And it would be a good name. I do love me some Talking Heads.
https://twitter.com/drvox/status/974755634032685056
https://twitter.com/Jeff_Hedges/status/974756551532609537
Sanders tried that and failed, miserably, in the South. He didn’t connect at all with what is the core constituency of the Democratic party. I don’t have to explain it because you already understand the dynamics of race, gender, power and privilege. But if the recognition of racism and misogyny results in (as you posit) with further divisions, the problem isn’t addressing those things but rather the problem is with the people who stand to lose power, even if those people are stuck on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. It’s the proverbial missing the forest for the trees, and those on the other end of the scale (the ‘oppressed’ for lack of a better word) know that in a way white males never can.
Oh, I don’t deny that today it would be a long, hard struggle to restore the primacy of a class-based analysis. I’m mostly referring to the historical.course of the left, going back to the AFL and Sam Gompers at least. That’s when we pretty much ditched the idea of a class-based critique of society and sold out for being well paid proles. It worked fine as long as there was constant growth within a relatively static social and technological environment. When stuff started to change–particularly the end of the magic economy in the 1960s, along with the radical transformation of society and culture–we found out that, um, well, we had thrown the baby out with the bath water.
I agree that the problem is with the people who stand to lose power. Those are the elites of the right, mostly, but also if we’re honest the techno lords of Silicon Valley, too, who while playing at being liberals are really just plutocrats who don’t care where you stick your pee pee. The folks who are really getting screwed are a different sort of problem, as they are being manipulated massively and always have been. Why is the manipulation successful? Because there are no competing voices. Class can’t be used, because for decades we’ve internalized the idea that unlike every other place on earth, here there are no classes and everyone can be a millionaire. To admit otherwise would be to admit that, no, you’re probably not going to be rich, and that cuts against our grain. Commonality with other humans is a non-starter, because tribalism and race baiting have been so ingrained that it’s nearly impossible to separate ethnicity and other factors from the sort of nationalist identity that the right has inculcated in people. I think the best hope may be, though, to return to people like Mill and start to hammer at people that if they really want to be left alone, if they really want to be free, they need to make sure everyone is free, and that their actions don’t hurt others. That means reining in the folks who are hurting others with their greed, but this will be a hard sell even if we can get people from the left or center who will deign to actually talk to folks who will initially be very hostile and culturally distant.
White privilege isn’t about money or class but… heh, okay.
Goddamn, that encapsulates my relationship with my mom to an upsetting degree.
Well, it encompasses those things, because that’s how we measure relative power. And why do you think race became a way of separating people, or has endured so long? It’s not because of some racism virus that floats around and infects people. It’s because racism makes for a dandy tool for elites to use to gain and maintain power. And that power is measured in money and status, among other things.
No, white privilege as a concept is not strictly about class and money, which is why it applies just as much to Mr. 40 Hour a Week blue-collar worker as it does to the lawyer or the engineer, despite the glaring disparities in wealth and status. But the entire history of racism and sexism in this country is rooted in the material foundations of society. Slavery arose because white Europeans wanted a stable labor supply; it endured because the descendants of those first slave holders found out that one, they loved being masters of other humans, and two, they could use the presence of a non-white underclass to insulate themselves from the legitimate aspirations of the mass of poorer people. So when even after slavery went away we ended up with a society that still privileged whites, there was a reason for that, as can be seen in the post-slavery Jim Crow era. A bit of privilege goes a long way to keeping poor whites in line.
Nope
If we’re going to oppose alternative facts, we probably shouldn’t indulge in them, however helpful the narrative they are then used to support.
I took his comment:
to mean modern slavery (meaning, specifically 1600 onwards, with the Atlantic Triangle, not modern day 21st century slavery,) not the concept of slavery itself.
Yea, context matters.
I’m speaking here solely of North American slavery, not ancient slavery. That should be clear in the context of the discussion. Slavery per se of course goes back nearly forever, but North American slavery was pretty much unique in the way it originated and developed.
No need for snark about alternative facts. Admittedly, there is scholarly debate about the role psychological racism played in the origins of North American slavery, with two general schools of thought, one holding that racism preceded slavery and the other that slavery pretty much created modern Western racism. Probably a mixture of both is close to accurate, but there’s plenty of evidence to support my particular take on the institution in North America.
It’s funny how George Washington is an American when he defeats the British, but a European when he holds slaves. But anyway.
I think if we’re talking about the origins of North American racism then it’s simple to look at the (largely) non-slaveholding cultures of Europe and say they were certainly no less racist (and possibly more racist) than the slaveholding cultures of the middle east. Of course the European colonists were racist against Africans - they were racist against everyone who wasn’t like them! The more different and the greater the proximity, the more racist they were!
Obviously the institution of slavery in North America and the events surrounding its abolition contributed tremendously to the evolution of north American racism. As far as I can tell nowhere else is there a corresponding phenomenon to the toxic legacy of the civil war, although I’m sure there are cases that I miss.
I don’t believe that this reflects anything fundamental about 19th century American society so much as the fact that US independence and the economic importance of slavery in the South made it nigh-impossible for slavery to be abolished without significant conflict.
I must say I’m not sure where I was going with this. I guess this is an example of one of those ways certain lines of argument often advanced by the left are unproductive - since I think I basically agree with you about white privilege in the US, and I think I basically agree with you about inequality in the US (although probably not about the remedies for it), but somehow we end up in disagreement about the historical narrative you’re advancing.
No worries; my ideas are just that, my ideas. I make no claim to authority, nor do I wish it.
The question of racism, slavery, and their impacts on the Atlantic world are complex, and I certainly don’t have the definitive answers. I generally agree with your analysis, though I’d argue that the institution of slavery, and its economic, legal, and social impact, was fundamental to 19th century American identity, North and South, partially because it was so intertwined with the founding of the nation its subsequent prosperity and constitutional development. But these are all arguable areas for sure.
And yeah, I see your point on old Washington. Personally, I’ve always viewed that group of elites as European Atlantics, people who were fundamentally European in outlook and culture but who were also shaped by the peculiar circumstances of living far from Europe and largely beyond its direct control. In my personal view, these folks didn’t become distinctly American until some time well into the 19th century. In that context, one regional group of Brits defeated another group of Brits in the Revolutionary War I guess.
White privilege is not even primarily about class or money. It’s about the defaults. So when they have over 90% of the test participants with albuterol were done with children of European descent and children of some minority status are not responding to albuterol, like not even close to the stats they had in the test, what does that mean. That means if you have white children, you can take drugs without wondering if your group was represented in the test, because of course they were, they were the default. That privilege of just having something applied to you because your the majority, has nothing to do with being rich or poor, or growing up with or without.
The assumption that if someone has an expensive car is if they’re white, they own it, if they’re not maybe they stole it. Again, it doesn’t matter if you grew up rich or poor, that assumption, the default, is against you.
The color nude, is not nude to a lot of group, again, the default.
This idea that poor white people don’t experience white privilege is just a complete misunderstanding of what white privilege actually is which is why Facebook is full of people talking about money and getting offended because they were poor and white and struggled.
We should rename it default privilege.
Nope. That would be unclear, and everyone with white privlege would be running around telling everyone how difficult their default is. In the USA, it’s White Privilege, and if you are white, you have it, and it’s not something white people do or even experience on purpose. It’s individual and institutional examples of racism. It automatically gives perks that people of other colors do not receive, and it provides advantages and immunity to challenges other people of other colors and descent simply do not have.
This is not about how poor or rich you are.
It’s already unclear, which is a big reason why the debate never ends.
It’s only unclear when you try and pussyfoot around the truth, and the truth is pretty simple: if you have white skin in this country, yesterday and today, you have advantages for no other reason than your appearance, and it has nothing to do with what class you are in. Since most people can’t accept that, they muddy the waters in order to avoid that truth because no one likes being told they have an unearned advantage.
Nah, it’s unclear because the moment you tell someone they have it better, they look around at their miserable life and shrug, confused. Then they get defensive. But we know this, it’s not news.
Then when they balk they’re accused of pussy-footing around, painting them as wrong and part of the problem. They don’t take this well and they get angry and start pointing out exceptions and perceived double standards. But at this point they’re just following the script, no surprises here.
Eventually they’ll gleefully wallow around in their willful ignorance with other like-minded people who didn’t appreciate being told how much better life is for them by people who don’t know anything about them. And they wear this ignorance like a badge of honor, happy to watch you flail about trying to make them understand, because they know what they’ve been through, and it doesn’t match the reality you’re trying to sell them. But we’ve already been over this a million times, so obviously this latest attempt to inform didn’t work either, and it almost seems like you’ve made an enemy out of a once-neutral and unengaged third party.
By this point you’ve lost more ground than you might have gained by bringing up the issue without trying to paint uninformed people as inherently bad in some way, no matter how tenuous their connection to whatever major systematic problem that happens to see Crayons named after them. And by this point they smirk whenever they see these “flesh-colored” Crayons, where they’d never throught twice about them before.
The issue is confusing because by the time you’re explaining the Crayons, ignorant people have already felt unjustifiably attacked enough to make them fortify their position, which to them means defending the honesty of their own existence up until the moment the veil was uncerimoniously ripped from their eyes. To them, getting them to change at this point means getting them to admit they didn’t earn what they have in life, nor did their parents, or anybody else they might have respected; and that their individual tragedies and hardships haven’t impeded their progress in the grand scheme of things–which they-re unlikely to do. So you might call this attitude pussy-footing around, but they call it embracing “common sense.”
I’m not implying your take on privilege isn’t 100% right, but I do think there might be better ways to educate people so that it makes more sense to them without automatically making an enemy of them in the process. We need people to be receptive, but too many times it seems like the speaker is just as happy to see these people dig their heels in, if for no other reason than it reinforces their claims that such an audience is willfully out of touch and maliciously obtuse.
Typed on a phone, so expect typos or whatever.
Arguments about privilege should more often be framed as policy and not personality, imo. Especially because how hard someone has worked is actually a separate category than privilege itself.
That is, you might well have worked your ass off every step of the way in your life and still benefited from privilege. Too often both sides (imo) are unable or unwilling to make this distinction. When you leer and sneer at an individual for their privilege, especially on internet forums, you may or may not have a full understanding of their lives and their successes and failures, even setting aside the silver spoon stories that are obvious.
It’s too easy in conversation to paint every success as privilege and every case of failure as institutional disadvantage and the obvious weakness of those assertions make them more easy to deflect if not partially refute. This is especially important because - and this is a subtlety that’s easy for progressives to forget/miss - privilege today is generally not codified. I mean, privilege in the time of the French Revolution was a thing, with lists and laws and all sorts of things. Jim Crow and Apartheid were definitely instances of institutional disprivilege. A lack of such institutionalized disprivilege today means you can’t just scream “privilege” as if it were a Fact without explanation to the unconvinced.
It’s just a losing argument as formulated. We’re all protagonists in our own story construct, and we’re wired to focus on the difficulties.
We always think the we overcome long odds, the boss that didn’t understand, the love interest that burnt up, the financial misfortune that felt like it took you to the brink.
For a lot of people, over the brink. The resentment that things didn’t work out. And they’re supposed to internalize a message about how they had it easier than others?
Not happening