Over the past two years, I have spent a great deal talking about (and even more time learning about) the way that group privilege operates on our evaluations of people, of events, of ourselves. It’s almost like an evaluation of ‘room temperature’ – where we sit on various latitude lines will influence what we think of as ‘normal’, and whatever our perceptions, they are filtered by our ‘set point’. And while your neighbour is shivering and complaining about how ze’s freezing to death, you’re throwing on a t-shirt and left baffled as to how anyone can call 15 degrees ‘cold’.
Another thing I have noticed is the yawning diversity in people’s willingness to recognize their own privilege. Some are ready, even eager in some cases, to accept that their own judgments are the product of a particular perspective that may not be shared by other people. Many others, with frustrating frequency, look into the face of the existence of privilege with the stony, reluctant resolve that is usually reserved for sexual requests involving drop cloths and rubber hoses. Any and all possible excuses are found to escape rather than simply accept the possibility that the sails of their ‘rational’ argument might have a gaping hole that they just cannot see.
Now my experience here at FTB has been… let’s just say it surprised me. I thought that I would have a much rougher ride toward acceptance than I did. People seemed to be familiar with the concept of privilege, and willing to at least listen when the topic is discussed. I credit the feminist skeptics with breaking this ground and bringing the idea of male privilege into the mainstream. To my perhaps greater surprise, many readers have been the one schooling me when my own privilege pokes its head through. It is that latter phenomenon I want to explore today, because it’s been on my mind for a while.
The reason for my surprise at my reception isn’t because I blindly assume that nobody before me has ever thought about these topics before. I contrast my experience here with what I have seen in the world and in other spaces where privilege is raised as a topic. Without wanting to put too fine a point on it, I bought into the stereotype that the majority of my readers would be white males (and who knows, maybe y’all are). Like the hypothetical temperature example above, I rather assumed that, like in other spaces where the topic has arisen, I’d see significant pushback when discussing issues of race because people would see it as an attack rather than a neutral description of behaviour. It is notoriously difficult to see reason when your back is against a wall and you feel like someone’s gunning for you – especially when that gun is aimed at your race.
Thinking about that got me thinking about my own experiences where I’ve had to acknowledge how my own privilege has filtered my judgment. These days it’s no problem – I live in a world of privilege dissection, and recognizing that I’m not perfect is something that has become much easier as I’ve gotten older. If I work at it real hard though, I can still remember those many years ago (read: my early 20s, like 4 years ago maybe?) when I was so woefully blind and ignorant of the power that my being male carried, and still carries. I used to be almost as bad as the MRA set when it came to things like mansplaining and finding the “real reasons” for things*. Just because the people I was arguing with lived sexism and misogyny didn’t mean that I couldn’t just armchair philosoph my way into propping up the status quo, right?
I am sad to say that it wasn’t my female friends that eventually turned me around on the whole ‘feminism’ thing. As much as I would love to be able to claim that a persuasive, rational argument opened my eyes, it was in fact my exploration of race issues. Understanding white privilege was easy – I’d seen it a million times in others. Understanding my own colour privilege was a bit tougher, but because it aligned so closely with the colour-based privilege I’d seen before it wasn’t too much of a stretch. Understanding that, by being a man, everything I knew might be draped in falsehood and misperception was a tough thing to accept. The consequences of such recognition meant that I was going to have to say “I’m wrong” a lot.
Of course, the upshot of actually learning to do that – to admit that I just didn’t get it – is that other things in my life got a whole lot better. I no longer feared losing arguments or exposing my own ignorance. After all, it was just another opportunity to learn – who wouldn’t love that? And yes, I would look weak in the eyes of people who equate strength with inflexibility, but was that really important? I realized that the path to truth is paved with stones of honesty, and that self-delusion is the worst kind.
All that to say this: I may have been situated in a ‘sweet spot’ for privilege recognition. Because I’ve seen privilege from both sides – being on the wrong side of white privilege, being on the ‘right’ side of male privilege (not to mention colour privilege, able-body privilege, cis gender privilege, first world privilege, insert your favourite here) – it is a trivial task for me to recognize and admit that there are things I don’t get simply by virtue of never being on the receiving end. It would be far more difficult for me to understand if I were white, and I dare say if I were… I dunno… a paraplegic trans lesbian living in Somalia or something. Being able to see ‘both sides’ puts me in an advantageous position to not only recognize privilege, but explain it to others.
Or maybe it’s easy for everyone and I’m just an asshole.
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*Seriously. Ask the people I went to grad school with. I used to ‘cheers’ friends at the bar with the opening line from Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit”. It even made it into my MSc thesis. I thought it was a really funny joke, and that the women in my program were just being uptight. If I could go back in time, I’d kick my own ass. For a lot of things.
The evidence strongly suggests this is not the case.
However, I am forced to disagree with your thesis, given just how much fail people manage on other social justice axes (Black people helping pass Prop 8, the gay community’s misogyny and race problems, feminism’s historical problems with everything else…)
It clearly can happen – along with yourself, Neil DeGrasse Tyson made a speech that more or less said the same thing (‘Because of racism, I had an easier time understanding how sexism could be’, in as few words as possible), but it doesn’t appear to be easier than it is for whitey mcstraighterson III.
Intersectionality for the win.
Does it help if I tell you that for me it was the other way round?
Recognizing male privilege because I got the short end of the stick there was easy, and it helped me understand my straight, cis, white*, middle class, able-bodied privilege (although I still fuck up sometimes).
Now all we need is to find a way to get those who hold all the aces understand privilege.
*For my background, native German privilege is probably a better term.
Actually there is evidence to suggest that people on the ‘losing’ side of social inequality actually do show a moderation effect in their willingness to stereotype and demonize out-groups. I suggest you read my series on System Justification Theory.
If you’re a lucky guy, there comes a time when you realize you’re being an asshole about things. Once you’ve had that epiphany, then it makes it a lot easier to examine your own behaviour.
You said that there’s some people who accepted it easily. Hi! Straight white guy here. Jen from Blaghag schooled me in privilege awhile ago (before Elevatorgate), which means it’s just easier to examine my behaviour. I don’t pretend to be perfect at it. But I do try, and I’ve found that trying, and accepting when you’ve fucked and fixing it, seems to be all that people want.
It’s not just online, either. I’ve started trying to challenge the privilege and stupid shit that people say around me in the real world, which I think is just as important. It’s easy to say here that “privilege is important, yep” but affecting those about you on a daily basis? Also important.
There’s a huge list of words I’ve taken off the table in the past 2 years, phrases, and other behaviours. I think it’s been a positive change.
Can we PLEASE stop repeating the tiresome myth about black people and Prop 8? I think it’s fine to have discussions about the intersections between homophobia and religion within communities of color. However, I find it tiresome when people keep (incorrectly) trotting out the passage of Prop 8 as an example of black people’s support of anti-gay legislation. It’s clear that the reported statistics were exaggerated and strongly correlated with religiosity:
http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/issues/egan_sherrill_prop8_1_6_09.pdf
Awesome. I am not sure what exactly did it for me. Terms like privilege are new to me. However, empathy is not. Empathy is where I first learned to recognize privilege long before I had a word to define it.
I explored taking the word cunt off the table few posts back. I have to say that has definitely been where I feel like I have grown as a person. Looking inward recognizing my predeliction toward a word is not worth its potential for harm.
Link to video of Tyson’s speech? I love that guy.
This is an apt post for me, considering I’m watching an unreal amount of privilege denial amongst some of the people commenting on that one story on Black Skeptics about racism in RDF.
Of course, I stupidly always think that if people just see the evidence for racism and sexism, that they’ll be rational and get it. But no. Some people just have some major blinders on. Statistical evidence = not really effective for converting people, from my experience.
But if anyone out there has seen any studies on what is the most effective way of getting people to recognise privilege (especially straight, white, cis males), drop a link here and I will work on changing up my strategy.
Fascinating. But the study seems to imply that this was demonstrated by examining reactions to higher status people than one’s current group. Does it actually apply when you play the marginalized off against each other? It also seemed like the marginalized were more likely to stereotype against themselves to maintain the status quo, so it seems counterintuitive for them to have greater respect for other marginalized people.
Seconding this one. Years of feminism and queer activism may not have made me automatically understanding of other axes of privilege, but it did help me understand that what I needed to do was to Shut Up And Listen and remember that It’s Not About Me. As well as being excruciatingly aware of when I was doing the Incredibly Annoying Things People Do When Confronted With Their Privilege.
It wasn’t the being a queer woman, though, that did it. It was the already knowing what privilege is and having butted heads with clueless straight dudes way too many times.
I was hoping you’d find one of the missing fragments of my optimism, but this was apparently misplaced hope. Why do I care, exactly, that it’s because of religiosity? The study found that this meant black and hispanic people supported prop 8 at about the same rate as white people after controlling for it, which is great and all except that the OP was talking about how a lack of privilege would make it easier in general for folks to understand their remaining privilege (And personally, I don’t really expect a given social justice movement to fail more than the majority does at the others, at any given time). Being just as likely to vote for oppression as the racial majority would appear to dent the OP’s proposition.
Plus, it’s not like we can get folks to just leave their religiousness in a box at home just on election day.
Re: Neil DeGrasse Tyson
http://youtu.be/KEeBPSvcNZQ?t=1h1m32s
He’s a pretty awesome dude, for reals.
*nod* It was similar for me as a kid, except that without a grasp of empathy I understood it as “this is not fair”. I stood up for rights that nobody at my school actually wanted, such as letting boys play the girly games like jump rope. (So girls, boys AND teachers hated me for that one.)
I started learning empathy *and* privilege in the context of feminism: not only may other people have different wants and preferences than you do, they have to deal with completely different unfairnesses; and you can treat someone unfairly without ever realizing it. Crommunist gets the credit for opening my eyes to racism though.
Over the weekend, I called a local NAACP group (I’m in the deep South US) about joining their rally for Trayvon Martin. I asked if it would be all right for a random white-looking person to come stand with them, because I didn’t want to butt in if I was going to distract from their message. The fellow I spoke to was so glad to hear it that within a sentence or so he dropped the “white people” voice he’d answered the phone with, and enthusiastically welcomed me in relaxed Southern voice. If it hadn’t been for Crommie, I wouldn’t have realized what that meant. I’ve rarely felt so humbled at a small sign of trust.
Thirding this. Without my experiences of being on the under side of male privilege and being poor, I would have been much more resistant to discussions of privilege. If it makes sense, in some ways I’m glad to have had such shitty experiences, because it helps me in the effort to be more ethical (not, of course, that I always manage.)
I’ve spoken with some friends on these topics, and we kind of think that white privilege seems to be the major overarching one, where if you get that it becomes a lot easier to see the other ones. It seems sometimes like people who are queer, or female, or trans, or lower-income, or fall into other underprivileged groups can still ignore privilege outside those domains as long they’re still white.
I think if we can get the idea of religious privilege into the conversation, we’d see a much greater acceptance of the existence of other kinds of privilege into the discussion, at least among atheists.
I happen to care because the whole “Prop 8 passed because of black folks” got huge traction among the ‘liberal’ set even though it was factually incorrect. The damage from some factually incorrect exit polls was highly damaging and really brought out some ugly rhetoric. Black voters were blamed for the whole fiasco even though they couldn’t have been responsible numerically for its passage! Things like that matter. I happen to care about silly things like accuracy and failing to account for factors like religiosity masks the fact that blacks are no more likely to vote for such legislation (as you note). In fact, the study finds that among weekly churchgoers, black voters were less likely to vote in support of Prop 8 (not clear that those results were statistically significant though).
Yes, I would hope that oppressed groups would recognize a common cause to unite around. As an African-American, it pains me to see homophobia within the black community. That still doesn’t change the fact that it’s irresponsible to make unqualified statements about blacks and Prop 8. In any case, we might not be able to get people to leave their religiosity at home but by understanding the reasons why people behave the way they do are important.
Reading an article about privilege, while my boss and a coworker growl about a bill that will require public pools to support better access for individuals in wheelchairs because they’re “sick of all these special people” and that “we just need to all go back to being people”. I nearly face palmed through the marble table top.
It’s definitely not that easy for everyone – people who HAVEN’T come to terms with how social/cultural privilege systems operate universally react badly when challenged on it. I think part of this may well be due to the fact that privilege is frequently linked to internalized, essentialized ‘identity’ categories, so people may have knee-jerk reactions to someone pointing out the privilege that those read-identity categories afford as though they were ontological challenges to the person, or alternately as though they are assertions that the person identified by privileged categories is somehow a Bad Person, essentializing both the privilege ascribed to the categories in question as well as the application of those identity categories to the individual in question and conflating privilege with bad/immoral/unethical/antisocial behavior.
I came to the idea of privilege via my Women’s Studies degree program. The concept completely revolutionized my worldview – all of those discontinuities of behavior that made little sense when viewed through the Classical Liberal frame of the Rational Actor-agent existing in a sea of discrete individuals suddenly were easy to understand as the results of context within cultural systems that ascribe different levels of value, power, authenticity, authority, trust, intelligence, capability, etc. to individual persons on the basis of read or ascribed identity categories. I was already leaning toward postmodern cultural-context-based analytical frames and models, and the concept of privilege fit in perfectly (and explained, for example, why progressive White men – like me! – still can do and do really fucked-up sexist and racist things sometimes – like, I’m sorry to say, I have – or in the worst cases frequently). I didn’t really find it hard to accept, since I already knew privilege existed because of the statistical data and personal narratives detailing the differences in lived experiences between me and others, so I found the actual articulation of the privilege model to be extremely attractive.
It also helped but the bullet in the brain of my most aggressive Libertarian/Classical Liberal (in the anarcho-socialist sense) views, as I realized that Libertarianism relies on a doctrine of privilege; ‘the individual’ and the ‘rational actor’ were in fact always a White, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, conventionally-attractive, etc. ‘individual’/’rational actor’, accorded the social prerogative to exercise agency. In the less-bigoted cases, it’s a sense of universalized privilege, where everyone can enjoy the cultural privileges I enjoy irrespective of identity categories; that is, of course, impossible, as one cannot have privileged groups without marginalized groups, and the shift for me was the recognition that the things I valued qua individualism came at a cost to others in marginalized positions, that to actually accord everyone the same rights and ability to exercise agency as I enjoy necessarily comes at the cost of the universality of my own ability to exercise agency. The scope and range of my actions are bounded by the rights and interests of other people.
The crux of the matter is that recognizing privilege and taking steps to resist it or act against it (one cannot disprivilege oneself, as on cannot dictate the terms or functioning of a social system, but one can act in ways that subvert, challenge, or otherwise queer operations of privilege) drastically reduces one’s own cultural capital and agency, more so than would be the case in a theoretical culture where the privilege dynamics did not exist (norms are normative, which is to say coercive). Some people, even once they recognize and accept that privilege exists and poses a problem for people on the wrong side of it, are unwilling to challenge it, as it comes at a cost (seriously, other men, see how comfortable you feel challenging the casual sexism of looks-based evaluations of women while you’re out with a group of male friends). To actively challenge something like voice privilege (where White men, as compared to Black men or White women or even more so Black women have an assumed ability to speak in any space and have their ideas heard and considered, as opposed to potentially dismissed out-of-hand – think about the trolls who like to cry, “Censorship!” if their hate-speech on internet fora is moderated: they presume the right to express their ideas in any forum), one must usually give up one’s own ‘right’ to speak and be heard, and instead shut up and listen (as others have pointed out), which sometimes means not being heard at all if time is limited. It’s a sacrifice that demands that one de-prioritize one’s own interests for the greater good (or really, the good of the Other), and it’s especially hard to convince people to do this in a culture that worships ‘the individual’ like a religious doctrine.
My point in all this is that, while it’s certainly hard to get people to acknowledge privilege, a great deal of the push-back may not come from a lack of acknowledging it, but instead from an unwillingness to challenge systems of privilege, especially from those who enjoy it. It’s also possible that persons positioned at various nexus of privilege who are advantaged by some and disadvantaged by others* may be especially reticent to give up the privileges they enjoy BECAUSE they are marginalized in other ways (when one has less, one is less-willing to give up what one does have), which might be a confounding force for trans-intersectionality recognition of and opposition to privilege.
*This probably applies to every single person to some respect. I, for example, am disadvantaged by my looks and height and atheism and minor physical disabilities, though I’m advantaged by my race, ethnicity, nationality, social and biological genders and their normative congruence, language(s), socioeconomic background, and plenty of others. Without getting into Oppression Olympics territory, I do think that some vectors of privilege have wider-ranging and more-severe consequences than others: there’s no country on earth that’s going to execute me for not being super-conventionally-hot, but I COULD be executed for being gay or female or transgendered in various places, and possibly for being Black in Florida. Being shorter than average (or normative for men) isn’t going to keep me out of a given university or prevent me from using health care services, but being poor might. Having recurring back pain and a weak eye isn’t going to stop me being considered for a job, but not being able to see or hear or walk could. I don’t think arguments about whether Black people or women or gay people or trans people are “oppressed ‘more'” is at all productive (or even necessarily makes sense), but it should be pretty evident that some privileges and marginalizations can impact people in more/less severe/problematic ways, and I’m speaking mainly about people who experience intersectionality of multiple vectors of strong and wide-ranging privilege.
That’s an excellent strategy; viability of bids for political office is a good, concrete example of religious (generally, and Christianity specifically) privilege that atheist or pro-secular people might be able to use as a jumping-off point.
Good on you for asking an organizer and not simply presuming a right to access the space; I’ve adopted the same practice when looking to enter predominantly-or-exclusively-female, -woman, -queer, -Black, -Hispanic/Latino, -etc. spaces. It’s such a small, simple gesture (and I’m yet to be refused – to a certain degree, I think the willingness to make the gesture, give the Other the power, and risk refusal signals a greater likelihood that the person is a well-intentioned ally who won’t try to co-opt the space/movement/etc. or isn’t intending to simply do some trolling – though even if I was regularly refused, I’d still ask), but I think if all ‘allies’ in social justice movements did this, it could profoundly impact activism in positive ways (emphasizing networking and mutual support instead of oppositional difference; unfortunately, this requires White men to shut the fuck up and listen, something to which most of us are not accustomed).
Good idea! I’m going to try this angle next time. Also, I’ve started storing up a list of links to articles, studies and stastics in my bookmarks, just in case.
Having a mother who was treated badly by both white women and white men was what made me aware of this. And realizing later on why when I was in her care alone rather than my father’s or both shopping seemed to go much slower.
We can all be so heartlessly stupid sometimes and sometimes we dig in our heels when that’s pointed out. It’s hard to be wrong, hard to see yourself as part of the problem. Even harder to give up the feel-good slacktivism of caring so very earnestly without actually seeing.
When it is given up, perhaps it makes people more tenacious. Becoming aware of one’s own privilege isn’t always easy but we value things that we’ve earned. We remember things that have caused us pain. It’s the hard lessons which inform our actions.
John: yeah, well, good on me and all that, but it’s such a small gesture. I shouldn’t deserve the outpouring of enthusiasm I got just for being a whitish person who isn’t a butthead. Sigh.
And, y’know, how many times did this NAACP contact person whose number was in the freakin’ newspaper pick up the phone this weekend, hear a white-person voice, and have it be some jackass whitesplaining or harassing him. I heard a phrase somewhere… “greeted with the fervent joy due a relief battalion”.
That’s exactly what I mean, though; it IS a ridiculously easy, small gesture that everyone should do, but most people don’t even think of it due to the blindness to other cultural positions induced by various forms of privilege. The recognition alone requires confronting and challenging cultural systems of privilege, which IS actually a big thing. Also, when being an asshole of some sort is overwhelming the norm, I think you should get SOME recognition for not being one, even in small ways. I don’t mean for this to be any sort of unjustified White-people-congratulating-each-other-for-what’s-literally-the-smallist-anti-racist-gesture-anyone-could-make fest, it’s just that recognizing that one (especially when one is inflected with a lot of cultural privilege) doesn’t necessarily have a right to access any and all spaces is so astoundingly rare in my experience that I think it’s noteworthy and should be actively encouraged with positive social reinforcement.
Also, nice memetic mutation with “whitesplaining” there.
Ah hah! I think that makes sense of something I was really annoyed with on another blog, but couldn’t articulate why. There’s libertarian blog (BHL), that frequently has pretty good discussions, but one post made the argument that the right to contract freely was more important that gender inequalities. The discussion was, specifically, about the Male/Female pay gap.
I struggled to put to words what I was thinking: that bringing the brunt of social stigma to bear in a negotiation does not make for a fair contract. I couldn’t figure out why that was, though, and I think you just hit on a way to discuss it more completely.
Thank you!
Oh god, that is so bad. I would cringe for you, but I have enough of my own stupidity to cringe about.
***
I had an epiphany about my own privilege during a conversation with a friend about trans women. I thought it was “unfair” that they got to live with all the privileges of being male and still claim that they felt like women. How can they feel like women if they’ve never actually lived as one and been treated like one? Who the hell were they to presume they even knew what that felt like!
Then my friend (calmy, to her credit) pointed out that trans people, especially trans women, typically have it way, way worse than cis women. It really was like a light going on. It’s so obvious that I don’t know why I didn’t think of it that way. I guess I was too busy making it about me.
I said they helped, not that they passed the damn thing (I’m not exactly in a rush to forget the vast number of white people who voted for/wrote/advertised it). Obviously the primary responsibility falls on the majority; that doesn’t change other groups got involved, and it doesn’t change that marginalized groups failed to grok other marginalized groups. Again.
Mine went a little backwards and turned – from feminism I went to understanding racism better, because of the women of color who were complaining about the racism in the feminist movement. I learned quickly to shut up and listen, and then was able to listen better on racism in general.
Y’all should also be aware that black people versus gay rights is not happening in a vacuum. Documents from NOM’s 2008 and 2009 campaigns just came to light, showing that it’s an actual strategy. So the results we’re seeing are biased – not just in the bigotry sense, but in the scientific sense.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/in-secret-documents-anti-gay-marriage-group-plott
Just started reading your blog, and like it. I’d heard some examples of color privilege, but never heard it called that or analyzed. Thanks.
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE
problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white
country and ONLY into white countries.
Crommunist’s notes: Actually, nobody says that. This is a straw man argument that has nothing to do with anything I’ve written about on this blog, particularly in this post
The Netherlands and Belgium are more crowded than Japan or Taiwan, but
nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing
in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with
them.
Believe it or not, Japan and Taiwan have their own immigration problems to deal with, and are not in any close proximity to the countries where there are refugee crises. To say nothing of the role that The Netherlands and Belgium played in destroying African countries, but that again has nothing to do with this post or this blog
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY
white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e.,
intermarry, with all those non-whites.
Nobody aside from Neo-Nazis talks about a “final solution” to any kind of race problem
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would
be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into
EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
I’d say you were criminally ignorant of a number of things, most obviously the history of European involvement in African history
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE
problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what
kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide
against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable
conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
You’ve presented no evidence of this whatsoever except a bunch of assertions and half-baked arguments that have no basis in fact, only in wild speculation.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
A common trope from ‘race realists’, but I’ve defined what anti-racist means, and it has nothing to do with a ‘final solution’ to a white ‘problem’. Anti-racism has nothing to do with intermarrying or destroying white people or “white countries”. I don’t know what kind of paranoid asshole trolls a blog, but congratulations, you’ve simply exposed yourself as a fucking idiot.