Not getting racism when you're young

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I don't think rights v privileges is a good place to start, and its a negative thing that has replaced equality as a way of thinking about racial differences. In most cases economic and political differences will lead legal ones, so using a distinction from legal language the foundation already a massive compromise.

"Privilege" is a really weird way of framing things that a person doesn't have to endure. I have had the privilege never to have fallen out of a crane, and I have the right not to have a piano dropped on my head when I walk down the street. McIntosh's essays seem to assume that the distinction between a right and a privilege is, like, part of direct life experience and I just find that to be an absurdity, something only an academic could have come up with

[Kankurette]

Totally agree, it's a classic divide and conquer tactic from the establishment. The desperately need to stop working class people from uniting so they 'intersectionalise' the hell out of them to turn them against each other.

But doesn't intersectionality include class as well? Like, class can be a factor that people discriminate against, or another hoop to jump through? And if not, it should include class.

Yeah, when I was talking about acknowledging your privilege I meant it on the most immediate and personal level - taking that first step of recognising that there may be things you'll never have to worry about, which are currently a fact of life for people from minority and marginalised ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Digesting that initial recognition (which, for me, it goes without saying should absolutely include acknowledgement of our colonial history, it's not an either/or) then makes it easier to make empathetic, responsible and progressive choices about how you interact with others and talk about these things.

It's obviously a different kettle of fish when you're talking about sweeping HR policies and the like. This is a minor and fairly innocent example of how this kind of stuff can backfire, but I've posted on here before about the time my line manager got invited to some sort of diversity awareness training by HR, as apparently "they could see that none of her direct reports were BAME" - presumably just going by my English-sounding name and pasty Outlook profile photo. I thought it was funny, but you can see how similar misunderstandings in the name of workplace diversity and inclusion could easily be counterproductive or offensive.

Not race-related, but: I got forced to go to a diversity event at work and it was the biggest waste of time ever. I tried to explain to my line manager that I didn't want to go as 1) I was due to go home and I was already knackered, and having to do extra time would set off a fibro flare - which it did - and 2) I hate events like this because having to do group work and talking about potential hotbed issues with people I don't know, or worse, people I hate, makes me panicky. Net result: I got my arm twisted into going, was put in a group with a colleague who'd bullied me, had a meltdown and ran out. There's an irony in there somewhere. My line manager said she'd never met an autistic person before. I said, "Now you have."

I'm sure some of you are going to go 'suck it up snowflake', or make some comment about disability and idpol or something, but it was fucking horrible. It was so humiliating and my line manager treated me like a naughty little girl. And if you insist on someone who's got both physical and mental health issues going to something that will exacerbate both issues, you're not as open-minded as you think you are.

[TrenterPercenter]

"It Doesn't Make It Alright" connects the indignities and humiliations of growing up "nobody" with the NF violence of the time.

I'm not criticising the sentiment, I'm just saying it belongs to a time when younger people were more justified in feeling that changing attitudes in their peer groups and bonding with others would be enough to sort out fascism once and for all. The Specials record is such an inspiring, nakedly utopian thing that some moments like "It Doesn't Make It Alright" are poignant to listen to because all those good intentions and smarts weren't enough to bring about the new era their music was meant to celebrate.

If I can hark back to a childhood in Birmingham; in which actual working class anti-racist music and discourse was around you a lot I'd just say all this poignant an worthiness of it all is a bit misplaced; in the first instance it was about communities, anthems and solidarity through fun; people, of different ethnicities spent time with each other at parties; at work; in communities sharing food and music.  These communities were not "woke" or anything like any of this modern middle class impression of anti-racism; there was a solidarity around class which bound people together and a common enemy in Thatcher and the Tories.  Time was spent dancing and taking drugs, there were still some elements of homophobia, sexism and all the bad behaviours people do when under pressure; this isn't ideal but neither is a puritanical "outrage first and for effect" approach an overly academic and professionalised approach to life.  Life and humans are not that simple; that is why collectivism is so powerful because it is fluid and fuzzy yet binds through common not engineered or prescribed needs and desires.  It, is as any good Marxist should know is a relation, a reaction between people that allows the rest to flow (hence you build the superstructure and environment for this to flow around).

[Kankurette]

I think we do still have a bit of that in Manchester. Parts of London as well. Look at Adele, for instance. The Marcus Rashford fun and games at Euro 2021 brought people together as well regardless of race, and please do not get angry with me for 'talking about individuals' or whatever, I am using it as an example because that is where I live.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I don't want to dredge the whole argument up again, but intersectionality cannot include class because class is about types of relation rather than being a relation itself. Like, being a factory worker and being a mother are similar in terms of class but they're not the same relation. Intersectionality needs each intersection not to be decomposeable into its parts, partly because its a legal theory.

The idea of class being just another kind of oppression breaks the central insight of class itself, which is that we can think critical about what "oppression" actually means other than just the abstract notion of domination, we can be precise about social and economic relations. Before "intersectionality" was coined people like Audre Lorde attempted to make new concepts like "classism" to make class work with a system which had a plurality of oppressions but no general concept like class struggle to unite them. But the utility of doing this isn't persuasive because the notion of a "matrix of oppression" itself begs the question of class struggle in a marxist sense.

Class conceptualises the sameness or commonality between different kinds of injustice, its the inevitable limit point of any theory that posits nothing but differences and pluralities.

[flotemysost]

"Privilege" is a really weird way of framing things that a person doesn't have to endure. I have had the privilege never to have fallen out of a crane, and I have the right not to have a piano dropped on my head when I walk down the street. McIntosh's essays seem to assume that the distinction between a right and a privilege is, like, part of direct life experience and I just find that to be an absurdity, something only an academic could have come up with

I guess to my mind "privilege" is a useful word because in the simplest of terms, it describes the fact that systemic oppression and inequality favours some people more than others, and those are favoured get to enjoy greater freedoms and opportunities than others, not because they've worked harder or are cleverer or stronger or whatever, just because they are afforded privilege. Not getting hit by a piano falling on your head is just luck, it's not as if some people are more likely to be hit by a falling piano simply because of the circumstances of their birth. Unless they're born into a line of piano factory workers, maybe.

I'm really not very well read on academic/political theory around this, I guess I'm just thinking about ways of describing it which make sense to me and help me get my head around the current problem and therefore ways of counteracting it.

[MikeP]

"Privilege" is a really weird way of framing things that a person doesn't have to endure. I have had the privilege never to have fallen out of a crane, and I have the right not to have a piano dropped on my head when I walk down the street.

Rights are what you fight for, priveleges are what you get gratis.
Both can be withdrawn at any time without notice. What people call rights are largley expectations. You might think you have the right not to have a piano dropped on your head when you walk down the street, but it's a theory that only holds water until someone drops a piano on your head.

[Kankurette]

Flotesmysost, I'm the same and I always feel like the dumb kid at the back of the class in these discussions because I find Marxist theory, and political theory in general, hard to get my head around. I've tried reading essays and stuff but it just goes over my head.

[TrenterPercenter]

"Privilege" is a really weird way of framing things that a person doesn't have to endure. I have had the privilege never to have fallen out of a crane, and I have the right not to have a piano dropped on my head when I walk down the street. McIntosh's essays seem to assume that the distinction between a right and a privilege is, like, part of direct life experience and I just find that to be an absurdity, something only an academic could have come up with

Agree with this 100% it is absurd.  Privilege is meant to be about asking what can you use your privilege for but instead it has been turned into a "you have this" based on some really badly considered usually race and sex reductionist logic which implies that people are complicit in discrimination based on characteristics.

It also often used as a tautological technique to game arguments; you have to agree with the premise in order to escape the consequences.  There is a lot to disagree with McWhorter on some of his thoughts but he is very good at identifying the tropes and techniques employed by what terms "The Elect".

People that genuinely care about things tend to care about whether the logic in there arguments hold up and isn't making them out to be hypocrites.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I guess to my mind "privilege" is a useful word because in the simplest of terms, it describes the fact that systemic oppression and inequality favours some people more than others, and those are favoured get to enjoy greater freedoms and opportunities than others, not because they've worked harder or are cleverer or stronger or whatever, just because they are afforded privilege. Not getting hit by a piano falling on your head is just luck, it's not as if some people are more likely to be hit by a falling piano simply because of the circumstances of their birth. Unless they're born into a line of piano factory workers, maybe.

The issue is why this needs to specifically a legal distinction. Privilege wasn't a word chosen arbitrarily, it doesn't just mean an advantage or a bonus, it implies something that is a benefit but isn't a right. To me that traces the origin of privilege theory from academic legal theory to HR departments, where the distinctions between privileges and rights in American law are vitally important. In places where legal recourse and compliance are less important, like direct labour action or anti-colonial movements, the distinction between a right and privilege doesn't have that significance.

If you read black feminist authors from the late 1970s, or black marxists from 1960s, the distinction between rights and privileges rarely figures if at all because they're talking about situations either remote from legality or where all legal institutions are presupposed to be hostile - there are demanded rights, which include a right to land, right to self determination and a high standard of living, "forty acres and a mule". It starts appearing frequently at the end of the 1980s when racism and sexism start being of concern to corporations and institutions. In these situations the difference between an involiable right and a privilege to be enjoyed matters.

[TrenterPercenter]

I guess to my mind "privilege" is a useful word because in the simplest of terms, it describes the fact that systemic oppression and inequality favours some people more than others, and those are favoured get to enjoy greater freedoms and opportunities than others, not because they've worked harder or are cleverer or stronger or whatever, just because they are afforded privilege. Not getting hit by a piano falling on your head is just luck, it's not as if some people are more likely to be hit by a falling piano simply because of the circumstances of their birth. Unless they're born into a line of piano factory workers, maybe.

I agree privilege is useful but not when it is reduced down to stereotypes.  I also disagree in part with VGF2Ks wholesale rejection of intersectionality; it is useful, again if not applied to stereotypes and that hierarchies of oppression are seen as the complicated and variable things that they actually are.

for example people that work in removals are generally men; so they are at an increased risk of pianos falling on their heads it would be weird to then say women are privileged to not have pianos fall on their heads - this is actually what MRAs say, not pianos but the increased risk of death for men in manual professions.  It's a ridiculous argument; based on the idea that there is something inalienable about men, the work they do and women and advantages they receive from not doing this work.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Allen and Ignatiev, who coined the term "white skin privilege" are at odds with much of contemporary privilege theory because they both empathically reject that the idea of race is anything other than a social or political construction - they've both said it is primarily an economic or class relation. It describes why white workers act against their own interests as much as it describes why trade unions were still racist in the 1970s after the civil rights movement.

The experiential and self-reflective part of what McIntosh and other claims is contrary to this because it assumes that race is essential and inalienable, and colours experience directly via "privilege" which only exists because people are actively denying it. Compare to Ignatiev who argued things like Irish labourers weren't white until they took jobs as cops, then they became white. Then the risk of being alienated from new found whiteness motivated their violence against nonwhites. I think one of these positions is very persuasive and the other isn't.

[chveik]

the way i see it, the tripartition race, class, gender is a sociological one: you're describing different forms of 'domination' that occur in a particular moment in time. even if you say that they're all interfering with each other, the fact that there are three elements means that you're going to isolate one of them at some point, you will have to decide whether race or class or gender supersedes the others in one particular situation between different social forces. it's a new tool to talk about society, probably more accurate in some ways than other sociological models.

on the contrary, what class struggle offers is a transformative theory, something that you can really work with instead of just describing things. when the privilege theorists talk about solutions to fight different types of oppressions, they always tend to be psychological ones: it's about self-reflection, changing the way you interact with others but solely in relation to your own biography, but it's never really about combining forces towards a common enemy. and in each situation the enemy is always the capital, whatever form it takes in that situation. the workplace under capitalism is an exploitative structure, privilege theory can't act on that structure, it's trying to neutralise different relations of power in that workplace but not the Big one, between those that have the means of production and those that do not.

obviously it's a good thing when people don't have to suffer regular humilations because they 'belong' to an ethnic minority and whatnot. but i'm not sure the way to go is to enforce it while keeping the material inequalities in the exact same way they were before. you can see it's also directed to one particular type of work (where that legal vocabulary can exist) while a massive part of the population is still considered expendable.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

+ 1

I think a very telling point on the "self-reflection" part is how much disability figured into the precursors of privilege theory but its prominence more or less hasn't survived into McIntosh/DiAngelo era. A company might be able improve things for minority workers by having anti-racism seminars and getting employees to fill out privilege checklist, but healthcare and support for the disabled or chronic illness is going to be a welfare issue, is going to require spending and investment. Issues about productivity will always take precidence over fair treatment for the disabled because production isn't potentially indifferent to disability like it is to race and gender. People need material things like glasses, ramps, hearing aids, etc. At that point things get a lot less Ibram X Kendi and a lot more Koch Brothers.

[chveik]

yeah good point, from what i've seen the state has to pay companies and institutions for them to employ disabled people. and the state doesn't care much about those people in the first place, given all the hoops you have to go through in order to be officially recognised as disabled and then the stuggle to obtain material improvements.

[Brundle-Fly]

Yeah, but Lip Up Fatty was mint.