7 ms·

Great read. I've become allergic to words like "privilege" as they usually are seen in the company of ill-thought-out and grandiose/insulting/wrong proclamatio

Great read. I've become allergic to words like "privilege" as they usually are seen in the company of ill-thought-out and grandiose/insulting/wrong proclamations about How Things Should Be Done, ..but this is none of that - it's an honest look and deep analysis of someone's experience. And knowing how important upbringing is, and the sheer (almost superhuman) tenacity the author had to go through to even partially overcome the (poisonous? non-optimum?) mindset that was completely a result of things out of their control... what the heck is everyone else supposed to do? How does society do right by people like this? Overall, we're pretty horrible at dealing with things that are as subtle as mindset.

Frondo 11y ago
To be honest, one thing you can do is retrain yourself to be un-allergic to words like "privilege", and see their use as the consequence of a lot of people's suffering systemic unfairness and injustice. When I see that word, "privilege," especially tied to attacks on white/male/hetero/whatever, my response isn't "oh jeez, not that again".....it's "yeah, that is a problem, and I really wish the other white male hetero folks in the room could see it and not just roll their eyes". It sounds like you want to be an ally, and that's great. I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal, it really isn't about you, even though you're a beneficiary of it every day. Knowing about systemic injustice and doing nothing/remaining silent, though, that's pretty callous, and knowing about systemic injustice and perpetuating it, well, then it would be about you.
- 67726e 11y ago
  Or you could stop using the fact that someone is white, male, or straight as some kind of attack, insult, or excuse. There are certainly issues in society, real problems but I'm tired of hearing it. Somehow all of my hardships in life are reduced to nothing, because I'm "privileged".
  - paulv 11y ago
    "...if you think having privilege means that you’re a bad person, or that you haven’t had struggles, or that you haven’t worked hard for what you have – then I can totally feel why you might be frustrated. If that were the case, then yes, it’d be completely unfair of me to claim that all white people or straight people or men or people of any other dominant group are living easy off their unearned privileges. But having privilege doesn’t mean any of those things." Maisha Z. Johnson, http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-means/ http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-me...
    - 13thLetter 11y ago
      Then perhaps Ms. Johnson should take that up with 90% of the people who use the word "privilege" in arguments nowadays, because they're not using it the way she thinks they're using it.
      - paulv 11y ago
        I don't think it's solely Ms. Johnson's job to tell people that they're using the word wrong. Now that you know the meaning, you can help us spread the knowledge (like I did by sharing that link).
        Karunamon 11y ago
        This sounds like linguistic prescriptivism. For most human communication, the most commonly used definition is the "correct" one. Cf. "Literally", "I could care less", "Dapper"
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - BurningFrog 11y ago
      That's the formal definition, used when being scrutinized. The angrier one is far more common in real life debate. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word...
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  "I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal," Most times I've seen people talk about privilege, it got personal (as in, filled with obscenities, personal attacks, and thinly veiled threats) very quickly when others did not immediately agree with them. So your statement does not comport with my experience, at least.
- flubert 11y ago
  I wonder what the value is for various types of "privilege"? As in, if you could pay so much and reap the benefits, how much should someone be willing to pay? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000?
  - AlexWest 11y ago
    It's relatively easy to quantify pay discrimination against various groups. Emotional pain and civil rights deprivation are harder to quantify, though.
    - refurb 11y ago
      It's relatively easy to quantify pay discrimination against various groups Is it? Would you then argue that since Asians in the US have a higher median income than whites, the difference is due to discrimination? If not, then what is the cause?
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  It is not ok to look at someone's gender, age & race and make assumptions about there life, full stop. Applying a term like 'privileged' to an entire group of people based on a single characteristic is stereotyping at it's worst. This isn't to say that trends don't exist, but it is not ok to assume something about an individual simply because it's true, as a general rule for the group they belong to. Like it or not, that's the trap that many people fall into when talking about privilege.
  - ossreality 11y ago
    aka, "I have no idea what the word privilege means". Just like every one of these god damn threads. You just flat out don't know what the word privilege means. paulv's comment is better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956283 I have privilege. I have a lot of it because I'm white, straight-appearing, and grew up with access to a computer at the age of 6. I also lack privilege in some ways because I am gay. I actually have some minor privilege as being gay (I won't likely be accused of sexually or otherwise assaulting a female). Privilege is not a zero sum game. It's not an accusation. It's not a bad thing, inherently. It's something to be aware of. And then there are people like you get immediately get defensive. IM NOT A RACIST I DONT NEED THIS. It one, makes you look like you're projecting... and two, is completely missing the point.
  - AlexWest 11y ago
    But that's really the whole point of privilege - belonging to the group is enough to grant you the advantages of it. Period. It doesn't mean your life is great, it doesn't mean you don't have problems, but the members of a privileged class absolutely possess those privileges - that's how it works.
    - Domenic_S 11y ago
      I get it, but I don't buy it. Rather, I don't buy that it's so cut and dried as to be accepted with "period". When you're part of the largest demographic, you're basically invisible: Generic 30s Middle Class White Guy #87473674282. The term just isn't nuanced enough.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Karunamon 11y ago
  There's one problem here: ..(my response is) "yeah, that is a problem" Well, no, not always. There are two huge problems with the whole "you are privileged therefore.." argument, so much so that I question the value of even using it: - They extrapolate the general to the individual, which is unfair for the same reason that all prejudice is unfair. - It's used disgustingly often as a throwaway attack to silence people. (In essence: You're privileged, shaddap) - The same people would use this to attack the author of this article, based on what's immediately visible about him (white male), without knowing a damn thing about his struggle. For a very good recent example of this, look at what happened at Missouri U in the news. I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal... If only I could believe that. My experience on the greater internet in the last few years is that, perhaps nine times out of ten, anyone using the word intends it as an attack on a group (their intentions, however noble, are irrelevant), and the other time, it gets the serious, thoughtful treatment we see here.
- im2w1l 11y ago
  The reason I'm allergic to "privilege" is that 9 out 10 times, "you are privileged" is followed by "and here is how we are going to fuck you over to fix that"
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  It's not the word that is the problem. The problem is that the word is used with intent to insult people for the sin of being white and male. No matter what word you choose to use for that insult, it will be met with an eye-roll.
sharemywin 11y ago
mentoring. poor students.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Couldn't hurt, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't really solve the problem. The author was poor, but appeared to have a positive, if difficult home life. Mentoring would have helped the knowledge problem, but his problem was lack of resource above everything else. Lack of resource leads to instability, and it taints literally everything you do, even mentally. I know, I know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It's not me you have to convince.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    The mental training poor people, middle class people, and rich people get is completely different. If you grow up poor there's a huge amount you need to learn - about law, politics, business ethics, finance, negotiation, social signalling, confidence and assertiveness, and how to find and deal with influencers - that the rich seem to be taught effortlessly. Having more money doesn't change the basic life training, because the life training is itself a form of positional social signalling. If you're middle class you're half in and half out. You have some idea how the world really works, but your ability to act on that learning is limited because you won't naturally have the right contacts - unless you cultivate them deliberately. Most of the poor have no idea that any of this matters. They're caged inside a media-managed world view, and it takes exceptional ability to break out of that. Mentoring can help some, but nothing helps as much as confidence and contacts.

Frondo 11y ago

To be honest, one thing you can do is retrain yourself to be un-allergic to words like "privilege", and see their use as the consequence of a lot of people's suffering systemic unfairness and injustice. When I see that word, "privilege," especially tied to attacks on white/male/hetero/whatever, my response isn't "oh jeez, not that again".....it's "yeah, that is a problem, and I really wish the other white male hetero folks in the room could see it and not just roll their eyes". It sounds like you want to be an ally, and that's great. I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal, it really isn't about you, even though you're a beneficiary of it every day. Knowing about systemic injustice and doing nothing/remaining silent, though, that's pretty callous, and knowing about systemic injustice and perpetuating it, well, then it would be about you.

67726e 11y ago
Or you could stop using the fact that someone is white, male, or straight as some kind of attack, insult, or excuse. There are certainly issues in society, real problems but I'm tired of hearing it. Somehow all of my hardships in life are reduced to nothing, because I'm "privileged".
- paulv 11y ago
  "...if you think having privilege means that you’re a bad person, or that you haven’t had struggles, or that you haven’t worked hard for what you have – then I can totally feel why you might be frustrated. If that were the case, then yes, it’d be completely unfair of me to claim that all white people or straight people or men or people of any other dominant group are living easy off their unearned privileges. But having privilege doesn’t mean any of those things." Maisha Z. Johnson, http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-means/ http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-me...
  - 13thLetter 11y ago
    Then perhaps Ms. Johnson should take that up with 90% of the people who use the word "privilege" in arguments nowadays, because they're not using it the way she thinks they're using it.
    - paulv 11y ago
      I don't think it's solely Ms. Johnson's job to tell people that they're using the word wrong. Now that you know the meaning, you can help us spread the knowledge (like I did by sharing that link).
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        This sounds like linguistic prescriptivism. For most human communication, the most commonly used definition is the "correct" one. Cf. "Literally", "I could care less", "Dapper"
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - BurningFrog 11y ago
    That's the formal definition, used when being scrutinized. The angrier one is far more common in real life debate. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word...
13thLetter 11y ago
"I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal," Most times I've seen people talk about privilege, it got personal (as in, filled with obscenities, personal attacks, and thinly veiled threats) very quickly when others did not immediately agree with them. So your statement does not comport with my experience, at least.
flubert 11y ago
I wonder what the value is for various types of "privilege"? As in, if you could pay so much and reap the benefits, how much should someone be willing to pay? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000?
- AlexWest 11y ago
  It's relatively easy to quantify pay discrimination against various groups. Emotional pain and civil rights deprivation are harder to quantify, though.
  - refurb 11y ago
    It's relatively easy to quantify pay discrimination against various groups Is it? Would you then argue that since Asians in the US have a higher median income than whites, the difference is due to discrimination? If not, then what is the cause?
TrevorJ 11y ago
It is not ok to look at someone's gender, age & race and make assumptions about there life, full stop. Applying a term like 'privileged' to an entire group of people based on a single characteristic is stereotyping at it's worst. This isn't to say that trends don't exist, but it is not ok to assume something about an individual simply because it's true, as a general rule for the group they belong to. Like it or not, that's the trap that many people fall into when talking about privilege.
- ossreality 11y ago
  aka, "I have no idea what the word privilege means". Just like every one of these god damn threads. You just flat out don't know what the word privilege means. paulv's comment is better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956283 I have privilege. I have a lot of it because I'm white, straight-appearing, and grew up with access to a computer at the age of 6. I also lack privilege in some ways because I am gay. I actually have some minor privilege as being gay (I won't likely be accused of sexually or otherwise assaulting a female). Privilege is not a zero sum game. It's not an accusation. It's not a bad thing, inherently. It's something to be aware of. And then there are people like you get immediately get defensive. IM NOT A RACIST I DONT NEED THIS. It one, makes you look like you're projecting... and two, is completely missing the point.
- AlexWest 11y ago
  But that's really the whole point of privilege - belonging to the group is enough to grant you the advantages of it. Period. It doesn't mean your life is great, it doesn't mean you don't have problems, but the members of a privileged class absolutely possess those privileges - that's how it works.
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    I get it, but I don't buy it. Rather, I don't buy that it's so cut and dried as to be accepted with "period". When you're part of the largest demographic, you're basically invisible: Generic 30s Middle Class White Guy #87473674282. The term just isn't nuanced enough.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Karunamon 11y ago
There's one problem here: ..(my response is) "yeah, that is a problem" Well, no, not always. There are two huge problems with the whole "you are privileged therefore.." argument, so much so that I question the value of even using it: - They extrapolate the general to the individual, which is unfair for the same reason that all prejudice is unfair. - It's used disgustingly often as a throwaway attack to silence people. (In essence: You're privileged, shaddap) - The same people would use this to attack the author of this article, based on what's immediately visible about him (white male), without knowing a damn thing about his struggle. For a very good recent example of this, look at what happened at Missouri U in the news. I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal... If only I could believe that. My experience on the greater internet in the last few years is that, perhaps nine times out of ten, anyone using the word intends it as an attack on a group (their intentions, however noble, are irrelevant), and the other time, it gets the serious, thoughtful treatment we see here.
im2w1l 11y ago
The reason I'm allergic to "privilege" is that 9 out 10 times, "you are privileged" is followed by "and here is how we are going to fuck you over to fix that"
oldmanjay 11y ago
It's not the word that is the problem. The problem is that the word is used with intent to insult people for the sin of being white and male. No matter what word you choose to use for that insult, it will be met with an eye-roll.

sharemywin 11y ago

mentoring. poor students.

Karunamon 11y ago
Couldn't hurt, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't really solve the problem. The author was poor, but appeared to have a positive, if difficult home life. Mentoring would have helped the knowledge problem, but his problem was lack of resource above everything else. Lack of resource leads to instability, and it taints literally everything you do, even mentally. I know, I know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It's not me you have to convince.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The mental training poor people, middle class people, and rich people get is completely different. If you grow up poor there's a huge amount you need to learn - about law, politics, business ethics, finance, negotiation, social signalling, confidence and assertiveness, and how to find and deal with influencers - that the rich seem to be taught effortlessly. Having more money doesn't change the basic life training, because the life training is itself a form of positional social signalling. If you're middle class you're half in and half out. You have some idea how the world really works, but your ability to act on that learning is limited because you won't naturally have the right contacts - unless you cultivate them deliberately. Most of the poor have no idea that any of this matters. They're caged inside a media-managed world view, and it takes exceptional ability to break out of that. Mentoring can help some, but nothing helps as much as confidence and contacts.