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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  3176 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Explaining white privilege to a broke white person

I shared it because I thought it was an interesting perspective on the topic from someone who's seen little in the way of tangible privilege. And she even gives criticism that I can relate to as a poor, working white person. Apparently mentioning the topic becomes a referendum on its merits though. I'm not saying this to you specifically because I don't agree with you or whatever, I'm just disappointed with the replies as a whole and I'm tacking this onto the last one that seemed reasonable.





kleinbl00  ·  3176 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's a worthwhile discussion and one that we, as a culture, need to learn how to have. Unfortunately "you don't agree with my argument" doesn't mean "you don't understand my argument" and most of the discussions around the phrase "white privilege" conflate the two.

I know I certainly thought I understood prejudice as a "disadvantaged" ethnicity. It wasn't until spending time amongst African Americans that I realized that while I might have a better idea than most middle class white men my understanding was woefully incomplete. Unfortunately the whole "white privilege" discussion is usually some form of "you lack the moral authority to have an opinion" rather than "here's a perspective you haven't considered" and the Internet isn't helping that. Even perspectives like the one linked above tend to deprecate any individual experience by demonstrating that on average, white people have it better.

End result? Whoever deploys the argument is saying "I hereby nullify your individual experience through averaged demographics."

disbell  ·  3176 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Bringing up privilege shouldn't completely shut down a discussion, but rather give context to it. The context is important, because when people are making an entire argument related to a pretty big issue based completely on their own experience... well, anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much. Even when you get a room full of people who decide to make an argument based on a collection of personal experiences... the plural of anecdote is not data. Data, though, provides a much better basis for large-scale decision making when stakes are high.

I'm not trying to defend the rhetorical strategies of people on tumblr or buzzfeed (or anywhere else on the internet)- I'd tend to disagree with comments about people using and framing discussions of privilege/intersectionality for their own pre-determined ends.

disbell  ·  3176 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    But that's just the point - if the whole argument is that individuals can't see their privilege, and they answer with a personal anecdote, you're not going to advance the argument by taking the individual experiences of the person entirely off the table. The appropriate tactic is to relate the individual experience to the demographic, not dismiss it.

I agree with you here. Additionally, I think one heuristic that could help people get on board with the idea of privilege is to look at race/class/gender/ethnicity in another country. Take just about any East Asian country, for example. Often, Americans interested in social justice will immediately try to overlay American race relations on places like Japan or Korea, pointing out that Hollywood actors are popular there and the US military presence. Upon a closer look, though, it becomes really apparent that the ethnic majority straight males in those countries run the show and have a great deal of privilege; Western whites just tend to be on top of the minority heap but are still disadvantaged in those societies. From there, you can see that white privilege isn't a universal inherent to being white, but depends on the environment you're in. There is in fact Han privilege in China, and it's just as problematic for minorities there.

I think a lot of the resistance to the idea of white privilege is the innateness that seems to come along with it- people don't want to believe that they are inherently "bad" or in living an unfair life.

kleinbl00  ·  3176 days ago  ·  link  ·  

But that's just the point - if the whole argument is that individuals can't see their privilege, and they answer with a personal anecdote, you're not going to advance the argument by taking the individual experiences of the person entirely off the table. The appropriate tactic is to relate the individual experience to the demographic, not dismiss it.

Data, as you're using it, is ample and abundant. It's pretty much impossible to dismiss and the people who are arguing the data are not going to be swayed by an argument of privilege; they tend to be the ones arguing that black men go to prison more often because blacks are inherently more violent and that discussion requires an entirely different strategy. The whole problem with "white privilege" discussions is that they are wielded by people who want to say "the plural of anecdote is not data" rather than "I hear what you're saying, but here are the problems you didn't face growing up regardless of how shitty your life was."