Interesting Links for 28-01-2016

[andrewducker]

• Lib Dems propose Scottish income tax rise to fund education
  • education tax Scotland libdem
• The DWP is forcing a rape victim to pay the Bedroom Tax on her police-installed panic room
  • rape housing welfare OhForFucksSake
• What Happened to Jane Mayer When She Wrote About the Koch Brothers
  • conspiracy reporting money politics viaSwampers
• Explaining White

Comments

[thakil]

The thing that I think gets activists of all kinds in trouble when talking to "normal" people is that they have developed a language of their own and assigned different meaning to words than "normal" people attach to them. By that, I refer to racism and privilege. When a "normal" person thinks of a racist, they think of a nasty hick who fires people of different races, won't talk to them and expects them to be stupider/more criminal excetera. An outright bigot, in other words. When an activist calls something racist it can often be because it embodies certain attitudes about race which are inaccurate. The idea being that under this, more broad definition, almost everyone is racist. Similarly for privilege. When someone hears the word "privilege" they imagine someone born to fortune, someone who has never had a difficult day in their life, while again the intention is that it's about subtle ways in which society benefits people of certain backgrounds

[andrewducker]

Yeah. Definitely seen that confusion between the different uses. And having had a discussion about "privilege" yesterday, there seem to be some common additional misunderstandings

Worse? How could it be worse?

[danieldwilliam]

On the explaining privilege to a broke white person article I wonder if there is a disadvantage event horizon beyond which any form of privilege ceases to exist and the concept of privilege becomes, in practise, useless

RE: Worse? How could it be worse?

[andrewducker]

Privilege is not a ladder. It is not a score. A person does not fall to zero on the privilege scale. Because there is no privilege scale.

Look at the examples in the article:
"I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."
"When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."
"If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race."
"I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time."

Not one of these is about having leverage, or a multiplier of something else. You can't multiply any of these by zero, because they are not numbers on a scale.

They are simply things that some people have, and others don't, which affect people on a day to day basis.

And having something which someone doesn't, is a "privilege". It's what "privilege" means, in this context.

Re: Worse? How could it be worse?

[danieldwilliam]

I think for a thing to exist it must have an impact on the universe around it

RE: Re: Worse? How could it be worse?

[andrewducker]

I think for a thing to exist it must have an impact on the universe around it.

I'm not convinced this is the case for privilge below a certain level of socio-economic deprevation

Then I think you need to look at the people who are speaking from those levels, who _are_ clearly deeply emotionally and socially effected by lack of representation.

If you think that having the cops pull you over for being black doesn't have an effect, just because you're poor, then I am, frankly, boggled.

Re: Re: Worse? How could it be worse?

[danieldwilliam]

I'm not suggesting that it doesn't have an impact

RE: Re: Re: Worse? How could it be worse?

[andrewducker]

"But, and this is the question I'm trying to articulate, if the police in parallel to pulling over a bunch of young black men are also pulling over poor white trash and they are just as likely to end up falsely imprisoned"

In that case those people _don't_ have that privilege over black people, on that specific thing. And anyone claiming they do is wrong.

But that's got nothing to do with zero bounds. Because privilege is not a ladder. A black man and a white woman are both privileged over each other, in different contexts.