Explaining Privilege: It may not be what you think.

[Emily Lake]

Well I guess it’s good to see that admission to Harvard remains the ONLY form of discrimination against white men. Nice that it makes it easy for Derec to respond when he never has to look anything up because there’s only the one problem, so he can just reuse the same argument. That’s handy.

Also handy that the ONLY thing that matters in college success is SAT scores, so derec can claim that alone should be everyone’s measure for admissions.

It’sa simple life in a two-sided dice world.

It would also be nice to have information about the economic backgrounds of the students, by ethnicity. I'd guess that the white students with higher SAT scores also had private schooling, extensive SAT prep, and other educational opportunities that weren't available to Hispanic and black students.

 

[steve_bank]

Given the times the oft quoted '..all men are created equal..' did not mean any kind of social or economic or any kind of equality. In the times it meant there were no special privilege's by birth or aristocratic titlem No social deference by title.

Today the Obama kids will have a privilege's only afforded a small number of people.

Acess to upper levels from the family identity and position of Barak Obama. Access to the best education.

No one except maybe some white supremacists begrudge the family its success, Obama most definitely earned it. It is as American as it gets.

Is the Obama family privilege just when compared to kids at the bottom?

A kid with parents in science is likely to grow up with good math skills, is that unjust privilege's? Same for pro sports athletes.

There is a tendency on the left and in mainstream media to practice selective morality and ethics, and narrowly focus on specific cases.

It is th way the system has always been.

The idea was a constant churning across social starat that allows those from the bottom to the top.

Both Hilary and Bill had small beginnings.

Maybe the best example is Jobs, Wazniac, and Apple which started in a garage with an idea. The original HP sated in a garage with a couple of engineers.

Our system has positives and negatives and there is always forms of privilege's. The idea that across the entire nation we will have a uniform homogeneous primary education outcome is a bit fanciful. There are too many family and social variables that produce forms of privledge.

The Soviets tried to force a leveling by isolating family from education and heavy school indoctrination, and it failed. It produced a dull and lifeless culture that stagnated while the west advanced.

 

[Metaphor]

The same thing is true with respect to height. Most things in the world are built to accommodate the normal height range of humans. For those of us who are quite a bit shorter than average, that can present a challenge that other people aren't even aware of. For example, when I'm at the grocery store, I end up either having to ask a stranger to get something off of a top shelf for me, or I climb the shelves. I'm 46 years old, and I end up scaling the shelves like a monkey because I can't reach the top shelf. It's embarrassing... and it's something that most people never even think about. Most people can reach those shelves just fine, and it never even occurs to them that the height could be a barrier.

It's funny. For a moment I thought you were going to talk about the difficulties the very tall face, like hypervigilance around every doorway and pneumatic elbow in existence ready to brain us the moment we have a spatial misjudgment, or complete strangers on public transport asking us if we are aware we are tall, or finding that the 'extra tall' shirt and sleeve lengths are designed for the shockingly tall 6'2" man.

And short women in supermarkets asking us to get the can off the top shelf.

 

[Metaphor]

The Privilege Cudgel

Emily was correct to say in a previous post that the word privilege to describe the phenomena in the OP is unfortunate, because privilege used to have a different connotation.

My lived experience of people who talk about privilege is that such people pay lip service to intersectionality, but have a specific ordering of their privilege stack and no amount of 'less privileged' scores on some axes of privilege ever matter if you possess a 'more privileged' characteristic. This privilege stack is used to claim epistemic privilege (white people have nothing to say about racism to people of colour, especially black people, men have nothing to say about sexism). It is also used to excuse the moral culpability of prejudiced people on one side of the 'power' divide (only white people can be racist and all white people are racist).

The discussion of privilege is also suffocatingly American.

For all its intersectional rhetoric, it is also maddeningly reductive. I am, according to the standards of the day, white. But I am not Anglo. My parents came from unglamorous parts of Europe and when they came to Australia in the 1970s I guaran-fucking-tee you they were not treated like the Anglo-Celtic whites in Australia. We were wogs. I do not have an Anglo name. But reducing me to white erases everything else about my culture and ethnic background.

My lived experience of people who talk about privilege are also the people who will be instantly and unapologetically ageist when they dismiss a group of older white men as 'male, pale, and stale'.

My lived experience of people who talk about privilege is undiluted venom directed at anybody who asks questions about it. Asking women for the ways they are privileged over men is enough to evoke instant rage, even though there are very clear ways women are privileged over men (and vice versa).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are hard pressed to say to whites in Appalachia and in depressed coal areas that they are priviledged.

Ever here wqhites use the term white trash or trailer trash for other whites?

Exactly. It's socioeconomic, not racial.

On NPR there was a discussion about a black women from Africa living in England who had a film role about a black American activist. The woman on NPR was furious it was not played by an American black, She also complained immigrant Nigerian women in Ca were rising faster than native born blacks, the actress being from Nigeria.

Of course, because this exposes the claims that they are being held back by racism as a lie.

In the 60s I dated an Italian girl with immigrant parents. Her father started a successful sausage company in the face of bias. An Italian uncle married into my family and it was a long time before my father and uncles accepted him.

Yup, racism is not purely white. I have relatives I never met (the marriage that made them relatives has ended) because the relation traced through someone racist. Said former relatives knew my wife is married to an American but they think I'm American-born Chinese.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Good explanation. I anticipate the usual suspects coming here to deny privilege even exists, or ignoring this thread altogether.

What I don't understand, is why it seems worth the effort to deny such an obvious and demonstrable thing exists. It's not my fault I'm a white guy, so why pretend that doesn't come with some inherent privilege?

I mean, I try to use that privilege when I can to help those without that privilege, but this isn't a zero sum game.

Differences exist. Duh! The problem with these arguments is that it's just the disparate outcome argument in different clothes. Disparate outcome does not prove discrimination, it only suggests areas to check for discrimination.

Wrong thread - no one is discussing discrimination in this thread.

They just dog-whistled it.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Wrong thread - no one is discussing discrimination in this thread.

They just dog-whistled it.

They who?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not replying to Derec. Just wanted to point out to the unaware reader that this graph represents a time not soon after Black people were substantially oppressed. It has been only 50ish years (as of those court documents) since the civil rights movement that white people had the privilege of not needing to do prior to applying at Harvard. So yes, you are going to see a lot of blacks trying to get a piece of the American pie in droves especially by means of affirmative action (a policy that was put in place to counter the privilege Derec claims doesn't exist).

Carry on.

Nope. As you say, 50 years. There would have been a surge at the start due to qualified people who were omitted because of race, but that's long gone. What his graphs show is discrimination, plain and simple. Since it's done in a supposedly good cause I actually find it more evil.

 

[laughing dog]

Wrong thread - no one is discussing discrimination in this thread.

They just dog-whistled it.

I am a dog, and I didn't hear it. Privilege is not necessarily about discrimination. In fact, if you had bothered to read the OP there is no mention of discrimination at all. In fact, I will quote part of the OP that is an apt synopsis:
.

It [privilege] is the gift of not having to think about certain things. It is the gift of freedom from certain concerns, concerns members of other groups must always consider. It is the gift of having the world automatically fit me.

Ironically, your comments in this thread up to this point might be construed as dog whistles for bigots, racists and their dupes.

 

[Gospel]

Not replying to Derec. Just wanted to point out to the unaware reader that this graph represents a time not soon after Black people were substantially oppressed. It has been only 50ish years (as of those court documents) since the civil rights movement that white people had the privilege of not needing to do prior to applying at Harvard. So yes, you are going to see a lot of blacks trying to get a piece of the American pie in droves especially by means of affirmative action (a policy that was put in place to counter the privilege Derec claims doesn't exist).

Carry on.

Nope. As you say, 50 years. There would have been a surge at the start due to qualified people who were omitted because of race, but that's long gone. What his graphs show is discrimination, plain and simple. Since it's done in a supposedly good cause I actually find it more evil.

I'm not very good at writing but because I like this messageboard and take it seriously I'll give it a shot.

I know the words affirmative action is a trigger for you. I get that. looking at the actual graph while keeping the history of the US’ educational system regarding black people in mind makes it clear as day the droves as I called it are not long gone. Black people were intentionally kept ignorant up until the late 1860’s when we were finally allowed to have colored schools (in the north). Obviously colored schools weren’t given the same materials or even allowed to have the same quality of education but we (black people) still made the best of it even after the Civil War that left substantially less northern colored schools in operation and those that were was under attack regularly. The south didn’t even have schools for black people until the after the civil war and even then Blacks were prohibited from getting an education in most places in the south. This was an ongoing theme from 1865 well into the 1950’s.

Side note: The teachers in desegregated schools were predominantly white & often hammered into black students that said students were inferior (north and south schools). This sewed distrust in the school system that even I still experienced in the 90’s through the early 2000’s.

Anyhow that’s just a synopsis of the complex history up to the 1950’s as best as I can put it so that a white person can comfortably digest it without the extremely ugly shit that went on. Now, the civil rights movement happened from 1954 to 1968 with desegregating schools as a major part of its platform. Desegregation wasn’t complete until the 1990’s. YES THE FUCKING 1990’s bro! But the point is not the desegregation but the general treatment of black students in public schools by white teachers and staff as well as the curriculum catered towards the white population that served to keep the SAT scores artificially low for black students and up for white students. All this for just the PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND NOT COLLEGE. The public school are important because you have to go through them to get to college (remember?).

Which leads us to 2000 where this graph is started. With said complex history of the public schools I don’t really need to talk about the colleges themselves to show how we got to this 2000-2016 graph (which shows the constant yet slow improvement in SAT scores). But I’ll hold your hand if you want me to.

Edit: Sorry AthenaAwakened for momentarily hijacking your thread. But this does show a theme of privilege so it's not really off topic.

 

[Toni]

I genuinely think that if a brand new word had been coined for this, there would have been a lot less pushback and objection.

Or maybe some people just whine too much.

That's true--and I will just out and out admit that this is also me.

But I, too, struggle with the word: privilege because I don't see it as 'privilege' but as the way things should be for all people. It should NOT be seen as a privilege to be able to walk through a department store without being followed because you are presumed to be a shoplifter. It should NOT be a privilege to expect your child or your spouse or your friend or yourself to be able to drive (legally, obeying traffic rules, etc) or walk to wherever you need to go without being stopped by police and having your life at risk because you are the 'wrong' color. Or get a job/scholarship/place in a school or on a team, etc.

We ALL like to believe that we earned our place in school, our scholarships, our jobs, our place in society on our own merit. Largely, we did, at least if you grew up on the lower end of middle class like I did, without much in the way of family wealth or position or influence to smooth any bumps you encountered.

But too often, we are so busy congratulating ourselves on achieving whatever successes we have achieved to see how many others who are as intelligent, well educated, hard working, decent people do not get the jobs/scholarships/school admissions/jobs or basic freedom to walk into a store or drive down the road unharassed solely because of the way they look or their gender or who they love, their religion, their culture, their primary language, and more.

At least in this country, we tend to believe that we all have earned our place and if your place ain't so hot, well, that's on you for having a certain coloring or eye shape or hair texture or gender or religion or primary language or whatever is used, consciously and not, to deny people the same access to what is good in life--including the safety and space to just exist.

 

[Emily Lake]

The same thing is true with respect to height. Most things in the world are built to accommodate the normal height range of humans. For those of us who are quite a bit shorter than average, that can present a challenge that other people aren't even aware of. For example, when I'm at the grocery store, I end up either having to ask a stranger to get something off of a top shelf for me, or I climb the shelves. I'm 46 years old, and I end up scaling the shelves like a monkey because I can't reach the top shelf. It's embarrassing... and it's something that most people never even think about. Most people can reach those shelves just fine, and it never even occurs to them that the height could be a barrier.

It's funny. For a moment I thought you were going to talk about the difficulties the very tall face, like hypervigilance around every doorway and pneumatic elbow in existence ready to brain us the moment we have a spatial misjudgment, or complete strangers on public transport asking us if we are aware we are tall, or finding that the 'extra tall' shirt and sleeve lengths are designed for the shockingly tall 6'2" man.

And short women in supermarkets asking us to get the can off the top shelf.

I actually contemplated adding in the extra-tall aspect too, but I don't have any direct experience of it so I kept out of it

I did have a coworker who was 7' tall. Nothing worked for him, all the doorways are too low, all the chairs were like children's chairs. I assume he had to have a lot of his clothing custom made. I never asked though... I saw enough people make comments about his height, and I also saw how uncomfortable it made him.

 

[Gospel]

I have no idea what yall think privilege means. It's not complicated. It means having special rights, advantages, or immunities. The OP (in my opinion) used a poetic analogy (to which some of the obviously less mentally privileged members pointlessly criticized) to draw you in before it covered almost everyone by flat out saying we all have a form of & lack of it one way or another. Instead of getting defensive about your own privileges or offensive from your lack of any privileges it may be a better idea to try to understand the existing & lack of privileges of others. I could be reading it wrong so whatever.

If we can do that (and judging by the reactions here I have my doubts) I'd think it's more likely that as a society we can make privilege a pass time. But we damn sure won't get anywhere doing this shit;

 

[Toni]

I have no idea what yall think privilege means. It's not complicated. It means having special rights, advantages, or immunities. The OP (in my opinion) used a poetic analogy (to which some of the obviously less mentally privileged members pointlessly criticized) to draw you in before it covered almost everyone by flat out saying we all have a form of & lack of it one way or another. Instead of getting defensive about your own privileges or offensive from your lack of any privileges it may be a better idea to try to understand the existing & lack of privileges of others. I could be reading it wrong so whatever.

If we can do that (and judging by the reactions here I have my doubts) I'd think it's more likely that as a society we can make privilege a pass time. But we damn sure won't get anywhere doing this shit;
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The issue is that I don't see being able to walk through a department store unharrassed or drive around in posh neighborhoods or just regular neighborhoods and NOT get pulled over and have to fear for my life at the hands of the police, or being treated fairly for loans, mortgages, offered any neighborhood that meets my stated criteria and price point, being considered equally for jobs, scholarships, seats at institutions of higher learning, etc. Being treated fairly under the law: Being treated as a full citizen of these United States and a full human being actually should not be privilege. I recognize that's how it is for me, for the most part and I think that's how it should be for EVERYONE. If that's 'privilege' then, everyone should be privileged.

Worse, I sometimes lose sight of the FACT that not everyone is treated the same. Much harder to do in recent years. But yeah: people tend to take their experiences as the norm.

Yes, we should see barriers to accessibility to buildings and to jobs, etc. But being black or brown or gay or (insert minority) should not be seen as being disabled. It is society which has the problem, not the minority person.

 

[Gospel]

Toni, you say you don't see [insert your examples here] as privilege because they shouldn't be, then later say you recognize that's how it is for you. You do see it, you just desire others to be on equal terms (as seen in your closing statement). It's like you get it but somehow don't at the same time.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well I guess it’s good to see that admission to Harvard remains the ONLY form of discrimination against white men. Nice that it makes it easy for Derec to respond when he never has to look anything up because there’s only the one problem, so he can just reuse the same argument. That’s handy.

Also handy that the ONLY thing that matters in college success is SAT scores, so derec can claim that alone should be everyone’s measure for admissions.

It’sa simple life in a two-sided dice world.

There are obviously multiple types of discrimination. That doesn't rebut what Derec is pointing out.

 

[laughing dog]

Well I guess it’s good to see that admission to Harvard remains the ONLY form of discrimination against white men. Nice that it makes it easy for Derec to respond when he never has to look anything up because there’s only the one problem, so he can just reuse the same argument. That’s handy.

Also handy that the ONLY thing that matters in college success is SAT scores, so derec can claim that alone should be everyone’s measure for admissions.

It’sa simple life in a two-sided dice world.

There are obviously multiple types of discrimination. That doesn't rebut what Derec is pointing out.

Again, you are focusing on the molecules of the bark on the trees in the forest, instead of the forest (which is the topic).

 

[Toni]

Sounds like you are describing human civilization going back to the first civilizations.

Should the state be all things to all people all the time regardless of the issue, and is it even possible?

I speak as one who 5 years ago had heart failure resulting in mob9lity limitations. I walk well enough with a cane to get around the city on public transit. I was in a wheel chair for a while. It may sound cliché, but it was eye opening for me.

What pisses me off are the for rent electric bikes and scooters users leave in the middle of sidewalks.

You are not directly invoking race but I assume it is what you are t6alking about.

You are hard pressed to say to whites in Appalachia and in depressed coal areas that they are priviledged.

Ever here wqhites use the term white trash or trailer trash for other whites?

IMO 'privilege' as is now the PC term is something you work for, no one can hand that to you. White immigrants went through the process. It was a long struggle for Irish and Italian. I know thyat from experience growing up in the NYC are in the 50s/60s. In the day Italians made an issue on the recurring portrayal of Italians on TV and in movies as being criminal thugs. They seceded in forcing changes in the original Godfather movie.


On NPR there was a discussion about a black women from Africa living in England who had a film role about a black American activist. The woman on NPR was furious it was not played by an American black, She also complained immigrant Nigerian women in Ca were rising faster than native born blacks, the actress being from Nigeria.

I worked for an engineering company started by Iranian immigrants. They came over with nothing, went to school, got experience, and started a company. They made their own privilege's. Nothing was handed to them.

In the 60s I dated an Italian girl with immigrant parents. Her father started a successful sausage company in the face of bias. An Italian uncle married into my family and it was a long time before my father and uncles accepted him.

I did not grow up in Appalachia but I did spend some time in my childhood without an indoor toilet and can remember very well when both sets of grandparents got indoor plumbing (aside from the well pump in the kitchen). My father never slept in a heated room until he was married and yes, it was the Midwest so real winters. I never considered myself poor because frankly my family was pretty average in most respects, especially economically.

But my dad worked a white collar job which came with good benefits and a car allowance. He wore a suit nicely and learned good, educated grammar. He was very smart, held a patent and rose as far within his company as anyone with only a high school education could possibly rise. There was nothing about him that would make a stranger think he was not fairly well educated and had grown up in a nice middle class home with two parents, nice clothes and 3 squares a day and maybe a summer job instead of working in a small farm where the plow was pulled by a mile or a horse and his first job was serving as weight to hold that plow down and to jump off and move the rocks out of the way. He was five years old. He only finished high school out sheer cussedness: his dad wanted him to drop out to help on the farm. I am pretty sure he never had a Christmas present until he was married. But he took wealthy clients to dinners, ate with the president of his company. He could have walked into any restaurant or department store or country club and no one would have considered he did not belong.

Oprah Winfrey was told she could not be shown a handbag because she could never afford it. Professor Gates was arrested in his own home on suspicion of burglary because his neighbor didn’t realize a black man was their neighbor. And so on.

You can grow up dirt poor and still be seen as belonging in any store or restaurant if you’re dressed nicely and have white skin.

If you have black or brown skin, you cannot confidently drive down the street or walk into a convenience store without being under suspicion or worse, no matter how nicely you are dressed, no matter how wealthy or what degrees you have earned.

Because of racism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Differences exist. Duh! The problem with these arguments is that it's just the disparate outcome argument in different clothes. Disparate outcome does not prove discrimination, it only suggests areas to check for discrimination.

It’s the racism of the gaps.

Well, no. That's not what it is. It's not about disparate outcomes - it's about different measures and different rules being applied to different people based on an inherent trait rather than on their abilities and skills. It's about recognizing that we, as humans, build our world. We don't exist in nature as it is, we alter our environments. And generally speaking, the people who design those environments tend to be the 'dominant' group within any given society.

You're assuming the discrimination is real and on a big enough scale to matter.

The same thing is true with respect to height. Most things in the world are built to accommodate the normal height range of humans. For those of us who are quite a bit shorter than average, that can present a challenge that other people aren't even aware of. For example, when I'm at the grocery store, I end up either having to ask a stranger to get something off of a top shelf for me, or I climb the shelves. I'm 46 years old, and I end up scaling the shelves like a monkey because I can't reach the top shelf. It's embarrassing... and it's something that most people never even think about.

But the stores aren't discriminating against you. If they built all the shelves to accommodate you they would have less product per square foot and would have to increase the size of the store, raising prices for everyone. I've been asked a few times and I'm quite used to playing giraffe anyway as she's 4'10".

 

[southernhybrid]

Toni, you say you don't see [insert your examples here] as privilege because they shouldn't be, then later say you recognize that's how it is for you. You do see it, you just desire others to be on equal terms (as seen in your closing statement). It's like you get it but somehow don't at the same time.

I think all that Toni is saying is that the word, "privilege" may be the problem, not that some people aren't treated as equals by others. I totally understand the concept of privilege as it's being used, but I also understand how the word itself has caused a lot of misunderstandings, due to that word's more traditional meaning. I think it would have been better to simply point out that there are a lot of people who aren't being given the basic human rights that we all should be entitled to in a free society, instead of equating those rights as some type of a privilege.

Still, I don't think this is going to change until people live and work together and begin to accept each other as equals. My neighborhood was once all white, but it's becoming a lot more racially diverse as more homes have been sold over the past year, or two, due to the older folks down sizing, dying or moving in with family members. There are a large number of mixed race marriages and relationships here. I applaud that because when we stop looking at each other based on our race or ethnicity and simply see each other as members of the human race, things will gradually get better. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but negativity never helps move us forward. So, I do my best to interact with and befriend people who may not be just like me, when it comes to a multitude of things.

This is always a difficult subject to discuss without a lot of misunderstandings.