Explaining "Privilege' to Straight White Male nerds....

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Fnord
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09 Nov 2013, 10:07 pm

There is no human race that is devoid of racists.

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09 Nov 2013, 10:59 pm

Jacoby wrote:

Does anyone here want to seriously argue that I am more privileged than the Obama daughters?

No.

People want to seriously argue that you would be worse off if you became black but everything else about you stayed the same.

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09 Nov 2013, 11:18 pm

Sherlock03 wrote:

I suppose being impervious to racism must be an African American privilege :lol:

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LKL
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10 Nov 2013, 3:37 am

AspieOtaku wrote:

LKL wrote:

AspieOtaku wrote:

LKL wrote:

AspieOtaku wrote:

LKL wrote:

AspieOtaku wrote:

I dunno i dont feel as priviledged only making 800 a month and paying 500 a month rent in a 5x10 room and not collecting food stamps or ssdi.

Would you be better or worse off if you had been born under the exact same circumstances, but were born a black child to black parents?

To be honest in such a situation it would most likely be the same. When your that poor your pretty much equally screwed regardless of ethnicity.The only difference would be based on family history. The assumption that being caucasian instantly leads to the idea that you will be rich or racist or an oppressor or treated with respect by stuck up yuppees. When I get looked down on as subhuman by yuppees if I got ran over by their fancy BMW they would just keep driving.

In some cities, only half of NT black men are employed. Would you even have an $800 a month job if you were an AS black man in that type of area?

Probably not but how priviledged would a homeless white person compared to a middle class black family?

Not very. In that case, class would have a stronger effect than race. That's where the concept of intersectionality comes in; privilege isn't about what you have right now, it's more about being given the benefit of the doubt by people who don't know you, solely based on being perceived as a member of one group or another.

All other things being equal, a middle class white man is going to be given opportunities - is going to be given the benefit of the doubt - more than a middle class black man, and will be more likely to succeed. He didn't do anything to earn that benefit; he gets it just by being white. Likewise, he didn't do anything to harm or take away that benefit from the black guy, and the black guy didn't do anything wrong to lose that benefit.

All other things being equal, a homeless white guy is going to be harassed by the police less than a homeless black guy. He's more likely to receive social services, and less likely to be perceived as being dangerous.

All other things being equal, a middle-class, teenage white kid is less likely to be shot by the cops or by a neighborhood watch man than a middle-class, teenage black kid; and if he is shot, the perpetrator is more likely to be convicted if the kid is white than if the kid is black.

You do make a point and I whole heartedly agree! When it comes to differences in money making status race means nothing!

No, race still means something; look, for instance, at the black college professor who was arrested by the cops a few years ago when he had to break in to his own home after a trip. He was upper middle class, but was still assumed to be a criminal by the police even though he could have easily proven that it was his house if they had given him a chance. There's a spectrum of privilege, and it's not even the same for every interaction; a more class-conscious cop might have noticed the professor's clothing and bearing more quickly, and a more racist cop might have just shot him. But a lower-middle-class white guy would probably have still fared better than him, in any case.

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10 Nov 2013, 3:41 am

Sherlock03 wrote:

jrjones9933 wrote:

Where's the literal-mindedness?

Where is the deductive reasoning that attempt to understand rather than blindly accept. If there is a correlation that skin color has an overall impact of the hardships in life, does that not lead to the question of why? Surely, it is unreasonable to assume that skin color alone is the cause of hardships. A more reasonable conclusion is that there are standards in different groups that set what is the acceptable average. In the male Caucasian group normal appears to be set at middle class to upper middle class. Failure to meet these standards means that you will be bellow average. Alternatively, the Hispanic and African American communities have a set norm somewhere bellow middle class, which is in fact an easier standard to meet than "entitled white males", who must work harder to feel normal. This does not mean that black or Hispanic men are any less intelligent nor are they any different in their ability to succeed. To say contrary is to insinuate an untrue ( if not raciest) argument that they are congenitally predisposed towards a lesser existence.

You assume that racism doesn't exist, and you assume that equal amounts of hard work pays off equally for people of different races and genders. This is demonstrably not true. I've met a lot of really freaking-hard-working hispanic guys at work, who are nevertheless lower middle class at best.

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10 Nov 2013, 3:44 am

GGPViper wrote:

The word "Privilege" (assuming one is not referring to the more narrow legal concept of right vs. privilege), whether it be white, male, heterosexual or [insert category here], is a non-falsifiable term designed to impose collective guilt upon [insert category here] and create a destructive "Us vs. Them" mentality. It is a divisive term by definition, and humanity would be better off if it was to disappear from the English language altogether.

It was bad enough when "Privilege" was just another feminist crap pseudo-scientific term. Must it infect questions of race and sexuality as well?

This is not correct. Recognizing privilege isn't about feeling guilt; it's about recognizing that other people have it harder than you, through no fault of their own, and not being a dick towards people who haven't succeeded based on the assumption that they just didn't work as hard or try as hard as you did.

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10 Nov 2013, 3:49 am

AspieOtaku wrote:

Time for me to check my privilege then!

This is actually the right basic idea, although it's a little simplistic and the numbers assigned by the creator seem to have been based on his personal opinion and nothing else.

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10 Nov 2013, 4:51 am

Apple_in_my_Eye wrote:

People need to look up intersectionality -- it's about what's p*ssing you off.

Discussions of "privilege" cause friction all over the place. I.e. There are feminist "brown" women who have conflicts with upper-middle class white women feminists (some of the white feminists deny the importance of race -- they think that gender discrimination dwarfs it so much that racial issues are irrelevant).

Intersectionality is about that. It's about how privilege is not as simple as "you're white and male, so being disabled and poor doesn't matter" -- of course it matters. In that case you lack non-disabled and non-poor privilege, and the problem is that some people won't recognize that.

My problem is not with the original author of that article. What I have a problem with is when Geekonychus said that socially inept straight white men become sexist because they "don't have the social capacity to use their privilege, because they think it's owed to them". I think this statement is both arrogant and ignorant because I think that this social charisma that he talks about is itself a form of privilege. If it wasn't then how come Asperger's and high functioning autism are in diagnostic manuals like the DSM when it is mainly stuff like social ineptness and non-verbal body language that they need help with?

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10 Nov 2013, 4:56 am

LKL wrote:

AspieOtaku wrote:

Time for me to check my privilege then!

This is actually the right basic idea, although it's a little simplistic and the numbers assigned by the creator seem to have been based on his personal opinion and nothing else.

Okay, I'll play your damn game. According to this, I'm a 2.

I'm privileged. Not a lot, but apparently, I have it easy.

Then why am I struggling to perform basic tasks for university, such are my crushing mental problems? Why can I only have one appointment every two weeks to attempt to fix these problems? Why did I sit here last night, despairing over my lack of options? Why did I walk around being laughed at and afraid of the crowds yesterday?

Most of all, why do I have nobody to go to? Why doesn't anyone understand? Why, anytime I dare get my problems off my chest, as most of the time, I have to be silent about it all, I get people like you dismissing that I have problems altogether, when honestly, if you walked in my damn shoes for a week, you'd goddamn hang yourself.

Y'know what? I don't care about these other people. Plenty of people care about them. Nobody gives a crap about me, and that is why your damn privilege is just a plain wrong concept to back morally. Because it promotes the idea that some people's problems are important, to be cared about and supported, and some people can just go screw themselves. And furthermore, why, in my current situation, should I give a damn about other people's problems? Would they ever give a damn about me? No, they wouldn't.

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10 Nov 2013, 5:37 am

Jono wrote:

I've lost track of the beginning of this thread, but I agree with what you're saying. I categorize that lack of charm as a disability (which goes way beyond dating: it's having a job or not, having a place to sleep or not, getting abused by cops or not, and so many other things).

The statement "lack privilege... think it's owed to them" is looking at it wrong, yeah. If you're black and you lack a privilege, like being able to drive your expensive car without getting pulled over every 2 miles, then you want that privilege, too. You do believe it is owed to you because that would makes things fair -- and there's nothing wrong with that. That's the whole point of the concept of privilege.

Saying that people who lack a privilege don't deserve it runs counter to that. The idea is that no one is undeserving.

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10 Nov 2013, 6:31 am

LKL wrote:

AspieOtaku wrote:

Time for me to check my privilege then!

This is actually the right basic idea, although it's a little simplistic and the numbers assigned by the creator seem to have been based on his personal opinion and nothing else.

I really don't agree with the way it's scored. Seems to be done by a guy who believes women are privileged (even if they're queer) and that trans people are limited to those who actually want to transition (and genderqueers don't exist.) The most obvious mistake to me is that he seems to think that you have to be below to poverty line before class becomes an issue (and how much wealth was in the house when you were growing up doesn't seem to matter.)

And yes, I've used male pronouns because I can't see this game not being made by a cis guy. If it's made by someone who isn't a cis guy, my mind will be blown.

Also he seems a bit antisemitic and thinks Asians don't suffer racism (and I know bloody well they do.)

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10 Nov 2013, 7:07 am

LKL wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

One cannot make inferences about individuals on the basis of group characteristics. Claiming that an individual has privilege because he or she belongs to a specific group is an ecological fallacy by definition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy

The very second the OP used words "straight", "white", "male" and privilege in the same sentence, he was automatically judging millions of individuals not by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin, their gender and their sexual orientation.

Being met with the word privilege is also extremely denigrating to those individuals who do not share those privileged qualities that are effectively assumed to be present. Try asking a poor white man with no high-school diploma living in rural Mississippi on government assistance how he feels about white privilege.

Last edited by GGPViper on 10 Nov 2013, 7:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

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10 Nov 2013, 7:09 am

GGPViper wrote:

Try asking a poor white man with no high-school diploma living in rural Mississippi on government assistance how he feels about white privilege.

I've tried pointing this out as an ineffective tool of persuasion in the past; no one seems to have gotten the message.

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10 Nov 2013, 8:01 am

LKL wrote:

You assume too much. I never said racism doesn't exist. However I don't think there is a racist behind every tree and in every shadow. Most of what I have read places people who actually act on prejudice at a minuscule percentage of the population. There are obviously non racism reasons for why the Hispanic guys you know are lower middle class. What is their education level, are they fluent in English, how much money do they save and invest, etc.

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10 Nov 2013, 8:40 am

AspieOtaku wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

jrjones9933 wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

The word "Privilege" (assuming one is not referring to the more narrow legal concept of right vs. privilege), whether it be white, male, heterosexual or [insert category here], is a non-falsifiable term designed to impose collective guilt upon [insert category here] and create a destructive "Us vs. Them" mentality. It is a divisive term by definition, and humanity would be better off if it was to disappear from the English language altogether.

It was bad enough when "Privilege" was just another feminist crap pseudo-scientific term. Must it infect questions of race and sexuality as well?

Privilege is clearly falsifiable. If (in the example that I gave just above) equally-qualified job applicants got a similar number of calls for interviews, that would disprove the notion of privilege. Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination are divisive. Demonstrating their existence will make privileged people feel uncomfortable, but refusing to perpetuate the system of privilege should help alleviate that discomfort.

What I said. The purpose of the term privilege is to assign blame to people simply because they belong to a specific category, and not because of their actions.

The term 'privilege' simply means that you have benefits (but not rights) other people do not have, for example because of your skin color. Collective guilt has nothing to do with it. There's a difference between creating awareness of these privileges and creating divisors. Since a black person is three times as likely to live below the poverty line as a white person, one can safely assume that there is a privilege to being white.

The word was never a feminist pseudo-scientific term, but a French word from the early Medieval period who refered to special grants or permits to selected people. As long as the notion that black people are different from white people is promoted, white people will always have privileges in the US. If there was an equivalent to the n-word specifically for white people, saying the word out loud would land you a very hefty fine.

Well there is cracker, honky, peckerwood, white trash, whitie, and white devil. Theres no fine for saying that they can say it to white folks all the time in a hateful tone and get away with it.

White trash refers to a specific subset of white people (typically the guests on stage on talk shows such as Dr. Phil). The other words have no connection to slavery or something similar. Furthermore, while there are racists in every race, there's no racism against white people in the US on an institutional level. This is a massive privilege.

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10 Nov 2013, 8:47 am

puddingmouse wrote:

This

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