But how is that any different than the argument of privilege? If someone understands the argument of straight white male privilege (I do) but disagrees with it (I do), how will any of this content convince them?
It's not that I don't understand the language or object to the specific terms used. I'm quite a bit past that.
I'm going to say something here, I mean absolutely nothing by it and it's not directed at anyone. But it's an absolute analogy of what the article is doing:
"You're not dumb, you're intelligence stat is low."
It's as if the article assumes the problem is that people don't understand the topic. And sure, there's some sub-set of people in that box. But I don't think the method of presentation is going to win over any meaningful part of that sub-set of people either. Whether you understand the topic or not, the article is dead weight.
Then good for you for understanding; the article is not aimed at you. And nowhere does the article say "you're not privileged."
It's not about convincing; it's about explaining. If you already understand the argument and disagree, then that's fine. No amount of additional explanation is going to change the facts that you have based your opinion on.
Pete and I had this conversation last night: If someone is racist, explaining what racism is to them is not going to help the problem. That person is still going to be racist. The explanation is only helpful when someone doesn't fully understand what racism is and needs it explained in a way that he/she "gets" it. That's what this article is trying to do; it frames it in a different way so people who don't already get it have another way to look at it.
This article is essentially attempting to explain privilege without using the word privilege in the explanation. Hence the mission statement at the beginning of the article: "So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?"
The counterpoint to that being that he explained it in a way that makes gamers freak out about it even more.
The fact that so many of you are so touchy about the fact that straight white middle-class-and-up men do have a substantial advantage over pretty-much everyone else is telling.
Yeah so on that note, did anybody actually read the article before bitching about it? I mean, that mission statement appears within the first few paragraphs. Likewise, the end clearly lays out that you don't get to choose your settings in life.
I think I'm done discussing this article with people who didn't read it or didn't pick up the main content.
The fact that so many of you are so touchy about the fact that straight white middle-class-and-up men do have a substantial advantage over pretty-much everyone else is telling.
Where "so many of us" is, in fact, two people: Andrew and Nineless, with Creamstak a possible third.
The fact that so many of you are so touchy about the fact that straight white middle-class-and-up men do have a substantial advantage over pretty-much everyone else is telling.
Where "so many of us" is, in fact, two people: Andrew and Nineless.
No, add Pete to that list. He was acutely uncomfortable with the discussion too.
It makes sense that you would be uncomfortable with someone saying that you are, essentially, BETTER than other groups in a certain way. All your life you have had it drilled into you that you are not better just by virtue of your race. The concept of racial privilege seems directly contradictory to that unless you parse it very carefully.
It makes sense that you would be uncomfortable with someone saying that you are, essentially, BETTER than other groups in a certain way. All your life you have had it drilled into you that you are not better just by virtue of your race. The concept of racial privilege seems directly contradictory to that unless you parse it very carefully.
THIS. I've been trying to pin down why the whole concept and discussion bothered me. I totally understand the concepts presented and acknowledge them, but it's so unnerving to have people tell you that you are inherently better than people because of your skin. I desperately don't want this to be the case and it makes me feel helpless and guilty.
I don't know why it's so hard for people to grasp the idea that there is no objective knowledge when it comes to social issues. It's real simple; your viewpoint cannot be the deciding one. If you are not offended, insulted, or attacked by something, it does not mean that this is true for everyone, and it does not make the people who are somehow deficient.
That's the take away from all this bullshit about privilege; it's very easy to ignore an issue when it doesn't affect you. When you don't experience discrimination, you find it harder to see it affecting people. When people claim to be colourblind, it's usually because they've never experienced racism. When people claim that gender doesn't matter, it's usually because their gender has never been an issue with what they've wanted to do. It's easy to deny the existence of experiences you've never had.
It makes sense that you would be uncomfortable with someone saying that you are, essentially, BETTER than other groups in a certain way. All your life you have had it drilled into you that you are not better just by virtue of your race. The concept of racial privilege seems directly contradictory to that unless you parse it very carefully.
THIS. I've been trying to pin down why the whole concept and discussion bothered me. I totally understand the concepts presented and acknowledge them, but it's so unnerving to have people tell you that you are inherently better than people because of your skin. I desperately don't want this to be the case and it makes me feel helpless and guilty.
It's not that you are better, it's that you have it better, on average. Going back to the video game metaphor, it isn't that playing on the easier difficulty makes you more skilled, it just means that challenges, on average, are lesser.
Yeah, it's uncomfortable to hear. But honestly, we're lucky to be uncomfortable with the privilege we have rather than dealing with the fallout from the privileges we don't have.
To level things on the discussion at hand here, if the point was the educate and provide information to the people... then why did you drop a link to the article here? Do you feel that someone here simply didn't understand the argument? That's certainly possible, but that isn't what I've gathered from following the conversation so-far.
Also, I'll openly admit that it mildly irks me that he directs that bold line at straight white males specifically (but not because I might be categorized as S W and M most of the time). It would be no different if he had picked any other category. Those attributes are not the comprehensive factor in whether or not someone understands (or agrees with) the argument, or at least that's my perspective. Bad form.
The problem is rather simple, someone having a privileged status may inform their perspectives. But being of a privileged status does not change the value of their perspectives. That's really all there is to it. Certainly, people have advantages and disadvantages. But this has no bearing on the validity of anything. It's as simple as that, as I see it.
So long as the argument of privilege is simply that it exists, I don't mind it. It's also absolutely fine to make (researched and supported) statements of statistics. So long as the argument walks those lines, it's fine.
But the very second you make "statements of fact" without examining all of the specific circumstances, you've crossed an obvious line. If you look at two CEOs, one being white and the other black, and you assume the black one "worked harder" or "had a more difficult time" or "earned it more", that's silly. To evaluate the validity of that statement, you can't be informed by those simple categories. To let your own prejudices about "people with privilege" inform your perspective is to fail that test.
As such, I don't find comments like "check your privilege at the door" to be useful. You should try to remove all your prejudices, whether they come from advantages (privilege) or disadvantage or anything else. You should check all your bullshit (including preconceived notions of another persons privileged perspective) at the door. That is the truth of the thing.
The only problem I have with that is the the majority opinion is usually already (over)represented in any conversation. The reason that the "check your privilege" thing exists in social justice circles is because without it there is just a constant repetition of the same two phenomenon; whenever somebody brings up a life experience, it is fundamentally challenged by a whole bunch of concern trolls (the "shit that never happened" problem), and whenever somebody tries to address a minority issue, a similar issue affecting the social majority is brought up and dominates the conversation entirely (the "what about the menz" problem).
Thus, it's impossible to talk about the 1 in 4 women who will be raped in their lifetime because every conversation about rape has to be about male rape, and it's impossible to point out that most rapists are men and what we can do about that because you make men feel bad, even though it's not an accusation. This pattern repeats every. single. time. For example, on reddit, feminists burned through four different subreddits before they simply started banning divergent viewpoints, because every single thread anyone tried to start would be dominated by "As a man, I think you are overreacting..." (200 upvotes)
(Of course, this lead to such a violent shift of the overton window to the point where these places are now dominated by sex-negative conservatives and over-the-top advocates for the disabled running the euphemism treadmill as hard as they can, but there was a nice period of a couple of months where real discussions could be had.)
It makes sense that you would be uncomfortable with someone saying that you are, essentially, BETTER than other groups in a certain way. All your life you have had it drilled into you that you are not better just by virtue of your race. The concept of racial privilege seems directly contradictory to that unless you parse it very carefully.
THIS. I've been trying to pin down why the whole concept and discussion bothered me. I totally understand the concepts presented and acknowledge them, but it's so unnerving to have people tell you that you are inherently better than people because of your skin. I desperately don't want this to be the case and it makes me feel helpless and guilty.
It's not that you are inherently "better," it's just that you have a statistical advantage. Those are two different things. It is frustrating and uncomfortable to realize that our culture is unfair in this way, but instead of denying privilege and getting upset, its better to understand it and try to deal with it realistically.
Internet conversations will always drift to the lowest common denominator not hedged out by extenuating circumstances. That doesn't make either side "in the right" about a thing. Once again, does anyone disagree with me... on my previous formulation?
It is frustrating and uncomfortable to realize that our culture is unfair in this way, but instead of denying privilege and getting upset, its better to understand it and try to deal with it realistically.
It's not that you are inherently "better," it's just that you have a statistical advantage. Those are two different things. It is frustrating and uncomfortable to realize that our culture is unfair in this way, but instead of denying privilege and getting upset, its better to understand it and try to deal with it realistically.
Certainly. And one can make a similarly statistical argument for how we can behave to better things. Affirmative Action is exactly that. But we should always be informed that we're making statistical decisions on statistical information.
Similarly, if someone challenged me on an issue with the argument that I only have a perspective because I'm privileged in some way, I have to look at it carefully. They could be correct, I have standards but I'm not perfect. But supposing that we carefully examine my perspective and I have gathered the necessary information to construct an independent valid argument, I constructed an independent valid argument and that person should not discount it simply because of said circumstances.
Exactly. The pattern is so predicable that they are considered stock responses and they have cute nicknames in social justice circles.
But see, that's a problem too. :P
By having "stock responses" and "cute nicknames" you're falling victim to the same problematic mentality that creates the problem in the first place...
Similarly, Rym's pithy statements, while potentially evoking some interesting reactions, don't forward the discussion.
Excuse me for my apparent ignorance about "the usual privileged arguments". That's not really my circle so I am/was unaware. If that's how you want to dismiss arguments, that's fine. I guess I am now labeled a "MensRights" dude from now on...
"That guy/girl/whoever" who predictably says "hey, men get raped too!" in any discussion about rape are basically adding nothing and serving only to be douches.
"That guy/girl/whoever" who predictably says "hey, men get raped too!" in any discussion about rape are basically adding nothing and serving only to be douches.
Andrew, it doesn't make you Mens Rights dude. It just means you haven't invested in this stuff. Which is fine, everyone has their spheres of interests, and it's not as though I'm invested in this stuff for selfless reasons.
I was just trying to explain the privilege argument to a friend... I came up with:
[The Privilege Argument] is probably intended to be something more generous like, "Be aware that it's possible that your privileged social status may be informing your opinions." which would be totally reasonable and nobody would argue with that. But that lacks the drama.
Yeah so on that note, did anybody actually read the article before bitching about it? I mean, that mission statement appears within the first few paragraphs. Likewise, the end clearly lays out that you don't get to choose your settings in life.
I think I'm done discussing this article with people who didn't read it or didn't pick up the main content.
So I read the article through.
A perfectly valid and succint description of the concept of white privelege, wrapped up in the most condescending language I could possibly imagine.
I'll skip the obvious problem with the title of the article for now.
1) The initial paragraph immediately sets up an "us/them" conflict. "I've been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them" is one of the most conceited and condescending ways you could possibly introduce your argument. It's the equivalent of talking about a person as though they're not there, right to their face.
2) When the author later identifies as straight white male, he has actually completed his alienation of the straight white male audience. He starts off with a tone that says "I am not one of you," and then graciously lowers himself to "straight white male" status by admitting that he's one of us.
Do you understand how that comes off as maddeningly condescending? He's not talking to straight white males, he's talking at straight white males about straight white males, while simultaneously distancing himself from that group and claiming membership.
It's the sort of reaction I have to a pundit talking about "real hard-working Americans," and how they have [blah] values. It is in fact the exact same sort of phrasing:
You create a value for a certain class, distance yourself from subset A of that class, and extol the virtues of subset B, while creating a veiled slight directed at subset A. When Sarah Palin (for example) talks about "real America," she's extolling the virtues of a particular small subset (mostly small-minded bigots) while simultaneously belittling the rest of America (that does not share the same values) by implying that it's not "real." She also uses that statement to identify herself as a "real American," whether or not she actually has any of the values she ascribes to said "real America."
3) The use of the "difficulty setting" analogy is poor because playing on a harder difficulty setting is a point of pride in video gaming culture. The people who play on "easy" settings are dismissed as being less good, and their accomplishments are less worthwhile. They are dismissed when they talk about the high score they get on "easy" mode.
Sometimes, they're encouraged to play on a higher difficulty setting. That's actually a positive thing, because you can encourage people to strive to improve their position.
However, as the article points out later on, you can't select your difficulty setting, and you can't change it.
So, basically, the "difficulty setting" language is sort of like saying "your accomplishments are less worthwhile than someone else's because of things you cannot control." It's actually more belittling because of the interaction of the analogy with reality - not only am I worth less as a person, I'm worth less because of the way I was born.
----------------------
Of course, most analogies break down on analysis. I think the best analogies hold up to intense, reasonable scrutiny. If you have to bust out the solipsism card to break an analogy, it holds up.
The problem with the article is that the language used to convey the point is condescending and inflammatory to its intended audience. If the author was trolling, it would be a 1/10 troll because it's too obvious.
But if this author is trying to establish a rapport with the people to whom he is trying to speak, he's failed pretty hard.
You need to explain white privilege? Try this:
"White men, historically, have held more literal privileges than anyone else. The effects of centuries of white privilege still have an effect today, as we have institutions that were established and habits created in the midst of white privilege. It's not your fault personally, but it's reality - as a group, white men have it easier than non-white people.
[studies]
Your accomplishments are valuable and worthwhile, and your contributions to society are laudable. However, when someone without centuries of white privilege accomplishes the same thing, it has to be lauded more, at least for the time being, until the concept of white privilege is broken and removed from society. The goal is to have people be lauded primarily by their accomplishments, and not at all by the privilege they may or may not have had."
It bothers me that minority accomplishments are lauded more than equivalent accomplishments from white males. The way I see it, you should be lauded based on the merits of your accomplishments. Judging not by the color of the skin, but by the content of the character. However, because of a lengthy history of oppression, non-whites have a harder time getting just about anything done, so I put up and shut up - mostly.
The problem is trying to get highly privileged white males to surrender their privilege, because it is often a self-sustaining entity. How to fix that? I don't know, but this article is not really helping. Government intervention is the only way I can see it working, and while I dislike a lot of ways that affirmative action initiatives are implemented, I can't see any other way for it to happen.
We need to pick a system that grants "unfair" advantage to under-privileged people and stick with it until white privilege is essentially undone. Then, we need to remove the artificially granted privilege, and establish social equality.
Of course, if we establish artificial privilege for a different class of people, and continue that culture of privilege for long enough, then we might eliminate white privilege and establish non-white privilege. Which, frankly, would be just as problematic.
I don't think that means we shouldn't try, but we do need to understand that we run a very serious risk of just fighting over a ball of privilege.
tl;dr: The article in question is right about privilege, but poor language and wording choices prevent it from accomplishing its purpose. The idea has to be communicated in a way that is neither condescending nor attacking.
Comments
It's not that I don't understand the language or object to the specific terms used. I'm quite a bit past that.
I'm going to say something here, I mean absolutely nothing by it and it's not directed at anyone. But it's an absolute analogy of what the article is doing: It's as if the article assumes the problem is that people don't understand the topic. And sure, there's some sub-set of people in that box. But I don't think the method of presentation is going to win over any meaningful part of that sub-set of people either. Whether you understand the topic or not, the article is dead weight.
It's not about convincing; it's about explaining. If you already understand the argument and disagree, then that's fine. No amount of additional explanation is going to change the facts that you have based your opinion on.
Pete and I had this conversation last night: If someone is racist, explaining what racism is to them is not going to help the problem. That person is still going to be racist. The explanation is only helpful when someone doesn't fully understand what racism is and needs it explained in a way that he/she "gets" it. That's what this article is trying to do; it frames it in a different way so people who don't already get it have another way to look at it.
This article is essentially attempting to explain privilege without using the word privilege in the explanation. Hence the mission statement at the beginning of the article: "So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?"
The counterpoint to that being that he explained it in a way that makes gamers freak out about it even more.
I think I'm done discussing this article with people who didn't read it or didn't pick up the main content.
It makes sense that you would be uncomfortable with someone saying that you are, essentially, BETTER than other groups in a certain way. All your life you have had it drilled into you that you are not better just by virtue of your race. The concept of racial privilege seems directly contradictory to that unless you parse it very carefully.
That's the take away from all this bullshit about privilege; it's very easy to ignore an issue when it doesn't affect you. When you don't experience discrimination, you find it harder to see it affecting people. When people claim to be colourblind, it's usually because they've never experienced racism. When people claim that gender doesn't matter, it's usually because their gender has never been an issue with what they've wanted to do. It's easy to deny the existence of experiences you've never had. It's not that you are better, it's that you have it better, on average. Going back to the video game metaphor, it isn't that playing on the easier difficulty makes you more skilled, it just means that challenges, on average, are lesser.
Yeah, it's uncomfortable to hear. But honestly, we're lucky to be uncomfortable with the privilege we have rather than dealing with the fallout from the privileges we don't have.
Also, I'll openly admit that it mildly irks me that he directs that bold line at straight white males specifically (but not because I might be categorized as S W and M most of the time). It would be no different if he had picked any other category. Those attributes are not the comprehensive factor in whether or not someone understands (or agrees with) the argument, or at least that's my perspective. Bad form.
The problem is rather simple, someone having a privileged status may inform their perspectives. But being of a privileged status does not change the value of their perspectives. That's really all there is to it. Certainly, people have advantages and disadvantages. But this has no bearing on the validity of anything. It's as simple as that, as I see it.
So long as the argument of privilege is simply that it exists, I don't mind it. It's also absolutely fine to make (researched and supported) statements of statistics. So long as the argument walks those lines, it's fine.
But the very second you make "statements of fact" without examining all of the specific circumstances, you've crossed an obvious line. If you look at two CEOs, one being white and the other black, and you assume the black one "worked harder" or "had a more difficult time" or "earned it more", that's silly. To evaluate the validity of that statement, you can't be informed by those simple categories. To let your own prejudices about "people with privilege" inform your perspective is to fail that test.
As such, I don't find comments like "check your privilege at the door" to be useful. You should try to remove all your prejudices, whether they come from advantages (privilege) or disadvantage or anything else. You should check all your bullshit (including preconceived notions of another persons privileged perspective) at the door. That is the truth of the thing.
Anyone disagree with me on that?
Thus, it's impossible to talk about the 1 in 4 women who will be raped in their lifetime because every conversation about rape has to be about male rape, and it's impossible to point out that most rapists are men and what we can do about that because you make men feel bad, even though it's not an accusation. This pattern repeats every. single. time. For example, on reddit, feminists burned through four different subreddits before they simply started banning divergent viewpoints, because every single thread anyone tried to start would be dominated by "As a man, I think you are overreacting..." (200 upvotes)
(Of course, this lead to such a violent shift of the overton window to the point where these places are now dominated by sex-negative conservatives and over-the-top advocates for the disabled running the euphemism treadmill as hard as they can, but there was a nice period of a couple of months where real discussions could be had.)
Similarly, if someone challenged me on an issue with the argument that I only have a perspective because I'm privileged in some way, I have to look at it carefully. They could be correct, I have standards but I'm not perfect. But supposing that we carefully examine my perspective and I have gathered the necessary information to construct an independent valid argument, I constructed an independent valid argument and that person should not discount it simply because of said circumstances.
By having "stock responses" and "cute nicknames" you're falling victim to the same problematic mentality that creates the problem in the first place...
Similarly, Rym's pithy statements, while potentially evoking some interesting reactions, don't forward the discussion.
"That guy/girl/whoever" who predictably says "hey, men get raped too!" in any discussion about rape are basically adding nothing and serving only to be douches.
Besides, the MRA guys tend to be an order of magnitude more nutty than anything posted here. This site is devoted to some more spectacular examples.
Curious, where does douche fit on the bitch to cunt scale?
[The Privilege Argument] is probably intended to be something more generous like, "Be aware that it's possible that your privileged social status may be informing your opinions." which would be totally reasonable and nobody would argue with that. But that lacks the drama.
A perfectly valid and succint description of the concept of white privelege, wrapped up in the most condescending language I could possibly imagine.
I'll skip the obvious problem with the title of the article for now.
1) The initial paragraph immediately sets up an "us/them" conflict. "I've been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them" is one of the most conceited and condescending ways you could possibly introduce your argument. It's the equivalent of talking about a person as though they're not there, right to their face.
2) When the author later identifies as straight white male, he has actually completed his alienation of the straight white male audience. He starts off with a tone that says "I am not one of you," and then graciously lowers himself to "straight white male" status by admitting that he's one of us.
Do you understand how that comes off as maddeningly condescending? He's not talking to straight white males, he's talking at straight white males about straight white males, while simultaneously distancing himself from that group and claiming membership.
It's the sort of reaction I have to a pundit talking about "real hard-working Americans," and how they have [blah] values. It is in fact the exact same sort of phrasing:
You create a value for a certain class, distance yourself from subset A of that class, and extol the virtues of subset B, while creating a veiled slight directed at subset A. When Sarah Palin (for example) talks about "real America," she's extolling the virtues of a particular small subset (mostly small-minded bigots) while simultaneously belittling the rest of America (that does not share the same values) by implying that it's not "real." She also uses that statement to identify herself as a "real American," whether or not she actually has any of the values she ascribes to said "real America."
3) The use of the "difficulty setting" analogy is poor because playing on a harder difficulty setting is a point of pride in video gaming culture. The people who play on "easy" settings are dismissed as being less good, and their accomplishments are less worthwhile. They are dismissed when they talk about the high score they get on "easy" mode.
Sometimes, they're encouraged to play on a higher difficulty setting. That's actually a positive thing, because you can encourage people to strive to improve their position.
However, as the article points out later on, you can't select your difficulty setting, and you can't change it.
So, basically, the "difficulty setting" language is sort of like saying "your accomplishments are less worthwhile than someone else's because of things you cannot control." It's actually more belittling because of the interaction of the analogy with reality - not only am I worth less as a person, I'm worth less because of the way I was born.
----------------------
Of course, most analogies break down on analysis. I think the best analogies hold up to intense, reasonable scrutiny. If you have to bust out the solipsism card to break an analogy, it holds up.
The problem with the article is that the language used to convey the point is condescending and inflammatory to its intended audience. If the author was trolling, it would be a 1/10 troll because it's too obvious.
But if this author is trying to establish a rapport with the people to whom he is trying to speak, he's failed pretty hard.
You need to explain white privilege? Try this:
"White men, historically, have held more literal privileges than anyone else. The effects of centuries of white privilege still have an effect today, as we have institutions that were established and habits created in the midst of white privilege. It's not your fault personally, but it's reality - as a group, white men have it easier than non-white people.
[studies]
Your accomplishments are valuable and worthwhile, and your contributions to society are laudable. However, when someone without centuries of white privilege accomplishes the same thing, it has to be lauded more, at least for the time being, until the concept of white privilege is broken and removed from society. The goal is to have people be lauded primarily by their accomplishments, and not at all by the privilege they may or may not have had."
It bothers me that minority accomplishments are lauded more than equivalent accomplishments from white males. The way I see it, you should be lauded based on the merits of your accomplishments. Judging not by the color of the skin, but by the content of the character. However, because of a lengthy history of oppression, non-whites have a harder time getting just about anything done, so I put up and shut up - mostly.
The problem is trying to get highly privileged white males to surrender their privilege, because it is often a self-sustaining entity. How to fix that? I don't know, but this article is not really helping. Government intervention is the only way I can see it working, and while I dislike a lot of ways that affirmative action initiatives are implemented, I can't see any other way for it to happen.
We need to pick a system that grants "unfair" advantage to under-privileged people and stick with it until white privilege is essentially undone. Then, we need to remove the artificially granted privilege, and establish social equality.
Of course, if we establish artificial privilege for a different class of people, and continue that culture of privilege for long enough, then we might eliminate white privilege and establish non-white privilege. Which, frankly, would be just as problematic.
I don't think that means we shouldn't try, but we do need to understand that we run a very serious risk of just fighting over a ball of privilege.
tl;dr: The article in question is right about privilege, but poor language and wording choices prevent it from accomplishing its purpose. The idea has to be communicated in a way that is neither condescending nor attacking.