But they're not! At this point I think we should just scrap the word privilege and call it "shit I don't have to deal with because I'm X" since it's apparently too politically charged to have a discussion about it.
Just one example.
As a white person I have never in my life cared about getting a receipt from any store I shop at, have ever been accused of shoplifting, have never had the self-checkout person have even the slightest suspicion even when I was broke in college and ringing up way too many bananas, and when the sensor things beep the workers apologize and tell me to just go.
This is not the experience of black Americans where children have to be taught to always get and keep their receipts because they get stopped so frequently.
You can fix that by going into stores dressed as a homeless person or any other out-group that contain white people that the store owner/employees in-group has likely an negative emotional response to.
For maximal negative response, portrait yourself as a male with, low social economic status, different race, different biological markers, and signals of different cultural values. As per research this will likely result in activation of fear, disgust and low activation of empathy.
The OP's point holds true. Consider a clean and showered young male that is not dressed like a homeless person. This is generally quite achievable for most of the poor population.
This individual will experience problems if his skin is black that he wouldn't experience if his skin is white.
In most places in the US, the black guy with nice suit will be less likely to have that experience than a homeless looking white guy. But a black guy with a nice suit will experience it more than a white guy with a nice suit.
You're probably mostly concerned with the American experience, so this might be tangential to you.
I grew up as a white ex-pat in a Philippines. While I don't think I ever tried to abuse it, but I could definitely get away with a lot of things even if I dressed as a hobbo/gangster.
I'm merely talking about controlling for variables. If you keep the outfit the same and only change the skin color you'll see a difference. I have no idea which direction the change starts to lean when you change clothing, smell, age and or other factors all at the same time.
Am I missing something because I feel like we're agreeing? Because everything you mentioned are good examples of other forms of privilege, or I guess lack thereof.
I'm always so surprised in internet discussions that people will readily acknowledge lots of forms of privilege but then turn around and be like "white privilege" or "male privilege" -- naaah anything like that can be explained by these other 300 types of privilege. Like "black privilege" and "female privilege" exist too -- it's just a language for describing how the different facets of ourselves change how we're treated.
Privilege being the word for describing when that facet helps you not experience "worse than normal" treatment than people without it might -- contrasted with "advantage", when you get "better than normal" treatment for having it.
To me it is biology. A set of factors contribute to fear and disgust when people meet and an other set of factors trigger empathy and cooperation. We can use the word privilege to mean, in a given environment, having more triggers than someone else for the positive effects and less triggers for the negative effects. The resulting individual experience is the sum of interactions.
Some trait has stronger effect than others such as social economic status and kinship. Close to that comes gender, although sometimes it can also be the strongest factor. Research into this subject generally show a strong environmental aspect to this as well.
I would not use "white privilege" in an online discussion because it often than not lead the discussion away from the complexity of in-group and out-group interactions and into the realm of blame and over simplification. The most insightful thing anyone can really make about white privilege is that being rich, healthy, appeasing appearance, surrounded by a strong majority of in-group members (preferable kinship) that have similar cultural values, then being white is also a benefit as long as the other in-group members are also majority white.
> Like "black privilege" and "female privilege" exist too -- it's just a language for describing how the different facets of ourselves change how we're treated.
In my experience, a lot of people who use the word “privilege” will get very very very upset at that claim. To them, “privilege” is fundamentally connected to groups. It wouldn’t make sense for both male privilege and female privilege to exist; the whole point is that males are collectively privileged relative to females.
I think what you’re describing is a better fit for reality.
Sure, but that doesn't invalidate the racial part of it. Yes a white person who appears to be homeless or a meth addict will be looked at suspiciously. But a black person is much more likely to be profiled simply because of their skin color than a white person. That is white privilege.
White privilege doesn't mean all white people are born with trust funds from the left over plantation money.
Sure, but economically equivalent white and black people have different experiences. That's a privilege under the definition.
That more affluent-appearing black people are treated like less affluent looking white people isn't proof that white privilege doesn't exist. It's the opposite.
You're technically right, but the argument that "given otherwise identical circumstances, white people are less oppressed than black people" (or whatever) has the issues that a) "otherwise identical circumstances" almost never exist and b) this argument is often even being used when the otherwise circumstances are clearly not identical (I remember an online discussion where people were called out for criticising Beyoncé, who must have it really hard as a black woman - which, sure, she might have, but she's also crazy rich and a prominent media figure, so she also has privilege; and then again, even not having privilege doesn't mean you should be immune to criticism).
I don't question the notion of privilege as much as how often it's applied to shut down dissenting opinion.
Privilege isn't a binary thing. You aren't privileged or not. Many people have some forms of privilege and not others.
An affluent white woman and a homeless black man have very different life experiences, each has privileges that the other doesn't.
Fighting about which is more privileged is silly (even if it may seem obvious to you). What's ultimately important is to understand situations in which those privileges will affect the experiences of those people.
As for Beyonce, that's so vague that I can't know. If she was describing the challenges of being black in the recording industry, then yes using her success to claim she can't understand the challenges she's had to overcome is ridiculous. But in other contexts, that she's affluent is relevant.
I don't disagree with you. Understanding privilege is important. But you may not have witnessed the ridiculous discussions that I have sometimes seen.
The context was that people were complaining about her sexualised persona and what kind of image that projects onto young women. I don't necessarily agree with that criticism (I think it's kinda complex, but I also don't think that sex or being sexual is "wrong" or anything), but I thought that the criticism of "she's a black woman, so if she wants to be sexual, that's her way of reasserting her black femininity and may not be criticised" is frankly ridiculous, when she's clearly benefiting financially so well from it.
> Fighting about which is more privileged is silly
And yet that seems to be the game people have to play in order for their statements to have any currency.
I even know people who had to take an "oppression index" in college to see who in the class had the least privilege. Interestingly, the person who had the least privilege was also the most ideologically opposed to the concept, for what it's worth.
> I'm sorry if I don't put much trust in third hand stories like this, it's easy for them to be blown out of proportion.
Fair enough, but consider the new SAT "Adversity" score[1]. Is that not essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale? It's still reducing the "vector" that oppression is supposed to be (from an intersectionality perspective) to a "scalar" value that is useful for sorting people into a hierarchy.
With regard to my first point, consider the NYT opinion piece arguing against the Adversity score[2]. The author spends the first two paragraphs establishing his own adversity/lack of privilege before he begins to actually make an argument. I don't think there's anything wrong with him doing so, and I think it's rhetorically effective, but do you think his opinion would be given a platform if he did not have that adversity score?
> My experiences, as a cis-het-white-affluent person would disagree. ;)
Perhaps because you benefit from (in Paul Graham's words) "orthodox privilege"? That is, your ideas are not questioned on the basis of your identity because they are the "right" opinions[3]. For someone to question the orthodoxy, they must first establish their own adversity or risk being discounted (or worse).
> Fair enough, but consider the new SAT "Adversity" score[1]. Is that not essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale? It's still reducing the "vector" that oppression is supposed to be (from an intersectionality perspective) to a "scalar" value that is useful for sorting people into a hierarchy.
I don't know that the SAT adversity score claims to be an explicit demarcation of privilege. It wouldn't, for example, encode racial privilege since none of the signifiers are the test takers race. Some may be racially correlated, but I think we've already established that those are different. As far as I can tell it really only applies at the granularity of a high school and not a particular student (although I may very well be mistaken here, it's hard to tell).
But this is mostly moot since the Adversity Score plan was withdrawn[1].
> but do you think his opinion would be given a platform if he did not have that adversity score?
Broadly, yes[1]. Worth noting that Williams is and has been a staff writer at the NYT for quite some time, he was also the author (like the actual author, not just a signatory) of the Harper's letter that's been in the news. He's got quite the platform, even when it comes to non-race related things.
> Perhaps because you benefit from (in Paul Graham's words) "orthodox privilege"? That is, your ideas are not questioned on the basis of your identity because they are the "right" opinions[3]. For someone to question the orthodoxy, they must first establish their own adversity or risk being discounted (or worse).
That's a bit of a catch-22 now isn't it. My opinions will be discounted due to my privilege, but if they aren't, that's also due to my privilege. But I also don't think this is true: there's all kinds of things that I do question with my more progressive friends. But they're usually around economic policy, or procedures (I'm pragmatic, many people I know are not, so there's ongoing debate I see about reformist vs. revolutionary action with regard to the issue du jour).
Being a reformist as opposed to a revolutionary is absolutely impacted by my privileges, and I recognize that. I'm much more comfortable with the world the way things are than some of my "colleagues" in this context, so reformism is safer to me. But some people aren't treated as well by the system today, so they are much more willing to throw the whole thing out, deal with the chaos for a while, and build something new from the ashes.
That's clearly worse for me, but probably gets them to where they're more equal faster. Interestingly, I'm not even sure which of those two opinions would be considered orthodoxy among progressive circles. But I don't think people discount my opinions on the subject because I have some privileges. In some cases I think they're actually valued more.
> As a white person I have never in my life cared about getting a receipt from any store I shop at
I agree with your meaning overall, but this is not a great example. I'm a white dude, and I worry about getting receipts any time I am going to one store after buying from another (while walking). I'm hyper-aware in stores of whether it would appear to an observer that I was shoplifting, having been accused of such more than once when young, so I take visible steps like tying off the bags I'm carrying from the previous store, consider whether the store I'm entering is likely to sell items I have in the bag I'm carrying, and so on.
Just one example.
As a white person I have never in my life cared about getting a receipt from any store I shop at, have ever been accused of shoplifting, have never had the self-checkout person have even the slightest suspicion even when I was broke in college and ringing up way too many bananas, and when the sensor things beep the workers apologize and tell me to just go.
This is not the experience of black Americans where children have to be taught to always get and keep their receipts because they get stopped so frequently.