Thinking about the broke-ass white person, I can't see any word that describes what we call white privilege that wouldn't stumble on the problem you note. The idea is that all other things equal, your skin color made what would have been a hard life a very hard life. Yeah, you might be broke and have a shitty job, but you're not in prison because a cop planted evidence when they "didn't like your attitude" at a traffic stop for your burned out tail light. Perhaps the problem is that the nature of this concept requires a person to look past their natural reaction and engage in critical thinking. Maybe there's no way to dress it up without substantially warping the meaning.
Agree. Nobody wants to hear the smarmy, "Well it could be worse" response. "Oh your mother died from improper diabetes care in the bass-ackwards Allegheny hospital system? Well it could be worse. You could be BLACK." Jesus. Applied on the individual level, which is truly the only place that changes anything, the "white privilege" approach is appalling. At a certain (higher) class level in society, it functions as a progressive tax on moral superiority, but below a (still pretty high) income and class level, it's a regressive bludgeon. I really think it is not that a broke-ass white person can't think critically (and I don't think you said that, I'm just clarifying), since mostly they can, and maybe a few can't, but more importantly, they've got other shit to worry about in their lives that takes precedence over making space in their brain and time in their daily activities to develop a nuanced and informed view of racism in post-9/11 America. You have to take care of people's basic survival needs and health problems and fears for their children before you expect (keeping in mind that "expecting" is SUCH a class-privileged stance) them to want to sit down and talk about "What The Confederate Flag Means to Me" with a black person. (I just thought of the best argument against me, but I have to go get a haircut.)
I'd say that's mostly because the problem here is that we're focusing on the wrong demographic information. We shouldn't care what race or gender or sexual orientation someone is, we should only care whether or not they need our help. We don't need a social stratification narrative in order to bring help to people who are in need. That does more to fuel outrage culture than it does to actually help anyone.
That's true, but that's the end goal. Right now, there are a lot of people who disagree with that, and not only do they vote but they also have an influence upon society. We need to persuade them. Right now, they think of things in terms of social stratification, and so we have to play in that ballpark, because they refuse to play in ours. We have lots of anti-discrimination laws, and that's good. I think any worthwhile civilization should have those, without exception. But there is still the cultural and social battle to be had, a battle of ideas.We shouldn't care what race or gender or sexual orientation someone is, we should only care whether or not they need our help.
Who exactly are you talking about anyway? Who thinks of things in terms of social stratification? Because intersectional feminists are a pretty tiny portion of the population and aren't really even remotely what I'd call mainstream.We need to persuade them. Right now, they think of things in terms of social stratification, and so we have to play in that ballpark, because they refuse to play in ours.
Why? This is a terrible strategy in my eyes. Letting your opponents dominate the conversation without ever challenging your narrative doesn't get you anywhere.
The mainstream. The people who, if they don't dominate the conversation at least in the beginning, just leave and strengthen their own beliefs while they do it. They already understand the world in X way. We want to replace it with Y way. Before we get to do that, we have to convince them to doubt that X way is the best way. Only when we've done that do we have room at all to start talking about Y way.Who exactly are you talking about anyway?