Jimmie Higgins
28th June 2011, 08:43
From the Black Nationalism thread...
I'm German and white apart of America's working poor where I feel no sense of privilege whatsoever on the part of my skin.
What's this white privilege your talking about? If it exists I certainly have never had it.
I've only known poverty as it has only been one of the few constants in my life. You make it sound like all us caucasians have it which is just absurd and completely untrue.
What they mean is that if you are straight, you have not had to worry that if you hold your lover's hand in public that police will harass you or thugs will threaten you for doing that. If you are white, you have probably not specifically been targeted (for being white) by police and that if you were arrested for something, statistically, you would probably receive less punishment than a black or Latino male youth accused of the same thing.
As it has been explained to me, "Privilege" in this context does not mean that someone is like Paris Hilton or something, it means that the society favors X, Y, and Z groups of people and thereby makes them oblivious to oppression of the non-privileged groups.
For me there is not question about if there is social inequality and oppression in modern society - there is no doubt that while I think all workers are oppressed, some specific groups in society are targeted for specific extra oppression. That being said, I think "privilege theory" a useless theory for fighting oppression IMO not to mention the whole language and confusion over the term is divisive and polarizing.
First I think it is not helpful for fighting racism because it seems to put more emphasis on how the non-oppressed are not-oppressed rather than the real conditions of oppression. I often here people use the term "baseline" or other things to describe the experiences of oppressed people in society which seems to me to suggest that what we should expect or want is for Arab people, for example, to continue to be profiled, but that non-Arabs should also be profiled by the police and FBI. By saying that being privileged means that people respect what little rights we have in this country, we are de-facto accepting oppression as "normal" or inherent and not as something that can be overcome and smashed.
I also think this theory is flawed in that it is often presented outside of any sort of consideration of class or the overall organization of society. Males just being dominant, just privileged their own experiences, is that argument. This view doesn't hold up once we begin to ask which men, the academics, the Parliament members, the businessmen, the street-sweepers, the farmers? It also ignores how norms in society change rapidly over time: how could it be that men or straight men favor their "experience" and privilege it when what society considers to be masculine or hetero-normative changes quite a bit and is not based on any inherent or biological?
The best privilege theorists do talk about how class rule plays into oppression ("privilege") but they tend to take a mechanistic view. They argue that by privileging white people, the ruling class could unite poor whites with the slave-owners and later the capitalists. This view has more of a historical grain of truth since it at least places the origin of social oppression with the ruling class. However, it's sort of mechanical too because it treats the rights won by working class people over time as sort of "bribes" to workers to get them to support the oppression of others. This reinforces a passive view of history where people are victims and not dynamic people responding to their circumstances. The rights that white workers have are all due to struggle (or all workers and oppressed groups, not just white people) and if other people have their rights violated or were not also granted these same rights, that is because the ruling class was effective in watering down the victory for labor rights or relief for the poor and are able to drive a wedge into the class. Bosses do this in strikes all the fucking time - they'll be on the ropes so they'll offer a compromise that grants the strikers most of their demands but not fully - they'll add something about how new-hires can't get the same contract or that certain sectors will get more of the demands met than others. This is simple divide and rule, not some "privileging" of some workers over others. Even in the civil rights movement the ruling class played this game among black activists - the moderate ones were "privileged" in that the US granted a portion of rights that people were demanding, but at the same time they brutally oppressed groups like the Black Panthers and increased police repression on working class blacks even as more jobs and positions opened up for middle class blacks. Their goal is for NONE of us to have workers rights or the ability to stand up to police repression - but to enforce that on the whole population at once risks a generalized struggle and so it's easier to go after smaller groups within the larger population and restrict their rights and thereby set a precedent for lensing all those kinds of rights. White supremacy in the South disenfrancized blacks, obviously, but the poll taxes and literacy tests also disenfranchised poor whites - both groups had conflicts with the dominant class, but white supremacist ideas and racism were used to keep people fighting amongst themselves instead of fighting together for land reform or more rights and protections for sharecroppers.
Again I don't think that privilege theory is useful for fighting oppression - I think people are only attracted to this theory right now because oppression is treated as "invisible" in our society right now and, for example, most white people do not know about or don't believe that there is racial profiling by the police on a generalized and routine basis. Sexist ideas and images have become totally ubiquitous and right-wing radio claims that white shop-owners are the real oppressed people and women, LGBT people, Blacks, Immigrants, Latinos and Arabs are all faking their oppression.
But it's not privilege that has caused this state of affairs IMO. It's the lack of real movements and struggle against oppression at the same time there has been a concerted effort by the ruling class to hide oppression. This effort has been on every level of society: in academia, people make a name for themselves like Denesh D'Souza by talking about "post-racial" America; right-wing think tanks and radio talk about "reverse-racism" and "reverse-sexism" and Christians argue they are being persecuted when gay people demand not to be persecuted. Oppression won't be ended when the non-oppressed sit around and think about their "privileges" - it will be ended when people see oppression, see how it is used by our rulers to keep us all down, and most importantly build movements based on solidarity as well as the leadership of oppressed people in their own struggles to overcome and smash oppression.
I'm German and white apart of America's working poor where I feel no sense of privilege whatsoever on the part of my skin.
What's this white privilege your talking about? If it exists I certainly have never had it.
I've only known poverty as it has only been one of the few constants in my life. You make it sound like all us caucasians have it which is just absurd and completely untrue.
What they mean is that if you are straight, you have not had to worry that if you hold your lover's hand in public that police will harass you or thugs will threaten you for doing that. If you are white, you have probably not specifically been targeted (for being white) by police and that if you were arrested for something, statistically, you would probably receive less punishment than a black or Latino male youth accused of the same thing.
As it has been explained to me, "Privilege" in this context does not mean that someone is like Paris Hilton or something, it means that the society favors X, Y, and Z groups of people and thereby makes them oblivious to oppression of the non-privileged groups.
For me there is not question about if there is social inequality and oppression in modern society - there is no doubt that while I think all workers are oppressed, some specific groups in society are targeted for specific extra oppression. That being said, I think "privilege theory" a useless theory for fighting oppression IMO not to mention the whole language and confusion over the term is divisive and polarizing.
First I think it is not helpful for fighting racism because it seems to put more emphasis on how the non-oppressed are not-oppressed rather than the real conditions of oppression. I often here people use the term "baseline" or other things to describe the experiences of oppressed people in society which seems to me to suggest that what we should expect or want is for Arab people, for example, to continue to be profiled, but that non-Arabs should also be profiled by the police and FBI. By saying that being privileged means that people respect what little rights we have in this country, we are de-facto accepting oppression as "normal" or inherent and not as something that can be overcome and smashed.
I also think this theory is flawed in that it is often presented outside of any sort of consideration of class or the overall organization of society. Males just being dominant, just privileged their own experiences, is that argument. This view doesn't hold up once we begin to ask which men, the academics, the Parliament members, the businessmen, the street-sweepers, the farmers? It also ignores how norms in society change rapidly over time: how could it be that men or straight men favor their "experience" and privilege it when what society considers to be masculine or hetero-normative changes quite a bit and is not based on any inherent or biological?
The best privilege theorists do talk about how class rule plays into oppression ("privilege") but they tend to take a mechanistic view. They argue that by privileging white people, the ruling class could unite poor whites with the slave-owners and later the capitalists. This view has more of a historical grain of truth since it at least places the origin of social oppression with the ruling class. However, it's sort of mechanical too because it treats the rights won by working class people over time as sort of "bribes" to workers to get them to support the oppression of others. This reinforces a passive view of history where people are victims and not dynamic people responding to their circumstances. The rights that white workers have are all due to struggle (or all workers and oppressed groups, not just white people) and if other people have their rights violated or were not also granted these same rights, that is because the ruling class was effective in watering down the victory for labor rights or relief for the poor and are able to drive a wedge into the class. Bosses do this in strikes all the fucking time - they'll be on the ropes so they'll offer a compromise that grants the strikers most of their demands but not fully - they'll add something about how new-hires can't get the same contract or that certain sectors will get more of the demands met than others. This is simple divide and rule, not some "privileging" of some workers over others. Even in the civil rights movement the ruling class played this game among black activists - the moderate ones were "privileged" in that the US granted a portion of rights that people were demanding, but at the same time they brutally oppressed groups like the Black Panthers and increased police repression on working class blacks even as more jobs and positions opened up for middle class blacks. Their goal is for NONE of us to have workers rights or the ability to stand up to police repression - but to enforce that on the whole population at once risks a generalized struggle and so it's easier to go after smaller groups within the larger population and restrict their rights and thereby set a precedent for lensing all those kinds of rights. White supremacy in the South disenfrancized blacks, obviously, but the poll taxes and literacy tests also disenfranchised poor whites - both groups had conflicts with the dominant class, but white supremacist ideas and racism were used to keep people fighting amongst themselves instead of fighting together for land reform or more rights and protections for sharecroppers.
Again I don't think that privilege theory is useful for fighting oppression - I think people are only attracted to this theory right now because oppression is treated as "invisible" in our society right now and, for example, most white people do not know about or don't believe that there is racial profiling by the police on a generalized and routine basis. Sexist ideas and images have become totally ubiquitous and right-wing radio claims that white shop-owners are the real oppressed people and women, LGBT people, Blacks, Immigrants, Latinos and Arabs are all faking their oppression.
But it's not privilege that has caused this state of affairs IMO. It's the lack of real movements and struggle against oppression at the same time there has been a concerted effort by the ruling class to hide oppression. This effort has been on every level of society: in academia, people make a name for themselves like Denesh D'Souza by talking about "post-racial" America; right-wing think tanks and radio talk about "reverse-racism" and "reverse-sexism" and Christians argue they are being persecuted when gay people demand not to be persecuted. Oppression won't be ended when the non-oppressed sit around and think about their "privileges" - it will be ended when people see oppression, see how it is used by our rulers to keep us all down, and most importantly build movements based on solidarity as well as the leadership of oppressed people in their own struggles to overcome and smash oppression.