Another White Guy Tries To Explain Privilege

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I totally regret all those times I've painted people as the oppressor. No, wait, I haven't done that and neither did the author of the article I linked to.

Dox47, you're arguing against people who aren't here, opposing arguments that haven't been made here.

I wasn't arguing against a specific point, but rather pointing out how arguing about "privilege" generally tends to fail, for all the reasons I pointed out, plus some I didn't. There's a whole thread attached to that link, I only excerpted my opener.

Not necessarily. Evidence of privilege is simply evidence of privilege. Suppose a newcomer enters a country, that country is welcoming and open minded. It is still entirely possible for that person to experience bad outcomes based on their lack of familiarity with that culture and its rules. Many cultures have social contracts that are very difficult to understand, that were developed in isolation and do privilege those that follow them. It is however a bit of a stretch to claim that the culture under question is xenophobic or systematically oppressing an outsider that they have no collective experience of. Thus your treatment of privilege=systematically oppression is highly simplistic.

Privilege, within its most benign form, is simply collective culture and experience. Such experience is necessarily limited to those who share it. If decide that I want to learn a language like Navajo, I am at a disadvantage in that effort to a native person of that culture. It does not follow that the culture in question is systematically oppressing me. Thus, if you want to cross from privilege to discrimination, privilege is certainly an interesting starting point, but you will need other factors to really explore the subject matter.

So, no one can ever bring up a new way to discuss social preferences for particular types of people? Or, no one can succeed at bringing up a new way to discuss it because people will always be able to refuse to discuss the new angle and will prefer to rehash old arguments that have no relevance to the new approach to the topic?

You seem to have made a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, in that you argue that no one can talk about privilege because people will refuse to discuss anything except the arguments that you are making.