"Some scholars suggest we can best understand these developments as a form of backlash against ongoing cultural, economic,and demographic trends (Kaufmann 2019; Norris and Inglehart 2019)"
Is the paper paper based on the premise that the right-wing views, or the rising success thereof, are an anomaly or "backlash" from some normal state?
ed: or not? Is there another interpretation of the first page?
I understand the usage of "backlash" here to mean a response in the other direction.
Cause: The political left begins discussing white privilege more than it did previously
Effect: The political right begins discussing their views on race more as well, in ways specifically counter to the ones raised by the left.
It's a cause and effect in the opposite direction. I think abnormality implies something other than a cultural response.
White privilege absolutely exists, and it should absolutely be discussed, but in the context of politics, it’s an implied message of, “your problems aren’t significant and you should get over it.” Whether or not what’s objectively true has no bearing on how it makes people feel and how, then, they will perceive the person speaking.
A better approach is to focus on shared problems, but perhaps give a bit more attention to those with particular hardships or barriers.
Exactly, this is a "big numbers" problem, that says nothing about individual experiences, and should never be used as argument against an individual, but you'd be hard pressed to find an activist that bothers to clarify that.
Not a big surprise. In the simple world of white privilege white people have an advantage and black people are disadvantaged from birth. Policies must balance this out.
In the real world life people don't fit into these simple boxes. Where do half white / half black people fit in. Are they slightly privileged?Should someone 100% black feel disadvantaged over someone with lighter skin? Are brown people more privileged?
Does it matter if they are from Mexico vs Arab vs Southern Italian vs Indian? Who has more or less privilege?
Where do the Obama daughters fit in? They have more privileges and a bigger leg up over anyone reading this site. Do they suffer from white privilege?
It would be interesting to see if the Obama daughters have more or less advantage than other comparable President's family members. But I don't see a way to do a valid comparison; too small a sample size and the subjects don't really have many constants.
White privilege absolutely exists, as does 'male privilege', 'health privilege' (mental or physical), 'preference/motivation privilege' (e.g. do you enjoy, or can you at least tolerate, doing things that are financially viable) and a whole host of other inherent advantages that a person can possess from birth, or obtain later in life and hold on to.
Quite literally, 'privilege' (less aggressively known as advantage) is obviously a thing. Even if you don't consider the 'white' variant, people win and lose the game of society based on pretty arbitrary attributes.
We generally don't run around speaking about those issues in those terms, though, because it's just not a very tactful way of addressing them (attacking core components of a person's ego), it's much more politically manageable to discuss equality/empathy/representation for example.
It would be equally unpopular to talk about e.g. the 'transgender plight', despite the struggles trans individuals face. Words are important.
Absolutely. The majority of people do not like being guilted for an unfairness they have not directly contributed to or supported.
A far better spin is to simply address the same factors as equal opportunity violations because then the failure is something bigger and cultural where everybody is invited to contribute resolution.
And the same people who love talking about 'male privilege' tend to get offended at the mention of 'female privilege', even though there are numerous documented examples, eg people having to vacate seats on flights just because they were seated next to a child and were male and thus assumed to be a potential predator.
The experience of trans men in particular is filled with realizations that privilege isn't a one way street.
Female privilege is not having to risk your life fighting for your country. Female privilege is having much stronger emotional support that results in fewer suicides. Female privilege is reduced sentences for equal crimes. Female privilege is winning child custody cases even when you’re a less fit parent. Female privilege is society unanimously deeming you less expendable than men. And yet you will rarely hear the term.
White privilege is nothing but a slur meant to cut people down. It is not surprising that people feel attacked by it.
Conscriptions is no one's burden in the modern US, which has a military expressly designed not to use conscripts in any capacity, even in major contingencies.
... which is incredibly naive. It assumes a permanence to the current state of affairs where none exists. A World War scenario could not be fought with volunteers, which is why the Selective Service System still exists.
>even in major contingencies.
Yeah, no. There are contingency plans for major conflicts that absolutely do involve the draft.
> A World War scenario could not be fought with volunteers
It absolutely could. Something that looked like WWI or WWII couldn't, but a modern major power conflict wouldn't look like anything like those.
> which is why the Selective Service System still exists.
But no draft law, and thus no conscription, exists: conscription is no one's burden. Any actual draft law would likely make changes to the selective service system based on whatever vision of conscription motivated the draft law itself, rendering guesses about the hypothetical future burden of conscription based on the registration-with-no-legal-basis-for-conscription system that exists today purely speculative.
Privilege has become a dirty word, and I suspect it is in no small part due to the fact that some people feel it is over-emphasized compared to other aspects of one’s status (especially on an individual level, of course,) and because it is sometimes used in a combative manner to cut others down, which perhaps unconsciously sends the message that instead of increasing the privilege of the underprivileged, we’d rather decrease the privilege of others instead, to even the playing field. And I can’t really attest to this, because I mostly stay out of political discussions, but it would fit with the American, and perhaps human, tradition of focusing on retribution instead of, but often under the guise of, improving the status quo, ignoring evidence that this is not the happening. I feel this kind of behavior is really evident any time human emotions run high, and it unfortunately describes how we handle a lot of problems in the U.S., especially crimes: we don’t really want to try to improve on the root causes, or to rehabilitate, often we want people to rot in prison.
The word privilege on its own should not bring all of this baggage, but it feels like it’s too late. The word is now tainted for many. Does this mean serious discussion about it has been pushed off a couple generations?
Well, the implicit connotation in the term 'privilege' is that it's been conferred as some sort of favour, perhaps even a temporary one (e.g. it's a privilege to be awarded a prize).
Compare with, say, 'advantage'.
Underprivileged, and disadvantaged, are also often used as synonyms within the social context, whilst outside of that they're not at all the same thing.
I agree, the word privilege does not feel like it does the disparity justice, when I think about it. Not sure what the implications of this are, but it’s thought provoking, anyways.
The word "privilege" has always been a thought-terminating-cliche. Its use in the present-day sense became well known with references to the "bourgeois privilege" of culture, literacy etc. among Maoist radicals in the 1960s and 1970s. (Of course, it was generally assumed that any such "privilege" ought to be abolished, and that a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution would be a, well, great way to achieve that.)
The title of the submission seems (intentionally?) misleading. It causes loss of support among white voters, conservatives and moderates in particular, the actual title of the paper being
"Losing Elections, Winning the Debate: Progressive Racial Rhetoric and White Backlash"
I think it's because the accusation of "privilege" is conversation-stopping. There is no where to go once this is said, because it's a fundamental attack on who the person is, which is something that cannot be changed, discards any merit of a point being argued, and provides no solutions.
It essentially asserts that the person saying something is to be disqualified and/or the opinion is inferior without any logical proof. And it suggests "my position is inherently more correct than yours" because I'm not privileged. It signals the end of rational discussion.
Is it any wonder that many people (when their private opinions are polled, rather than asked to join shouting in a crowd) actually dislike the tactic?
>I think it's because the accusation of "privilege" is conversation-stopping.
I agree it signals the end of rational discussion, but not the end of the conversation. It's usually immediately followed up with all the ways privileged people need to give X, Y, and Z to everyone else, in perpetuity, to "make things even." Unsurprisingly, that's an unpopular idea.
I don't really see it that way? The history behind it can be pretty depressing, but basically it's saying you've benefited from good luck. Having good or bad luck is something that happens to you; the merit or blame comes from what do you do about it.
I think that a lot of times white privilege is used incorrectly as the predominant reason why someone did/did not succeed, rather than one of many complex factors. It's even hard to point to a specific event that exemplifies it, rather an a shift in distribution of potential outcomes (getting into a particular college, for example).
Maybe there's a useful parallel to folks arguing that climate change isn't real when there's a bad winter (particular event vs the overall trend).
"White privilege" isn't one out of many factors though. It's the underlying reason for why so many factors came together to help you succeed in the first place.
White privilege is having your application go through the first time because your name is spelled how webdevs expect.
White privilege is your assigned recruiter giving the extra 0.x seconds of time to look over your resume if they consider you as one of their tribe and "deserving" of placement. These judgments, while often rationalized consciously post-hoc, really mostly happen at the subconscious level before we're even aware that we're thinking about it.
White privilege is knowing where to start to achieve your goals because there are people in your community that can provide mentorship who have probably benefited from white privilege to the point that they can point you in the right direction and even give you some connections to break onto the scene.
etc.
Your "useful parallel" is relying on tokenism as a sort of reverse no-true-Scotsman attack.
- Having well educated parents able to help me with my school and putting an large emphasis on its importance
- Having both parents in the house
- Having access to, and the ability to participate in extracurriculars in school
Those are all correlated with my race, but there are also white people who lack them. Those are the many factors I was talking about. They are specific and identifiable.
The useful parallel is that people do a poor job of identifying trends, when counter examples to the trend exist.
... but you created the same No True Scotsman in the inverse, up thread?
Your definition of "white privilege" assumes a complete homogeneity of experience that is absolutely not the case. Do you actually believe that all white people experience life in the exact way you described?
#NotAllWhitePeople is not a very useful line of rhetoric if the goal is to solve the problem of equity in opportunity.
It is a given and openly acknowledged that not all white people have the same chances. But it doesn't seem particularly accurate to assert that a difference in equity is insignificant between folks who only differ in race because of some pre-existing intra-race variance.
And #AllWhitePeople is? If it's a "given" that "not all white people" have the same life experience, then why is it a useful line of rhetoric, in your case, to pretend that they do? I'm not following your last sentence. Is your claim that the intra-race variance of experience is sufficiently [edit: not] different to a degree that it's useful, rhetorically speaking, to pretend that one race's experience is homogeneous?
The differences in equity within the cohort of white people is in general of a lower magnitude than differences in equity between white folk and black folk. That's the starkest and, in America at least, the most historically important comparison between races and thus the thing that usually ends up getting talked about most.
Not all white people, but a large majority of white people, have it better off than most minority folks, with some notable exceptions.
This kind of language is exactly why people respond poorly to the term. Most people have worked hard for the things they have including white people, there isn't a secret check that you get every year for being in the pale people club. If you're middle class or lower there's no reason for a white person to side with a politician who is making their platform based around white priviledge because all it means for them is that they get to get to pay the same taxes to be less of a priority.
The term privilege is used in many ways by many people.
Sometimes it means luck but I don't see it used that way very often.
I've seen it used most often to
- deride a person or group of people
- describe oneself in a funny way
- describe oneself in a way that is serious but ultimately in a positive light
Specific recent examples from my Facebook is whether voting for Biden is privilege or not voting for him is privilege or whether being pro quarantine is a privilege or anti quarantine is a privilege. The subtext is always you REALLY don't want to be on the side of the privileged.
Every single time it seems to make the argument dumber and nastier.
It's a backwards framing of the problem. Think about it: in a country where everyone is white, is there “white privilege?” How can the majority of people in a country be “privileged?” Is that how normal people talk? The issue isn't white privilege. By almost any metric, the most "privileged" demographic in the U.S. is actually Asians. (A U.S.-born Asian growing up in the bottom 20% of the income distribution has a 27% chance of ending up in the top 20%. That's far ahead of whites born in the bottom 20%.) The real problem is that African Americans are disadvantaged. The "privilege" that whites enjoy is that they don't suffer all the social disadvantages of being African American.
Framing is a challenging problem but you are right that it is important.
Locally we have a lot of black immigrants, they of course have a lot of challenges. They often get lumped into a "black" group.
But looking at the statistics closer indicates they are making fast progress in many areas, similarly to a local immigrant Asian population made many years ago.
However, the local African Americans generally are not making a lot educational or economic progress.
The differences are striking and really change where you think more / different resources are needed and what is going on for a given group.
I read somewhere that the vast majority of black students in elite universities are either biracial (like Obama) or of Caribbean descent, not of former US slaves.
As I understand it, "privilege" has nothing to do with income metrics and what have you. Privilege means that you can assume that society and all its mechanisms will work in your favor. Privilege means that if something horribly unfair happens to you, you can shout about it, and people will listen. Lacking privilege means that, when you shout about it, society will tell you to STFU. Having privilege means you can forget about having privilege. Lacking privilege means you need to constantly worry about losing it.
The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.
The minority can never, ever forget that they are the minority.
> As I understand it, "privilege" has nothing to do with income metrics and what have you. Privilege means that you can assume that society and all its mechanisms will work in your favor.
When an Asian American born in the bottom 20% is much more likely to end up in the top 20% than a white person in the same situation, how is that not “society and it’s mechanisms working in favor” of the Asian person?
> The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.
That’s just a roundabout way of saying that minorities have disadvantages. Obviously that’s true. But expressing it as “white privilege” is a bizarre rhetorical device that doesn’t reflect how normal people talk. We don’t talk about the “privilege” of being average height, we talk about the challenges of especially tall people fitting into airplane seats or of especially short people in finding suits that fit.
Exactly. The absence of disadvantaged isn’t privileged.
Besides, all those people in America talking about other people’s privilege often neglect the massive one they have - living now, in a first world country.
At the end of the day, thumping your chest saying you’re a bigger victim because x, y, z will only go so far. It will get you favor with some, but eventually people tire of being attacked.
It seems to come as shock that lots of white men don’t support people who call white men the root of all evil. There seems to be another shock that white women often support the men. I don’t know why they’re surprised. They have fathers, brothers, and sons.
Guilt by born identity is a farce. This isn’t the Bible. We don’t have original sin, and while we do have historical sins, everyone has it. everyone.
It's not an attack, though, and it's not a reflection of who a person is. Privilege is about the circumstances the person is in, how lucky they are in the cosmic lottery of life. Being privileged doesn't make you a bad person. Failing to recognize your privilege may, depending on your moral framework.
What does that even mean? This is code for “you should feel guilty for who you are” and generally a big reason why people become combative when the term “privilege” gets brought up.
It's part of the bizarro "privilege" narratives. In their framework, if you deny the existence of your privilege, you are proving you have it even more, because only a "privileged" person is capable of ignoring the concept of privileged/unprivileged
The parent is referencing the "Kafka Trap", which I believe was originally coined on ESR's blog a decade or so ago. This rhetorical construction is used a lot in these kinds of discussions, and, because of its crudeness, is why people tend to get pretty bent out of shape during said discussion.
>One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}.” I’ve been presented with enough instances of this recently that I’ve decided that it needs a name. I call this general style of argument “kafkatrapping”, and the above the Model A kafkatrap.
I would believe that except for the “white” part. It is used to make people feel guilty for advantages that they may not even benefit from purely because they fall into a certain group.
It's used to make people aware of the advantages they often have because they fall into a certain group. The goal isn't to make someone feel guilty, it's to make them conscious of their advantages in hopes they help to dismantle them.
It's used to attribute individual excellence to generalized advantages of a certain group of people. If these advantages were as powerful and prevalent as you suggest, there wouldn't be more millions of white people in poverty. They certainly have some effect but it is often exaggerated to diminish the accomplishments of all people in the group. It is more fruitful to highlight the disadvantages that a group of people experience so that we may fix them and bring everyone up.
> It is more fruitful to highlight the disadvantages that a group of people experience so that we may fix them and bring everyone up.
I see it as the same. It's one thing to say, "I don't have to worry about X because I am white" and basically the same to say, "They do have to worry about X because they are non-white".
> If these advantages were as powerful and prevalent as you suggest, there wouldn't be more millions of white people in poverty.
I don't think anyone who believes in white privilege believes that it is a monolithic escalator to success. It makes some things easier. But there also exists privilege due to class, health, access to education, gender, climate, family support, etc.
There are many, many types of privilege, and being white is just one of them that has an interaction with the others. (e.g. is it more advantageous to be white and able bodied or white and not able bodied? Is it more advantageous to be white and poor or black and poor? etc.)
> It's used to attribute individual excellence to generalized advantages of a certain group of people.
If you believe that individual excellence is the only factor, then how would you explain the demographic data about fortune 500 CEOs? One hypothesis is that privilege played a role -- that they had advantages due to race, class, gender, health, etc. that combined with their individual achievement resulted in their success. If privilege didn't play a role in their success, is it just a coincidence that the demographics overwhelmingly skew white male?
I'll try to explain with an example: I am able bodied, I can walk and run easily. When I visit a store or bus depot or whatever, I can navigate it with ease. This is privilege, and I am not a bad person for being able bodied.
I shouldn't feel guilt because I can walk. But it's important to recognize that my experiences and my abilities might be different than others.
An architect designing a public building with only stairs or narrow doors, or a traffic planner optimizing crossing times for an average pedestrian are cases of failing to recognize their privilege in being able bodied. If, after being made aware of their privilege, they continue to design for themselves then they may be considered immoral by some people.
It's the wrong word then. The etymology of privilege:
Middle English: via Old French from Latin privilegium ‘bill or law affecting an individual’, from privus ‘private’ + lex, leg- ‘law’.
In fact, in France privilèges have been abolished during the revolution.
And it's not just the wrong word, it's kind of opposite; privilege generally meant the benefit of a minority, but here it's used to describe when the majority benefits, because they are the majority.
Unfortunately, that's not how language works. Words get adopted to mean things independent of their etymology all the time. I find it confusing a lot of the time. (eg "literally" used to mean "figuratively").
You believe that language is prescriptive -- that there are 'correct' usages of words. [1] I believe that language is descriptive -- that dictionaries follow common usage rather than define the usage. Depending on your cultural heritage, one or the other may be more common.
Descriptivism allows for expressions like, "To boldly go where no man has gone before!" which is a split infinitive, and an 'incorrect' use of language. If a native speaker would say a thing in speaking, then it's valid. Native English speakers use language in all sorts of ways that would be 'incorrect' -- from jive to rhyming slang to 1337 sp34k to adoptions from queer culture like 'shade' or 'yass'.
Recognizing your privilege means keeping aware that other people may struggle with things (sexism, racism, disabilities, etc.) that you don't struggle with. That can have far reaching implications in terms of design, how you frame advice, instructions, policy, etc.
For example I have given friends advice before on how to get somewhere, and been told that it won't work for them, for reasons such as them not wanting to walk alone in a certain area/time due to being a small woman, or lack of handicap accessible infrastructure making something take longer than it would for me.
If being confronted with your own privilege makes you feel guilty, that sounds more like you are bothered that others are less privileged
It's one thing to be self-aware and think about who you are when you formulate the arguments and opinions and solutions you put out in front of the world and to others. It's quite another thing to judge the merit of someone's opinions and solutions based on who you think they are. Figure out which you're talking about.
People say that privilege isn't an attack. But when I search for it on my Facebook, 4 of the 5 were used to deride and the other is "May you, at least once, have the privilege of writing code that never goes away and is never looked at again."
Also if you search reddit for whether trans women or trans men possess male privilege you will find people arguing as if their life depended on it. And these people seem to very involved in movements where the use of the term is the most frequent so should be the most acquainted with it's use and definition.
It's no wonder that people dislike it if people repeatedly ignore the subtleties of the concept and take the attack as a personal affront to their identity.
Would you prefer it to be rephrased? Should we spend the time to shield egos or should we encourage egos not to be so fragile?
They take it as a dismissal of their ideas, not necessarily of their identity.
"No matter how thoughtful your opinion that differs from mine, I'm going to regard it as invalid because you're white" is how it comes down to many people. Which side is the one with the fragile ego there? The one that takes offense at having their ideas dismissed on such a basis, or the side that has to use such an excuse to not listen?
The point of "because you're white" is, you have no personal experience in that matter. Despite an obvious lack of expertise, privileged people (and I consider me part of that group) feel that their opinion is of at least equal value, and that it should be listened to.
Personally, I quite easily give my opinion unasked (like here), and do feel rejected if it isn't listen too.
Likely, because I grew up the way, that my opinion matters.
I would imagine, the experience would be quite a different one, if your thoughtful opinion would be voiced after being asked for it.
As far as I understand the term, white privilege means some kind of economical and political advantage of whites over other races. Meaning that the outcomes are different, depending on one's race. From a brief glimpse of the paper, it is quite clear that the authors push for equality of outcome and label their position as 'liberal'. However, many people disagree. The classical liberal position is granting every person equality of opportunity, saying nothing about equality of outcome. And for a good reason: you actually can't have both. Either everyone is equal at the start of the game and then the more successful achieve more, or everyone is equal at the end, and for that you have to make their opportunities unequal.
When you think about it this way, equality of outcome is essentially a Marxist rhetoric. So it's quite understandable why many people don't like politicians who advocate this controversial position.
If, the other hand, what politicians really want is a greater equality of opportunity, they really should make that clear. But I don't think they usually mean that, given that people who talk about white privilege are usually the ones who push for so-called 'affirmative action', which clearly reduces equality of opportunity in favor of equality of outcome.
White privilege and other topics are largely academic topics that are statistical and general in nature. Take that to an individual and tell them about their privilege based on some stats, they're going to feel like it doesn't fit... and really it doesn't on an individual level.
Obama had a speech near the end of his presidency, he talked about situations talking to individuals who have real struggles, real problems in their lives and don't feel like anyone handed anything to them.
Then someone comes to them who doesn't know them, and talks to them about their privilege? That's not going to help convince them of anything.
Even to a further extent, talk to anyone you don't know .. and tell them what you know about them based on just their race? That's probabbly not going to go well.
You're not getting far, and frankly on an individual / non academic level it seems off the mark for an individual or audience.
I feel like concepts like white privilege and such sort of escaped academia and more general conversations, and are swung around a bit wildly and inaccurately by some folks.
Framing an issue in one way may immediately get you half-way to the effective solution while another way would get you far away from it. "White privilege" immediately suggests a solution - "deprivileging". Not many would feel like having such a solution applied to them, it feels like an attack and triggers instinctive self-defense. The same issue can be framed as various groups/classes/races being "underprivileged". That triggers empathic response and calls to the sense of justice and equality.
The the phrase white privilege is an ingenious attempt by malicious people and their useful-idiots to divert attention from issues of class to issues of race.
These toxic propagandists have tricked millions of people into believing that the poorest white person is as responsible for the poverty of black people as the richest.
Transforming the political fight from the 1% vs the 99% into a fight of the racial majority vs a racial minority. If the 99% are fighting among themselves, they can't unite against the 1%.
Millions of powerless white people predictably take offense at the idea that they're responsible for an economic system rigged by the rich to oppress poor people of all races. Of course prejudice exists but the core issue holding people back is purely economic, not racial.
> Political scientists have long known that major shifts in a nation’s racial makeup or in its racial policies can provoke a right-wing response among some portions of the electorate. Since the 1960s, the Democratic Party in the U.S.has staked out a position as the party of racial liberalism (Carmines and Stimson 1989). Democratic support for civil rights legislation helped the party secure the long-term loyalty of a majority of African American voters, but alienated many of the party’s white voters. This led to Republican gains in new areas of the country, especially the South (Black and Black 2002.)
That's historical revisionism. Four Civil Rights Acts were passed in the 1950s and 1960s, plus the Voting Rights Act. Each passed by overwhelming majorities in the House Republican Caucus, and much narrower majorities in the House Democratic Caucus. In fact, the 1960s were a time of the Democratic Party toeing the line on civil rights to appease southern Democrats. Indeed, while people talk about Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," Nixon won the South only because George Wallace. Wallace, running on a segregationist platform, split the Democratic vote with Hubert Humphrey. Wallace outright won 5 deep southern states, and beat Humphrey in several others. Nixon--who had helped shepherd the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress--didn't carry a majority in any southern state.
In 1976, Carter won the Presidency with the traditional coalition of conservative Southerners and liberal north easterners, while Ford won the west and most of the midwest. Reagan won both the south and most of the northeast, and so did George H.W. Bush in 1988. It wasn't until the 1990s, with Bill Clinton, that the now-familiar alignment of the south with republicans and the northeast with democrats took shape.
I'm very interested in this topic. Do you have a "favorite" (most accurate, least revisionist) writeup of the causes of the political realignment that happened between the 1940s and the 1980s? Specifically, if you don't think it was largely about civil rights, what do you think was happening?
I don't understand how the facts you've cited establish either of these two sentences as "revisionism": "Democratic support for civil rights legislation helped the party secure the long-term loyalty of a majority of African American voters, but alienated many of the party’s white voters. This led to Republican gains in new areas of the country, especially the South (Black and Black 2002.)"
As you say, the traditional (pre-1960s) coalition of the Democrats was (white) conservative Southerners and liberal Northerners. That explains the messy partisan alignment of the five bills you mentioned. (The voting patterns are clear if you look at geography, not party affiliation[1].)
In the aftermath of those bills, we find evidence that something strongly alienated the white, conservative Southern Democrats, and resulted in Republican gain. While the national politics you mention are confusing, there is a clear visual pattern in the presidential voting records of a southern state like North Carolina [2]: blue prior to the 1960s, and red afterwards.
What was it that alienated the white, conservative Southerners? Perhaps there is a more compelling answer to this than "civil rights", but your evidence does not establish that. You cite George Wallace, but his story is one of many that supports the quoted passage and its thesis that civil rights was a key issue. A long-time Democrat, he was one of many blue dogs who broke with the national party over segregation. His famous "segregation now, tomorrow, forever" speech in 1963 was arguably his moment of greatest acclaim by his electorate, and by 1968, he was sufficiently alienated from Democrats to make a third-party run as a segregationist. Many other Southern dems (eg Eastland, Thurmond) opposed the civil rights bills, and in their aftermath, switched parties in name or in spirit (supporting Republican national candidates), citing civil rights or segregation as a particular point of policy difference.
Even if the word isn't that bad inherently, the racist and dismissive way that its used in practice makes it a very foolish word to use if you're trying to connect with people rather than alienate them.
Ultimately the problem with the phrasing is that privilege is something given which can be removed. It's false because no one in particular decrees or gives benefits for being white - which would also be illegal.
Disparity and disadvantage are better words.
It's a social bias, and those cannot be changed by a decree. So not only is it attacking people, alleging guilt, it's also an ineffective stance to repeatedly point it out. Affirmative action also has connotation of failure to solve the issues black people face.
The framing around “privilege” is useful because it forces a reckoning that white people need to cede something in order for a more equitable society to emerge. Granted, I see the many problems with it, but a lot of that is just white people choking on the reality that they’ll need to give up some things.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadIs the paper paper based on the premise that the right-wing views, or the rising success thereof, are an anomaly or "backlash" from some normal state?
ed: or not? Is there another interpretation of the first page?
Cause: The political left begins discussing white privilege more than it did previously Effect: The political right begins discussing their views on race more as well, in ways specifically counter to the ones raised by the left.
It's a cause and effect in the opposite direction. I think abnormality implies something other than a cultural response.
White privilege absolutely exists, and it should absolutely be discussed, but in the context of politics, it’s an implied message of, “your problems aren’t significant and you should get over it.” Whether or not what’s objectively true has no bearing on how it makes people feel and how, then, they will perceive the person speaking.
A better approach is to focus on shared problems, but perhaps give a bit more attention to those with particular hardships or barriers.
Being black can also have advantages (affirmative action).
But no one uses "black privilege". Because everyone is aware that most of the blacks are, in sum, more disadvantaged compared to median citizen.
Some of the whites are also more disadvantaged. If I were one of them, i would be equally repulsed by "white privilege"
In the real world life people don't fit into these simple boxes. Where do half white / half black people fit in. Are they slightly privileged?Should someone 100% black feel disadvantaged over someone with lighter skin? Are brown people more privileged? Does it matter if they are from Mexico vs Arab vs Southern Italian vs Indian? Who has more or less privilege?
Where do the Obama daughters fit in? They have more privileges and a bigger leg up over anyone reading this site. Do they suffer from white privilege?
White privilege absolutely exists, as does 'male privilege', 'health privilege' (mental or physical), 'preference/motivation privilege' (e.g. do you enjoy, or can you at least tolerate, doing things that are financially viable) and a whole host of other inherent advantages that a person can possess from birth, or obtain later in life and hold on to.
Quite literally, 'privilege' (less aggressively known as advantage) is obviously a thing. Even if you don't consider the 'white' variant, people win and lose the game of society based on pretty arbitrary attributes.
We generally don't run around speaking about those issues in those terms, though, because it's just not a very tactful way of addressing them (attacking core components of a person's ego), it's much more politically manageable to discuss equality/empathy/representation for example.
It would be equally unpopular to talk about e.g. the 'transgender plight', despite the struggles trans individuals face. Words are important.
A far better spin is to simply address the same factors as equal opportunity violations because then the failure is something bigger and cultural where everybody is invited to contribute resolution.
The experience of trans men in particular is filled with realizations that privilege isn't a one way street.
White privilege is nothing but a slur meant to cut people down. It is not surprising that people feel attacked by it.
>even in major contingencies.
Yeah, no. There are contingency plans for major conflicts that absolutely do involve the draft.
It absolutely could. Something that looked like WWI or WWII couldn't, but a modern major power conflict wouldn't look like anything like those.
> which is why the Selective Service System still exists.
But no draft law, and thus no conscription, exists: conscription is no one's burden. Any actual draft law would likely make changes to the selective service system based on whatever vision of conscription motivated the draft law itself, rendering guesses about the hypothetical future burden of conscription based on the registration-with-no-legal-basis-for-conscription system that exists today purely speculative.
The word privilege on its own should not bring all of this baggage, but it feels like it’s too late. The word is now tainted for many. Does this mean serious discussion about it has been pushed off a couple generations?
Compare with, say, 'advantage'.
Underprivileged, and disadvantaged, are also often used as synonyms within the social context, whilst outside of that they're not at all the same thing.
"Losing Elections, Winning the Debate: Progressive Racial Rhetoric and White Backlash"
It essentially asserts that the person saying something is to be disqualified and/or the opinion is inferior without any logical proof. And it suggests "my position is inherently more correct than yours" because I'm not privileged. It signals the end of rational discussion.
Is it any wonder that many people (when their private opinions are polled, rather than asked to join shouting in a crowd) actually dislike the tactic?
I agree it signals the end of rational discussion, but not the end of the conversation. It's usually immediately followed up with all the ways privileged people need to give X, Y, and Z to everyone else, in perpetuity, to "make things even." Unsurprisingly, that's an unpopular idea.
Maybe there's a useful parallel to folks arguing that climate change isn't real when there's a bad winter (particular event vs the overall trend).
White privilege is having your application go through the first time because your name is spelled how webdevs expect.
White privilege is your assigned recruiter giving the extra 0.x seconds of time to look over your resume if they consider you as one of their tribe and "deserving" of placement. These judgments, while often rationalized consciously post-hoc, really mostly happen at the subconscious level before we're even aware that we're thinking about it.
White privilege is knowing where to start to achieve your goals because there are people in your community that can provide mentorship who have probably benefited from white privilege to the point that they can point you in the right direction and even give you some connections to break onto the scene.
etc.
Your "useful parallel" is relying on tokenism as a sort of reverse no-true-Scotsman attack.
- Having well educated parents able to help me with my school and putting an large emphasis on its importance
- Having both parents in the house
- Having access to, and the ability to participate in extracurriculars in school
Those are all correlated with my race, but there are also white people who lack them. Those are the many factors I was talking about. They are specific and identifiable.
The useful parallel is that people do a poor job of identifying trends, when counter examples to the trend exist.
No true Scotsman again. The counter examples do not negate the overwhelming influence of the causes to which the trend is attributed.
Your definition of "white privilege" assumes a complete homogeneity of experience that is absolutely not the case. Do you actually believe that all white people experience life in the exact way you described?
It is a given and openly acknowledged that not all white people have the same chances. But it doesn't seem particularly accurate to assert that a difference in equity is insignificant between folks who only differ in race because of some pre-existing intra-race variance.
Not all white people, but a large majority of white people, have it better off than most minority folks, with some notable exceptions.
I've seen it used most often to
- deride a person or group of people
- describe oneself in a funny way
- describe oneself in a way that is serious but ultimately in a positive light
Specific recent examples from my Facebook is whether voting for Biden is privilege or not voting for him is privilege or whether being pro quarantine is a privilege or anti quarantine is a privilege. The subtext is always you REALLY don't want to be on the side of the privileged.
Every single time it seems to make the argument dumber and nastier.
Talk to anyone you don't know... and tell them what you know about them based on their race as if it is fact.
Generally, not a good way to connect, and you have a good chance of being wrong.
Locally we have a lot of black immigrants, they of course have a lot of challenges. They often get lumped into a "black" group.
But looking at the statistics closer indicates they are making fast progress in many areas, similarly to a local immigrant Asian population made many years ago.
However, the local African Americans generally are not making a lot educational or economic progress.
The differences are striking and really change where you think more / different resources are needed and what is going on for a given group.
The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.
The minority can never, ever forget that they are the minority.
When an Asian American born in the bottom 20% is much more likely to end up in the top 20% than a white person in the same situation, how is that not “society and it’s mechanisms working in favor” of the Asian person?
> The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.
That’s just a roundabout way of saying that minorities have disadvantages. Obviously that’s true. But expressing it as “white privilege” is a bizarre rhetorical device that doesn’t reflect how normal people talk. We don’t talk about the “privilege” of being average height, we talk about the challenges of especially tall people fitting into airplane seats or of especially short people in finding suits that fit.
Besides, all those people in America talking about other people’s privilege often neglect the massive one they have - living now, in a first world country.
At the end of the day, thumping your chest saying you’re a bigger victim because x, y, z will only go so far. It will get you favor with some, but eventually people tire of being attacked.
It seems to come as shock that lots of white men don’t support people who call white men the root of all evil. There seems to be another shock that white women often support the men. I don’t know why they’re surprised. They have fathers, brothers, and sons.
Guilt by born identity is a farce. This isn’t the Bible. We don’t have original sin, and while we do have historical sins, everyone has it. everyone.
What does that even mean? This is code for “you should feel guilty for who you are” and generally a big reason why people become combative when the term “privilege” gets brought up.
It's part of the bizarro "privilege" narratives. In their framework, if you deny the existence of your privilege, you are proving you have it even more, because only a "privileged" person is capable of ignoring the concept of privileged/unprivileged
>One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}.” I’ve been presented with enough instances of this recently that I’ve decided that it needs a name. I call this general style of argument “kafkatrapping”, and the above the Model A kafkatrap.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122
I see it as the same. It's one thing to say, "I don't have to worry about X because I am white" and basically the same to say, "They do have to worry about X because they are non-white".
> If these advantages were as powerful and prevalent as you suggest, there wouldn't be more millions of white people in poverty.
I don't think anyone who believes in white privilege believes that it is a monolithic escalator to success. It makes some things easier. But there also exists privilege due to class, health, access to education, gender, climate, family support, etc.
There are many, many types of privilege, and being white is just one of them that has an interaction with the others. (e.g. is it more advantageous to be white and able bodied or white and not able bodied? Is it more advantageous to be white and poor or black and poor? etc.)
> It's used to attribute individual excellence to generalized advantages of a certain group of people.
If you believe that individual excellence is the only factor, then how would you explain the demographic data about fortune 500 CEOs? One hypothesis is that privilege played a role -- that they had advantages due to race, class, gender, health, etc. that combined with their individual achievement resulted in their success. If privilege didn't play a role in their success, is it just a coincidence that the demographics overwhelmingly skew white male?
I shouldn't feel guilt because I can walk. But it's important to recognize that my experiences and my abilities might be different than others.
An architect designing a public building with only stairs or narrow doors, or a traffic planner optimizing crossing times for an average pedestrian are cases of failing to recognize their privilege in being able bodied. If, after being made aware of their privilege, they continue to design for themselves then they may be considered immoral by some people.
Middle English: via Old French from Latin privilegium ‘bill or law affecting an individual’, from privus ‘private’ + lex, leg- ‘law’.
In fact, in France privilèges have been abolished during the revolution. And it's not just the wrong word, it's kind of opposite; privilege generally meant the benefit of a minority, but here it's used to describe when the majority benefits, because they are the majority.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1576/
And at least according to makers of the OED, it does not define words, it describes them: https://languages.oup.com/about-us/how-we-create-language-co...
Descriptivism allows for expressions like, "To boldly go where no man has gone before!" which is a split infinitive, and an 'incorrect' use of language. If a native speaker would say a thing in speaking, then it's valid. Native English speakers use language in all sorts of ways that would be 'incorrect' -- from jive to rhyming slang to 1337 sp34k to adoptions from queer culture like 'shade' or 'yass'.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
For example I have given friends advice before on how to get somewhere, and been told that it won't work for them, for reasons such as them not wanting to walk alone in a certain area/time due to being a small woman, or lack of handicap accessible infrastructure making something take longer than it would for me.
If being confronted with your own privilege makes you feel guilty, that sounds more like you are bothered that others are less privileged
Also if you search reddit for whether trans women or trans men possess male privilege you will find people arguing as if their life depended on it. And these people seem to very involved in movements where the use of the term is the most frequent so should be the most acquainted with it's use and definition.
Also, you wouldn't use the word privileged to talk about regimes in places with oppressive governments. You'd use the word oppressive.
Would you prefer it to be rephrased? Should we spend the time to shield egos or should we encourage egos not to be so fragile?
"No matter how thoughtful your opinion that differs from mine, I'm going to regard it as invalid because you're white" is how it comes down to many people. Which side is the one with the fragile ego there? The one that takes offense at having their ideas dismissed on such a basis, or the side that has to use such an excuse to not listen?
Personally, I quite easily give my opinion unasked (like here), and do feel rejected if it isn't listen too. Likely, because I grew up the way, that my opinion matters.
I would imagine, the experience would be quite a different one, if your thoughtful opinion would be voiced after being asked for it.
When you think about it this way, equality of outcome is essentially a Marxist rhetoric. So it's quite understandable why many people don't like politicians who advocate this controversial position.
If, the other hand, what politicians really want is a greater equality of opportunity, they really should make that clear. But I don't think they usually mean that, given that people who talk about white privilege are usually the ones who push for so-called 'affirmative action', which clearly reduces equality of opportunity in favor of equality of outcome.
Obama had a speech near the end of his presidency, he talked about situations talking to individuals who have real struggles, real problems in their lives and don't feel like anyone handed anything to them.
Then someone comes to them who doesn't know them, and talks to them about their privilege? That's not going to help convince them of anything.
Even to a further extent, talk to anyone you don't know .. and tell them what you know about them based on just their race? That's probabbly not going to go well.
You're not getting far, and frankly on an individual / non academic level it seems off the mark for an individual or audience.
I feel like concepts like white privilege and such sort of escaped academia and more general conversations, and are swung around a bit wildly and inaccurately by some folks.
These toxic propagandists have tricked millions of people into believing that the poorest white person is as responsible for the poverty of black people as the richest.
Transforming the political fight from the 1% vs the 99% into a fight of the racial majority vs a racial minority. If the 99% are fighting among themselves, they can't unite against the 1%.
Millions of powerless white people predictably take offense at the idea that they're responsible for an economic system rigged by the rich to oppress poor people of all races. Of course prejudice exists but the core issue holding people back is purely economic, not racial.
That's historical revisionism. Four Civil Rights Acts were passed in the 1950s and 1960s, plus the Voting Rights Act. Each passed by overwhelming majorities in the House Republican Caucus, and much narrower majorities in the House Democratic Caucus. In fact, the 1960s were a time of the Democratic Party toeing the line on civil rights to appease southern Democrats. Indeed, while people talk about Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," Nixon won the South only because George Wallace. Wallace, running on a segregationist platform, split the Democratic vote with Hubert Humphrey. Wallace outright won 5 deep southern states, and beat Humphrey in several others. Nixon--who had helped shepherd the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress--didn't carry a majority in any southern state.
In 1976, Carter won the Presidency with the traditional coalition of conservative Southerners and liberal north easterners, while Ford won the west and most of the midwest. Reagan won both the south and most of the northeast, and so did George H.W. Bush in 1988. It wasn't until the 1990s, with Bill Clinton, that the now-familiar alignment of the south with republicans and the northeast with democrats took shape.
I don't understand how the facts you've cited establish either of these two sentences as "revisionism": "Democratic support for civil rights legislation helped the party secure the long-term loyalty of a majority of African American voters, but alienated many of the party’s white voters. This led to Republican gains in new areas of the country, especially the South (Black and Black 2002.)"
As you say, the traditional (pre-1960s) coalition of the Democrats was (white) conservative Southerners and liberal Northerners. That explains the messy partisan alignment of the five bills you mentioned. (The voting patterns are clear if you look at geography, not party affiliation[1].)
In the aftermath of those bills, we find evidence that something strongly alienated the white, conservative Southern Democrats, and resulted in Republican gain. While the national politics you mention are confusing, there is a clear visual pattern in the presidential voting records of a southern state like North Carolina [2]: blue prior to the 1960s, and red afterwards.
What was it that alienated the white, conservative Southerners? Perhaps there is a more compelling answer to this than "civil rights", but your evidence does not establish that. You cite George Wallace, but his story is one of many that supports the quoted passage and its thesis that civil rights was a key issue. A long-time Democrat, he was one of many blue dogs who broke with the national party over segregation. His famous "segregation now, tomorrow, forever" speech in 1963 was arguably his moment of greatest acclaim by his electorate, and by 1968, he was sufficiently alienated from Democrats to make a third-party run as a segregationist. Many other Southern dems (eg Eastland, Thurmond) opposed the civil rights bills, and in their aftermath, switched parties in name or in spirit (supporting Republican national candidates), citing civil rights or segregation as a particular point of policy difference.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#By_pa... [2] https://www.270towin.com/states/North_Carolina
Disparity and disadvantage are better words.
It's a social bias, and those cannot be changed by a decree. So not only is it attacking people, alleging guilt, it's also an ineffective stance to repeatedly point it out. Affirmative action also has connotation of failure to solve the issues black people face.