A Question of Privilege

[Axulus]

Good essay. Here are some excerpts:

My university-aged daughter is always telling me about the “privilege” that people like me have and how it makes it impossible for me to understand and empathise with those whose lives are without such privilege. I do see her point. I’ve never been black or gay or trans or gender queer or mentally ill. I don’t know what it would be like to grow up in a derelict building in a dangerous neighbourhood, to have drug addicts for parents, to fear for my safety while walking to school, to be openly despised for being female, denied education or refused employment based on my skin colour or gender. And while I have been poor enough not to be able to afford a car or health insurance, I have never been so poor I had to steal food. Clearly, I’ve not suffered the worst of what society can throw at a person.

Nonetheless, this whole notion of “privilege” vexes me. We talk about it as though we can all recognise what it is. I am not always so sure. I can tell one narrative of my life and it seems to describe someone who grew up without privilege, and I can tell another narrative and it seems almost as though my life was one of ease and privilege from the time I was born.

Let’s start with my father, who was illegitimate, rejected by his own family and adopted by someone named “Leimbach” whom I never met. He was complicated in every way, moody and depressive and dissatisfied with life. He’d already left one marriage and child before marrying my mother. He paid no attention to me unless I threw up or hurt myself, perhaps because he was so unhappy. When I was about four years old, he took one of the many guns he kept in the basement and shot himself in the head. We were all in the house, ten o’clock in the morning. My sister and I were told to go to our room and stay there. Then, we were moved to the neighbour’s house, where I was given an egg salad sandwich and told not to look out the windows.

He left my mother with three tiny children and no life insurance payout. This was the 1960’s when women working was unusual and they were badly paid.

...

But there is another story and it is one of remarkable privilege. Let me tell you this one, which I prefer telling and in which I overcome no great hardships. Let’s start with what I looked like: I was born white, healthy, and clever. In fact, even better, I was a pretty child. I grew up in a household in which women were seen as strong, independent, capable people who worked in the “real” world alongside men. I never saw my mother defer to my father or any other man. There was no man to defer to, which I found absolutely wonderful. It made my mother sad that my father had died, and it forced her to work, too. But there were books all over the house, and three or four dogs lying around at any one time. Anyway, it turned out she liked working, at least at first.

...

http://martileimbach.com/2016/04/14/a-question-of-privilege/

 

[Crazy Eddie]

GOOD READ!

 

[untermensche]

This is the individual story which can go in many directions.

The individual is a leaf in the wind. Sometimes protected and shielded from the wind, sometimes blown about.

But in the US something like white privilege was deliberately established and still exists in many places but is weakened.

Real power is mainly in the hands of white people. The most rich are mainly white.

Like the mainly white bankers who tell Obama what to do.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This is the individual story which can go in many directions.

The individual is a leaf in the wind. Sometimes protected and shielded from the wind, sometimes blown about.

But in the US something like white privilege was deliberately established and still exists in many places but is weakened.

Real power is mainly in the hands of white people. The most rich are mainly white.

Like the mainly white bankers who tell Obama what to do.

I think you mean "who politely ask Obama". They always make sure to phrase their orders in the form of a question, both for liability issues and because of proper breeding. Say what you will about the evil oligarchs who rule our society, but you can't legitimately question their manners.

 

[arkirk]

This is the individual story which can go in many directions.

The individual is a leaf in the wind. Sometimes protected and shielded from the wind, sometimes blown about.

But in the US something like white privilege was deliberately established and still exists in many places but is weakened.

Real power is mainly in the hands of white people. The most rich are mainly white.

Like the mainly white bankers who tell Obama what to do.

I think you mean "who politely ask Obama". They always make sure to phrase their orders in the form of a question, both for liability issues and because of proper breeding. Say what you will about the evil oligarchs who rule our society, but you can't legitimately question their manners.

Tom, Tom! We have oligarchs like Trump here. No, they are not polite, especially in private! Of course if profit is in it, they could be polite just a short while. Obama has been the most abused and disrespected president we have had in a long time. I don't try to tell you how Canadian oligarchs act, but we have had a congress that gets downright insulting with Obama....not that it isn't perhaps deserved.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Many Chinese who came to America and were poor became wealthy. Does this mean we have Chinese privilege? This does not invalidate the fact there are under privileged but there are a lot of exceptions to the rule where people have been fortunate enough to be able to change their circumstances (even if it took a couple of generations).

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Interesting, I feel the exact same way for the use of the word "entitlements" (with respect to Social Security and Medicare) by right wingers.

 

[Barbarian]

The use of 'privilege' instead of 'luck' vexes me too, but for a different reason. 'Privilege', as used in these contexts, is an intentionally loaded and twisted word, because originally it meant that you actively sought some advantage for yourself which you kept by force and flouted whenever possible. This connotation is still alive and well, and this is why many people, myself included, see these uses of it as offensive. Try to pick any SJW screed about 'privilege' and replace every instance of the word with 'luck' and see how the entire screed becomes mostly true but also totally trivial, and you'll see why this word was chosen.

 

[bigfield]

The article illustrates two mistakes committed by people, like Leimbach's daughter, who misapply the sociological concept of privilege.

Firstly, sociologists only compare groups when discussing privilege. White privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc. They compare group averages with respect to outcomes and identify which groups have an advantage over other groups.

Secondly, sociology typically only discusses a limited number of classifications. They usually cover race, sex, sexuality, socioeconomic status, religion etc. As Leimbach illustrates, these are not the only factors which determine a persons advantages in life; a person can also be disadvantaged by the death of a parent (or both), an abusive or neglectful household, a conservative religion, a corrupt boarding school, etc. Some other factors include physical and mental ability and disability, height, beauty, extroversion, etc.

Amateur social theorists, like Leimbach's daughter, often commit an ecological fallacy: They take the characteristics of groups and use them to make conclusions about individuals. For example, whites Americans are privileged relative to black Americans, but that cannot be used to show that a given white American is more privileged than a given black American.

 

[bigfield]

This is quote-mining:

But there is another story and it is one of remarkable privilege. Let me tell you this one, which I prefer telling and in which I overcome no great hardships. Let’s start with what I looked like: I was born white, healthy, and clever. In fact, even better, I was a pretty child. I grew up in a household in which women were seen as strong, independent, capable people who worked in the “real” world alongside men. I never saw my mother defer to my father or any other man. There was no man to defer to, which I found absolutely wonderful. It made my mother sad that my father had died, and it forced her to work, too. But there were books all over the house, and three or four dogs lying around at any one time. Anyway, it turned out she liked working, at least at first.

"Anyway, it turned out she liked working, at least at first."

She stopped liking it because she was dying of a brain tumour, not because of a poor work ethic or a lack of ability.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This is the individual story which can go in many directions.

The individual is a leaf in the wind. Sometimes protected and shielded from the wind, sometimes blown about.

But in the US something like white privilege was deliberately established and still exists in many places but is weakened.

Real power is mainly in the hands of white people. The most rich are mainly white.

Like the mainly white bankers who tell Obama what to do.

The thing is, Privilege is ultimately just the statistical sum of people's prejudices and the capacity to transcend them to achieve a positive outcome. White people find this both easier and less neccesary to do than people of color.

The whole point of checking your privileges is to take a realistic look at the advantages you started with and the resources you were given at birth, compared to the disadvantages you had to overcome in order to get where you currently are. The point of this exercise isn't to give proper credit to your privileged/unprivileged status in American society, but to form a realistic self image of what you accomplished and how. That's an important thing; people delude themselves into thinking they're "self made men" who started with nothing and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps just because they're so totally badass. The truth is, we all start with a set of advantages and a set of handicaps: white males play life on easy mode, but have higher expectations from just about everyone; women of all races are under pressure from a thousand directions to present themselves as sex objects and then scorned by society if and when they ever do; black people start with an inherent barrier to employment that they have to overcome by being twice as qualified as the next white applicant, which basically forces them to pursue professional excellence as a survival tactic; Latinos are stereotyped as being ultra-hard working laborers and can sometimes bluff their way into jobs they are woefully unqualified for, forcing some workers to pick up a VERY fast learning curve in order to survive.

If you recognize that everyone starts in different places with different strengths and weaknesses, it's easier to empathize with people who haven't enjoyed as much success in life. There's nothing wrong with having a giant head start in marathon race; the issue is that those who have the head start sometimes look back on those who didn't and mock them for not being able to keep up.

 

[Bronzeage]

Not every privileged person gets their privileges.

Life is full of tough breaks and the fact that some people waste their privilege is not evidence that privilege does not exist.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Part of the problem with being privileged (Free, white and 21) is that many such privileged persons see privilege as a zero sum game. To add more privilege to say, women, reduces my privilege and rights. And thus resentment, and an over-sensitive way of viewing possible encroachments on that privilege

 

[Bronzeage]

Part of the problem with being privileged (Free, white and 21) is that many such privileged persons see privilege as a zero sum game. To add more privilege to say, women, reduces my privilege and rights. And thus resentment, and an over-sensitive way of viewing possible encroachments on that privilege

This is known as "Conservation of Privilege." It is the idea that anything which promotes equality diminishes the position of the better off.