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If you lose all your chips at the "black table" and I lose mine at the "white table", as we cry over our beers it would be ridiculous for you to assert that I s

If you lose all your chips at the "black table" and I lose mine at the "white table", as we cry over our beers it would be ridiculous for you to assert that I should feel privileged compared to you when our outcomes have turned out to be identical.

YuriNiyazov 11y ago
If we look around the bar, and see that the vast majority of people crying over the beers are black, would it be a reasonable thing for me to assert that the white folk that are here (you included) must've gotten extra unlucky? I think that's a reasonable thing to assert. That's what privilege is: the number of times you can fuck up (self-inflicted bad things) or be unlucky (externally inflicted bad things) before you lose all your chips. That's the nice things about probability and statistics. They allow us to compare an individual to a group.
- ElComradio 11y ago
  As a fellow loser at the bar, how is the knowledge that I am extra unlucky supposed to make me feel towards you? Am I supposed to consider myself fortunate that I had a greater chance at winning even as we both sit there with no chips? Am I supposed to buy you a beer because you had less of a chance?
  - YuriNiyazov 11y ago
    "How is this supposed to make you feel?" - I have no idea, and I certainly don't think that in your sorry state you owe a beer to anyone. However, I do think you should say to your fellow losers "I am sorry that you guys are forced play a harder game, and I promise to remember that if I ever manage to leave the losers' bar."
    - ElComradio 11y ago
      Now we get down to it- It's really a call to action. We are both losers, but you want the guys at the winners' tables to buy you a beer first, because you had a harder time, and disregard the fact that you and I are both equally losers. Of course feelings are important- The feeling you wish to elicit is guilt, not simply acknowledgement.
      - YuriNiyazov 11y ago
        The call to action is the acknowledgment, not the beer or the guilt. Getting white males, whether successful or not, to even say "yes, the system discriminates for us, regardless of outcomes" is such a huge barrier that their acknowledgment of the issue is the first thing that must happen before any kind of "fixing of the system" could happen.
        ElComradio 11y ago
        Acknowledgement is useless and not actionable. The end goal of people who bring up privilege is to engender a sense of guilt over undeserved advantages, which then leads to resources flowing out of the guilty group. So at our losers' table, you would ask the white winners to help you out over me, and over the other white guys at the losers' table, because we, the white losers, must have fucked up more to get here. The underprivileged losers are entitled to disproportionate aid from the winners.
        YuriNiyazov 11y ago
        Let's assume that this whole discussion really is about resource redistribution. I don't actually think so, but we can take that as a hypothetical. A winner comes over to the losers bar, and you want him to give every loser, white or black, the same number of chips. The problem is that after you all get your re-up, you get to go play at the white table again, and they go back to play at the black table again, which means that you have a way greater chance to not come back to the losers' bar. Ideally, you'd make both games have the same probability distributions, and that might happen eventually, but until then, the underprivileged losers should get more resources to have similar outcomes. Expected value is everything.
        ElComradio 11y ago
        What is the conversation about if not resource redistribution? Simple acknowledgment gets you what, exactly? Nothing.. There's obviously some desired action. That action is what, if not some kind of favoritism or balancing of scales? In this simplistic example, it comes down to one party using guilt tactics to convince the other party to provide an advantage or a leg up, which necessitates working against their own interests. Guilt tactics are required because it's a social engineering goal; the total number of people at the losers' bar remains the same.

YuriNiyazov 11y ago

If we look around the bar, and see that the vast majority of people crying over the beers are black, would it be a reasonable thing for me to assert that the white folk that are here (you included) must've gotten extra unlucky? I think that's a reasonable thing to assert. That's what privilege is: the number of times you can fuck up (self-inflicted bad things) or be unlucky (externally inflicted bad things) before you lose all your chips. That's the nice things about probability and statistics. They allow us to compare an individual to a group.

ElComradio 11y ago
As a fellow loser at the bar, how is the knowledge that I am extra unlucky supposed to make me feel towards you? Am I supposed to consider myself fortunate that I had a greater chance at winning even as we both sit there with no chips? Am I supposed to buy you a beer because you had less of a chance?
- YuriNiyazov 11y ago
  "How is this supposed to make you feel?" - I have no idea, and I certainly don't think that in your sorry state you owe a beer to anyone. However, I do think you should say to your fellow losers "I am sorry that you guys are forced play a harder game, and I promise to remember that if I ever manage to leave the losers' bar."
  - ElComradio 11y ago
    Now we get down to it- It's really a call to action. We are both losers, but you want the guys at the winners' tables to buy you a beer first, because you had a harder time, and disregard the fact that you and I are both equally losers. Of course feelings are important- The feeling you wish to elicit is guilt, not simply acknowledgement.
    - YuriNiyazov 11y ago
      The call to action is the acknowledgment, not the beer or the guilt. Getting white males, whether successful or not, to even say "yes, the system discriminates for us, regardless of outcomes" is such a huge barrier that their acknowledgment of the issue is the first thing that must happen before any kind of "fixing of the system" could happen.
      - ElComradio 11y ago
        Acknowledgement is useless and not actionable. The end goal of people who bring up privilege is to engender a sense of guilt over undeserved advantages, which then leads to resources flowing out of the guilty group. So at our losers' table, you would ask the white winners to help you out over me, and over the other white guys at the losers' table, because we, the white losers, must have fucked up more to get here. The underprivileged losers are entitled to disproportionate aid from the winners.
        YuriNiyazov 11y ago
        Let's assume that this whole discussion really is about resource redistribution. I don't actually think so, but we can take that as a hypothetical. A winner comes over to the losers bar, and you want him to give every loser, white or black, the same number of chips. The problem is that after you all get your re-up, you get to go play at the white table again, and they go back to play at the black table again, which means that you have a way greater chance to not come back to the losers' bar. Ideally, you'd make both games have the same probability distributions, and that might happen eventually, but until then, the underprivileged losers should get more resources to have similar outcomes. Expected value is everything.
        ElComradio 11y ago
        What is the conversation about if not resource redistribution? Simple acknowledgment gets you what, exactly? Nothing.. There's obviously some desired action. That action is what, if not some kind of favoritism or balancing of scales? In this simplistic example, it comes down to one party using guilt tactics to convince the other party to provide an advantage or a leg up, which necessitates working against their own interests. Guilt tactics are required because it's a social engineering goal; the total number of people at the losers' bar remains the same.