3 ms·

> I think it's a rhetorical mistake to call it a "privilege" when bad things don't happen to you that shouldn't happen to anybody. The purpose of the rhetoric

> I think it's a rhetorical mistake to call it a "privilege" when bad things don't happen to you that shouldn't happen to anybody. The purpose of the rhetoric is not to accurately describe reality, but to induce guilt in the listener, to make them easier to manipulate.

PaulHoule 5y ago
I first heard about "white privilege" when I was a grad student at Cornell and was working with another friend to unify left wing groups on campus. At the time I was going to animal rights, black liberation, Latino and other groups, making a newsletter of what they were doing, tabling to support rebels in Chiapas, burning CDs of Noam Chomsky interviews, etc. I overheard a conversation between two white students who'd just gotten out of a class where "white privilege" was introduced and they were both pretty insulted by it. At the time it was a big concern of mine that right-wing groups like the Olin Foundation were heavily funding efforts to change the culture and academia and my friend and I thought "What's a better idea to invent than 'white privilege' if you want the Republicans to win every election 100% of the time?" Today I would look at the intro of How to be an anti-racist as an example of what not to do. One thing I learned the hard way as an aspiring vanguardist was that black activists don't want to hear from whites who think they have answers to their problems. Thus I find the idea that whites have to personally make it their own quest to solve the problems of black people is bunk. Black people own their problems, particularly they own the right to decide what their problems are and what solutions they find acceptable. I can certainly help them find those solutions but in the end black people are in charge of solving their own problems and that's how it should be.

3 ms·

> I think it's a rhetorical mistake to call it a "privilege" when bad things don't happen to you that shouldn't happen to anybody. The purpose of the rhetoric

by car_analogy 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
I first heard about "white privilege" when I was a grad student at Cornell and was working with another friend to unify left wing groups on campus. At the time I was going to animal rights, black liberation, Latino and other groups, making a newsletter of what they were doing, tabling to support rebels in Chiapas, burning CDs of Noam Chomsky interviews, etc. I overheard a conversation between two white students who'd just gotten out of a class where "white privilege" was introduced and they were both pretty insulted by it. At the time it was a big concern of mine that right-wing groups like the Olin Foundation were heavily funding efforts to change the culture and academia and my friend and I thought "What's a better idea to invent than 'white privilege' if you want the Republicans to win every election 100% of the time?" Today I would look at the intro of How to be an anti-racist as an example of what not to do. One thing I learned the hard way as an aspiring vanguardist was that black activists don't want to hear from whites who think they have answers to their problems. Thus I find the idea that whites have to personally make it their own quest to solve the problems of black people is bunk. Black people own their problems, particularly they own the right to decide what their problems are and what solutions they find acceptable. I can certainly help them find those solutions but in the end black people are in charge of solving their own problems and that's how it should be.