This post originally appeared on Raven Radiation. It was written by a friend and former student of mine.
While it was posted in relation to events that anyone who’s active in the science fiction and fantasy blogosphere will recognize, I felt it was generalizable as well.
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What privilige discussions are and aren’t saying.
(My attempt in arranging a dead horse’s limbs.)
If you are white, in a white-dominant white-normative culture, you reap white privilege. There may be other privileges which you do not reap. That’s not the point or topic of that sentence. If you are white in a white-dominant, white-normative culture, you reap white privilege.
If you are a white woman, you may still be discriminated against on the basis of your sex, but you will still reap white privilege. If you are a poor white person, you lack economic privilege, but you still have white privilege. White privilege exists for you because you are white.
I recommend reading Peggy McIntosh’s essay, “Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack,” if you would like examples on what white privilege confers. It’s an incomplete list, but it’s an enlightening one (emphasis mine):
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my race.
Note how it keeps coming back to race? That’s because it’s a discussion of racial privilege. If it were a discussion of sexual or economic privilege, it would keep coming back to that.
Saying “What about me? I experience this other type of disadvantage!” in a discussion about race is like telling someone who turns down a slice of lasagna because she’s allergic to tomatoes “What about me? I’m allergic to dairy and that has ricotta in it!” It means that neither one of you will be able to eat the lasagna, but it doesn’t mean you have the same problem or that you’ll experience them in the same way. (As a corollary, saying “Yeah, but what about your sex or economic status?” is like saying “Yeah, but it also has pasta and sausage and ricotta in it!”. The fact that she can eat wheat/gluten and meat and dairy products does not make her any less allergic to tomatoes.)
No, white privilege is not a be-all end-all ticket which guarantees you absolute equality in all life’s dealings. What it is, is a freedom from an entire suite of cultural misapprehensions, expectations, and burdens which you would otherwise have to carry. Yes, in this society, being exempted from those burdens is a privilege.
As a person – white or not – you have burdens to carry. No one is disputing this. When people point out white privilege, they’re not saying you would be burdened only if you were non-white. They’re saying if you were non-white, you would have these additional burdens to carry.
When there’s a huge, ongoing discussion about racism and a white person chimes in with “I’m not privileged, I’m a woman!” or “I’m not privileged, I’m poor!”, they are wrong. They are privileged in a way which does not reflect their sex or economic status. Believe it or not, they can be privileged in one way and disadvantaged in another.
A wealthy man of color will still not experience white privilege. He will experience economic and male privilege. He will not experience white privilege.
If you want a discussion about womens’ disadvantage or economic disadvantage, you’re well within your rights to start a new discussion. But please, please, please do not see it as your fundamental right to bring the discussion of racism to a screeching halt so that you can repurpose the discussion to talk about a different set of privileges altogether. In a discussion about otherness, for example, or marginality, all these privileges should be examined as part of a larger societal ailment. Discussions of otherness are good and necessary.
A discussion of racism is not a de facto discussion of all cultural otherness or marginality, just as a discussion on tomato allergies (say, in the form of a blog of tomato-free recipes for popular foods like pizza, salsa, marinara) is not a de facto forum for all food allergies (and the author is under no requirement to accommodate those with, say, dairy allergies in his/her considerations). The fact that it’s an inappropriate forum does not imply that it’s an inappropriate topic. People with dairy allergies are more than welcome to find or start their own forums. But expecting to walk into a different discussion and be accommodated is unreasonable.
I’d been thinking about posting something about kyriarchy in that whole mess, and then I finally realized — heckno. These people aren’t ready for that level of conversation. ::sigh::
Yep. Lack-of-privilege wars are in full swing. I used to think this was a male thing – men stomping into discussions of male privilege and talking about the race/class/national privilege that they didn’t have – but it turns out that’s just a function of where I was hanging out. Women are often just as bad!
What a great piece! I’ve bookmarked it.
If you want to deliver an anti-racist message to poor and working class white people, I would politely suggest that you don’t start the conversion with how privileged they are. I saw a posted link here on this blog showing Richard Trumka from the AFL-CIO giving an anti-racist speech to unionists during the presidential election. I would suggest that as the approach to use and not McIntosh or Tim Wise.
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2008/10/02/the-times-they-are-a-changing/
Second, class is form of exploitation. There is a difference between oppression and exploitation. Lumping it in as just another “ism” is severly misguided in my opinion.
True. But I’d love to hear what you’d have to say about it.
Thanks for this Mandolin.
While I’m no expert in this myself, it always amazes me how many people can’t shut up for a few minutes and just listen to what other people are saying without interjecting anything.
Along the lines of what drydock says: if you read the knapsack list the examples boil down to “I don’t want to be defined/confined/negatively affected/limited/defamed/and so on by my race.” And when talking about privilege people can hear the conversation as “I am going to define/confine/etc. you by your privilege.” They don’t like that either! So they get defensive and that’s when communication breaks down and all the trouble starts.
drydock,
I like Trumka’s message. But I don’t see it as substantively different from Tim Wise’s message in this clip. They both make the same points about how racism is used to divide and weaken the underclass, and to give poor whites a few crumbs to distract them from the real problem. Aside from the fact that Trumka specified how this applied to union workers — sensibly catering to his audience — while Wise kept his general, how is Wise’s problematic?
Dunno McIntosh.
One thing I’ve found difficult in internet discussions is people saying, “Your saying that shows X kind of privilege” when they themselves are not lacking that type of privilege. It seems kind of presumptuous to assume that a kind of person you are not must be without a certain kind of privilege, and especially for the reason you’re asserting.
For example, English was not the language most often used in my home when I was growing up, but I’d be really annoyed if someone whose parents always spoke English tried to defend my making a grammar error by saying to the person who had criticized, “Oh, that’s your non-immigrant-family privilege.” If there’s something imperfect about my English, it’s probably due to growing up among a bunch of very-much-nonimmigrant white people who were careless about grammar (i.e. rural middle class white Southerners), not my family. Indeed, people who are taught English as a second language often have better grammar than those who speak it as a first language, because they’ve been taught it formally and have to think about verb tenses and so forth, and are habituated to using English more in writing or formal settings than in casual conversation (and thus are more on guard against slips).
Anyway, I’ve just noticed that it’s pretty common for white Americans to make a “your privilege talking” critique when they have the same privilege as the person being criticized, and when no person lacking that privilege — even if there is one who has spoken in the discussion — has made the critique.
Re: white people calling out other white people
If white people fail to challenge other white people on forms of discourse and statements that they think are racist, then it puts the burden squarely and entirely on those who may already be at a disadvantage (or who may have already done this Xteen thousand times) to call out the privilege.
White people who bring up the problematic nature of others’ statements or assumptions have to be open to hearing from members of group that does not have that privilege that their interpretation is wrong, not widely held, not universally held, etc. But being open to being wrong is not the same as keeping your mouth shut.
Also, especially with blogosphere conversations, as you become familiar with the concept of privilege and with particular blogs/conversation spaces you see the SAME PATTERNS over and over and over again. Just because there is not a person of color this particular time calling out this particular behavior, doesn’t mean some of the white conversation participants haven’t seen them do so over and over and over again.
It can be problematic, but PG, I think your example is just one of the more problematic potential examples, rather than the usual way that whites try to alert other whites to problematically privileged statements.
Emily,
OK, but what about when whites are calling out non-whites? Not everyone announces her race at the beginning of a conversation. Particularly on left blogs where I’ve made a comment that is seen as conservative/centrist, people often make incorrect assumptions about my race, gender, age and a host of other identifiers.
Clarence Thomas may be the pseudonymous commenter on an affirmative action discussion who is getting attacked for his “white privilege” if he doesn’t announce at the beginning, “I’m a black guy who grew up in a shack in Georgia before school integration.” That doesn’t mean that Thomas is right about affirmative action, but it does make impossible that his errors derive from white privilege. (I’d say that Thomas’s strident opposition to affirmative action derives mostly from his experiences as a black person who was hyper sensitive to the possibility that his achievements were assumed not to be the product of merit.)
It’s one thing to say as a critique, “In light of your comment, you might want to think about whether you’re taking full consideration of X situation.” That’s a comment that applies equally to anyone who has said something dumb or thoughtless, regardless of their race/gender/etc. I don’t have to know whether commenter “clarence” is white, black or purple to make that kind of critique. It’s another thing to make incorrect assumptions and say, “You’re showing your male/white/American privilege.” The critiques for which I have the most respect are those that ask me to think harder about something , rather than those basically telling me to f*** off because the critiquer assumes something about my identity.
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I totally get what this is saying when it comes to the “my nonprivilege is worse than yours, so nyah…” thing, but I’ve also had productive discussions with people of various backgrounds by comparing oppressive elements and using those to bring us together. It is as the whole saying goes about divide and conquer. If all the disadvantaged groups could get together and make a stand against otherness, we’d be powerful beyond measure.
So we are all getting served lasagna. Some of us are allergic to tomotoes, ricotta, gluten, whatever. None of us can eat the lasagna that is being served to us by those in power. It seems the thing we all have to do is figure out how to get control over the kitchen ingredients in the first place and make something different, several things that everyone could eat, not just whine about how sad it is that we can’t eat the lasagna because OUR allergies are worse than YOUR allergies. That is the important discussion that should be included on any of these topics, I would hope.
PG,
I think we have very different ideas about how, when and why people get called out for privilege. My experience is in the feminist blogosphere, where privilege often manifests itself in the form of comments like “X story about race issues is not appropriate for a feminist site because it’s not about how people are oppressed because of their sex/gender” or getting extremely defensive and commenting on the tone of another person’s comment rather than the point of the comment – accusing others of being “angry” and “mean” because they point out a racial aspect that has been ignored.
Seems to me that this post is addressing that sort of discussion de-railing use of privilege. When talk turns to racism, the commenter says “but what about sexism?” “but what about classism?” And then the discussion of racism gets de-railed. It has little to do with substantive positions on issues and everything to do with how the conversation is handled, whose “voice” is listened to, whose comments are ridiculed, etc.
Sure, people can claim that they’re “calling out privilege” when they’re really being high and mighty nitwits. That doesn’t mean that white people should avoid talking about and challenging others on privilege. And if you’re wrong, you say, OK, sorry, I’m wrong in this instance. Clearly your comment doesn’t rest on the obliviousness of privilege.
“And if you’re wrong, you say, OK, sorry, I’m wrong in this instance.”
Yes.
Sure, people can claim that they’re “calling out privilege” when they’re really being high and mighty nitwits. That doesn’t mean that white people should avoid talking about and challenging others on privilege. And if you’re wrong, you say, OK, sorry, I’m wrong in this instance. Clearly your comment doesn’t rest on the obliviousness of privilege.
I don’t think it makes sense in a forum where you don’t really know anything about a person, except what she/he/it has just said, to say “Ah ha, clearly you are speaking out of this form of privilege.” The only privilege you can assume is access to the internet (so yes, any variation on “I don’t see why everyone can’t just do X online” would pretty clearly be coming out of Internet-privilege).
It seems more productive to tell someone that they should think harder about a particular circumstance than to assume that their errors are due to some particular form of privilege. If it’s possible for a comment to be made without being due to some form of privilege, then privilege shouldn’t be the conclusion to which people jump. (Admittedly there are some comments so idiotic that they only can come out of privilege, like “If I had periods, I’d feel so nasty that I’d stay home until they were over,” but then the commenter clearly has indicated his privilege and it’s nothing that has to be presumed.)
There is a value to these privilege lists, because they can give you a sense of how life might look to others. That’s a good thing.
Very often the notion of privilege is indeed used to discount opposing views and cast dissenters as being blinded by privilege. It isn’t that they just hear the conversation that way – you can read many threads that have comments like: “What the hell do you know about life, or what really goes on – you’re privileged. ”
And it is amusing, because when someone says “I am going to define you by your privilege” what they are really doing is claiming Victim Privilege in the discussion.
In my view, there is no direct relationship between privilege and knowledge. Privilege sometimes blinds you to reality, but not always. Being a victim sometimes makes things clear, but not always. Privileged people can have empathy, people who are victims can be blinded by rage.
you can read many threads that have comments like: “What the hell do you know about life, or what really goes on – you’re privileged. ”
Exactly. And ever noticed how many of the people who make comments like that then say they’re not here to “educate” you?
Sweating Through Fog,
You’re not welcome in this thread anymore. You can continue to post on the rest of the site, I suppose, but no, we’re not going to derail this discussion with trash like “Victim Privilege.”