“Privilege” is a get-out-of-thinking-free card that validates its owner’s prejudices.
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Samizdata quote of the dayMarch 3rd, 2015 |
 13 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Yes – which is why there is no such thing as “white privilege”. The media (and so on) do not accept the opinions of someone such as Governor Scott Walker because he is a white man – they do not accept his opinions at all.
But their is such as thing as Progressive privilege or “liberal” (in the American statist sense) privilege.
A collectivist (such as Mr Obama – or Mrs Clinton) is allowed to say things that are just not true, that are factually wrong – because the media (and academia) assume their intentions are noble.
Because the intentions of the Progressive are assumed to be noble – they are “given a pass”.
For example Francis Bacon (the Progressive writer of the collectivist utopia “The New Atlantis” 1610) is given a pass for claiming that the Sun went round the Earth (a discredited view – even in the early 17th century) and for stating that people should not be allowed to teach that the Earth went round the Sun.
After all Francis Bacon was “pro science” and wanted a “scientific” elite to control society – for the general good…..
Libertarians and conservatives (of whatever “race”) are given no such pass – as our intentions are assumed to be vile.
Perhaps we should be like the Progressive Rousseau – and proclaim (constantly) how much we “love the people”.
Except that Rousseau treated individual persons (even his own children) like dirt.
Lovers of “the people” normally do abuse (indeed slaughter) individual persons.
The “General Will” (as interpreted by the “Lawgiver”) is all that matters to the Progressive.
Individual (and private association) property rights – do not count to the Progressive at all.
But the “intentions” of the Progressive are good – so they get a pass on the hundreds of thousands of people (mostly in the provinces) they murdered after the French Revolution (that orgy of looting)and all the their other crimes.
That is true “privilege”.
White privilege is simply “original sin” for the secular left.
Original Sin, yes, you are guilty by reason of your parentage, a bit like those people in Germany in the mid-1930s who found that they had a ‘privilege’. The Left are, ultimately, a cult, a widespread and propagating cult, and a Death cult. Perhaps it would be fun and illustrative to ask this sort of Lefty what Karl Marx had to say about ‘white privilege’ and follow up to ask if he was wrong about economic ‘privilege’.
It’s my cue to stop paying attention to the person who uses it.
That, and “neoliberal”.
Is neo-liberal the opposite of paleo-marxist?
“Neo-liberal” means “actually liberal” whereas “liberal” means “illiberal”.
I think the concept of privilege can be useful, although it is definitely used as a “get-out-of-thinking-free card” and as a bludgeon in an attempt to shut down inconvenient debate.
What the concept means is that some characteristics that an individual can have are considered the norm, and that therefore individuals that possess those characteristics have an advantage over those who do not. To me that seems both obvious and uncontroversial.
A simple example is sexual orientation. Being heterosexual is considered the norm; if you are heterosexual you never have to “come out”. It is never suggested either subtly or overtly that you are bad, ill or inferior solely because of your sexual orientation. Heterosexual people therefore have – all other things being equal – an advantage over non-heterosexual people. This is not to say that heterosexual people don’t have problems, its just that non-heterosexual people have additional problems which stem from the fact that their sexuality is generally considered non-standard.
Another example would be extrovert privilege. Extroversion is clearly considered to be the norm in western societies (more so in some like the US, and less so in others like Switzerland). You will know this if you, like me, are an introvert. For example, in the UK many trains have a “quiet coach”. This is because being extroverted is considered the norm, and if you are introverted and would like a bit of peace and quiet you need to “come out” as an introvert and state that you would like a seat in the quiet coach when making your booking. And if there are no seats left on the quiet coach, then tough luck, you’ve just got to sit three seats down from two people loudly talking about something utterly inane one of them did last weekend. And because of extrovert privilege it won’t even enter their minds that they could be causing someone else a problem.
Anyone who tries to play that card on me gets told to check their snivelege.
Robert, except none of those things are about ‘privilege’ really. They are ‘advantages’, not privileges. For the word to really mean anything, privilege is something that can be given to you and can be rescinded.
If I allow someone to post on Samizdata, it is a privilege I grant because I own Samizdata. And if that person annoys me by posting things I feel are inappropriate, I can kick that person off, which is to say, rescind that privilege.
Or if the state says “Only Whites can swim from this beach, Bantu are prohibited”, white people swimming from that beach are only doing so because the state has granted them a privileged to do so. The state had decided that where certain classes of people can swim is a privilege only they can grant.
But if the state does not prohibit certain kinds of sex, someone discovering their sexual preferences are not well thought of by others does not mean they are lacking privilege, other than in the sense all participants need to extend the (rescind-able) ‘privilege’ of having sex with them, or not.
The fact some people might not want to be around someone else because they like homosexuality/bestiality/S&M/gangbangs/missionary position only/trampoline sex or whatever, has nothing to do with ‘privilege’, if the word is to have any useful differentiation from ‘advantage’. The issue is free association, not ‘privilege’.
Be careful with that word never. It’s common in lesbian communities to regard heterosexuals as bad, ill, or inferior. For example, women who become pregnant through sexual intercourse with a man are derogatively referred to as “breeders” (even to their face).
The notion of “privilege” as it is currently used depends on a degree of social uniformity that has not existed for a couple of generations now. And, to the extent that it is a synonym for institutional bias, it is in most cases flat wrong, since institutional bias is more likely to run counter to the supposed privileges, not with them.
Here is a thought – the Prohibitionist as Stalinist.
Nixon went after cannabis to jail his political enemies. The essence of Stalinism.
“Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.” – John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the rationale of the War on Drugs.
Tedd
March 4, 2015 at 5:00 pm
Well that is funny. “Breeders” are bad. So what are daughters of breeders? Tainted at least.