White privilege is a complex thing

[Beeth]

Many people in the west, including well-informed leftists (e.g. Tim Wise), seem to have a simplistic view on white privilege. "Whites control everything, racism is institutional, minorities at a disadvantage, yada yada yada."

Truth is, It goes way beyond economics/politics and enters psychological realms - I have experience in countries like India, bangladesh, singapore, and many other 'nonwhite' countries. It is all about perception rather than actual economic realities.

Unfortunately, Marxism today is more like economic reductionism, so it is impossible to even consider other possibilities while discussing privilege theories.

[The Feral Underclass]

The "beyond" you're talking about is what I would call 'structural oppression.'

Many Marxists are shit when it comes to privilege theory, but there is definitely a shift towards understanding these structural forms of oppression more and more within the left.

[Consistent.Surprise]

It is all about perception rather than actual economic realities.

Yup. Cis white folk have a far easier time throughout the world than anyone else. Doesn't mean we like it, nor does it mean we agree with it. But as a white woman in a predominantly black city (& I make just above poverty level for an individual), & I still have more advantages & am given more opportunities because I'm white. I've never knowingly taken advantage of it but I would doubt that the color of my skin has never played a role in the treatment I have received.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

And we have perfectly functional Marxist explanations for these phenomena - special oppression as a feature of the bourgeois dictatorship, patriarchy, colour castes and so on. Why drag the discussion down into the liberal mud of privilege politics?

[The Feral Underclass]

Yup. Cis white folk have a far easier time throughout the world than anyone else. Doesn't mean we like it, nor does it mean we agree with it. But as a white woman in a predominantly black city (& I make just above poverty level for an individual), & I still have more advantages & am given more opportunities because I'm white. I've never knowingly taken advantage of it but I would doubt that the color of my skin has never played a role in the treatment I have received.

People never clutch their bags when I get into lifts with them.

[Consistent.Surprise]

People never clutch their bags when I get into lifts with them.

Your initial comment I was going to respond to, you ninja, was: I should have specified hetero cis whites.

Do they? Bah! Maybe they're worried you're passing judgement on their style (sadly, I do that. Bad me!)

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The politics of privilege have made the important contribution of signaling how the structures of oppression constitute who we are as persons. However, as the rituals of confessing privilege have evolved, they have shifted our focus from building social movements for global transformation to individual self-improvement. Furthermore, they rest on a white supremacist/colonialist notion of a subject that can constitute itself over and against others through self-reflexivity.

From The Problem with Privilege (http://www.revleft.com/vb/andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-with-privilege-by-andrea-smith/) (Andrea Smith is also the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide).
The privilege-circle-jerk is the worst. Stop it.


And we have perfectly functional Marxist explanations for these phenomena - special oppression as a feature of the bourgeois dictatorship, patriarchy, colour castes and so on.

"Special oppression" is not a "perfectly functional" explanation - it's a fucking idealist cop-out. It fails to grapple with the interdependence of class/race/gender, and the capitalist totality. It's simply the flip-side of the same coin as liberal "privilege politics", where constitutive elements of class as a real historical phenomenon are abstracted away.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

"Special oppression" is not a "perfectly functional" explanation - it's a fucking idealist cop-out. It fails to grapple with the interdependence of class/race/gender, and the capitalist totality. It's simply the flip-side of the same coin as liberal "privilege politics", where constitutive elements of class as a real historical phenomenon are abstracted away.

How is the notion of special oppression idealist? If anything its chief strength is its focus on the material circumstances, on the concrete application of violence by dominant social groups against marginalised ones. And that allows one to cut through the endless debates that arise in idealist theories that place oppression on the level of ideology.

How does it fail to grapple with the interdependence, etc. etc.? Obviously we think these phenomena are grounded in the mode of production, and thus dependent on the class struggle. Perhaps you meant to say that it is asymmetric, since it "privileges" the class struggle? Fair enough. But to me that is one of the strengths of the approach. It connects the struggle against patriarchal, racist etc. oppression to the movement of the masses of the workers, and demonstrates why the usual popular-front, bourgeois-led approach to these struggles is suicidal.