13 ms·

How do I find out what "privilege" I have? Do I have to work harder to actively offset this imaginary benefit society has somehow determined that I've been born

• macimumloam 13y ago
  It's not imaginary at all though. Do you truly believe that there is no benefit in everyday life gained by being a white, straight, middle-class+, male? Is there not a benefit to going to a school that can afford up to date books? To not have being open about you sexuality be a real risk to your career and health? Is there no benefit to not having racial slurs yelled at you? To not have many people in society assume that you know less because of your sex? Pretending that privilege doesn't exist because you haven't been on the wrong side does no good to yourself or society.
  • rfnslyr 13y ago
    No, I truly believe there is no such thing, it's something made up by the entitled. Why is it that I work alongside many tiny asian women and indian women that can barely speak a word of English and are in their 30's? You are assuming I go to a nice school and I'm from a nice middle class family that can support all my stuff. I'm not. I dropped out because I had no money and I was born in eastern european ghetto filth. Not have my sexuality be a real risk to my career and health? What do you know about my life, my career, my health, or anything, for you to lay baseless "privilege" assumptions? Being white isn't a ticket to kingdom come and anybody who believes so has to do some deep self reflection. I've been on the wrong side, the very very wrong side. What the fuck do you know about going to prison? Where was my white privilege when my teeth were being ground into the asphalt by 5 guys bigger than me? What do you know about not having SHIT to eat for days at a time? Not seeing your parents for weeks at a time to just bring food to the table? What do you know about spending 5 years travelling through many different countries just to escape a communist regime, to leave your family behind, to have nothing? "Privilege" is something created by the people that are already born into an upper class world and spend their days speculating upon the lives of the less fortunate which in turn sprouted this movement. Do not fucking sit here and spout this poisonous bullshit, because it doesn't exist in the extremes of life, only in the made up comfortable society you've been brought up in, maybe. You don't know shit about me.
    • icebraining 13y ago
      Nobody is talking about you specifically, and nobody claims that white people are set for life or that no white people have shitty lives. The claim is that, all else being equal, and on average, being white provides a boost. This doesn't mean that you personally have benefited from this; but my grandfather smoked three packs a day and lived to be 90+, does that mean that smoking doesn't shorten the life expectancy?
      • msandford 13y ago
        Sounds to me like that's more a result of your family, smarts, getting into the right college, etc than being white or male. Being white or male might have helped a bit, but I'm a white male and I didn't get paid 500k right out of school. If EVERY white male make 500k starting the day they graduated I'd believe that your theory holds true. But they don't. Perhaps it has less merit than you suspect.
        • icebraining 13y ago
          Sounds to me like that's more a result of your family, smarts, getting into the right college, etc than being white or male. Possibly, though being white (or male) has influence on whether you get into the right college (or go to college at all). Being white or male might have helped a bit, but I'm a white male and I didn't get paid 500k right out of school. If EVERY white male make 500k starting the day they graduated I'd believe that your theory holds true. But they don't. This is a baffling claim. So no one has any privilege over anyone else unless they are among the 1% top earners in society? I can't even comprehend such logic. In any case, it's not my theory (I was just explaining it), and it's hardly without merit: this has been demonstrated in studies, such as [1] and [2]. [1] http://d.pr/f/guzI http://d.pr/f/guzI [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
        • doktrin 13y ago
          > If EVERY white male make 500k starting the day they graduated I'd believe that your theory holds true. While we're busy setting absurdly high evidentiary bars, let's make it a cool million.
  • railsdude 13y ago
    > that privilege doesn't exist because you haven't been on the wrong side does no good to yourself or society. Know who is on the wrong side? Poor people born in 3rd world countries, with no food, jobs, infrastructure, nothing. On the top of that, a lot of them live in a freaking civil war. People born in the USA, man or woman, who is middle-class+, is privileged beyond any dream of the majority of the world population.
    • macimumloam 13y ago
      I think this is very true, but no one questions the privilege of being born in America. However, people do doubt the average benefit that being male has on professional conversations within the developed world.
    • anovikov 13y ago
      Maybe that was true 40 years ago. Nowadays a median middle class natural-born U.S. citizen is a fat type with an old SUV, living in a cardboard house and getting maybe $60k a year. Such a quality of life is within easy reach of every person in the world except maybe totalitarian societies like DPRK (which are very rare) and extremely dilapidated sub-Saharan Africa countries, given he has some brains and will to work hard. We live in a global world. I don't even tell many people in places like Eastern Europe enjoy better quality of life right now, with maybe somewhat less cash - in safe, walkable, well-designed cities, with better food and environment and less spoiled societies with a strong demand of democracy (nobody wishes to return to Soviet era and every government looking like doing so will be thrown out quickly).
  • Shivetya 13y ago
    It is imaginary, its a guilt trip imposed by those who need it to profit off of or as an excuse. Oh it definitely existed, don't get me wrong, there were times every countries history where it did. The real bogeyman is pretending that people don't discriminate against their own kind. Just as in society as in work people have prejudices against those they don't know any many are formed based on societal norms. Assigning privileged just because of skin color is another form of racism. Its an excuse. Not every white person was born on the right side of the tracks, not non-white was either. Fortunately most of us don't think of privileged status based on color, unfortunately some only do.
  • JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    I think its the loaded work 'privilege' that gets peoples' dander up. It intended to insult, and its the wrong word. Privilege is something given undeservedly, something that can be taken away, and exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others. Being born as whatever(white-male) is not a good fit for that definition. It wasn't given, it cant be taken away, and its not 'exercised' intentionally by any means. The word is just used to make people feel guilty. So they lash back. Not a helpful discussion technique. Why not just say 'genes' or 'heredity' if that's what we mean?
    • macimumloam 13y ago
      I think privilege is definitely meant to get peopled dander up so that they discuss it. Also, as I understand it, the privilege isn't being white, its the average benefit that being white will yield you
      • JoeAltmaier 13y ago
        So, it gets white males upset, who have all the power. Not very constructive. Further the benefit is accrued through the actions of OTHER people. So who's the right one to educate? I think the discussion is mostly confused and non-productive, when it resorts to using charged words over the correct ones, and seeks to insult those who admittedly wield more power.
    • aaren 13y ago
      > Why not just say 'genes' or 'heredity' if that's what we mean? Because privilege derives from many sources and is much more complex than any one of them. It is unfortunate that it is sometimes used, or taken, to shut people out. This is not the intention of the word. At its best it calls someone to take account of their unconscious biases.
      • vezzy-fnord 13y ago
        Exactly, privilege is complex. The world does not work in absolutes. The postmodern feminist has a very simplistic and Western-centric (particularly American-centric) worldview where being white and male makes you prosper, but being black or white and female makes you suffer. This fails to address for countless nuances and by default simply stating "You're white, ergo you're instantly privileged." is just false and dishonest. It's also funny how the end goal is to foster social equality, yet when you have every single slightly different group forming its own political advocacy and demanding radical shifts in human behavior/special accommodations, you're only stratifying things even further. I guess this can be warranted if people focused on actual issues, but instead most of our attention in the Western world is focused on people making ribald jokes in public places.
  • throwaway7878 13y ago
    I don't understand. If I make generalizations of an individual of a class based on characteristics of the class as a whole, that is racism. Example: "A young black male like you is much more likely to be a criminal." But if you do the same thing with privledge, that is considered acceptable (and an indicator that you are an enlightened) Example: "A white male is more likely to go to a school that can afford up to date books" (from macimumloam.) Both things are true. But if go around saying the first one all the time whenever I speak to a black male I'll be ostracized, but if I say the second, everyone will feel good about themselves about showing some white male his place. (Posting from a throwaway account because of just this reason.)
    • macimumloam 13y ago
      I think the issue is this. In the first case you are attempting to pass judgement on the actions a person may or may not take based on their race. in your example, commit a crime, which is an unjust judgement of that person's character. In the second case it is an example of how society will affect you based on your race, outside of the personal actions of that person. The sentence makes no judgment on that person's character.
      • throwaway7878 13y ago
        So what about someone instead saying "A black person is more likely to be stupid (to be concrete: having lower math SAT scores) than a white person." That doesn't judge their character but you still can't go shouting it whenever anyone brings up black people.
        • ceejayoz 13y ago
          You can't go shouting that because someone with low SAT scores isn't necessarily "stupid".
        • macimumloam 13y ago
          Here the overarching problem with these statements. They are trying to pass judgment on a race based on certain statistics about them. Is it racist to say that black students on average score lower on the SATs? No, it is a statistical fact. Is it racist to proclaim these students as stupid because of that? Yes, extremely, because you are judging their intelligence base on race without understanding why that statistic might be true. Instead of being so heavily concerned with what you "can" and "can not" say without being racist, its important to focus on why these statistics do exist and understand why they are true. Your statement implies that the student is stupid because they are black. That is racist and strictly false. So why do these students score lower? Probably due the incredibly high level of institutionalized racism that they experience every day of their life. We need to work towards building a better society together, and eliminating societal constraints based on characteristics beyond their control characteristics. By focusing on how you can't say racists things (and if you didn't know it would be racist, then not bothering to understand why), and how that is unfair to you takes focus away from the real issues. Black students are scoring lower on the SATs, and its because as a society, we have institutionalized racism towards them. That is the great injustice here, not the lose of anyone's right to remain ignorant.
  • Houshalter 13y ago
    You are right that other people have it worse often through no fault of their own, but this doesn't mean "privilege" is a useful concept. You are also privileged by being born into the late 20th century instead of a medieval village. You are privileged by not having any disabilities. You are privileged if you are attractive (which correlates with a lot of good things.) You are privileged by hereditary IQ (correlates with income.) Especially what country you are born into. By comparison race and sexuality are only tiny factors. On top of this, even if you are white, straight, etc, you can still have a shitty life through random chance. What use is it to divide people into these specific categories when there are millions of other factors as well?
  • anovikov 13y ago
    Looking at the high layers of society, i can see a lot of open gays, much more than i can see around myself. So being straight is probably not such a big advantage. Women on freelancing sites definitely earn a lot more than men, i know a lot of men pretending to be women there to get projects easier, and not a single case of reverse. People who make their living of freelancing probably know what they are doing. And that is precisely due to (real or imaginary) positive sides of women as workers - being attentive to detail, better communicators, and more reliable - i can hardly imagine a girl forgetting about her unfinished gig and going drinking while that what's normally happens to guys all the time. If i was a customer i'd be that kind of reverse sexist either. Being middle+ class definitely helps :)
• aaren 13y ago
  To get a flavour for your privilege as a white male in tech, you could try starting with these checklists: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Privilege_checklist http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Privilege_checklist Reading these constructively might require that you at least admit the possibility that you receive some help in life other than the effort that you directly put in.
  • rfnslyr 13y ago
    No actually, I've never been given a handout once in my life. I grew up in the shittiest of shit ghettos in eastern europe and I got out of there. Then I made a whole new life for myself from the ground up. I never had any "groups" to help me along, no support systems, no grants, no aid, nothing. I do not have "privilege" and I think it's disgusting that people offset their own deficiencies with someone else's imaginary "privilege" rather than working hard. Victim culture is poisonous. Do you see how my "privilege" just adversely affected me instead of imaginarily pushing me in the right direction as you so define it? Randoms on the internet telling me I had an invisible hand to help shove me in the right direction. Does that not discredit my effort? Is that not ironic and counter to what privilege actually is in the context you are using it? Now I have to deal with people thinking I was skyrocketed into the good life simply because I'm a tall white male. The reality is I gave up a substantial portion of the beginning of my life to propel myself into the life I'm in. It took countless hours of mental agony and breakdowns to finally repair myself to a point where I'm able to be a viable athlete in this hyper competitive concrete jungle. I spent my nights and days studying finance, programming, and mathematics. I did not go out with friends. I kept to a very strict routine to better myself, and after years, it has finally fucking paid off. Do not talk to me about privilege, I know what poverty is. You are disillusioning yourself and those around you.
    • aaren 13y ago
      Indeed, you may not be as privileged as someone born in an affluent suburb of London. Hopefully someone that did have that background would take that into account when making assumptions about your past and motives. Different people can have different privileges - you can't necessarily win at privilege. If you at least skim read the checklists you will see that most of the examples don't take the form of anything like handouts or support groups. By telling me "Do not talk to me about privilege, I know what poverty is." you are using the concept of privilege in your argument and are essentially telling me to check my privilege. I'm ok with that. Privilege isn't about discrediting anyone. It is about helping us understand the experiences of other people.
• cossatot 13y ago
  A good essay on this topic is here: http://pgbovine.net/tech-privilege.htm http://pgbovine.net/tech-privilege.htm
  • rfnslyr 13y ago
    That is such a terrible article on so many levels.
    • kevingadd 13y ago
      of course you don't see fit to enumerate any of your criticisms.
      • rfnslyr 13y ago
        I don't have time right now, I'll respond later.