white privilege vs. racism against blacks (link to video)

[coda]

This video shows clear example of white privilege vs. racism and racial profiling.

Although It's never surprising to see the reactions, it is always sad and shocking in it's blatancy and mob mentality.. and despicable to witness. :(

http://camajo.tumblr.com/post/3555932358/sexgenderbody-this-is-white-privilege



(the topic should say racism against blacks... if someone wants to fix.. also you can add that there is a video maybe, thanks)

[PhoenixAsh]

yup...open and shut case...I'd say. Disgusting.

Funny enough...this works even when the police is around. They challenge...but when you are white and have the key explanation ready...they will even going so far as to step out of their vehicle and assisting with the tools in the back of their car. And this is from experience.

The psychology of people works on stereotypes. Thats the most depressing part.

If you wear official looking overalls and a clip board with an official looking form....you can even walk into a computer store and take away 12 computers. Because people see the uniform much like they see the color of somebodies skin.

dQJwUhhUjpI

[Fulanito de Tal]

This video shows clear example of white privilege vs. racism and racial profiling.

Although It's never surprising to see the reactions, it is always sad and shocking in it's blatancy and mob mentality.. and despicable to witness. :(

http://camajo.tumblr.com/post/3555932358/sexgenderbody-this-is-white-privilege



(the topic should say racism against blacks... if someone wants to fix.. also you can add that there is a video maybe, thanks)

Good find! I'm saving this one :)

[Jimmie Higgins]

This video shows clear example of white privilege vs. racism and racial profiling.

Although It's never surprising to see the reactions, it is always sad and shocking in it's blatancy and mob mentality.. and despicable to witness. :(

http://camajo.tumblr.com/post/3555932358/sexgenderbody-this-is-white-privilege


Why is this "white privilege vs. racism"?

[GallowsBird]

"White privilege" is a ridiculous concept. For instance I'd hardly say "white" minorites such as Italians have a "privilege" in America. People should stop seeing the world as "black vs white". It is highly counter-productive.

[The Red Next Door]

"White privilege" is a ridiculous concept. For instance I'd hardly say "white" minorites such as Italians have a "privilege" in America. People should stop seeing the world as "black vs white". It is highly counter-productive.

Yes, some Italians do have privilege. Now a days, but with them. It kind of complex, because they are portray in the media, in a very fuck up manner,
but. Today, no. They are not going to get pull over by the police, or face harsh oppression.

So, In America, the oppression issue is black,yellow,brown. People seem to forget about the browns and yellow sometimes.

All non white minorities have more oppression, in Europe. The case is different but here, people can't tell if you are polish or etc unless you tell them and then hell might break lose.

[RedAnarchist]

Why is this "white privilege vs. racism"?

The title was erroneous, and I've edited it to what the OP intended it to be.

[BankHeist]

"White privilege" is a ridiculous concept. For instance I'd hardly say "white" minorites such as Italians have a "privilege" in America. People should stop seeing the world as "black vs white". It is highly counter-productive.
:rolleyes:

Spoken like a real whitey or uncle Tom.

Acknowledging that major disparities exist between Black and white America is counter-productive for who exactly?

It's ironic, because I'm sure to the benefactor of your wage labor, seeing the world as "poor vs. rich" is also "highly counter-productive".

[Fulanito de Tal]

"White privilege" is a ridiculous concept. For instance I'd hardly say "white" minorites such as Italians have a "privilege" in America. People should stop seeing the world as "black vs white". It is highly counter-productive.

Wow. So white people have is just as bad as black people?

In the US, whites of all ethnicities tend to sell their own cultures out and acculturate to the dominant Anglo American culture to receive the benefits of privilege. Blacks cannot acculturate because the dominant group has stereotypes based on their physical characteristics. Therefore, not matter how white they act, they will always be black in the eyes of whites. If you don't think so, then you're supporting a white supremacist ideology.

I think you should stop seeing the world as "black vs. white". It's more of a "white hating black" deal. Black people never asked for this nor do they promote this. This is all done by white people. Black people just let everyone know it's happening. White people don't like it mentioned because it highlights what's happening.

Here's a popular paper on white privilege: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

[GallowsBird]

:rolleyes:

Spoken like a real whitey or uncle Tom.

I don't think of myself as a "whitey", my name isn't Tom. I am in fact an uncle though.


Acknowledging that major disparities exist between Black and white America is counter-productive for who exactly? I acknowledge that their are major disparities between "white America" and "black America" as well as "brown", "yellow", "red", "green" and any other colour under the sun, I just reject the term "white privilege" and pointed out that not all "whites" have this "privilege". And by the way "darker" whites, Arabs etc are profiled due to appearence.


It's ironic, because I'm sure to the benefactor of your wage labor, seeing the world as "poor vs. rich" is also "highly counter-productive".Yes that is as maybe however this "ironic" point of yours is baseless as racism is definitely counter-productive whereas a racist would disagree and anti-racism vice versa, and countering everything with "the capitalists think" style of posts does not lend anything to point you are trying to make.

[GallowsBird]

Wow. So white people have is just as bad as black people?

Some do others don't. Rich capitalist "black" people (and yes they do exist) for instance are better off than "white" immigrant familes in some slum in New York for instance... it is all relative. Yes "blacks" being a minority are descriminated against but so are other groups some of which are traditionally regarded as "white" and some by look.


In the US, whites of all ethnicities tend to sell their own cultures out and acculturate to the dominant Anglo American culture to receive the benefits of privilege. Blacks cannot acculturate because the dominant group has stereotypes based on their physical characteristics. Therefore, not matter how white they act, they will always be black in the eyes of whites. If you don't think so, then you're supporting a white supremacist ideology.I agree somewhat and I've fought white supremicists in real life so I am offended by the latter claim. I could say stupid things like you just support "black supremecy" but I won't as that would be an insult based on very little evidence.

The fact some groups have to pretend they are another groups shows that they aren't born with this "white privilege".


I think you should stop seeing the world as "black vs. white".Ridiculous. I am not seeing it as "black vs. white" hence my point.


It's more of a "white hating black" deal.What all whites hate all blacks in all countries?


Black people never asked for this nor do they promote this. This is all done by white people. Black people just let everyone know it's happening. White people don't like it mentioned because it highlights what's happening.I don't mind people mentioning that black people (or ANY people) are treated badly due to their ancestry and :cursing::cursing::cursing: you for implying that I do, frankly. I am merely pointing out that people forget that it isn't always anout skin colour... hence how the Jews in Europe were treated or the Irish.

[BankHeist]

I acknowledge that their are major disparities between "white America" and "black America" as well as "brown", "yellow", "red", "green" and any other colour under the sun, I just reject the term "white privilege" and pointed out that not all "whites" have this "privilege".


You still haven't pointed this out.

All you've done is complain about etymology; which is largely irrelevant to the fact being conveyed.

Regardless of whether you find the term "white privilege" objectionable or not; it doesn't change the reality -- that no white ethnic/cultural group; whether Irish, Italian, Jewish, Western European, or any other socially distinct white community, faces systematic oppression on a level even remotely comparable to that of African-Americans; and that white people, whatever their social, ethnic, or economic perdicament are able to enjoy societal privileges that Black people still cannot.

[GallowsBird]

You still haven't pointed this out.

All you've done is complain about etymology; which is largely irrelevant to the fact being conveyed.

You mean terminology not etymology. The latter of which I do have a strong interest in.


Regardless of whether you find the term "white privilege" objectionable or not; it doesn't change the reality -- that no white ethnic/cultural group; whether Irish, Italian, Jewish, Western European, or any other socially distinct white community, faces systematic oppression on a level even remotely comparable to that of African-Americans; and that white people, whatever their social, ethnic, or economic predicament are able to enjoy societal privileges that Black people still cannot.My point isn't that black people "don't have it bad" and will admit that they may have it the worst if that makes you feel better (though I think Native Americans have it worse in many ways). But my point is that white people are also judged and discriminated against based on appearance. I am talking for the UK mostly not the USA as I don't live there but in the UK if you are poor and scruffy and undesirable looking to those in power then you are commonly stopped by police et cetera and frankly "white people" can tell (or think they can) white people apart based on their ancestry and discriminate against them.

So I acknowledge that non-whites are discriminated against (of course they are) however it is naive to think that all whites are the discriminator class of society and frankly in some countries tanned "whites" are considered a different race whereas in America this is not the case.

As I say do Arabs or Iranians have this privilege? Also what about in places where blacks are the majority and have the most power... is there a "black privilege"? Or do you acknowledge that the colour of this privilege changes by location?

[Fulanito de Tal]

I don't mind people mentioning that black people (or ANY people) are treated badly due to their ancestry and :cursing::cursing::cursing: you for implying that I do, frankly. I am merely pointing out that people forget that it isn't always anout skin colour... hence how the Jews in Europe were treated or the Irish.

I'm glad you're offended. It's the first step in realizing your white privilege. :thumbup1:

I think you should watch the movie The Color of Fear. It's about a group a diverse group of men working with a white guy that believes there is no white privilege.

[GallowsBird]

I'm glad you're offended. It's the first step in realizing your white privilege. :thumbup1:

Except you don't even know I'm white. I'm also not saying that the case in the video is due to anything other than racism (other than classism) as it certainly is.

I'm going to leave this thread though as people are not only answering valid questions (whether there is white privilege in countries like Zimbabwe and whether Iranians, Arabs and the poor etc have this "privilege") but throwing around racist slurs themselves while calling other people racist which is immature and highly ironic. Especially since I am advocating not only solidarity between the traditional "races" (and abolition of the racist concept of "races") but also merely pointing out (from a class-conscious viewpoint) that to brand all "whites" as benefiting from racism regardless of economic and social stature is flawed. Ergo, I find the "white privilege" view too close to identity politics and not mindful of the general class struggle.

I shall leave this conundrum (based on something I have actually witnessed) however:

Three men are walking down the street. Two are business leaders in expensive suits; one white and the other black. The third is a scruffy poor working-class man; his clothes are cheap and his beard untrimmed. One of them is stopped by the police... which one?

[Queercommie Girl]

Regardless of whether you find the term "white privilege" objectionable or not; it doesn't change the reality -- that no white ethnic/cultural group; whether Irish, Italian, Jewish, Western European, or any other socially distinct white community, faces systematic oppression on a level even remotely comparable to that of African-Americans; and that white people, whatever their social, ethnic, or economic perdicament are able to enjoy societal privileges that Black people still cannot.


This makes sense if you narrow down your definition of "whites" to European whites (+ Israelis). It's true that even East Europeans and Irish people generally do not suffer the level of racial discrimination experienced by non-European peoples in general.

Technically Muslims Arabs are also racially "white", but they do not really enjoy "white privilege". In fact, I'd say in many parts of the Western world now, Arabs are even more discriminated against than people of Black African descent.

[chegitz guevara]

Freedom is not privilege, because oppression should not be normal.

[Decommissioner]

Replace this...



Three men are walking down the street. Two are business leaders in expensive suits; one white and the other black. The third is a scruffy poor working-class man; his clothes are cheap and his beard untrimmed. One of them is stopped by the police... which one?

with this...





Two men are walking down the street. Both are scruffy with cheap clothes and beards untrimmed; one white and the other black. One of them is stopped by the police... which one?

This is more analogous to white privelage. Also, if you took that black businessman, and put him in plain casual clothes, he would also more likely get stopped by the police over the "scruffy" white man.

No leftist denies that class doesn't play a role, and the in a material sense the rich black man is more privelaged than the poor white, but that is not what we are talking about. The privelage is relative, the rich white is always preferential to rich black, the poor white always preferential to the poor black.

And this privelage doesn't just manifest itself in viewpoints and outlooks of certain individuals, it is systematic and ingrained into our mass social consciousness, to the point that we are blind to our own privelage. I am a scruffy white man who gets picked on by the cops, and even I realize that the opportunities I have available to me are far greater than a black person in the same situation as I am. When people address me, say, if they just met me, I am likely to be described by my name, what I am wearing, my scruffy beard. If I were black, I would first and foremost be "that black guy".

I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in america race is still a big deal. In public, minorities are like the elephant in the room, people instantly assume they are either low class, uneducated, thieves, all the negative stereotypes. White people here are literally scared of black people, and if not that they are just outright racist. So in many instances, yes a police officer around here would stop a black man over any white person no matter how scruffy the white person is. With how ingrained the racism is around here, a white cop would find a black man in a business suit even more suspicious than a black man who looks how he thinks a black man is supposed to look.

[El Chuncho]

In the defense of the UK race isn't as big a thing as in the US, though xenophobia and classism still is. You are more likely to be targeted by the police if you are poor, regardless of colour, than rich and black. ''White privilege'' doesn't really exist in the UK, at least not in Northumbria (North-East England) but poor immigrants and Romani people still get it bad, despite many of them being considered white.

When visiting the US, the first thing that struck me is how much ''racism'' still exists in the mainstream. In the UK it is rare for someone to be talking about ''races'' on TV but in the US, especially in Georgia, you had adverts where they mentioned ''race'', as if blacks, whites, yellows etc. were still so divided. Maybe I am hyper-sensitive but I found it shocking, disgusting and very sad. As much as I hate the UK, I still felt a little happy that it isn't permeated by a ''race war''.

[jake williams]

I think the recasting of problems as issues of "privilege", rather than power or oppression, is a perfect example of the reaction of identity politics.

Almost no white people have any fundamental power over the society they live in, because almost no white people are a part of the ruling class in their respective societies. White groups or individuals may happen to enjoy many "privileges" relative to the oppression of others, but the problem is only the "privileged state" if, as chegitz said, the natural or appropriate state is that of oppression. It isn't.

There is a problem of relative privilege, but the problem is the relation, the racism itself (or whatever).

This is particularly clear when, and I see this happen regularly, bourgeois or petty-bourgeois "left" intellectuals go after the white, first world working class for being too privileged. That's the work of the bourgeois reactionaries attacking the class gains of their enemy. It's not the work of those opposed to oppression and exploitation.

[Tim Finnegan]

I think the recasting of problems as issues of "privilege", rather than power or oppression, is a perfect example of the reaction of identity politics.
I'm not at all convinced that the two concepts are mutually exclusive. As I understand it, privilege is the ideological means by which a given system of oppression is sustained, rather than an alternate explanation for that system of oppression.

Aside form anything else, it's privilege-as-state, not privilege-as-quantity, which seems to be a point of confusion; it refers to an elevated social status, rather than to any material rewards granted directly because of that status.

[coda]

There's the problem right there! People are more outraged by the use of the term "privilege" than they are at the stark example of everyday casual racism/racial profiling.

privilege by definition to mean:
1. A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste. (The Free Dictionary)

That's how the video was going around in blog-land and I didn't have time to think about retitling it.. nor did i think it needed correction. It is what it is...

[jake williams]

I'm not at all convinced that the two concepts are mutually exclusive. As I understand it, privilege is the ideological means by which a given system of oppression is sustained, rather than an alternate explanation for that system of oppression.
I'm not clear what you mean.


There's the problem right there! People are more outraged by the use of the term "privilege" than they are at the stark example of everyday casual racism/racial profiling.
Everyone here understands that racism exists and is repugnant. But if there's a question of how it's understood, or dealt with, then there's a political question which it's important to get right.

[coda]

<<But if there's a question of how it's understood, or dealt with, then there's a political question which it's important to get right.>.

Fair enough. Then, please narrate what is really going on in that video and how it is to be perceived...

[Tim Finnegan]

I'm not clear what you mean.
"Privileging" is the elevating of a certain general experience (or, more specifically, its normalised form) to a hegemonic status within society, e.g. the construction of rigid heterosexuality as an objective norm and alternative sexual orientations as a departure from this. This erases the experiences of the oppressed group from hegemonic discourse, and thus sustains their oppression by preventing them from challenging it within the terms of this discourse, which is to say, within the terms of the only discourse considered legitimate by the majority. Thus, an important part of anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, etc. activism is in recognising systems of privilege, so that they can be effectively challenged.

I honestly don't think that it's something which is fundamentally unfamiliar to anyone with a commitment to social justice, even if the particular theory may be.

[syndicat]

as bell hooks points out (in "Class Matters"), "privilege" is a class term. i prefer to say that some oppressed groups have advantages relative to others. the entire working class (about 3/4 of the population in the USA) is an oppressed group, but the class is made of many groups, and these groups do not have an identity of situation or advantage.

Structural racism and patriarchy (structural gender inequality) are real and generate relative advantages. capitalism tends to preserve these patterns of systemic inequality because...1. it creates resentments that makes solidarity between groups harder, thus increasing the bargaining power of the dominating classes, 2. enables certain groups with fewer opportunities to be treated worse, paid less etc., 3. enables certain disfavored groups to be stripped of their assets (e.g. indigenous groups whose lands are taken).

but these patterns create injuries to disfavored groups and generate struggles around that. it's necessary for the class as a whole to support these struggles because ignoring the injuries of racism or patriarchy isn't solidarity. you can't have an alliance among the oppressed (the groups who make up the working class) on the basis of ignoring the injuries of certain groups. solidarity means "an injury to one is an injury to all."

[Queercommie Girl]

as bell hooks points out (in "Class Matters"), "privilege" is a class term. i prefer to say that some oppressed groups have advantages relative to others. the entire working class (about 3/4 of the population in the USA) is an oppressed group, but the class is made of many groups, and these groups do not have an identity of situation or advantage.

Structural racism and patriarchy (structural gender inequality) are real and generate relative advantages. capitalism tends to preserve these patterns of systemic inequality because...1. it creates resentments that makes solidarity between groups harder, thus increasing the bargaining power of the dominating classes, 2. enables certain groups with fewer opportunities to be treated worse, paid less etc., 3. enables certain disfavored groups to be stripped of their assets (e.g. indigenous groups whose lands are taken).

but these patterns create injuries to disfavored groups and generate struggles around that. it's necessary for the class as a whole to support these struggles because ignoring the injuries of racism or patriarchy isn't solidarity. you can't have an alliance among the oppressed (the groups who make up the working class) on the basis of ignoring the injuries of certain groups. solidarity means "an injury to one is an injury to all."

I basically agree but I think you certainly should add queerphobia to the list too.

[Jimmie Higgins]

as bell hooks points out (in "Class Matters"), "privilege" is a class term. i prefer to say that some oppressed groups have advantages relative to others. the entire working class (about 3/4 of the population in the USA) is an oppressed group, but the class is made of many groups, and these groups do not have an identity of situation or advantage.

Structural racism and patriarchy (structural gender inequality) are real and generate relative advantages. capitalism tends to preserve these patterns of systemic inequality because...1. it creates resentments that makes solidarity between groups harder, thus increasing the bargaining power of the dominating classes, 2. enables certain groups with fewer opportunities to be treated worse, paid less etc., 3. enables certain disfavored groups to be stripped of their assets (e.g. indigenous groups whose lands are taken).

but these patterns create injuries to disfavored groups and generate struggles around that. it's necessary for the class as a whole to support these struggles because ignoring the injuries of racism or patriarchy isn't solidarity. you can't have an alliance among the oppressed (the groups who make up the working class) on the basis of ignoring the injuries of certain groups. solidarity means "an injury to one is an injury to all."

Why isn't it that some groups in the class are specifically targeted for oppression on top of the class oppression faced by all. THe ruling class is actively trying to take people's rights away, not grant some people rights that the RC doesn't have to. Wage inequality between men and women is shrinking, for example, not because women are getting higher pay, but because men are getting less paid... so does that mean that we are heading towards less oppression of women - hell, no, it's as bad, if not worse, than it has been for the last 20 years.

The difficulty I have with "privilege theory" is that it inverts oppression from being an attack, to being the norm and not being attacked to a privilage...


I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I “fix” myself, one thing never changes–I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don’t look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me–they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I’m white.” (as cited in bell hooks, Teaching Community: (http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0415968186-0)A Pedagogy of Hope (http://repositories.cdlib.org/gseis/interactions/vol1/iss1/art8/), 2003)
All of the above observations are true more or less, but by making the problem "privilege" not racism, look at where the conclusion leads the person she quotes... white people must fix "themselves".

I don't think the way most people talk about privilege is a class term at all - or at least I don't understand how it is. I think in academic circles it seems to be used as a way to talk about racism and other oppressions in society without having to face the real structural and class dimensions of it - and therefore not offering any material way to fight it (which for academics who make their career off of analyzing things is kind of convenient). Rather than seeing oppression as something that must be fought on the basis of solidarity like you were talking about.

[SacRedMan]

Lol. It shows again that people don't care about the property of others.

[jake williams]

As per usual Jimmie Higgins is more articulate than I am.

[Jimmie Higgins]

<<But if there's a question of how it's understood, or dealt with, then there's a political question which it's important to get right.>.

Fair enough. Then, please narrate what is really going on in that video and how it is to be perceived...What's in that video is racism and the effects of decades of "war on crime" racial scapegoating. Why it is "privilege" for someone to assume that a white guy is not stealing the bike when he is out in broad daylight? It's clearly racism and the effects of racial profiling that people assume that a black person doing the same thing is a criminal. But our goal is not that everyone should be racially profiled the same ways! Personally I want to fight for a world where people don't snitch on anyone or assume that people are trying to rip others off based on circumstantial hunches or "shady behavior".

This is what I don't get about this "privilege" argument... as leftists we should argue that "equality" is that the white guy should have had the cops called on him? Everyone on a plane should be strip searched so that when the pigs strip-search and profile Arabs, at least they aren't privileging non-Arabs? Should black people "check their citizen privilege" since no one profiles them for being an undocumented immigrant from Latin America, but they do for Latinos with indigenous features? How about focusing on the racism of the profiling and aggressive Islamophobia than the lack of repression for non-Arabs.

What if the white guy in the video had a shaved head and tattos on his neck and someone called the cops... would non-tatooed people have non-"white trash" privilage? No, that's ridiculous because white people are not oppressed for their skin color, he would be oppressed for being poor. So it just seems to flip oppression on its head to, again, talk about "lack of oppression" rather than the oppression itself.

Again, maybe I don't understand this conception of talking about racism, maybe I'm missing part of the argument but this line of thinking always sounds to me like the radicals who think that socialist "equality" means everyone has to make due with less and live in poverty. That's not socialism to me - I want to build movements that can allow Arab people to fight (with the solidarity of non-Arabs) to have the "privilage" of not being strip-searched, LGBTQ people have the "privilege" of not having the shit kicked out of them for no fucking reason other than showing affection in public, etc. In other words, I want to end oppression - "privilege" is not a problem for most in the US - oppression (racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/islamophobia and other forms) is.

[Tim Finnegan]

Privilege should not be understand as any relative advantages or an absence of disadvantages, but as a form of ideological construction that perpetuates the system of inequality producing these advantages/disadvantages. "White privilege" is not a set of advantages leant to white people, but of the prioritising of a (normalised) white experience and the exclusion of alternate experiences, both of which serve to sustain these advantages, as well as the absence of certain disadvantages, leant by the contemporary system of racial oppression by removing non-white voices from the sphere of legitimate discourse. (Note, for example, the enthusiasm with which Obama was said to "transcend race", i.e. act and talk like a white guy.) The usage is closer to the old medieval concept of "privilege", that is, as a preferential treatment by society at large, rather than to the woollier usage more common today.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Privilege should not be understand as any relative advantages or an absence of disadvantages, but as a form of ideological construction that perpetuates the system of inequality producing these advantages/disadvantages. "White privilege" is not a set of advantages leant to white people, but of the prioritising of a (normalised) white experience and the exclusion of alternate experiences, both of which serve to sustain these advantages, as well as the absence of certain disadvantages, leant by the contemporary system of racial oppression by removing non-white voices from the sphere of legitimate discourse. (Note, for example, the enthusiasm with which Obama was said to "transcend race", i.e. act and talk like a white guy; "whiteness", despite formal declarations, is an effective absence of race.) The usage is closer to the old medieval concept of "privilege", that is, as a preferential treatment by society at large, rather than to the woollier usage more common today.

I still don't understand how privilage and oppression relate then. By this definition above, then people from Appalachia ("hillbillies") are not "privileged" - but in reality, they aren't specifically oppressed other than for being poor rural people, so this "privilaging" concept is useless for understanding oppression. Subcultures are not-privileged, and (at times) have suffered some scapegoating and repression (hippies, punks, whatever) - but are they especially and systemically oppressed in the same way as LGBT people? I'd find that kind of an insulting concept.

What about Colin Powell or closeted gay people... they don't suffer oppression since they have adopted to the privileged culture?

This whole concept just seems way too abstract and somewhat idealist to me. How is it useful for understanding oppression or how to fight it?

[Tim Finnegan]

I still don't understand how privilage and oppression relate then. By this definition above, then people from Appalachia ("hillbillies") are not "privileged" - but in reality, they aren't specifically oppressed other than for being poor rural people, so this "privilaging" concept is useless for understanding oppression. Subcultures are not-privilaged, hippies, whatever - but are they especially and systemically oppressed in the same way as LGBT people? I'd find that kind of an insulting concept.
Again, privilege is an ideological construction that serves to sustain a system of domination. The extent of privilege is a product of the extent of this domination, it's not a simple on/off status.


What about Colin Powell or closeted gay people... they don't suffer oppression since they have adopted to the privileged culture?Good questions, and with two different answers:
In the first example, a "white-acting" black person will be less relatively privileged in comparison to someone more "black-acting", insofar as their experiences are closer to the legitimate norm, and that the norm reflects a larger part of their experiences, but they will still be non-privileged to the inverse extent.
The second is trickier, and is indeed something which is rather heavily debated. The distinction which can be made is privilege as individually attributed and as a general hierarchy of experience; to take your example, the fact that a closeted queer person may be regarded as straight and treated as such, but that this treatment will only exist to the extent that their actual sexual/gender identity is erased, e.g. a closeted trans woman will not suffer direct misogyny when passing as a man, because she will not be regarded as a woman but as a man, but will still experience a general misogyny in so far as her womanness is excluded from the sphere of legitimate experiences. There's honestly no clear answer as to the extent to which this can be considered privilege.


This whole concept just seems way too abstract and somewhat idealist to me. How is it useful for understanding oppression or how to fight it?Pretty essential, I'd say. It's the only real basis on which you can argue that, say, straight people can't speak for gay people.

[Anarchrusty]

I think one of the worst things about white privilege, is that people deny it. They say, oh racism and white privilege are something from the past and nowadays we are better than that.
That is the trap most white people fall for. It is not about some white people being poor and some people of colour ''having made it'', it is about complete races having much more difficulties to make it. They are confined to area's, which are deliberately kept poor through the introduction of drugs (the bad kind, I mean), allowing arms to the most desperate downtrodden (so they can kill each other off) poor bastards, racist discrimination on the jobmarket (try finding one when you are called Asif or Mohammed) and many many more reasons.

What we need to do, is make white people acknowledge the fact they are better off by pointing out all they have (as a class) and only then can we begin to heal some of the past injustices.
I am white myself and realising my privilege is one the of the best things that ever happened to me: it spurned my political birth.

[syndicat]

I don't think the way most people talk about privilege is a class term at all - or at least I don't understand how it is. I think in academic circles it seems to be used as a way to talk about racism and other oppressions in society without having to face the real structural and class dimensions of it - and therefore not offering any material way to fight it (which for academics who make their career off of analyzing things is kind of convenient). Rather than seeing oppression as something that must be fought on the basis of solidarity like you were talking about

you talking to me? here's news for you: academics don't run the english language. meanings of words is determined by mass usage. academics speak to each other.

"privilege" has an economic meaning. if you talk to people about "the privileged groups" in society, they aren't going to think about the white working class checker at the supermarket. they're going to think about lawyers, doctors, CEOs, wealthy people, etc. a handful of leftists & academics have tried to re-use this word to refer to the various forms of oppression. and it doesn't work. it doesn't work because oppression is about absence, denial, trampling of freedom. and "privilege" doesn't have that meaning.

in her book "Justice & the Politics of Difference," Iris Young tries to develop a theory of the criteria of oppression as understood by the social movements of the past half century. she gives a list of criteria. "privilege" isn't one of them. she lists marginalization, being subject to violence (lynching, gay bashing, wife-beating, etc), subordination/domination, exploitation, cultural imperialism (e.g. not teaching the language of minority to their children). these all have to do with the trampling, limiting, denial of freedom.

[coda]

<<this whole concept just seems way too abstract and somewhat idealist to me. How is it useful for understanding oppression or how to fight it?>>

It's not that complicated to understand, really. Privilege, as in any favorable condition that is extended to some--that is not afforded to and excludes: one person, more than one person, a group of people, a specific group of people....

You should probably read this wiki article and the "further reading" resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege

[syndicat]

Privilege, as in any favorable condition that is extended to some--that is not afforded to and excludes: one person, more than one person, a group of people, a specific group of people....



it doesn't explain why racism is a form of oppression. oppression is the denial, trampling, restricting of liberty. liberty & oppression are opposites. the civil rights movement was called the "black freedom movement" for a reason.

it also plays into white guilt politics. a working class inter-ethnic alliance has to assume that all the groups involved are respected...otherwise it's not an alliance.

[coda]

<<a handful of leftists & academics have tried to re-use this word to refer to the various forms of oppression. and it doesn't work. it doesn't work because oppression is about absence, denial, trampling of freedom. and "privilege" doesn't have that meaning.>>

<<it doesn't explain why racism is a form of oppression. oppression is the denial, trampling, restricting of liberty. liberty & oppression are opposites. the civil rights movement was called the "black freedom movement" for a reason.>>

It's a contrast and way of statistical comparison. It contrasts the advantages of one group to the disadvantages of the other. It shows how subtle and ingrained institutional racism is and has been accepted by society by comparing the white majority have's to the black (and other) minority have-nots.

There are obvious overt examples of oppression and discrimination such as strip searches, assaults, beatings, immigration round-ups, racial profiling.. etc. Yes, there are those -- and then there are the other more subtle ways systematic oppression exists that can only be deduced and detected by comparison of privilege and lack thereof.. such as the contrast of schools & quality of education, property values, housing, neighborhoods, job opportunities, the list goes on and ripples into every facet of living in a pre-dominantly white nation with a pre-dominate white culture. Including also all forms of entertainment... tv, movies, toys, books--- white people, white faces, white characters, white stories.

The US legislature of Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity disclaimers acknowledges that white privilege is a reality and exists to the disadvantage of non-whites.

It is hard to deny that it exists. It exists and in it's literal form is not only "white privilege" but is also a type of racial segregation.

[Jimmie Higgins]

you talking to me? here's news for you: academics don't run the english language.Thanks for the unnecessary hostility Mr. Herst. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear - I meant the way most academics speak about "privilege theory" is not a class-based theory at all. I misunderstood your use of "privilege" as the academic concept of "privilage theory" and that is what I was talking about, not the regular use of the term, which I totally agree has a social-class connotation.



this whole concept just seems way too abstract and somewhat idealist to me. How is it useful for understanding oppression or how to fight it?

It's not that complicated to understand, really. Privilege, as in any favorable condition that is extended to some--that is not afforded to and excludes: one person, more than one person, a group of people, a specific group of people....

So it is a "privilege" to not be a slave? The ruling class grants us the "privillage" of not being child-laborers or in jail? Or is it that people fought for the 8 hour day, the end of slavery, and labor rights and so on but that the Ruling Class used racism and other divisions to EXCLUDE specific groups. Again why is "privilageing" the issue and not the blatand oppression of groups - don't we want everyone to fight for "privilage"?

When the racist ruling class in the post-reconstruction south restricted voting rights for black people, what it racism or "privileging white people"? It couldn't be "privileging" white people because many illiterate poor whites were also disenfranchised by the litieracy tests and other restrictions. It's not that white people were as oppressed as the black population, but many whites were adversly effected too, suggesting that the goal of the ruling class was not to "win-over whites" but to keep down and oppress the black population. It's like the prison system now: it's primary targets are poor people, black people, latinos, native americans in some areas and immigrants, but the goal is not to give white people a pass, the goal of prisons is to control the whole population by targeting specific scapegoats.

But I don't know much about this theory so maybe I'm missing something. How is this academic concept concretely useful for understanding what racism or sexism is and how to fight it? I want to smash these oppressions, please tell me how is this theory going to help me do that - if you can not, it is just not a valuable theory.

[coda]

<<But I don't know much about this theory so maybe I'm missing something. How is this academic concept concretely useful for understanding what racism or sexism is and how to fight it? I want to smash these oppressions, please tell me how is this theory going to help me do that - if you can not, it is just not a valuable theory>>

yeah.. you keep saying that.... and seemingly, and deliberately kicking against the reality of it all. Accept it as fact. The way to smash these oppressions, is first-- to acknowledge that they exist.. because it does! I think in order to smash these oppressions we have to be willing as the pre-dominate culture to give up the privileges that have been born into and be willing to hear out the grievances of all minorities-- what their experiences are and have been.. and not to be offended by it. That's a start! It's not going to resolve overnight -- atleast not the hostility of blacks towards whites.. or native amricans towards whites --- it can't be easily whitewashed over.. I think what we need to do is step out of "our" whiteness, and try to empathize with what it might be like to be non-white in a predominate white society...

[syndicat]

I think in order to smash these oppressions we have to be willing as the pre-dominate culture to give up the privileges that have been born into and be willing to hear out the grievances of all minorities-- what their experiences are and have been.. and not to be offended by it.

this is a very moralistic and individualistic approach. oppressions are systemic ways in which groups are, as JH says, "kept down" or as i put it earlier, their freedom is restricted, trampled on, denied. they can only be effectively fought against and pushed back and overcome through collective social struggle, thru social movements. It's not about individuals "giving up their privileges." for the white worker making close to minimum wage as a checker at the supermarket, what would that even mean?

[Jimmie Higgins]

<<But I don't know much about this theory so maybe I'm missing something. How is this academic concept concretely useful for understanding what racism or sexism is and how to fight it? I want to smash these oppressions, please tell me how is this theory going to help me do that - if you can not, it is just not a valuable theory>>

yeah.. you keep saying that.... and seemingly, and deliberately kicking against the reality of it all. Accept it as fact. The way to smash these oppressions, is first-- to acknowledge that they exist.. because it does! I think in order to smash these oppressions we have to be willing as the pre-dominate culture to give up the privileges that have been born into and be willing to hear out the grievances of all minorities-- what their experiences are and have been.. and not to be offended by it. That's a start! It's not going to resolve overnight -- atleast not the hostility of blacks towards whites.. or native amricans towards whites --- it can't be easily whitewashed over.. I think what we need to do is step out of "our" whiteness, and try to empathize with what it might be like to be non-white in a predominate white society...

This is a largely racially divided society and that's part of the reason different groups don't understand the problems of other groups. It's also because oppressed people are "marginalized" - not that people are "privileged". When do you normally hear about people who don't have health insurance or people who've had their homes taken away or people who just work everyday and can barely survive? Hardly ever outside of some progressive circles. Does this mean that people who have insurance at work have "health privilege" or is it just much more direct to say that people in this society who are suffereing are marginalized because the rulers want to cover over these problems... they want to keep the staus quo as it is and ignore dissent and complaints.

I mean it just seems weird to me because it puts more emphasis on the white/straight/male/christian experience (the "privilege" of not being specifically oppressed other than just being a worker) than the racism and oppression of groups itself. I don't want the "privilege" of having the minimal rights working people have to be ended I want to make sure that everyone at least has those privileges... so again, the problem is racism/sexism, not the lack of racism/non-sexism directed at some.

But I totally agree that we have to build trust and solidarity among different groups within the working class and, as radicals, should fight oppressions wherever they happen (even if it's someone telling sexist jokes about Sara Palin or something). Part of that is for non-oppressed people to recognize racism and sexism and fight in solidarity with oppressed people - not just recognize that they are not as oppressed and feel bad. Trust will be built among different people in this segregated society when people fight shoulder to shoulder in solidarity and prove in practice that a working class-agenda puts ending racism and sexism and homophobia in the center as much as defending the rights to strike or other general working class issues.

It's true that many white people do not believe that "Driving While Black" happens or that they buy the bullshit about this country being colorblind or post-sexism or whatnot - but I don't think it's caused by privilage --- I think it's caused by a concerted effort by the ruling class through think tanks and the monopolization of mainstream political discourse and the media etc, to make people believe this. In Oakland I always hear African Americans say "we can't play the victim, we can't say it's the 'man' keeping us down" and I'm like, "yes you can and should because the man is attacking all of us and the man is behind racial profiling and deciding to prioritize prisons over schools, police repression over jobs, etc". So I don't think it's "black privilege" causing some black people to accept the same bullshit arguments that racism is not the problem that many white people also accept - I think it's because they hear this argument from many different sources every day.

At the end of the day too, I think we need to argue that far from white/straight/non-Arab people being given a pass or "privileged", these non-specifically targeted groups actually end up suffering from racism/sexism/homophobia indirectly. The ruling class builds prisons and targets poor people of color, but this also impacts all workers even if you are not suffering directly from racial profiling because in places like California, they build prisons while cutting the schools; police have more power and carte blanche to smash a picket if police brutality against black people is ignored; profiling arabs after 9/11 allows the government to spy on FSRO or other political groups; sexism drives down the wages of the entire working class since most workers in the US are women! An injury to one is really an injury to all and we have to recognize these "injuries" because they effect all worker regardless of if we are in the group being directly attacked.

[coda]

<<they can only be effectively fought against and pushed back and overcome through collective social struggle, thru social movements.>>

Yes, I fully agree, collective struggle and social movements led by the oppressed group. The oppressed group needs to emancipate themselves in solidarity and cooperation, collaboration with affinity groups. The affinity groups as well as the predominate culture needs to listen to the experiences of racism by those who have suffered it and be willing to adopt the proposals put forward.

<<It's not about individuals "giving up their privileges." for the white worker making close to minimum wage as a checker at the supermarket, what would that even mean? >>
Yeah, I meant "giving up privileges" in a hypothetical way. I meant, metaphorically speaking..opening up your hand.. stepping outside of your whiteness, releasing the tight grasp of position of power as a dominate culture. The white minimum wage worker does not experience racism..they are experiencing the affects of Capitalist oppression...

[coda]

I agree with everything you wrote above, Jimmie Higgins. But, I think you are reading too far into the word "Privilege" and deriving a whole other meaning to it..

Yes, oppressed groups are marginalized --and on the other end of that marginalization are people and groups that profit from it, retaining a privilege or benefit as well as an interest in keeping that marginalization intact.

Peggy McIntosh's classic essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."
http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yes, oppressed groups are marginalized --and on the other end of that marginalization are people and groups that profit from it, retaining a privilege or benefit as well as an interest in keeping that marginalization intact.

Peggy McIntosh's classic essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."
http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf

I think this gets to a central disagreement I have with this theory and why I do not think it is a revolutionary or radical theory. What people "profit" from oppression? This theory of oppression actually AGREES with the basic assumptions of white supremacy - that all white people benefit from the status quo, that men benefit from the oppression of women, that hetero-marriage is a privilege. But do they? Do did poor white people benefit from racist restrictions on black rights after the civil war? Some thought they did, the racist power structure argued that they did... but in reality poor whites were also hit by the restrictions. Poor whites lost access to education, lost the ability to vote if they were illiterate, dissent was stiffed, and racism grew the power of their rulers which was then wielded against white as well as black sharecroppers and renters. Later in the north, some industrial workers definately had racist ideas (there were big race-riots by whites in the early 20th century in Chicago), many felt they gained from the racist status quo, but in reality, racism allowed the bosses to divide workers, prevent unionization and use black people or immigrants as scapegoats.

No one ultimately benefits or profits from opression in our society other than the ruling class that creates these divisions in order to divide half in order to conquer each as Fredrick Douglas said. Privilage theory seems to be based in post-modern ideas of "intersecting" oppressions which itself is based on the common idea that society is not divided by classes but sets of competing interest groups. Liberals see society this way and argue that these competing groups need to be balanced by a neutral government. Racists and reactionaries see society this way and argue for their group to dominate. I think we have to reject this view in favor of a class-based view of society where the people who run society have an interest in keeping the population divided: by restricting or attacking some, they are able to keep their opposition divided, weak, and fighting amongst themselves.

[syndicat]

Privilage theory seems to be based in post-modern ideas of "intersecting" oppressions which itself is based on the common idea that society is not divided by classes but sets of competing interest groups.

i don't think the idea of intersectionality is specifically post-modernist. it derives originally from African-American socialist-feminists. Oppresssions do intersect. Consider one of the ways women have been kept out of blue collar occupations. What would happen is that a woman who worked in such an occupation (such as coal mining, construction, a factory) would be harassed by male coworkers and supervisors would smile and look the other way. Creating resentments between groups is to management's advantage so they aren't going to intervene.

Driving out another working class group from your jobs is a job trust mentality. It assumes a very limited solidarity...only with people who are like you. Reserving jobs for your family, friends, people in your ethnic group.

I think there is a conflict between an apparent short-term advantage and the loss of a larger benefit. The larger benefit consists of all the gains that could be made by a more united working class.

[coda]

<<{...} I do not think it is a revolutionary or radical theory. What people "profit" from oppression? This theory of oppression actually AGREES with the basic assumptions of white supremacy - that all white people benefit from the status quo....>>>>>

I agree that it's not a revolutionary or radical theory either...

Perhaps we are having a disagreement about semantics and terminology. What I am saying is that I recognize that there is such a thing as white privilege, but recognizing it does not mean supporting it as good or beneficial. What I disagree with is people who say that white privilege does not exist and it's a myth or delusion.

My definition of white supremacy, rather than whites benefiting from the status quo, is more along the lines that it's concerned about wanting to preserve a "white genetically pure race" and white cultural hegemony, keeping others than whites from entering country and threatening the supremacy of the "white race" and culture. etc., whereas white privilege rationalizes and expects preferential treatment and entitlements above the baseline.

I see "white privilege" as not only having preferential treatment (and not limited to only excluding blacks but all minorities) but preferential conditions and culture/ society designed in mind for a white majority. The U.S., a country that claims to be a melting pot, locks up the borders to any one that is not. Anglo Saxon English is the defacto official spoken and written language, though there are over 335 languages spoken in the U.S. Although it is mostly blacks imprisoned and on Death Row.. a"jury of your peers" means the overwhelming majority and perhaps even the whole jury will be white people ---all conditions that are favorable or biased to whites.

It should probably be called "white bias" rather than "white privilege", but that is the sociological term that's out there, so that's why I've used it. (it is starting to sound really inaccurate...)

<<in favor of a class-based view of society where the people who run society have an interest in keeping the population divided: by restricting or attacking some, they are able to keep their opposition divided, weak, and fighting amongst themselves. >>

I see the causes as class-based as well. Oppression, racism and white privileges are derived from the ruling class and culturalized. The US was founded on it; Slavery, solely for the cotton industry and Native American genocide for imperialist expansionism. I agree there are major incentives for the ruling class to keep class antagonisms in constant tension.

The Marxist Theodore Allen has written a few books and papers on the subject from a class-based Marxist perspective. His theory is that white privilege does exist but the white working class should repudiate it as it prevents working class unity.

" {..} the centrality of the problem of white supremacy and the white-skin privilege which have historically frustrated the struggle for democracy, progress and socialism in the U.S." (Letter from Ted Allen to Noel Ignatin in [I]White Blind Spot [New York and Atlanta], October, 1969);
and,
"A radical is one who understands...that the white-skin privilege is the Achilles Heel of the American working class." (Ted Allen, Can White Radicals be Radicalized? [New York and Atlanta, October 1969], p. 18).
Links to his books and papers:
http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_4__theodore_w__allen__font___font__br__wit h_audio_and_video_links__86151.htm

[PhoenixAsh]

Right...I am going to post this here...because this is the next link I clocked on and right now I seriously need to focus on something else than the two nazi fuck sitting two tables down from me on the terras....and I am seriously considering punshing them in their racist fucking faces and something involving my glass...And there is police everywhere and I really can not afford to get arrested right now also because I need to catch my train to help a friend in need. But its a serious fucking dilema.These assholes with their rune and whitepower symbol tatts just sitting there all smug laughing at me (wearing siempre antifa star shirt) and mocking me all the time eying the police and back and laughing. Seriously this is fucking irritating....and I feel fucking powerless....and I really need to get this of my chest. FUCK! FUCK! >:-(
I am sorry for trolling. But I just KNOW this time I have to walk away and it makes me so fucking angry....

[El Chuncho]

Just ignore them at the moment, hindsight, and remember that they are angry NAZI imbeciles who will probably die in gangland violence. ;)

[PhoenixAsh]

I managed to restrain myself and not do something to stupid. I did have an international train to catch.

I did however sweep my large duffelback over their table "on accident" when I left throwing their beers over.

Take that! Fascist scum.

My act of " brave" (read: futile and childish) resistance today. :-)

There was some yelling and name calling when I walked away.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Let's come at this question in a different way. Why are certain groups "privileged"?


I see "white privilege" as not only having preferential treatment (and not limited to only excluding blacks but all minorities) but preferential conditions and culture/ society designed in mind for a white majority. The U.S., a country that claims to be a melting pot, locks up the borders to any one that is not. Anglo Saxon English is the defacto official spoken and written language, though there are over 335 languages spoken in the U.S. Although it is mostly blacks imprisoned and on Death Row.. a"jury of your peers" means the overwhelming majority and perhaps even the whole jury will be white people ---all conditions that are favorable or biased to whites.

Except for Cubans. So that get's to my explanation which is that opression in this society is political and class-based. It doesn't come just from "privileging" culture or skin color, it comes from the needs of the ruling class to control society. It's not just that latino immigrants are ignored by mainstream culture or the dominant groups in society: anti-Latino racism is whipped up by the ruling class in order to justify the mistreatment of migrants; whipped up against latino immigrants in order to create fear in a section of the working class; whipped up against undocumented workers to create a group of workers without rights. Does this "privilage" natives... many working class people think so, but some workers also believe the BS about tax-cuts for the rich helping them out... when empirically, these tax cuts haven't helped workers. So actually, rather than "privileging" natives, the point and origin and reason for the ongoing racism is to attack these specific workers (undocumented workers) but then by extension to create fear in the general Latino population and also to create a "race to the bottom" in wages as bosses tell workers to take less pay because they can always just hire a contractor who uses undocumented workers for cheaper.

So the effect is that groups are pitted against each-other, a specific group has their rights attacked, and the natives thing they have an advantage because of the inequality in treatment, but in reality both groups are directly hurt by this division and oppression.

When young black people are racially profiled for being "criminals" it makes it easier for our rulers to justify the racial profiling of latinos as undocumented workers. Attacking arabs in the US after 9/11 made it easier for the government to justify spying on political groups or militarizing the border. Homophobia allows the ruling class to enforce a really repressed and narrow definition of gender and family in the US and this causes tons of pain and misery for many straight people too as disfunctional families are forced together and teenagers get married too young because they get pregnant or whatnot. Racism against blacks was used to justify cutting welfare (Regans' imaginary "welfare queens" but who was hurt the most - poor whites who were the majority of welfare recipients. Racism against blacks is used to justify increased police forces, and more prisons... but this is coming back to bite the general population as local governments cut services and jobs and education to maintain the prisons and police forces.

It's the same in case after case that I can think of. Privilege theory seems to reduce the need to fight against racism and sexism to moral "do-gooderism" for people not directly effected. That's all fine and good and I guess I'd rather have people fighting racism for moralistic reasons than not at all. But I think the more effective and direct way to fight racism and oppression is by attacking these institutions and arguing a case for why an injury to one is an injury to all.


What would happen is that a woman who worked in such an occupation (such as coal mining, construction, a factory) would be harassed by male coworkers and supervisors would smile and look the other way. Creating resentments between groups is to management's advantage so they aren't going to intervene.This is very true, I was speaking of the common idea that oppression doesn't have a class origin but comes "naturally" from different groups competing. Both people who hold this "class-neutral" view (different groups just compete because of human nature or whatever) as well as the class-based view that you describe (groups pitted against each-other) are describing the same observable fact that groups compete in US society.

[coda]

BANG!!! That's me blowing out my brains in exasperation! Rehashing the same points while they continuously get rough shodded over and over again. Please! don't make me have to use Bold. I detest it.

Nowhere Nowhere.. have I written that white bias was not created or inflicted by the ruling class enemy. Yes, YES!!! It was!!! I'm an Anarchist, so it's silly to keep stressing the point of origin of unilateral ruling class control -- a point that I would never contest.

Still, That does not negate the existence of a pervasive deeply entrenched white cultural bias in the US. To be clear, I am addressing the social fabric specifically to the U.S. Not the economic heierarchy or the artificial constructs of intricate systems and pecking orders and income brackets that the ruling classes have devised to divide the working class. Yes, those exist too along side the socialization of a white-normative cultural spectrum which alienates, ostracizes and disenfranchises non whites of those who live here in the US, (whether immigrant, citizen or aliens from another planet) aka.. "white privilege."

Acknowledging that it does indeed exist does not diminish the theory of revolutionary class struggle. Identifying and recognizing it can it then be dismantled along with the other oppressive antagonistic structures that have cleaved itself to the capitalist ruling class bastion.

Won't you join in??

[Jimmie Higgins]

We can agree to disagree on this view of understanding racism and other specific oppressions, I'm sorry if I am frustrating you, I am just trying to understand this view and how it differs or overlaps with my view of where racism/sexism/homophobia come from and how to fight it. It is a very pervasive view among anti-racists I know and I do not find it to be a convincing view or one that in the end leads to radical conclusions or ways of fighting for equality, so when fellow radicals also hold this viewpoint I want to try and see how it can or can not be incorporated into radical struggles against oppression.

I think if this theory argues that whites DO benefit from racism and oppression, then it is a theory that is contradictory to radical class-based ways of looking at society and ultimately that is my problem with the theory as I understand it.

[Tim Finnegan]

I think if this theory argues that whites DO benefit from racism and oppression, then it is a theory that is contradictory to radical class-based ways of looking at society and ultimately that is my problem with the theory as I understand it.
There's a difference between relative benefit and absolute benefit. You can argue that whites are ultimately held back and held down by racism, and you'd be right, but if you denied that institutional racism against people of colour- discrimination in employment, discrimination in housing, discrimination in politics, and so forth- did not generate a corresponding advantage for white people, which it must by definition do, then you're not able to address the issues with a clear view. White workers have, historically, been most willing to give up the advantages lent to them by racism when they are made aware of the injustice that those relative advantages represent, not when they are told to forget about their relative advantages in the name of class unity.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There's a difference between relative benefit and absolute benefit. You can argue that whites are ultimately held back and held down by racism, and you'd be right, but if you denied that institutional racism against people of colour- discrimination in employment, discrimination in housing, discrimination in politics, and so forth- did not generate a corresponding advantage for white people, which it must by definition do, then you're not able to address the issues with a clear view.
What does this argument mean - yes of course if two people are walking down the street and one gets his knee kicked in, then yes, the other has a relative advantage. So is the problem then that the one with two knees needs to recognize his advantage and try and not use both knees? Or is the answer that the one with not extra burden needs to see that they can not get to where they need to go if his brother is hobbled and so he needs to help the other in repairing the knee or protect him from being hit in the knee again. It's a silly analogy, but it just seems so wierd to look at racism from the point of view of those who are not directly effected by it.

So if the US government put all undocumented workers in forced labor camps, would the issue be that non-slaves have to recognize their advantage and "give it up" - or should the issue be trying to emancipate the slaves!?


White workers have, historically, been most willing to give up the advantages lent to them by racism when they are made aware of the injustice that those relative advantages represent, not when they are told to forget about their relative advantages in the name of class unity.But what white and what advantages!? This is why this is not a class-based look at oppression. Appelatian white people live on welfare and do not benefit from the system and are not favored culturally. They are not especially oppressed like immigrants or scapegoated ethnic groups, they are only oppressed economically. You want the left to tell them to "give up their advantages" - well why not hand them a KKK costume while you're at it and save them the trip to the fabric store.

For the working class there is no "advantage" to the oppression of groups, it's only the ruling class that wins an advantage in being able split the population and not grant rights to people. If all white people "recognized their advantage" and all this immaterial crap it wouldn't do a thing for stopping oppression, just like if all yuppies realized their economic advantage. Racism is not an "invisible backpack" it is a concrete system put in place through laws and pushed from organized groups.

When white people have actually done things to fight racism it was not feeling guilty and being all yuppie and shit about poor little helpless so and so. White people have joined struggles of the oppressed when oppressed people have directly taken on the systems of oppression and racism. What were many stright peoples response to the anti-gay marriage fearmondering... many protested in solidarity, not by giving up their ability to marry, but fighting for equality. It was the bigots who argued that straight-only marriages are a privilege... and one that needs to be kept exclusive! John Brown wasn't worried about guilt, he was talking with abolitionists and runaway slaves. The white people who went to the South in the 1960s may have initially been motivated by moral issues but many of them then went back home and saw the injustices they also face in this system and formed the free-speech movement or saw solidarity with people being bombed in Vietnam. At UC Berkeley students who certainty had more advantages and were more privileged by any measure to students at UC Berkeley today let alone rural black people in the south, fought against repression of students because they had learned and were inspired by the civil rights struggles!

If "privilege theory" rather than more political solidarity existed in the 1960s, would Muhammad Ali have said that he dosn't have a quarrel with anyone over seas and that no one in Vietnam ever called him n***er? Or would he have said that he apologizes and recognizes his advantage over people in Vietnam?

Political solidarity recognizes that we all have a common enemy and there is a common origin point for racism and oppression in this society and that even if we are not directly under attack, an injury to one hurts us all ultimately.

"Privilege" or advantage seems to suggest that white American workers have it good - yes relative to black workers, but not to the rich. How can we talk of advantage when wages have stagnated for the working class, increasing 1% over the last generation while it's gone up 400% for the top fraction of a percentage of the population? Saying white people have a relative advantage over black people is true, but in the big picture it's like saying house slaves had an advantage over field salves - also true, but they were both in a fucked up situation and the answer wouldn't have been for house slaves to be less elitist and recognize their advantage, it would have been for both groups to work together and stop the freakin whip crackers!

I think a better way than "privilege" to describe the connection between general class oppression and the specific oppression against groups in class society is a popular phrase used in the US: when America has a cold black America has pneumonia. I think that can be modified to if the whole working class has a cold, then some specifically oppressed groups have pneumonia.

[eyedrop]

I'd like to see a response from white privilege theorists to Jimmie's last post.

I don't see how racism amongst white workers will decrease, by convincing them that racism are in their material self interest. People, as a group, generally act in their perceived material self interest.

I think it quite clear that having a group of dis-empowered workers doesn't increase the wages, and conditions, of the non-dis-empowered workers. They are quite clearly put in a situation where they have to compete with the lower wages of the dis-empowered workers so their wages are pushed down as well.

I think wages could easily be as this in an industry.

United workers: 50k wages
or
Blacks/Immigrants: 30k wages
and
White: 40k wages

The white workers would also gain by being united.


The British strikes a few years ago, when they demanded British jobs for Brits, clearly shows that workers know that having a dis-empowered workgroup is bad for them. Unfortunately a common response to it is to want the dis-empowered workgroup become even more dis-empowered.

[Tim Finnegan]

I'd like to see a response from white privilege theorists to Jimmie's last post.
Oop, sorry- must've forgot to reply at that. I'll just get on that.


I don't see how racism amongst white workers will decrease, by convincing them that racism are in their material self interest. People, as a group, generally act in their perceived material self interest.Is the distinction between "relative" and "absolute" alien to the working class, as it appears to be to you? :confused:


I think it quite clear that having a group of dis-empowered workers doesn't increase the wages, and conditions, of the non-dis-empowered workers. They are quite clearly put in a situation where they have to compete with the lower wages of the dis-empowered workers so their wages are pushed down as well.

I think wages could easily be as this in an industry.

United workers: 50k wages
or
Blacks/Immigrants: 30k wages
and
White: 40k wages

The white workers would also gain by being united.So what do you propose? Bringing immigrants into trade unionis, or workerist white nationalism?


The British strikes a few years ago, when they demanded British jobs for Brits, clearly shows that workers know that having a dis-empowered workgroup is bad for them. Unfortunately a common response to it is to want the dis-empowered workgroup become even more dis-empowered.You're ignoring exactly what "British" means in such rhetoric, because it's certainly not a comment on mere citizenship. It's bound heavily to racial constructions which exclude people of colour, as well as many "white ethnics" (specifically Slavs, Magyars and Jews, but in some of the more frothingly insane (re: Loyalist) understandings, can extend to the Irish (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2GaFlYT9dE)). It has nothing to do with working class power, and everything to do with racism.


What does this argument mean - yes of course if two people are walking down the street and one gets his knee kicked in, then yes, the other has a relative advantage. So is the problem then that the one with two knees needs to recognize his advantage and try and not use both knees? Or is the answer that the one with not extra burden needs to see that they can not get to where they need to go if his brother is hobbled and so he needs to help the other in repairing the knee or protect him from being hit in the knee again. It's a silly analogy, but it just seems so wierd to look at racism from the point of view of those who are not directly effected by it.

So if the US government put all undocumented workers in forced labor camps, would the issue be that non-slaves have to recognize their advantage and "give it up" - or should the issue be trying to emancipate the slaves!?
To emancipate the slaves, of course. "An injury to one is an injury to all", and all that.


But what white and what advantages!? This is why this is not a class-based look at oppression. Appelatian white people live on welfare and do not benefit from the system and are not favored culturally. They are not especially oppressed like immigrants or scapegoated ethnic groups, they are only oppressed economically. You want the left to tell them to "give up their advantages" - well why not hand them a KKK costume while you're at it and save them the trip to the fabric store.

For the working class there is no "advantage" to the oppression of groups, it's only the ruling class that wins an advantage in being able split the population and not grant rights to people. If all white people "recognized their advantage" and all this immaterial crap it wouldn't do a thing for stopping oppression, just like if all yuppies realized their economic advantage. Racism is not an "invisible backpack" it is a concrete system put in place through laws and pushed from organized groups.

When white people have actually done things to fight racism it was not feeling guilty and being all yuppie and shit about poor little helpless so and so. White people have joined struggles of the oppressed when oppressed people have directly taken on the systems of oppression and racism. What were many stright peoples response to the anti-gay marriage fearmondering... many protested in solidarity, not by giving up their ability to marry, but fighting for equality. It was the bigots who argued that straight-only marriages are a privilege... and one that needs to be kept exclusive! John Brown wasn't worried about guilt, he was talking with abolitionists and runaway slaves. The white people who went to the South in the 1960s may have initially been motivated by moral issues but many of them then went back home and saw the injustices they also face in this system and formed the free-speech movement or saw solidarity with people being bombed in Vietnam. At UC Berkeley students who certainty had more advantages and were more privileged by any measure to students at UC Berkeley today let alone rural black people in the south, fought against repression of students because they had learned and were inspired by the civil rights struggles!

If "privilege theory" rather than more political solidarity existed in the 1960s, would Muhammad Ali have said that he dosn't have a quarrel with anyone over seas and that no one in Vietnam ever called him n***er? Or would he have said that he apologizes and recognizes his advantage over people in Vietnam?

Political solidarity recognizes that we all have a common enemy and there is a common origin point for racism and oppression in this society and that even if we are not directly under attack, an injury to one hurts us all ultimately.

"Privilege" or advantage seems to suggest that white American workers have it good - yes relative to black workers, but not to the rich. How can we talk of advantage when wages have stagnated for the working class, increasing 1% over the last generation while it's gone up 400% for the top fraction of a percentage of the population? Saying white people have a relative advantage over black people is true, but in the big picture it's like saying house slaves had an advantage over field salves - also true, but they were both in a fucked up situation and the answer wouldn't have been for house slaves to be less elitist and recognize their advantage, it would have been for both groups to work together and stop the freakin whip crackers!

I think a better way than "privilege" to describe the connection between general class oppression and the specific oppression against groups in class society is a popular phrase used in the US: when America has a cold black America has pneumonia. I think that can be modified to if the whole working class has a cold, then some specifically oppressed groups have pneumonia.Again, privilege, at least when incorporated into a proper Marxist understanding of society organisation, is a form of ideological construction, rather than a material benefit in itself. It's the ideological normalising of certain experiences to the exclusion of others, which serves to sustain systems of oppression by excluding the voice of the oppressed from the spheres of legitimate discourse. It serves to produce a material benefit for the privileged group only to the extent that the disadvantage placed upon the oppressed offers them a relative, circumstantial advantage, in that it enables the systems of oppression that produce these relative advantages to continue. For example, if there is institutional discrimination in hiring practices against people of colour, then white people have an improved chance of getting a job, and the fact of white privilege excludes the voices of people of colour from the sphere of legitimate discourse, thereby de-legitimising their criticisms of institutional racism.
Now, of course, the systems of oppression that produce these relative advantages leave the white worker- or the straight worker, or the male worker, etc.- absolutely disadvantaged, because in a capitalist society all such systems of oppression ultimately serve to protect the bourgeoisie (as a social fact, if not necessarily as individuals) and their collective interests, but the for the white worker to express substantial solidarity with the worker of colour- or the straight worker with the queer worker, the male worker with the female worker, etc.- demands that he must recognise the fact of the centrality of his (general) experience as a white, straight, male, etc. individual in hegemonic bourgeois ideology, and support their struggle to challenge that ideology and thus challenge bourgeois rule. If this also means recognising a material advantage bestowed upon him by his relative social privilege, then so be it. It is very much in his own interests to do so, after all.

Tim Wise basically sums it all up here:

J3Xe1kX7Wsc

Edit: Tim Wise again, clever fellow that he is, discussing privilege in regards to class, and specifically addressing some of the issues raised by Jimmie Higgins.

0yCAlSVq_GY

[eyedrop]

Is the distinction between "relative" and "absolute" alien to the working class, as it appears to be to you? :confused: No I can't fathom why focusing on a relative gain (still a relative loss compared to workers in a non-racist society) is a good strategy compared to focusing on the actual loss incurred by the racist policies.

Trying to get white workers to give up a privilege reminds me of people hoping to guilt capitalists to give up their capital which we know is never going to happen. Its much better to show people how it hurts them, that they actually have a common case with the immigrants.

So what do you propose? Bringing immigrants into trade unionis, or workerist white nationalism? I didn't think it was necessary to mention it since we are on a revolutionary left forum. Also add in abolishment of "employment or deported" laws, and a bunch of other things that decreases immigrants bargaining power.


You're ignoring exactly what "British" means in such rhetoric, because it's certainly not a comment on mere citizenship. It's bound heavily to racial constructions which exclude people of colour, as well as many "white ethnics" (specifically Slavs, Magyars and Jews, but in some of the more frothingly insane (re: Loyalist) understandings, can extend to the Irish (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2GaFlYT9dE)). It has nothing to do with working class power, and everything to do with racism. How did you get this out of that I used the strikes as an example that the knowledge that a disempowered workgroup worsens conditions for everyone is widely known? I even went as long as to mention that it was unfortunate that such a response/sentiment is a quite common response.


Not that it's weird that a racist response is common, to disempowered groups driving down work conditions, as any other response is practically non-existant in the mainstream discourse. The parliamentary left and radicals have done a poor job of addressing that.

Even though it shouldn't be necessary I should add, that I think the racist response by the British jobs for Brits is completely wrong and actually worsens the problem, so I don't get misunderstood again.

[Tim Finnegan]

No I can't fathom why focusing on a relative gain (still a relative loss compared to workers in a non-racist society) is a good strategy compared to focusing on the actual loss incurred by the racist policies.

Trying to get white workers to give up a privilege reminds me of people hoping to guilt capitalists to give up their capital which we know is never going to happen. Its much better to show people how it hurts them, that they actually have a common case with the immigrants.
I didn't say that it was some of keystone of anti-racism, simply that it's a fact of life in a racist society. Recognition of this is part and parcel of establishing a coherent understanding of bourgeois white supremacism; it needs to be neither stressed nor avoided, merely acknowledged.

Also, again, I'd draw a distinction between "privilege" and "material advantage". Recognising privilege is about deconstructing bourgeois ideology, and produces a demand for the effective universalisation of that privilege, rather than any sort of condemnation. Social privelege is, put simply, the generally accepted entitlement to be treated as fully human, something which all people are entitled to, but something which the intersection of capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy denies to most.


I didn't think it was necessary to mention it since we are on a revolutionary left forum. Also add in abolishment of "employment or deported" laws, and a bunch of other things that decreases immigrants bargaining power.
Unions it is, then, but that requires an active anti-racist, anti-white privilege line, not merely an attempt to universalise the experience of the white workers. The historically lower participation of people of colour (and, at certain times, minority whites) from the trade union movement, it should be remembered, has historically been a product of active exclusion by white workers, not self-exclusion by more precarious workers of colour.


How did you get this out of that I used the strikes as an example that the knowledge that a disempowered workgroup worsens conditions for everyone is widely known? I even went as long as to mention that it was unfortunate that such a response/sentiment is a quite common response.

Not that it's weird that a racist response is common, to disempowered groups driving down work conditions, as any other response is practically non-existant in the mainstream discourse. The parliamentary left and radicals have done a poor job of addressing that.

Even though it shouldn't be necessary I should add, that I think the racist response by the British jobs for Brits is completely wrong and actually worsens the problem, so I don't get misunderstood again.
My point was that the "British jobs for British workers" line can't be properly understood as being tainted class conciousness, but as a form of ethnic false conciousness, specifically, that it reflects a feeling of entitlement among white, predominantly indigenous (i.e. Anglo-Celtic) people to preferential treatment, stemming from a thoroughly bourgeois ideology of white supremacism, albeit a particular strain currently on the defensive, and forced to reform as a sort of Powellite white nationalism.

That said, I suppose I did take your example too narrowly, and for that I apologise. There are indeed workers who draw a connection between immigrants and their own precariousness, some of whom may even be won over at least in part by the aforementioned white nationalist rhetoric, and that is, as you say, something that must be addressed.

[eyedrop]

I didn't say that it was some of keystone of anti-racism, simply that it's a fact of life in a racist society. Recognition of this is part and parcel of establishing a coherent understanding of bourgeois white supremacism; it needs to be neither stressed nor avoided, merely acknowledged.

Also, again, I'd draw a distinction between "privilege" and "material advantage". Recognising privilege is about deconstructing bourgeois ideology, and produces a demand for the effective universalisation of that privilege, rather than any sort of condemnation. Social privelege is, put simply, the generally accepted entitlement to be treated as fully human, something which all people are entitled to, but something which the intersection of capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy denies to most. How about just saying that immigrants are repressed and that repression has negative effects on you as well.

Just head over to the "I'm ashamed to be white" thread to find plenty of examples of people understanding privilege theory to say that white people gain by the racism.



Unions it is, then, but that requires an active anti-racist, anti-white privilege line, not merely an attempt to universalise the experience of the white workers. The historically lower participation of people of colour (and, at certain times, minority whites) from the trade union movement, it should be remembered, has historically been a product of active exclusion by white workers, not self-exclusion by more precarious workers of colour. Well I think it's way easier to convince unionized workers that it is not in their interest to keep a group of workers un-unionized, than that they have white privilege and need to give it up.



My point was that the "British jobs for British workers" line can't be properly understood as being tainted class conciousness, but as a form of ethnic false conciousness, specifically, that it reflects a feeling of entitlement among white, predominantly indigenous (i.e. Anglo-Celtic) people to preferential treatment, stemming from a thoroughly bourgeois ideology of white supremacism, albeit a particular strain currently on the defensive, and forced to reform as a sort of Powellite white nationalism.

That said, I suppose I did take your example too narrowly, and for that I apologise. There are indeed workers who draw a connection between immigrants and their own precariousness, some of whom may even be won over at least in part by the aforementioned white nationalist rhetoric, and that is, as you say, something that must be addressed.
I don't see workers feeling entitled to have jobs as a bad thing, whats bad is the direction and solutions they come up with to deal with it. Immigrant workers should have just as strong an entitlement to having jobs as well. It's important to understand why white supremacism is appealing. The left intellectuals here are wriggling around mostly completely clueless to why parties such as FRP (anti-immigrant populist part) has had such success. There are countless of books titled the success of FRP and such. Part of it is also the quasi-feminist thing showed by the daily newsreports of immigrants raping women.


I hope you don't use such pompeous language, which requires belonging to your social cliche to understand, much outside your social circle. It's also good when wanting to appear smart at job interviews though.

[Tim Finnegan]

How about just saying that immigrants are repressed and that repression has negative effects on you as well.
Because I'm a Marxist, and we require more than just vague platitudes.


Just head over to the "I'm ashamed to be white" thread to find plenty of examples of people understanding privilege theory to say that white people gain by the racism.
Again, "relative" and "absolute". One can gain from racism within the terms of white supremacist society without gaining absolutely.


Well I think it's way easier to convince unionized workers that it is not in their interest to keep a group of workers un-unionized, than that they have white privilege and need to give it up.
Again, they don't need to "give it up", they need to extend what currently constitutes a privileged status to those who are currently excluded. It's an ideological construction of exclusive legitimacy of experience, not, as I have stressed repeatedly, an immediate material benefit.


I don't see workers feeling entitled to have jobs as a bad thing, whats bad is the direction and solutions they come up with to deal with it. Immigrant workers should have just as strong an entitlement to having jobs as well. It's important to understand why white supremacism is appealing.
That's certainly part of it, but to understand why it appeals you have to understand how it works, which means examining its ideological construction, of which white privilege is a crucial element.


The left intellectuals here are wriggling around mostly completely clueless to why parties such as FRP (anti-immigrant populist part) has had such success. There are countless of books titled the success of FRP and such.
Does Norway just have sucky intellectuals, then? :confused: I'd say that in Britain, the Marxist left has been pretty good at pinning down the workings of the far-right, if not as adept at broadcasting their conclusions.


Part of it is also the quasi-feminist thing showed by the daily newsreports of immigrants raping women.
"Imperial feminism"? Yeah, that's a well established trope by now.


I hope you don't use such pompeous language, which requires belonging to your social cliche to understand, much outside your social circle. It's also good when wanting to appear smart at job interviews though.
I'd say it's rather more pompous to suggest that the terms I've used are far beyond the grasp of the average worker. There's nothing in there that you wouldn't find in Lenin, Gramsci, or any other revolutionary Marxist leader.

[eyedrop]

Because I'm a Marxist, and we require more than just vague platitudes.I find privilege to be vague. It would obviously be meaningful to expand what the immigrant repression consists of to make it less vague.



Again, "relative" and "absolute". One can gain from racism within the terms of white supremacist society without gaining absolutely.I think it makes more sense to put the relative goalpost at what it would be without the racism. To say that white workers suffer less by the effects of racism would be much more accurate.

We always need to strive too make things better, or else they will surely grow worse



Again, they don't need to "give it up", they need to extend what currently constitutes a privileged status to those who are currently excluded. It's an ideological construction of exclusive legitimacy of experience, not, as I have stressed repeatedly, an immediate material benefit.How does that mean anything else than fight against the repression of repressed people? White guilting people makes no more sense than guilting capitalists.


That's certainly part of it, but to understand why it appeals you have to understand how it works, which means examining its ideological construction, of which white privilege is a crucial element.



Does Norway just have sucky intellectuals, then? :confused: I'd say that in Britain, the Marxist left has been pretty good at pinning down the workings of the far-right, if not as adept at broadcasting their conclusions. We have decently mainstream newspapers with somewhat of a class perspective, but I haven't seen much of it there.



"Imperial feminism"? Yeah, that's a well established trope by now.
Not really imperial as it's concerning local things. "No one" really gives a fuck if they rape women in their "home" countries.


I'd say it's rather more pompous to suggest that the terms I've used are far beyond the grasp of the average worker. There's nothing in there that you wouldn't find in Lenin, Gramsci, or any other revolutionary Marxist leader.
Not everyone outside of your social cliche and revlefts cliche has an interest in learning outdated language. Language which worked for 80 years ago aren't the best to use now. Contemporary/non-academic language works much better. This academic language is also only for a small part of academically educated people, namely the political scientists and similar folks.

Learning to speak Marxisteusce is a skill that needs to be learned, but it shouldn't and isn't necessary to be a radical/Anarchist/Marxist.

[Tim Finnegan]

I find privilege to be vague. It would obviously be meaningful to expand what the immigrant repression consists of to make it less vague.
In what sense is privilege "vague"? I think I've been quite specific about what it constitutes.


I think it makes more sense to put the relative goalpost at what it would be without the racism. To say that white workers suffer less by the effects of racism would be much more accurate.It's not that simple, though. Discriminatory hiring practices, for example, don't occur because capitalists don't really want to hire anybody at all, but can only justify excluding one group. There's no reason to think that, in the absence of racism, unemployment would be at, for example, the level experienced by African-Americans for everyone.


We always need to strive too make things better, or else they will surely grow worseIs that not a given? :confused:


How does that mean anything else than fight against the repression of repressed people? White guilting people makes no more sense than guilting capitalists.Who on earth ever said anything about "guilt"? Are you talking to me, or Straw Liberal #437? :confused:

Frankly, guilt is the worst possible reaction one could have to these facts, because guilt is a demotivating force, an encouragement to wallow in self-pity and self-hatred, not to get out here and change the world. Many great revolutionaries were very much advantaged by the capitalist system, and well aware of it, but didn't wallow in guilt; rather, they worked to turn that advantage to the benefit of the oppressed.

Tim Wise again, because he's not a bad fella to go to on these issues:

XhOh_EGe41Y


We have decently mainstream newspapers with somewhat of a class perspective, but I haven't seen much of it there.I wouldn't confuse centre-left newspapers with even mid-left intellectuals, let alone far-leftists. At best, they'll let left-wing editorial pieces in ther now and then to offer up the false image of lively debate, but it's always very limited and often tightly controlled.


Not really imperial as it's concerning local things. "No one" really gives a fuck if they rape women in their "home" countries.Not substantially, but a charade of feminism has been a fairly solid plank in the neo-imperialist platform for a long time, particularly when dealing with the Islamic world. Obviously, this particular form has particular strains of "they're comin' for our women!" to it, but it comes back to the same rationalisation of white supremacy as the necessary repression of the bestial man of colour.


Not everyone outside of your social cliche and revlefts cliche has an interest in learning outdated language. Language which worked for 80 years ago aren't the best to use now. Contemporary/non-academic language works much better. This academic language is also only for a small part of academically educated people, namely the political scientists and similar folks.What part of my language is outdated, exclusively academic or non-contemporary? :confused:


Learning to speak Marxisteusce is a skill that needs to be learned, but it shouldn't and isn't necessary to be a radical/Anarchist/Marxist.I'm hardly using language of exceptional obscurity, or exclusively Marxist/Anarchist in usage. The only really technical term I've used is "ideology", and that's not really one you can abandon and hope to discuss these issues in any substantial fashion, any more than you could give up "capitalism".

[eyedrop]

In what sense is privilege "vague"? I think I've been quite specific about what it constitutes. As a term on it's own it is no more specific than repression of immigrants.


It's not that simple, though. Discriminatory hiring practices, for example, don't occur because capitalists don't really want to hire anybody at all, but can only justify excluding one group. There's no reason to think that, in the absence of racism, unemployment would be at, for example, the level experienced by African-Americans for everyone. That is because people actually get racist by all the racist propaganda thrown around. Employers as well.


Who on earth ever said anything about "guilt"? Are you talking to me, or Straw Liberal #437? :confused:

Frankly, guilt is the worst possible reaction one could have to these facts, because guilt is a demotivating force, an encouragement to wallow in self-pity and self-hatred, not to get out here and change the world. Many great revolutionaries were very much advantaged by the capitalist system, and well aware of it, but didn't wallow in guilt; rather, they worked to turn that advantage to the benefit of the oppressed. Maybe it's just a cultural thing, a part of Janteloven, but to me being privileged means that you should feel guilt about being privileged. Being privileged is a bad thing and pappagutter (sons of wealthy parents) always claim they aren't privileged.


I wouldn't confuse centre-left newspapers with even mid-left intellectuals, let alone far-leftists. At best, they'll let left-wing editorial pieces in ther now and then to offer up the false image of lively debate, but it's always very limited and often tightly controlled. I'll judge how the class perspective of my newpapers on my own.


Not substantially, but a charade of feminism has been a fairly solid plank in the neo-imperialist platform for a long time, particularly when dealing with the Islamic world. Obviously, this particular form has particular strains of "they're comin' for our women!" to it, but it comes back to the same rationalisation of white supremacy as the necessary repression of the bestial man of colour. I agree too some degree, but it gets more complicated as many of the parliamentary feminists is also against the wars in middle east. In words not in action though.


What part of my language is outdated, exclusively academic or non-contemporary? :confused:

I'm hardly using language of exceptional obscurity, or exclusively Marxist/Anarchist in usage. The only really technical term I've used is "ideology", and that's not really one you can abandon and hope to discuss these issues in any substantial fashion, any more than you could give up "capitalism".
I may have been overly harsh, but I generally find your posts to be overly abstract and hard too glean the meaning out of.


BTW! I appreciated this discussion so you know.

[Tim Finnegan]

As a term on it's own it is no more specific than repression of immigrants.
...But it's not a "term on its own". It's part of an ideological critique. :confused:


That is because people actually get racist by all the racist propaganda thrown around. Employers as well.Firstly, do you really think racism is just people "getting racist" because of "propaganda", and not a major component of bourgeois ideology? :confused:
Secondly, that doesn't actually challenge what I said, it just offers a different reason for the same thing.


Maybe it's just a cultural thing, a part of Janteloven, but to me being privileged means that you should feel guilt about being privileged. Being privileged is a bad thing and pappagutter (sons of wealthy parents) always claim they aren't privileged.Well, certainly, it's very often seen as shameful to possess an unearned advantage, but that's not what "privilege", in this sense, refers to, or at least not as such. It is, again, a form of ideological construction which favours the perspective and experience of an "in-group" against "out-groups", and while this tends to produce material advantages, that's not a defining characteristic.
However, culturally self-impositions of guilt do not constitute a political program, nor should they be taken to. If we went only by cultural norms, we wouldn't be leftists in the first place...


I'll judge how the class perspective of my newpapers on my own.That's really not what I said, but ok...


I agree too some degree, but it gets more complicated as many of the parliamentary feminists is also against the wars in middle east. In words not in action though.Yeah, there's a whole big mess of bourgeois silliness floating around the issue. Probably best not to go off-topic by trying to untangle it...


I may have been overly harsh, but I generally find your posts to be overly abstract and hard too glean the meaning out of.Well, perhaps. I can hardly claim professional-level writing skills, that's for certain. :lol:

[eyedrop]

...But it's not a "term on its own". It's part of an ideological critique. :confused: How does it differ from the standard critique, except that the emphasis that the whites are privileged instead of the immigrants are repressed?


Firstly, do you really think racism is just people "getting racist" because of "propaganda", and not a major component of bourgeois ideology? :confused:Haven't I said a couple of times in this thread that racism is a capitalist tactic to create a group of disempowered workers which they clearly benefit from. But it's not like the random store manager throws away the applications with weird names because of some conspiracy, he's just racist.

Secondly, that doesn't actually challenge what I said, it just offers a different reason for the same thing.Then I didn't get what you tried to say. We have a reason for why racism is encouraged and we know that racism causes it to be harder for the victims to be employed the rest follows?


Well, certainly, it's very often seen as shameful to possess an unearned advantage, but that's not what "privilege", in this sense, refers to, or at least not as such. It is, again, a form of ideological construction which favours the perspective and experience of an "in-group" against "out-groups", and while this tends to produce material advantages, that's not a defining characteristic.
However, culturally self-impositions of guilt do not constitute a political program, nor should they be taken to. If we went only by cultural norms, we wouldn't be leftists in the first place... So I just need to take an american activist cultural terms class first.
And what does the part I bolded mean? That the privilege construction causes whites to view themselves as a group and that gives them material advantages?


That's really not what I said, but ok...Well I said that publications with class perspective on other things was bad at it, then you boldly insinuated that they where centre left rags, with token some token class perspective.

[Tim Finnegan]

How does it differ from the standard critique, except that the emphasis that the whites are privileged instead of the immigrants are repressed?
That's not what it does at all. As I have said repeatedly, it's a component of the ideological construction of systems of oppression, not an alternative explanation for that theory.


Haven't I said a couple of times in this thread that racism is a capitalist tactic to create a group of disempowered workers which they clearly benefit from. But it's not like the random store manager throws away the applications with weird names because of some conspiracy, he's just racist.
Who said anything about a conspiracy? I just meant that racism goes deeper than store managers paying too much attention to right-wing tabloids.


Then I didn't get what you tried to say. We have a reason for why racism is encouraged and we know that racism causes it to be harder for the victims to be employed the rest follows?
Give or take, yes. White workers came to accept racist ideology because it appears to be in their interests within the terms of capitalism, and when they can see no alternative, as most historically have not, that's a powerful draw.


So I just need to take an american activist cultural terms class first.
And what does the part I bolded mean? That the privilege construction causes whites to view themselves as a group and that gives them material advantages?
It means that the hegemonic ideology is constructed in terms of the (general) experiences of white people, and from a white perspective, thereby excludes the voices of people of colour from legitiamte discourse. Of course, it's also constructed in such a fashion as to exclude women, queer people, the working class, and most other people; only a small minority actually get all the cards, but they are, it is not hard to see, the minority who runs everything.


Well I said that publications with class perspective on other things was bad at it, then you boldly insinuated that they where centre left rags, with token some token class perspective.
Are you saying that there are mainstream yet hard-left newspapers in Norway? If so, then you're a luckier country that we are! :laugh:

[eyedrop]

Are you saying that there are mainstream yet hard-left newspapers in Norway? If so, then you're a luckier country that we are! :laugh:

Mainstream as in you can buy them in a supermarket, where Class War, which had a sizeable ownership of a comintern assosiated commie party and now has a sizeable ownership of Rødt (which is as hard-left as the other parliamentary parties people here are members of), is sold. Technically I wouldn't call them hard-left, but if we would be generous and call most of the people posting here unrestricted hard-left, they are.
Manifest Analyse, which is a think-tank supported by the union and do have a pretty solid class analysis, often has articles in various left wing newspapers.

A class perspective isn't completely gone from the public discourse, but I haven't seen anyone discuss immigration from that perspective.


It means that the hegemonic ideology is constructed in terms of the (general) experiences of white people, and from a white perspective, thereby excludes the voices of people of colour from legitiamte discourse. Of course, it's also constructed in such a fashion as to exclude women, queer people, the working class, and most other people; only a small minority actually get all the cards, but they are, it is not hard to see, the minority who runs everything.
Isn't this just "we want more prominent minorities" in the media? Which could have come straight out of Ophra's show.

And those prominent minorities will be the rich minorities, not the poor ones, just like the poor whites aren't featured in media as well.

[Tim Finnegan]

Mainstream as in you can buy them in a supermarket, where Class War, which had a sizeable ownership of a comintern assosiated commie party and now has a sizeable ownership of Rødt (which is as hard-left as the other parliamentary parties people here are members of), is sold. Technically I wouldn't call them hard-left, but if we would be generous and call most of the people posting here unrestricted hard-left, they are.
Manifest Analyse, which is a think-tank supported by the union and do have a pretty solid class analysis, often has articles in various left wing newspapers.
Then you really are luckier! The only mainstream papers we have that lean noticeably leftwards are The Guardian, a middle class left-liberal affair, and a handful of left-populist tabloids.

I guess I shouldn't be so presumptuous when it comes to other countries. It's all too easy to forget that Britain is actually a fairly right-wing country- perhaps we're just exposed to too much of the US to remember that?


A class perspective isn't completely gone from the public discourse, but I haven't seen anyone discuss immigration from that perspective.
I suppose that's the difference, then- class is something of a taboo in the UK, and the English-speaking world generally, and it discussion often seen as archaic or wilfully disruptive. The one exception seems to be when it's utilised by the bourgeoisie and their lackeys, discussing a "white working class" as some innately racist blob that needs protecting from itself- and that's hardly the sort of class perspective on immigration we need.


Isn't this just "we want more prominent minorities" in the media? Which could have come straight out of Ophra's show.
Not at all; it's about minority perspectives, not simply minorities themselves. Left to themselves, the ruling class will offer only a minority individual so assimilated into the ideology of the ruling class as to be utterly compromised, or a caricatured Other so objectified as to be allowed little to no true voice; they'll allow Condeelzza Rice or a black minstrel show, basically.


And those prominent minorities will be the rich minorities, not the poor ones, just like the poor whites aren't featured in media as well.
Quite so. Hegemonic ideology, like the systems of oppression they represent, can only be properly challenged from the outside, and not from the inside; the bourgeoisie are more than adept at compromising what they are allowed to control. At best, you can barter with them to arrange the distribution of subversive material, but little more.

And, of course, the excluded groups very much include poor whites, something that middle-class liberals can all to often forget.

[eyedrop]

Then you really are luckier! The only mainstream papers we have that lean noticeably leftwards are The Guardian, a middle class left-liberal affair, and a handful of left-populist tabloids.

I guess I shouldn't be so presumptuous when it comes to other countries. It's all too easy to forget that Britain is actually a fairly right-wing country- perhaps we're just exposed to too much of the US to remember that?


I suppose that's the difference, then- class is something of a taboo in the UK, and the English-speaking world generally, and it discussion often seen as archaic or wilfully disruptive. The one exception seems to be when it's utilised by the bourgeoisie and their lackeys, discussing a "white working class" as some innately racist blob that needs protecting from itself- and that's hardly the sort of class perspective on immigration we need. While class is mentioned it is far from the norm, but it does show up from time to time. Some pearls are hidden between a bunch of crap, like for example a doctorate degree featured that class is still largely hereditary. A year or so ago there was plenty of warning about not creating an underclass out of immigrants/seasonal foreign workers, but little talk about how that affects everyone.

I reckon that some of the differences come from that part of our media has traditionally been controlled by the labour movement. I don't want to give you the impression that our media is some superclass conscious entity.



Not at all; it's about minority perspectives, not simply minorities themselves. Left to themselves, the ruling class will offer only a minority individual so assimilated into the ideology of the ruling class as to be utterly compromised, or a caricatured Other so objectified as to be allowed little to no true voice; they'll allow Condeelzza Rice or a black minstrel show, basically.


Quite so. Hegemonic ideology, like the systems of oppression they represent, can only be properly challenged from the outside, and not from the inside; the bourgeoisie are more than adept at compromising what they are allowed to control. At best, you can barter with them to arrange the distribution of subversive material, but little more.

And, of course, the excluded groups very much include poor whites, something that middle-class liberals can all to often forget.

Well I can't say that I'm not annoyed that every Hollywood love story is either an up and coming Manhatten resident. Or that he head union-leader of a nurses union is male, while 96% of nurses are female.

I still see trying to rebuild any kind of working class culture as more fruitful, which will hopefully be more diverse (or easier to influence to be more diverse) than media society, than trying to pressure media into portraying minority perspective.

A woman organizing a cross company, preferably worker only bridge tournament will show, and be more sure herself, that women can take the front-seat.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Give or take, yes. White workers came to accept racist ideology because it appears to be in their interests within the terms of capitalism, and when they can see no alternative, as most historically have not, that's a powerful draw.

It means that the hegemonic ideology is constructed in terms of the (general) experiences of white people, and from a white perspective, thereby excludes the voices of people of colour from legitiamte discourse. Of course, it's also constructed in such a fashion as to exclude women, queer people, the working class, and most other people; only a small minority actually get all the cards, but they are, it is not hard to see, the minority who runs everything.


Do you think there is a "white culture"? It seems like "privilege" is an attempt to explain mixed consciousness in some ways. Why aren't white people fighting against racism - why do so many not even acknowledge it?

Yes, this is a problem. Is it because the culture privileges their experience? If yes, then there is some "white culture" that exists beyond class. But then why would the ruling class spend so much effort CONVINCING people that we are "post-racial" and that there is no racism and that the police are always right and that black and Latino youth are sociopaths or "unteachable" if it could simply be the result of excluding people? I think the ruling class actually works very hard to make sure that racism and sexism and class divisions are "invisible" - it works very hard at creating (rather than privileging a pre-existing) cultural norm.

Hetero men are not naturally unemotional and afraid of close contact with other men (or even adverse to homosexual relationships when it comes down to it IMO). Male norms were not simply the ruling class "privileging" pre-existing attitudes or experiences, these norms were created and promoted because hegemony needs some conformity and if women think that they are weak, then they will not complain about doing free childcare for the nation and if men are afraid to show emotions or care for people, they will be more willing to go along with competing against their fellow workers or having a "stiff upper lip" about abuses on the job.

Also this brings up the question of why so many black people internalize what in white people would be called "white privilege". Since many black people - even many poor and struggling people buy into the same myths and lies about black youth as many white people do - suggesting to me that, again, the issue is not that the ruling class "privileges" some experience, but that it promotes attitudes and ideas that help maintain its rule. I've done a some anti-police brutality work in Oakland and while clearly there is a greater understanding (from first-hand experience) of racism among black people here, I also hear the same myths and arguments common in the media and adopted by many white people. When Obama said that black education inequality was due to too many fathers watching TV or not raising their kids, I'd talk to people about that and a lot of working class black people said they agreed. It common to hear black people in Oakland say that "too many black people blame 'the man' for their problems rather than taking personal responsibility". This is the same argument I heard from white racists in my high school in the 1990s.

This brings me to my other point. If "privilege" is used to explain why white people don't fight against racism and that if white people acknowledge "privilege" then they will be won to fighting racism... why aren't black people currently organizing big movements against racism? It certainty can't be because of privilege! In general there has been a decline in movements and it has nothing to do with privilage, it has everything to do with oppression, repression, and the destruction of grassroots movements. When white people did fight against racism, it wasn't because they recognized their privilege, it was because black people were standing up against oppression. So fight-back became on the basis of solidarity - the people feeling "guilty" or that they had it so much better were not the ones who went down to the south or worked with the BPP, they just voted for LBJ and felt relived of their white guilt and went on with their lives.