been for quite some time. The rows are assigned by who wants them. It’s not hard, and anyone could do it. Just get married before you have kids. Educate them. Work hard. Don’t commit crimes.
Anyone can do this, and in fact the black people that do have a significant advantage. The person playing life on the easiest setting of all is the black woman who had two parents who loved her and gets a degree and works hard. She’s going to make parter at the lawfirm before the white guy she’s up against.
Good, because I specifically pointed out I wasn’t talking about changing your identity, but instead saddling you with the social status equivalent to a particular identity.
No–again, I’m not talking about the identity itself (or the pigmentation, for that matter). I’m talking about social status.
I’m not sure how to explain this better. You’re sliding one setting (wealth) all the way to the easy end, and then pointing out that folks with this setting will have an easier time than someone with it slid all the way to the hard end. This ignores questions of race.
Ask a better question: who do you think will have an easier life, two white girls born to a single mother in Appalachia, or two black girls born to a single mother in Appalachia? Change only one variable at once.
…except that if you’re black, you have a much lower chance of having parents who are college grads due to past racism, and those lower chances heavily correlate to a lower chance of college admission for you. So your treatment for being black is, on balance, against you.
Good lord, do you seriously believe this? Have you not heard the studies about how police respond to perceived threats from white vs. black men?
Do you have any evidence at all to support this claim? Because I can, at request, offer evidence that black men are last to be hired.
This is a frankly astounding claim. Do you have any evidence at all to support it?
You say that you just want to look at “social status”, whatever that means exactly. You specifically talked about how you would be treated by people like cab drivers and cops. I assumed you didn’t mean things like upbringing and education, since that as you say ruins the control on the experiment.
Make up your mind. Do you offer a choice of just race, with other factors being equal to make it fair? Or do you offer a choice between a different race but also different parents and education and everything else that comes along with it? Because if you do, as you stated, this changes more than one variable at once.
I just reread your post to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
You even explicitly stated it:
"Let’s leave everything else the same except for how folks would treat you if you were black. "
Did you forget your own question? Because it seems to me I answered your hypothetical in good faith, and your moved the goalposts on me afterwards.
Seems like this is where the conversation has to go. You’re assuming that having dark skin is an advantage. Presumably LHoD disagrees. It seems like everything else in the conversation depends on this assumption, so it may be of no use to discuss anything else til this is settled.
So, what’s the evidence either way concerning this claim?
I’m totally confused–where do you think I moved the goalpost? Your last post exactly states what I meant. Please help me understand where you think I changed what I was saying.
I don’t know what he thinks at this point.
Look at college admissions. Does anyone seriously think that colleges are not letting in blacks because they are racist against them? I don’t think so.
But, yes, if you are a black person there are cultural reasons that aren’t your fault that make it harder to get into college. Because of the racist history of the US your parents aren’t as likely to be college educated. Because of the welfare state your parents aren’t likely to be married. There are many cultural reasons that it’s harder to get into college as a black person.
But color of your skin? That’s got nothing to do with how hard it is. In fact, if all other things are completely equal it’s an advantage to college admission.
So I just read the rest of Debaser’s post.
Yeah never mind. Sorry. Carry on. Good luck LHoD.
We are truly living in separate worlds.
This is a strange tangent, but this is how I’m reading the moving goalposts comment:
The variable in question is that of being black, not of having parents that are college grads.
The reason I objected to his use of a baseline is that I think privilege is relative to the observer. The person in a nice suburban house with a good school is privileged relative to the poor, and the rich person is privileged relative to her. I think the whole silly “you’re not poor, you have a refrigerator” argument is about even the poor today being privileged relative to Henry VIII.
My ex-step-sister lives in a big house in La Jolla, but it is smaller than the other houses in La Jolla, and she feels relatively underprivileged relative to her neighbors. She is theoretically liberal, but if there is anyone I’d want to say “check your privilege” to it is her.
Yes, I answered the question based on an assumption that only the way people treat you is changing. Not your upbringing or your parents or the history there. That’s the change. Moving goalposts isn’t really the right term. More like changing the rules of the game.
Ah, I see what you’re saying, and I apologize; I phrased the initial inquiry poorly.
In the past, I’ve asked people a question like this (based on a similar question I heard in the mid-nineties that crystallized some of my own thoughts about what would eventually be called privilege), and they’ve objected, “I wouldn’t change from being white to being black for anything, but only because my cultural background is such a huge part of my identity. I like being Irish!” or whatever. I was trying to avoid that response.
But what I wasn’t trying to do was to remove historical perspectives that influence modern racial disparities. I wasn’t trying to take away either affirmative action or legacy admissions, for example, and a hypothetical that removes the latter while leaving the former in place would be a useless hypothetical.
That said, I find the idea that in today’s times a black woman has the easiest “difficulty setting,” all else being equal, to be borderline delusional.
Since you aren’t a black woman, you have no way of knowing this, so check your privilege.
Regards,
Shodan
The Taco Bell hot sauce equivalent of a burn.