Episode 161: White Privilege (Peggy McIntosh, Charles Mills, et al) (Part Two)

Comments

1. Dave says

   April 3, 2017 at 7:40 pm

   I guess it’s tough to have philosophical conversations about social issues. People really seem to get stuck at the surface level, saying nothing more than can be heard from the talking heads in the media. If you really wanted to dive into The issue of “white privilege, ” you’d have to question many of the underlying assumptions such as:

   1. All people are equal and/or should be treated equally.
   2. If there is any inequality in the world it is the fault of the social system, not that of the race, class or the individual.
   3. There is such a thing as “fairness, “and we should try to imprint this value on the world.
   4. There is such a thing as “moral responsibility,” and we therefore have a duty to make things fair and equal for everyone.
   5. That some people being “privileged” over other people is wrong.
   6. That people can and should be classified by things such as skin color and coherent things can be said about these groups.

   A lot of these things seem almost like tenets of the modern Religion of the Left, and questioning them like heresy, but that’s definitely a podcast I’d like to listen to.

   Reply

   • Aaron says

     April 19, 2017 at 1:56 am

     Yes oh yes. I’d listen the heck out of that podcast. The reason I’ve found this latest series of podcasts so uninteresting is precisely because they take so much for granted that the discussion can’t help but be superficial. Actual philosophical questions, like the ones you pose in your list, are lurking just beneath the surface, and even the slightest attempt at rigour ought to expose them for examination. That the discussion just glides blithely above such questions is, I think, a testament to the powerful chilling effect that the ideological/authoritarian left has had on such discussions; these questions are deemed off limits not because they have been examined and resolved to anyone’s satisfaction, but because they are firewalled off from reasoned discussion by ideological violence.

     Reply

   • Mark Linsenmayer says

     April 19, 2017 at 11:42 pm

     Thanks, Dave. As with all our episodes, we choose some readings and try to discuss them. I did, e.g. drop the issue of whether moral responsibility actually exists, but since it wasn’t particularly relevant to the readings in question, I was fine letting it go. (We’ve had plenty of episodes on meta-ethics that cover this, and yet don’t have a problem doing episodes on ethics that sidestep this: However thin or thick our moral ontology may be, you can still usefully discuss what tenets it supports, to the extent that it supports any of them.) So feel free to suggest some actual readings for future episodes. Here’s my take on your list:

     1. All people are equal and/or should be treated equally.

     We’ve discussed this in various contexts, e.g. Nietzsche and Rawls. I argued early on that this whole idea of one person being “better” than another is confused: Of course there are plenty of actual differences in abilities, and (per Nietzsche) these are incommensurate enough that they do not amount to an overall “value” or “virtue level” of a person. We’ve discussed as recently as the Singer interview whether equality of treatment should be a fundamental moral assumption. If you can name a significant philosopher who argues against this that we should read, please do.

     2. If there is any inequality in the world it is the fault of the social system, not that of the race, class or the individual.

     Again, what sort of inequality? Are you suggesting we actually read some Spencer on social Darwinism? We might do that, but it would be much like reading something in favor on monarchy, i.e. it’s an outdated to the point of patently absurd position, not really so alive and interesting at this point.

     3. There is such a thing as “fairness, “and we should try to imprint this value on the world.

     Again, see, e.g. our Rawls episode, and Nozick, and Sandel.

     4. There is such a thing as “moral responsibility,” and we therefore have a duty to make things fair and equal for everyone.

     I don’t see the “therefore” here, but see point 3 and my introduction re. meta-ethics.

     5. That some people being “privileged” over other people is wrong.

     Again, whether this is an interesting question depends on what sense of “privileged” is meant. We weren’t discussing in general the equality of wealth, nor accidents of birth (see point 2; we did just read Burke, so I think we’ve done enough to charitably consider claims re. whether accidents of birth producing inequalities of power is OK), but I think the point of the current discussion was to talk about some of those specific privileges McIntosh cites. Do you think that having, e.g. security guards in stores be extra suspicious of you because of race is OK? I think that’s a pretty uncontroversial example; the issue is HOW MUCH of a problem this really is and so how much of our mental energy and resources should be dedicated to solving this. And surprise surprise: the people who don’t actually suffer from this generally regard it to be not a particularly big deal even if they acknowledge that it happens. So what’s interesting philosophically here is this notion of “white ignorance,” as a subspecies of “social epistemology,” referring to the alleged existence of facts that some of us are more reluctant to acknowledge than others. To what extent is this “ignorance” insurmountable (our answer: it’s pretty easily surmountable if you just have a conversation with those affected). While we did our best to by sympathetic here, and really just don’t have enough info from these readings to make a blanket judgment re “social epistemology,” I think this was just something we were curious about. There have been a number of philosophical ideas that we’ve considered not because we have any suspicion that they’re right, but because they’re part of the lingo people are throwing around and we want to better understand that.

     6. That people can and should be classified by things such as skin color and coherent things can be said about these groups.

     This in particular I find a totally boring question. Mills, e.g. does talk about this at great length, and the definition of “race” is certainly a legitimate philosophical question, but this is again like point 1. Yes, there are medical reasons why one might want to treat people of different “races’ (i.e. groups of genetic features) differently, but just looking at different cultures is enough to make it obvious that “race” is a social construction. Mills gives the example that he’s considered black in America but brown in Jamaica (“black” and “brown” being different racial labels there). And hey, “Jewish” was considered a race maybe 60 years ago, and is just “white” now. The examples go on.

     The only reason one would give a shit about question 6 is due to a position taken re. point 1. So, by comparison, “intelligence” is a pretty interesting topic, perhaps worth an episode if someone recommends a particularly good book on it to us, but unless you take Plato’s suggestion that we essentially run IQ tests on everyone at age 4 and then track them into castes to ensure that the smartest will rule (and heck, maybe take it a step farther and kill off the dumbest, right?), then it’s ultimately not a particularly essential question for philosophy.

     I certainly do find the whole phenomenon interesting re. what we do and don’t take for granted in particular discussions. I think our Kuhn episode comes closest to dealing with that, but of course is about science and not about these general sets of social agreements. A good philosophical rule of thumb is that if you’re breaking with tradition by arguing something new and interesting (e.g. there is no moral responsibility at all), then yes, let’s have that discussion, but if the position you think to be so innovative just sounds like reactionary assholery, then skip it. But of course, this rule already requires social/emotional agreement on what constitutes “new” vs. “reactionary” in the relevant sense… Certainly any position Hobbes espoused can’t really be considered “new,” but the point is that it’s a perennial skeptical doubt that is exactly the kind of thing that philosophy is here to address. Suffice it to say this is a shifting target: I largely considered religious philosophical questions to be outdated in the relevant sense, but of course those are pervasive enough that we’ve treated a number of them now (but not the famous “how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” question, as there are limits to our tolerance for bullshit).

     Reply

     • Jennifer Tejada says

       April 20, 2017 at 8:36 am

       Hello! Mostly this is to Mark.

       I am currently listening to the Strawson episode about free will and moral responsibility. It. Is. So. Good. Thanks for leading me to someone besides Sam Harris for help regarding this topic. His book was not helpful at all.

       Dave’s list helped me to see how many of the pressing questions I have had for my whole life have been answered by listening to your podcast. I know, I know – that’s a bold statement. It isn’t that you all have sorted out my moral dilemmas and questions. It’s that you’ve provided the framework for me to explore them and have helped put language and a sort of common humanity around things I formerly felt so alone in. So while I don’t know if I fall into the optimist/pessimest/determinist/libertarian camp and I still don’t know if there are only ideas or if there is a thing in itself or whatever….I know how to think about it a little better.

       I’ve read only about ten of the readings for all of the ~100 episodes I’ve listened to so I would never say I have a particular understanding of anyone you’ve discussed. Yet somehow there is this emergent quality of a new way of thinking that has had a profound effect on me. I have a list a mile long of things I want to go back and read.

       I’m super thankful for all of that. Keep on keeping on!

       Reply

     • Alan Cook says

       April 20, 2017 at 3:04 pm

       Mark, as a side note, here’s a book I recently read on the topic of intelligence that’s worth looking into:

       https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-Reflective-Mind-Keith-Stanovich/dp/0195341147

       Reply

     • Athena Sophia Speculi Ustorii says

       April 21, 2017 at 10:47 am

       Mark,

       Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

       This is terrific!

       Thank you for taking the time to seriously address questions and concerns raised by your listeners and for consistently and compassionately elevating general expectations and levels of discourse!!!

       (and — speaking for myself only — thank you for allowing those of us who are philosophical dilettantes — at best — to endlessly babble and blather on in our barbaric pseudo-philosophical patter!)

       Reply

   • Neil says

     May 2, 2017 at 2:57 am

     If we are to consider the idea of social responsibility for “white privilege” then we ought also to talk about how black people should be held socially responsible for black subculture.

     In a climate where I am seeing increasing open racist comments towards white people and claims that blacks cannot be racist, I can’t help but find this discussion patronizing.

     It’s sad that the poor opinion towards blacks I see, from many races, is toward culture and attitudes, and this type of rhetoric I see as actually harming racial relations.

     Reply

     • Mark Linsenmayer says

       May 2, 2017 at 8:41 am

       McWhorter, one of our authors, agrees with you that it’s also important within the black community to talk about their ethics, patterns, habits, etc.

       But why is it either/or? Can’t one acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the current “white ignorance” of the mechanisms of oppression, but also, then, of course, as social policy, work at multiple levels to try to correct the situation?

       McWhorter (and Blum I think) among our authors is definitely concerned that the rhetoric of white privilege leads to casting blacks as helpless victims, which has all the problems re. “pity” on Nietzsche’s account as we’ve discussed in multiple podcasts. So our point here was not to simply bow down to/patronize/put our stamp of approval on this rhetoric as it’s used widely on the Internet, but to try to figure out what legitimate concerns were being addressed by the language, and maybe what a better way of putting this would be.

       None of this need be “racist” toward whites, and as our next discussion on Baldwin goes into, the strategy of demonizing whites in reaction to being demonized is obviously morally and intellectually bankrupt. But what people are saying when they’re saying that blacks can’t be racist is that there’s an obvious asymmetry in the dynamic of hostility between the two sides given the immense historical injustices laid into the foundations of our society.

       Reply

       • Neil says

         May 2, 2017 at 11:14 am

         Mark,

         First allow me to express my gratitude for your response. I have been a big PEL fan for a while and this is my first time posting. I love the show and I have learned so much while being entertained at the same time. I must also disclose that I did not listen to both episodes on this topic, and in fact accidentally downloaded and started to listen to the second episode first and only made it 18:31 in, by which time I felt prompted to comment on its content. So while I think my comments will be able to stand on their own, forgive me for errors or omissions which result from this.

         “McWhorter, one of our authors, agrees with you that it’s also important within the black community to talk about their ethics, patterns, habits, etc.”

         This entire topic seems saturated with many assumptions, and one that I feel is illustrated here is that the idea is that if there is to be a discussion regarding culture, it is something which is supposed to occur within the black community. In other words, the less than inconspicuous insinuation is that any other racial group is to be excluded from participation. This seems to further imply that other races’ input must not be valid or relevant. This is troubling epistemically due to known psychological biases that would be more prevalent when the discussion is limited to within the group. It is also strange to think that the discussion should be limited to the black community when Asians or Indians, for example, may be effected in various ways and had absolutely nothing to do with “white privilege.”

         “But why is it either/or? Can’t one acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the current “white ignorance” of the mechanisms of oppression, but also, then, of course, as social policy, work at multiple levels to try to correct the situation?”

         The concept of the legacy of slavery seems to be to be problematic. With so many social factors, from teen pregnancy, single-mother households, unemployment, etc., being higher today than in the pre-Civil Rights Act era, it strains credulity to claim that the problems we have are a result of the legacy of slavery, which would indicate that this legacy is somehow stronger today than pre-Civil Rights Act. I would argue that much of this is a result of failed social policy over the decades which attempted to improve their situation, so I don’t want to place the blame simply on black subculture, which I think is partly in response to these policy failures. But the point is, how do we tease out potential causation of the “legacy of slavery” from all these factors? No doubt that racism plays a role, but the attribute it the role it has been given seem unable to be supported by empirical evidence. We may also be very skeptical of proposed policy to improve the situation, considering the failure of many programs such as welfare, housing projects, and affirmative action (ex: graduation rates improved for blacks when the UC system here in CA eliminated affirmative action in the 90s).
         I also object to the evidence from social psychology related to the concepts of implicit bias and microaggressions. Both these areas of research are very problematic, and suffice it to say that the evidence in both areas is not enough to make the claims of racism that come out of the literature, from the researchers themselves, no less, let alone what gets out into the popular media and in the general academic environment regarding these topics. For example, with respect to implicit bias, merely being aware of racial stereotypes can lead to implicit bias results. Instead of automatically jumping to the conclusion that racism is the cause and that there is systemic racism against blacks (which the researchers themselves do), it may be the case that people (including blacks) may simply be aware of general behavioral trends in the black community, based on their experience and what they see in the media, and when their subconscious biases a choice due to the patterns of behavior noticed in others (the degree of accuracy of these patterns is another concern), they are then labeled as a racist. How can a person express a conscious belief that when dealing with a single flesh-and-blood individual that the color of their skin doesn’t in itself matter be labeled a racist when their subconscious, doing what it does, is aware of patterns at the group level?

         “McWhorter (and Blum I think) among our authors is definitely concerned that the rhetoric of white privilege leads to casting blacks as helpless victims, which has all the problems re. “pity” on Nietzsche’s account as we’ve discussed in multiple podcasts. So our point here was not to simply bow down to/patronize/put our stamp of approval on this rhetoric as it’s used widely on the Internet, but to try to figure out what legitimate concerns were being addressed by the language, and maybe what a better way of putting this would be.
         None of this need be “racist” toward whites, and as our next discussion on Baldwin goes into, the strategy of demonizing whites in reaction to being demonized is obviously morally and intellectually bankrupt. But what people are saying when they’re saying that blacks can’t be racist is that there’s an obvious asymmetry in the dynamic of hostility between the two sides given the immense historical injustices laid into the foundations of our society.”

         I do remember your comments about privilege considering your background, and I do appreciate that angle. I have a coworker from Russia that is particularly bothered by her inclusion in “white people” that to be held accountable for the “legacy of slavery.” She just moved here 12 years ago and of course had nothing to do with slavery either in her personal ancestry or her nationality.

         There seems to me to be some deep philosophical problems of how we can attribute collective responsibility here and I realize that my post is already too long to attempt to address this. I would just say in a superficial way not addressing this deeper issues that there need be no attribution of responsibility in order to be able to address social problems; the blame game at this point seems unfair to the majority of white people that don’t really seem to care that someone is black (my criticism of implicit bias is key in this objection). To attribute responsibility and the subsequent treatment and implied obligations that come with it become themselves racist, like in the example of my Russian coworker. How is she included in this collective responsibility (which I think is questionable anyway) solely based on the color of her skin?

         And furthermore, there is categorical difference between potential responsibility for culture and for “white privilege.” While a black individual can play his part in the sense of having a collective intentionality to improve black culture by means of his individual good actions, there is nothing my Russian coworker can do to change anything about the color of her skin and being included in a group that supposedly is now collectively responsible for the “legacy of slavery.”

         Reply

         • Mark Linsenmayer says

           May 2, 2017 at 11:48 am

           OK, sounds like you you should go listen to eps 161 and 162 and get back to us; we discuss this notion of group responsibility at some length.

           We’re also trying to sidestep the argument being dependent on any particular scientific studies of the causality of the social situation. At least as concerns amateurs like us speculating about the matter, it definitely looks like people look for/consider legitimate the studies (alleged studies) that already support their position, and the same goes for analyses of what has constituted a failed social policy. I’m in no position to argue with you or anyone else here on a point by point basis, but if the evidence were really that unequivocal, then I’d expect more agreement across partisan lines.

           What’s been interesting to me delving into this political area in which I especially claim no expertise, is the idea of the performative aspect of the discussion, i.e. why have it and who’s having it. Yes, people can discuss classical philosophy because they really have an agenda re., e.g. allowing faith to persist despite science or on the contrary de-weaponize religious discourse, but for the most part, we can extricate ourselves from the political context of the debates about causality, reality, meta-ethics, etc.

           But here, of course, matters are different, and so I’m trying to think carefully about what even constitutes a useful or legitimate philosophical discussion in this area. Us having a discussion about the level of cultural value there is in hip hop music or other aspects of black culture would be pretty weird. I’m certainly not saying that a government or social organization, even if composed mostly of white people, has no business addressing incentives and other potential solutions involved in addressing the achievement gap or minority poverty or whatever.

           What philosophers may be able to contribute is critique and clarification of the rhetoric involved, which I think is what we tried to/started to do on these episodes. I too would like to separate “responsibility” from “blame” given my meta-ethical beliefs, yet our Judeo-Christian legacy has left these toxically intertwined. I think that as part of philosophy’s self-questioning process, it’s always legitimate to ask yourself “could I be wrong” from the standpoint of the various philosophies that claim to uncover our sources of bias: have I been brainwashed by my culture as related to my class, religion, etc. So I found Mills and some of the other readings we looked at here to be good food for thought, and would encourage anyone who’s quick to jump to a conclusion of “it’s all THEIR fault so I can feel all self-satisfied and not worry about it” to undergo a regular regimen of reading such things.

         • Neil says

           May 2, 2017 at 12:21 pm

           Mark,

           Thank you for the suggestions and the nice exchange. I also feel that many of these aspects may be weird to discuss on your program, which is why I guess I was prompted to comment. How can the more superficial questions such as culture, social policy, etc. be addressed without addressing research? It is not something amenable to philosophical inquiry without addressing empirical evidence. We cannot take the idea of systemic racism as axiomatic without addressing the research on which it is, to a certain extent, based upon. There is certainly a lot of motivated reasoning involved in charged topics like this, which can make interpretation of the research more difficult, and certainly this is not appropriate for your show.

           But, what might be useful would be to look at fundamental assumptions that underlie these topics. In my opinion, I feel that there are deep assumptions about human nature (ex: Blank Slate, Noble Savage, constrained vision, etc.), the nature of the world (determinism, causally sufficient antecedent psychological states/free will, etc.), and even the nature of knowledge. Others would include social ontology and theories of self/consciousness. The answers to these questions, I think, help to get at some of the roots of many political disagreements. For example, to my mind I see a strange contradiction in the mainstream idea that we do not have free will so notions of individual responsibility are altered or entirely changed, yet there can be a collective responsibility for an entire non-homogenous group of people based on the color of their skin! I cannot fathom the conception of the self and the ontology necessary to account for this!

           P.S. I realized I attributed Wes’s comment on his background to you! Sorry!

2. Noah says

   April 3, 2017 at 10:42 pm

   This is how insane things can get:

   https://compassionateactivism.leadpages.co/htw-program-jan-2017/?utm_source=EF-Site&utm_campaign=EF-HTW-OnDemand-StickyBar&utm_medium=Website-Ads

   Reply

   • Jennifer Tejada says

     April 4, 2017 at 10:09 am

     Noah,

     Can you explain why this is insane? It does seem ineffective. As in – who is going to read this and say OH MY GOD!! How could I have been so blind?! Thank goodness we have middle class white women like yourself to come and help save us from ourselves!! I get that part. And it’s definitely alarmist in a way that comes across as inauthentic. Is it a satire?

     However, maybe we aren’t alarmed enough. I keep trying to relate this to my own experience to understand. As I educate myself I see more and more sexism. And I become more alarmed. Paying attention to where racism is embedded into the world can be alarming too. I also think she misses the point when she says things like – learn how to avoid saying things that might hurt those you care about. Doesn’t that sound a lot like one cares more about not being seen as a racist person and about being politically correct than really caring about providing equal opportunities for all?

     Anyway – just curious how you really felt about it.

     Reply

     • Alan Thomas says

       April 4, 2017 at 2:21 pm

       It doesn’t look so bad to me, but the thing that bothers me most is that it’s a cash grab. I would much rather see people donate that $97 to the Democratic Party or to the DCCC. Worry about consciousness-raising later, after we try as quickly as possible to avert a clear and present danger to our republic.

       Reply

     • Noah says

       April 4, 2017 at 11:08 pm

       Maybe “insane” is too hyperbolic a word.

       I was just surprised and a little bemused to see “whiteness” being treated as a kind of illness; I mean, you can almost picture the phrase “toxic whiteness” appearing in a medical textbook. The whole thing is just another reminder of how obsessive modern society is with identity.

       Sartre’s essay “existentialism is a humanism” is an antidote to identitarian politics.

       He emphasizes action over being, and criticizes the habit of people (all people) to identify with their job or class. Identifying too much with your occupation negates your freedom to be other things.

       A chair has being-in-itself: it can’t change; it’s just a chair, a thing. Human beings have being-for-itself: we can and do change, and we can’t be reduced to objects.

       But this freedom causes anxiety. We don’t want the responsibility of freedom, so we try to reduce ourselves to something unchanging and ossified… “it’s not my duty to fight for a better society, I’m just a waiter.” We long for being-in-itself.

       You see practitioners of identity-politics say things like “black bodies,” reducing autonomous and dynamic human beings to physical objects. You see an uglier and less humane version of this in the phrase “white power.”

       Action not being, is what I’m saying. Don’t think about yourself. Find something you love and do it.

       Reply

       • Evan Hadkins says

         April 5, 2017 at 5:07 am

         Hi Noah, I agree with what you say. So this may seem just picky.

         It’s this sentence, ” Identifying too much with your occupation negates your freedom to be other things.” Usually the problem is distancing from our action. We may play a role in the sense of acting but not making it play-acting; doing it from our core because it matters; being present in what we do.

         Hope this makes sense. I think it’s important, even if it sounds pickly.

         Reply

       • Jennifer Tejada says

         April 5, 2017 at 11:58 am

         Thanks Noah,

         That makes some sense to me. I’ll have to think about it some more to get it. But I think you may have gotten closer to helping me understand how framing things in terms of “white privilege” is philosophically problematic. And without negating the notion that oppression of a certain class exists. And also without being sort of covertly racist. It’s hard to figure out the difference at this level for me.

         I was thinking about how oppressing another ( I think this was discussed in debouvoir) is really actually going to end up oppressing yourself. And so it makes me wonder how using the term white privilege will actually in a way end up hurting minorities. I don’t know the train of logic from A to B – I couldn’t really understand it in the debouvoir episode either but it resonates for some reason. I wish they could have fleshed this idea out a little bit – or maybe have another episode.

         Reply

         • dmf says

           April 6, 2017 at 7:11 am

           grist for the mill
           http://www.aaihs.org/the-critique-of-racial-liberalism-an-interview-with-charles-w-mills/

       • Jennifer Tejada says

         April 6, 2017 at 7:34 am

         Dmf,

         This article confuses me “Kant was a racial liberal in the straightforward old-fashioned racist sense—he said we should give respect to all persons while simultaneously declaring that blacks and Native Americans were natural slaves.”

         Is this true? I thought Kant provided an explanation of why slavery was rationally incoherent. This seems like a misrepresentation. If it’s not then fine – but it’s confusing to people like me who really don’t know much about these guys.

         Reply

         • Alan Thomas says

           April 6, 2017 at 12:56 pm

           He comes across pretty poorly here:
           http://www.csun.edu/~jaa7021/hist496/kant.htm

           Maybe the worst part is right at the end when he says that a sexist thing a black man said might have something to it (oof), except that the darkness of the man’s skin is proof that what he said was stupid!

       • Jonathan says

         April 6, 2017 at 8:31 pm

         Your reference to Existentialism points to how a particularly well-known thinker who embraced that philosophy – Martin Luther King – offers a different approach to the issues discussed in this podcast:

         In King’s (Existentialist) view, even those who are unaware of their responsibility for their own self-making (which becomes a source of anxiety) are still involved in acts of self-creation. And even if most of us never fully construct our self meaning, we would all like to think of ourselves as good.

         King recognized the fact that the people he wanted to reach (white Americans – even some of those who wielding truncheons and water canons against him) did not want to think of themselves as hateful and wicked. Which meant that the confrontations King initiated were not designed to rub white people’s noses in their own bigotry. Rather, he was trying to create a conflict between people’s personal self-belief in their own goodness and the real-world situation they were forced to observe (the violent oppression of blacks). Such a conflict would force people to choose between changing their own self-perception vs. changing the world. And King banked on the fact that as hard as it might be to change the world, changing a view of yourself is much harder.

         This strategic appeal to people’s sense of their own existential goodness might explain why King was one of the most successful political activists in human history. It might also explain why contemporary campaigns built around asking people to “own” (i.e., own up to) their own “white privilege” has so far only gotten us Donald Trump.

         Reply

         • Alan Thomas says

           April 6, 2017 at 8:33 pm

           Love this! Very cool.

3. Alan Thomas says

   April 4, 2017 at 2:25 pm

   It was interesting to hear about Wes’s Irish origins and upbringing in poverty. The thorniest question raised was whether people have a greater responsibility to try to change an unjust system if it benefits them than if it does not. I’m genuinely unsure as to what is the ethically correct position there.

   However, I absolutely agree with Wes that the white privilege argument as it is generally framed is counterproductive to actually winning the elections we must win to avert total disaster.

   Reply

   • Jill V says

     April 4, 2017 at 7:11 pm

     I found this section you mention disappointing insomuch as it didn’t seem much explored beyond Wes’s perspective. That he was able to express his perspective was good. That’s not at issue. But I’d have genuinely wanted to hear a deeper look into that.

     There are two ways of framing this privilege situation in reflection to Wes’s legitimate points. 1) yes, he had it very tough and suffered shame and a variety of harms. No dismissal there. Could he also say, “but at least I didn’t go through all that and also be black?” If that statement is a valid statement, that is what privilege references. 2) responsibility relates to “whose work is this.” So, is it a black person’s job to be oppressed and end oppression? We collectively act as such, largely because of what we imagine from King and others. But what is lost are a couple points. The oppressor must stop oppressing for oppression to end. That’s just so. One other option is that oppressors lose the strength to oppress. That’s largely the focus that’s being responded to negatively in today’s culture. But, with majority and control of the systems, the oppression stops from the oppressor, and that’s why this sits in the responsibility of white, using their privilege for good that was irrationally received. The example that seems easiest to understand is women’s right to vote. Like King (in a way) suffragettes were able to shine light and present what was the ask. But, they could not give themselves this right. White males had to give this right to them. They were the only way to complete this change, thus they were responsible. Of course they were born into a society that didn’t extend that to women. They didn’t do that. But, that was the baggage they were given at birth none the less and were the responsible party for the adjustment no other could do but them. That’s what responsible means to my understanding.

     Reply

     • Jennifer Tejada says

       April 4, 2017 at 10:25 pm

       Oh – I didn’t see it the way you did. I thought he mentioned the story about his childhood not to say – I have it rough also, rather it seemed like he was saying – look, poverty is a problem for all races. Lots of these social issues are a problem for all races. And the point is that it’s not all that persuasive to ascribe that particular issue, as pertinent as it may be, to the reasons or argument for what white privelege is or what minority disadvantage is. I thought that was why he focused on the idea of social recognition – because that’s really unique to white privelege. It read, to me, as a way of trying to explain the problems with white privilege as an argument and how it gets all mixed up with class differences which isn’t always tied to race.

       But seriously – I mostly grasp at the edges of these conversations so I could be wrong.

       Reply

       • Alan Thomas says

         April 5, 2017 at 12:24 am

         Jennifer,

         I don’t think you’re wrong. But I also don’t see a huge conflict between what you’re saying and what Jill did. Maybe I am the one missing something.

         Reply

     • Jill V says

       April 4, 2017 at 11:13 pm

       Jennifer, I think you present my wish that Wes were able to delve more deeply. You express it well, but I mean to split the difference.

       “Lots of these social issues are a problem for all races. And the point is that it’s not all that persuasive to ascribe that particular issue, as pertinent as it may be…” Yes, when whites are seriously experiencing lows, similar lows, the persuasiveness is done for. Deaf ears all around. The word is like death-by-a-thousand-cuts in my face of personal circumstance.

       “…to the reasons or argument for what white privilege is or what minority disadvantage is.” Maybe no. My question separates that neatly “yes, and would it be worse if that plus you were black?” but there may be more sophisticated looks. That was what didn’t get explored.

       We don’t know what Wes might say.

       There are multiple parts, as you say. Despite privilege the concept, terribly corrupted by casual flinging, he may have made a quite clear distinction regarding social recognition that ties these points together that I missed and you captured. Good on ya for that.

       Reply

       • Jennifer Tejada says

         April 5, 2017 at 12:08 pm

         I think I understand what you are trying to say. I just think we have to eliminate discussing those class issues altogether when it comes to race and instead focus on class issues as class issues and discuss race issues as race issues and understand that they will intersect but it’s different than equating class issues to race issues. There may be a black person who is quite privileged socioeconomically but he/she certainly still experiences institutional racism and so I think the point should be to eliminate comparative suffering. Your bad is bad, this other dude’s bad is bad, and that guy over there’s bad is bad. The end. Now – let’s fix the issues and realize that no one is asking us to triage anything/rank anything etc.

         Reply

         • Jill V says

           April 5, 2017 at 2:08 pm

           Yep. No disagreement. Well said. In fact, I probably need to rehear this to crystallize again the point I felt was being (not) made. What, before I do so, I thought was being left without reflection was the notion “privilege” that provokes issue– is it semantic, is it classist or class-blind, is it not pragmatic, is it accurately described but ruined by use and should that be addressed, OR is it ontologically (mmm, maybe not that) / epistemically unconvincing despite that the works that were reviewed shore up a solid position– so the rubric needs a different construction. I need to tighten up my recollection of that section in light of the entire 2 part discussion.

         • Jennifer Tejada says

           April 5, 2017 at 7:28 pm

           yeah…I need to re-listen also.

     • Alan Thomas says

       April 5, 2017 at 12:23 am

       The analogy with the suffrage movement is a good one. Very interesting points.

       Reply

4. Luke T says

   April 4, 2017 at 8:08 pm

   Timely addition: https://unmutetalk.podbean.com/e/episode-024-larry-blum-on-teaching-race/.

   Interviewee speaks briefly and specifically to White Privilege in last five minutes or so of episode, but the rest of the conversation dovetails with talk going on in the Episode 161, Part One thread from last week. That section has 120 comments by the time of this post, incidentally. I wonder how many other PEL episodes have attracted so much attention?

   Reply

5. Evan Hadkins says

   April 5, 2017 at 4:22 am

   Part of the discussion seemed to be about whether we have a duty of care for others, and to awareness. Being oblivious is a problem if there is a duty to awareness (which would be part of a virtue ethics I think).

   Reply

6. Alan Thomas says

   April 5, 2017 at 11:57 am

   “If, for example, you accept that employers are less likely to call in for an interview people with black/asian/hispanic sounding names, regardless of their qualifications, the necessary consequence of this fact is that white people (such as myself) are more likely to be interviewed and get jobs despite not being the most qualified/suitable candidate.”

   But in the 21st century, it has become more complex than that. And here might be an example of where white privilege actually shows up more strongly in the working class. Because I think that is where the type of discrimination you referred to here is more likely – and probably even more so in housing discrimination.

   But what if you are a black person with a PhD? As the owners of this podcast well know, there is a glut of PhD’s in the humanities in particular, and there are a lot of them who are unable to get the kind of academic jobs they had hoped for. But are there many black PhD’s who are failing to get tenure-track positions somewhere if they want them? Of course, this doesn’t prevent them from being pulled over for DWB, or potentially facing a situation like Skip Gates famously did. But those aren’t the kind of things that translate to a benefit for white PhD’s.

   Whereas further down on the blue collar rung of the economic ladder, black people are getting all the same disadvantages, and then some, without any compensating advantages at all. Therefore in some ways, blue collar whites must be benefiting more from white privilege than are highly educated whites, just by the zero-sum logic you point out.

   Reply

   • Jill V says

     April 5, 2017 at 2:24 pm

     That PhD argument doesn’t make sense. The moment white privilege ceases to privilege demonstrates it’s not privilege? Nope. What you could observe, white privilege harms white people. That also wasn’t discussed. In this micro-case you want to cite, you could extract that to say whites have benefited for so long in the dominant discourses that they’ve disadvantaged themselves because other voices are more valuable because they are disseminating what is needed.

     Reply

     • Alan Thomas says

       April 5, 2017 at 3:40 pm

       I don’t agree with your characterization of my point. What I was trying to say is that contra the kind of thesis offered by Wes, that blue-collar whites look skeptically upon white privilege because they don’t see themselves as privileged, my impression based on the example I discussed in my comment (and I can think of many others), is that blue-collar whites actually probably get a *greater* benefit from white privilege, relative to blue collar minorities, than do whites who are highly educated.

       But as for what you just wrote, don’t you mean they have disadvantaged their *successors* (a younger generation of whites with newly minted Ph.D.’s) rather than “themselves”? I think that’s actually an important distinction.

       Reply

7. Aslan Bolkonsky says

   April 5, 2017 at 5:20 pm

   It looks like my previous comment has disappeared…. I’m pretty sure it’s my fault as I wrote this on my phone and tried to copy and paste into the comments section. Soz! Anyway, I may as well post again, at least to provide a source for Alan’s quote above:

   Well, I gotta say thanks for tackling this topic. I know that you have copped some flak for taking on issues that have a political angle, but personally I found these readings and the discussion have helped me to analyse, in a more concrete way, a few concepts that have been on my mind for some time. I feel like my thoughts on the topic had been kind of unfocussed and almost stuck in a kind of loop, and they are slightly less so now. And if achieving greater clarity and an increased understanding of ones own thoughts is not part of the philosophical project, then I don’t know what is.

   I had just a few comments I wanted to share. Some might be obvious, but hopefully they’re interesting to at least one or two readers:

   There was some disagreement during the episode about whether ‘white privilege’ was limited to social/status disadvantages, or whether it would also include material disadvantage. My sense is that this confusion arises because there are in fact two separate learnings to be taken from the readings on ‘white privilege’.

   The first is that some of the disadvantages faced by people of colour are ‘invisible’ (hence the use of that word in the title of the McIntosh piece) – e.g. the fact that a white person sees a lot of people who look like them on TV and in the newspaper. These disadvantages are real, but they are more subtle than the types of ‘primary’ discrimination that campaigners had focussed on in the decades prior to McIntosh’s piece, such as voting rights. As such, many people who do not experience these ‘invisible’ disadvantages may not be aware of them unless they are brought to their attention. It seems that correcting this blindness is one of McIntosh’s aims.

   A second, and I think conceptually separate, proposition of the readings is that it is a necessary corollary of some types of unfair disadvantage suffered by people of colour that some unfair advantages are enjoyed by white people. To me, this seems an unarguable fact. If, for example, you accept that employers are less likely to call in for an interview people with black/asian/hispanic sounding names, regardless of their qualifications, the necessary consequence of this fact is that white people (such as myself) are more likely to be interviewed and get jobs despite not being the most qualified/suitable candidate. Again, this unearned advantage is something that even those who acknowledge the disadvantages experienced by people of colour are quite likely to be blind to.

   It seems to me that these two phenomena are undoubtedly real and that, by shedding light on these phenomena, the work that has been done on ‘white privilege’ is philosophically valuable. It is another question altogether whether referring to ‘white privilege’ is a useful rhetorical or persuasive technique. I agree that in many cases, because of human psychology, pointing out a person’s ‘white privilege’ is simply not a helpful technique of persuasion, but that does not affect the validity of the analysis in this area.

   I also believe that there’s something revealing about the common reactions to language of WP. In particular the response of “Hold on, don’t call me privileged. I had X, Y and Z to deal with growing up.” It seems to me that that, by this response, white people are in some ways reacting to a sense that they are being unfairly *defined* and depreciated because of their race. Most likely, this is one of the only contexts in which this will occur to a white person, while it is probably a feeling with which a coloured person is all too familiar. Again, regardless of the persuasiveness of this language, there’s still something to be learned about yourself from this.

   As a final aside, I think that this type of natural ‘defensiveness’ about unearned advantages is not limited to race. You can see something similar playing out on a global scale right now with all of the anti-migration and anti-globalism political movements. I’m not sure whether there are many good philosophical texts that deal with issues around migration (e.g. utilitarianism vs communitarianism) but I think it’d be great if you could find a way to delve into some of these issues. I get the impression it’s a debate that’s going to dominate the global conversation for quite some time to come…

   Reply

8. Alan Thomas says

   April 5, 2017 at 5:29 pm

   Huh, weird. So now my response is in a different thread. I would be curious to hear what you thought of it in either thread as you see fit.

   Reply

9. Julian says

   April 6, 2017 at 5:30 am

   It’s interesting that most of the people who comment on these podcasts are themselves from socioeconomic backgrounds that give them massive blinders about economic privilege. I grew up in an environment of abuse, addiction, and poverty. Most will tell me that I’m still privileged because I’m a white male, and all the various forms of privilege that I benefit from are invisible to me, but I didn’t feel so privileged when the SWAT team shot gas canisters into our home and arrested everyone inside. I was 7. That was only the beginning of a long, tumultuous childhood/relationship with institutional authority.

   There is a real refusal on the part of middle and upper class people of all races to acknowledge the obstacles faced by the poor. This persists and will not go away for a very long time. Wealthy people of all races cling to their wealth and have no interest in questioning the larger dynamic that creates that wealth. There is a lot of individual social power in weaponizing guilt/shame, no matter your race. And no matter the motive, it functions as a handy way of diverting from the material suffering of millions, (some of whom talk with funny accents and don’t like the same culture-forms you like) – material suffering that, if addressed, would require some of those people (wealthy people of all races) to pay a little more in taxes or give up next year’s smartphone upgrade.

   And nobody wants that.

   Reply

   • Alan Thomas says

     April 6, 2017 at 4:31 pm

     Julian, your last charge in particular seems unfair. I doubt many of the middle or high income people who are concerned about white privilege are the ones standing in the way of tax increases on the rich to pay for social programs for the poor. The Grover Norquist-endorsed politicians I see winning are getting substantial support from conservative blue collar white voters, who are the last people you’ll find talking about white privilege, except to heap scorn on the very idea.

     Reply

   • Evan Hadkins says

     April 6, 2017 at 4:44 pm

     There are different kinds of privilege. It is quite possible for economically disadvantaged people to be privileged in other ways (eg gender, culture).

     Reply

10. ehead says

    April 6, 2017 at 9:46 pm

    I can’t help but think that the word privilege is being used in a tactical manner. In older discourse racial issues were framed in the language of discrimination, and this language no doubt is perceived as dis-empowering by those being discriminated against. The introduction of privilege discourse seems like a tactical move meant to shift some of the psychological burden onto white people. Of course, one would have to be really naive not to think this shift would cause a backlash, even if one ignores the dubious technical accuracy of the word in this application. By technical accuracy I refer to all of the mildly put and understated objections in Blum’s article.

    I think this is a case of liberal masochists and academics completely losing touch with the lived reality of everyday people. Telling a poor white person he is privileged is nothing less than an assault on his self-respect. It is a way to diminish his already meager achievements. Imagine how someone who is struggling and just trying to get by is going to interpret this… I’m pretty inept and barely getting by as is it, despite having the deck stacked in my favor before I was even born. That will really do wonders for someone’s self esteem.

    Yet we’re expecting some poor sanitation worker or biscuit chef at McDonald’s to check their privilege, accept this psychic burden, realize how their failure in life is even greater than they originally thought, and somehow… this is going to make them re-evaluate how they perceive black Americans? All this because his chances of getting that early morning biscuit shift at McDonald’s was ever so marginally increased above the norm because he is white? Hmmm.

    Reply

    • Alan Thomas says

      April 6, 2017 at 10:30 pm

      It’s an absolutely valid point that it has some dubious merit as a political strategy. But as I noted upthread, I actually have changed my view due to this conversation, and now believe that if we are judging on the merits rather than the politics, white privilege (maybe “unearned advantage” is a better term) is stronger among the working class than among the highly educated, especially in coastal and other “blue” cities. At least when it comes to employment and housing, though probably not when it comes to interaction with the criminal justice system.

      Reply

      • ehead says

        April 7, 2017 at 10:39 am

        I think it might be technically accurate that a poor working class person could in fact be privileged, but only in a narrow (Blum) technical sense, and I don’t think it has the implications that are implied. For one, I think this entire exercise of segregating and parsing ones “privilege”, and attributing it to different sources, doesn’t reflect how we actually subjectively experience privilege. My critique is two fold (or maybe three).

        First, I’m somewhat dubious about the mathematics of this unearned advantage. Due to the fact that minorities are in fact, a minority, any discrimination against them will only marginally increase the “advantage” of the majority above the norm. In other words, this unearned advantage probably doesn’t amount to much “real” actual advantage for a member of the majority, and ironically the smaller the minority group the less it adds.

        Second, as I said, I’m skeptical about the utility of trying to parse and analyze something like privilege to being with, and attributing it’s origin to various sources. Obviously each and every one of us reaps some unearned advantage (however small), due to statistically and experimentally verifiable cognitive and social bias, whether it be a bias for tall people, good looking people, young people, white people, etc… While it’s interesting and informative to parse this from a purely intellectual position, it’s a recipe for disaster to parse and dissect “unearned advantage” in this manner in an attempt to galvanize support, particularly when your using loaded words like privilege, and attempting to get support from the “oppressors”. As you say though, this is an issue with the politics of the issue.

        This brings up my third complaint though, which is about semantics and rhetoric. A sort of neat trick is performed by the re-purposing of the word privilege here. Where I come from privilege talk is fighting talk. It’s analogous to accusing someone of cheating. It carries moral significance in that it tarnishes their reputation, belittles their achievements, and is a signal to third parties that an injustice has occurred, and that we all need to band together to REMOVE this privilege. This is where I take issue with the semantics, the call to action implied by the word privilege (where I come from) is that something needs to be taken away from someone or some group.

        Blum’s article convinced me there is real and legitimate white privilege, in the form of this “unearned advantage”, but there is at least one respect in which even calling this privilege is problematic, and that is that it’s difficult for any one individual to reconcile or act on this accusation of privilege. An individual cannot remove this marginal unearned advantage on his/her own, so they are effectively left impotent to repsond (to what some will interpret as an accusation). Perhaps my notion of privilege is too “thick”, in all the implications and moral weight I attribute it, but I don’t think my understanding of the word is outside the mainstream, and I honestly think a semantic trick is being performed here. The careful analysis by Blum provides plausible deniability, but people are aware of the loaded nature of this word, and are purposely using it instead of talking about discrimination. Blum provides the cover for those interested in a close analysis, but it is the hope of those using the word that it will in fact carry all of the emotional weight I outlined earlier.

        So, we are supposed to believe that white people have a sort of existential privilege, that they possess regardless of how they act in the world, and that is impossible for them to fully shed themselves of (until, presumably, sociological forces finally relieve them of it). It’s a peculiar sort of privilege that has a dual nature. We have it and can’t get rid of it by virtue of statistics (the statistical nature), but on an individual level we can only help the situation by lifting others up (by treating them how we would like ALL people to be treated). So, as individuals we have to act as if there is discrimination in the world, instead of by knocking others down (what privilege would imply).

        Reply

        • Alan Thomas says

          April 7, 2017 at 5:02 pm

          Interesting points.

          Reply

        • Athena Sophia Speculi Ustorii says

          April 7, 2017 at 7:36 pm

          ehead,

          I readily admit that I’m probably completely missing the point that you’re trying to make and may unfortunately just be talking past you…(no criticism here) I’m just not totally understanding the essential point/distinction that you’re trying to make, though I do think you make several great ones.

          Based on this fuzzy interpretation, I’m having a hard time seeing how “discrimination” is significantly better at capturing the notion of “unearned advantage” than “privilege” (while also completely recognizing how “loaded” the word “privilege” sounds to so many people).

          Or, to phrase it slightly differently, I’m having a hard time understanding the utility of using “discrimination” as a galvanizing rhetoric to address the very real problems associated with “unearned advantages.”

          I’ll try to capture a few points of confusion that I have.

          1. Is your basic point just that the discussion of “unearned advantage” is better served if we simply exchange the word “privilege” for the word “discrimination”?

          1.a Or, are you interested in dispensing with the notion of “unearned advantage” altogether and just replacing it with notions of “discrimination” somehow? …If so, please expand if you are so inclined.

          2. Following Blum, a rhetoric of “discrimination” seems to capture very well the notion of “spared injustice,” but I am having a hard time understanding how it also captures the notion of “unjust enrichment” (which I think is a really important piece of the discussion)?

          —

          Those are my essential questions. What follows is just my own tendency to incrementally proliferate a series of half-thoughts.

          —

          3. While yes, the word “privilege” is very loaded, regularly misunderstood, should probably be replaced, and is unfortunately weaponized, exactly how is the word “discrimination” rhetorically better?

          3.a.1. Personally, if I (attempt to) take my personal, mainstream understanding of “discrimination” as a marker for “unearned advantage,” my intuition is that the word “discrimination” becomes a little too free floating. As in, as a generic “actor-in-the-world,” I can readily acknowledge that discrimination exists in the world and that it creates victims of injustice,…and I can do that without ever really feeling necessarily implicated within that larger architecture of oppression. In other words, “discrimination” sounds 1) like it absolves me from necessarily being culpable in systems of oppression and 2) like something that those other “bad” people do to those other people who just don’t deserve it.

          3.a.2. In a general sense, “discrimination,” seems to mainly point to the harms/injustice that A suffers, and/or to the harms/injustice that B does to A. It does this without ever necessarily and explicitly pointing to the “unearned advantages” and/or “unjust enrichment” of the subject who is not (generally) being discriminated against.

          3.b For me, one of the primary points in the discussion of “privilege” is the self-reflective, inward turn that requires the subject to reflect on how their lack of being discriminated against/lack of being “harmed” elevates their social position relative to the disadvantage of oppressed people.

          In other words, one of the essential points in discussions of “privilege” is to recognize 1) one’s own “unjust enrichment” on the one hand, as well as 2) one’s own perpetuation/maintenance of systems of “unjust enrichment” on the other. .

          I just think that however we phrase things, it is a worthwhile endeavor to recognize that we are all always already implicated in matrices of injustice that — to the extent that we value ideas of equality, we should all do our best to disentangle. Sometimes that means recognizing, not necessarily that someone needs to be “knocked down,” but rather that they need to “wait their turn” a little more.

          As an aside, I am really hesitant, resistant to, and skeptical of framing discussions of “privilege” strictly within the framework of a “zero-sum game.” There is certainly a degree of mathematics to it — as in, for example, there are a limited number of jobs within any given sector, so not everyone that wants that job can get it. On the other hand, I also just think it’s about broadening our perspectives about the lives that different people have to live and just being respectfully mindful of each other’s differences — that means that it’s not reasonable to always assume that everyone is always “free” to do the same things or be in the same ways as everyone in the “dominant” position(s).

          Lastly, I understand that I might come off sounding somewhat pedantic sometimes. Please don’t take that as any kind of insult to your intelligence (if you did). It’s just a writing style that I’ve grown accustomed to and which is (perhaps unfortunately) the best way that I’ve been able to find to just coherently formulate my own thoughts. Moreover, I am quite certain that much, if not most of what I have said is patently obvious to you. I have no doubts that, should you respond, it will be measured and insightful. Thanks.

          Reply

          • Alan Thomas says

            April 7, 2017 at 10:32 pm

            Athena Sophia,

            I agree with pretty much everything you wrote there. I would add that I also have a problem with the word “discrimination” in this context because to “discriminate” can also mean something positive or neutral. Positive: “He has discriminating tastes in beer.” Neutral: “She had difficulty discriminating one puppy from another until she put color-coded collars on them.”

            So on the one hand it risks putting a negative stigma on a perfectly good positive/neutral word; on the other, it pulls its punches in describing racial favoritism, which should be couched in more clearly condemnatory language.

          • Luke T says

            April 8, 2017 at 7:34 am

            Valid points by all here on the extra baggage any chosen vocabulary (be it “privilege,” “discrimination,” or “unearned advantage”) carry with themselves when selected for a particular academic use. I wonder though if, over time, the frequency and circulation of – let’s say here, its particular or specialized connotation – removes some of that undesirable edge or ambiguity?

            Look, I agree that “privilege” is a pretty loaded word, and I don’t know finally if it was chosen with a stealth political agenda in mind or not, but couldn’t it be argued that – as this White Privilege discourse works it way through successive iterations, and becomes more and more commonplace in the public conversation – it eventually takes on the somewhat bland and defanged meaning that we now attach to “diversity?”

            In my lifetime, the public ascent of “diversity” was initially greeted with a lot of suspicion and derision. Probably there are some folks out there that still treat it with contempt today, but for most of us in the working population it’s just another feature of the landscape. I wonder if ‘white privilege’ might trace the same trajectory given its seeming, mainstream ‘coming out’ in recent years. (And, is that claim itself a fair characterization?)

          • ehead says

            April 10, 2017 at 9:28 am

            First let me say that I don’t find you pedantic at all, and I appreciate how you’ve made me think a little harder about these things. I’d also like to say upfront that I absolutely agree that, as a broad sociological phenomenon, white privilege exists as a mathematical consequence of discrimination in what you rightly call zero-sum scenarios (resulting in unearned privilege). Yet it seems like the discourse on white privilege engages in a sort of sleight of hand. In my last post I mentioned how most of my liberal friends conflate “spared injustice” into white privilege, so I won’t say anything more about that. But I feel like another sleight of hand is being performed and let me see if I can nail it down. I should say I read Blum’s article about a year ago, but it was memorable and clever enough that I think I still understand it’s most salient points. In essence you might say my complaint is that it is too clever.

            The short reply to your 3 points is no, yes, and yes (sort of). I am in favor of dispensing with the present “discourse” of unearned advantage, because I think it is using rhetorical sleight of hand. The “notion” of unearned advantage is interesting, but for reasons I’ll outline below I also don’t think it’s a useful guide for personal or political action. Let me flesh this out…

            1)
            I’m not convinced that mathematical abstractions are the proper way to think about things like rights and privileges. To the extinct that these concepts are meant to serve as guidelines for social relations or legislation, framing them in what seems like a contrived mathematical way seems counter intuitive. For example, it’s intuitive and easy to understand the “right to be considered for a job on the basis of ones qualifications and regardless of ones race”. Violations of this are easily and intuitively understood to be discrimination. It’s much less intuitive that the resultant incremental increase in a white persons chances of getting the job should be labelled a privilege. The awkwardness is immediately apparent when one tries to summarize what the “additional right or advantage” precisely is, or what sort of law would we pass to remove the privilege. To be clear, there are real and definite “wrongs” being committed that results in these statistics. But does aggregating these wrongs statistically, and calling a mathematical artifact computed from them a “privilege” really put the focus where it should be?

            A clue that something funny might be going on can be found in the odd mathematical properties of this privilege. As I said before, the smaller the minority group, the smaller the privilege. Does this make sense? Does it capture what we want about the underlying injustices? After all, I wouldn’t say someone has been discriminated against less just because the “group” they belong to is smaller than another discriminated against group.

            2)
            This brings me to another criticism, which is how privilege talk blurs distinctions between aggregate attributes and individual attributes. It’s sort of ironic that the left, considering all the work it has done to combat stereotypes, would be guilty of adding to this confusion. I’m still 1/2 way through the second episode, but I think Wes brought this up.

            I think we can all agree that politically and rhetorically privilege talk has been a disaster in that it angers the very people that it is attempting to reach, but can this honestly be that surprising? It’s easy to imagine how one of Trumps coal miners in West Virginia would react to being told to check his privilege. It’s probably similar to how a black person would feel if asked about the problem of “black crime”. Surely there are whites that have benefited from unearned advantage just as surely as there are black criminals, but I’m not comfortable placing a moral burden on the individual on the basis of aggregate statistics in either situation.

            One could say that white privilege talk is intended to apply only to broad sociological phenomenon and trends, but expressions like “check your privilege” betray the truth. The intention is to attribute this privilege at the individual level. This is the second sleight of hand that I alluded to earlier. Even after teasing apart the “spared injustice” from the statistically arrived at “unearned advantage”, it’s unclear to me how much this nebulous “wind at your back” is really helping out some poor coal miner in West Virginia, particularly if he lives in a predominantly white community of Scottish ancestry. It’s unclear how discrimination in Alabama is helping him out much, statistically or not. No, I think the only true way to figure out whether someone is privileged or not is to actually do the hard work of tracing through the messy details of their life.

            I think ones reaction to white privilege may depend a lot on how they feel about notions of collective moral responsibility. I’m uneasy when the locus of moral responsibility isn’t located on the individual, though for some reason I’m more comfortable with collective responsibility when it’s in regard to acts of omission (feeding the poor) than when it’s in regard to acts of commission (shooting an unarmed black person). I will point out though that defenders of white privilege discourse will have to point out why applying aggregate attributes to individuals in okay in this instance but not okay in discussions of Muslims, African-Americans, etc… My guess is Trump’s coal miners are unconsciously picking up on some of this sleight of hand and inconsistency, and that is at least partly the reason for the backlash. If “check your privilege” was merely a benign prompt to examine ones life to see if in fact one has benefited, then it should be possible to arrive at the conclusion that “no, I haven’t”. Yet, the aggregate attribute must apply… if you reject it, you are in denial.

          • Alan Thomas says

            April 10, 2017 at 10:42 am

            Very good points.

        • Athena Sophia Speculi Ustorii says

          April 19, 2017 at 4:15 pm

          ehead,

          This is in response to your comment on April 10th that begins —

          “First let me say that…”

          I understand that this thread might be in some sense “dead” at this point. So, should you not respond, I completely understand.

          First, thank you for your thoughtful reply. You made many great points that have left me thinking and struggling. I went back and read some of your previous comments and have a better appreciation of where you’re coming from and the point that you’re trying to make. I also see that much of my comments are a digression from the validity of your central point — that discussions of privilege bear the fruits of very unintuitive truths and hence fail to galvanize political solidarity. With that in mind, I sense that we might both just disagree on the general value of discourses on privilege — I feel that they are fraught, but well worth having; while I sense that you seem to feel that discourses on privilege cause more trouble than they are worth and can be supplanted with discourses on discrimination for the sake of political expediency. In that sense, perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree on some level.

          What follows is my unfortunate tendency to tediously prattle on and on about the way that “I” see things…please proceed at your own risk!

          …so, I’m not sure what value my forthcoming comments might be other than being some kind of personally entertaining thought exercise that kind of forgets your main point in favor of the marginal edges of your larger argument.

          I would like to say that I completely understand/recognize that discussions of privilege can be extremely off-putting and/or ineffective within a political context — by definition, a rhetoric of difference is not a rhetoric of commonality. I take seriously many of the points that you raised in that regard — it can be a real kick in the teeth to be scraping by at some low paying, unappreciated job and then be asked to think about how “privileged” you are. That said, just because the “delivery system” can come across as really unappealing, I don’t think that that means that the content itself completely lacks value. What the sugar is for the medicine…I still don’t know.

          With that in mind, I am still failing to connect the dots/fully grasp your notion of the “sleights-of-hand.” I’ll again do my best to unpack my confusion (for whatever that might be worth at this point). Again, I also worry that I may be talking past you, as you seem to generally have a clear grasp on privilege “theory” and you seem to have a better grasp on the distinctions between “rights” and “privileges,” etc. in terms of moral theory than I do.

          With that said, I recognize that you are attempting to uncouple “spared injustice” from privilege/unearned advantage (though I am not entirely clear how this is goal is achieved). Moreover, my initial intuition is that there seems to be some conflation of race and class privileges. And, as an aside, it also seems worth noting that you are perhaps quietly interested in forgetting about the altogether clearest example of privilege — unjust enrichment…I am happy to also leave that privilege aside for the moment, in favor of following a different line of argumentation.

          1. In response to your first point(s)

          1a. In order to just set the stage, (I think that) you accept my suggestion that you are interested in dispensing with the notion of “privilege/unearned advantage” altogether and just replacing it with notions of “discrimination” somehow.

          1.b In that regard, you said:

          “The ‘notion’ of unearned advantage is interesting, but for reasons I’ll outline below I also don’t think it’s a useful guide for personal or political action.”

          …

          “For example, it’s intuitive and easy to understand the ‘right to be considered for a job on the basis of ones qualifications and regardless of ones race.’ Violations of this are easily and intuitively understood to be discrimination. It’s much less intuitive that the resultant incremental increase in a white persons chances of getting the job should be labelled a privilege. The awkwardness is immediately apparent when one tries to summarize what the ‘additional right or advantage’ precisely is, or what sort of law would we pass to remove the privilege.”

          First, I would like to set our terms simply and in a way that I think follows Blum and with which I think that you would agree. Thus, from (my interpretation of) Blum’s presentation, the term “privilege” and “unearned advantage” seem to be — for all intents and purposes, mutually inclusive…what is one is necessarily the other, and vice versa.

          As Blum sets things out, he identifies three types of privileges — 1) spared injustice, 2) unjust enrichment, and 3) non-injustice-related unearned advantage.

          I would argue that 1) the existence of “injustice” necessarily entails the existence of something X that is unequally disadvantageous, and 2) the existence of “discrimination” necessarily entails the existence of something X that is unjust.

          Hence, any case that exhibits an absence of discrimination is also necessarily a case that exhibits an absence of discrimination-based injustice…Or, in other words — spared injustice.

          The question then becomes — is it the case that a spared injustice can be a privilege?

          …In other words, can we say that not being discriminated against is a privilege?

          I would like to concur with Blum and with what seems intuitively true to me, and argue that yes, a spared injustice can be a privilege, even when we completely set aside any notion of aggregate statistics.

          For example (and putting aside sun tans, etc.), no one has any control over what color their skin is. There is nothing really that you can do to change it, neither is it something that you can “earn.”

          Hence, if we can accept that (some) white people discriminate against POC due to their skin color, then we should be able to accept that one unearned advantage of being white is not being racially discriminated against by (some) other white people by virtue of the fact “white” people have white skin. Thus — in this oversimplified example, white people are spared the injustice of being racially discriminated against by racist white people.

          From this, it seems fairly reasonable to suggest that a spared injustice can be a privilege/unearned advantage.

          From your abovementioned quote, I am assuming that you are positing the intuitively apparent (unjust) existence of racial discrimination that puts someone (presumably a POC) at a disadvantage. To the extent that a white person applying to that same job is not racially discriminated against, it would seem fairly intuitive (to me) to say that that white person is being “spared from being subject to racial discrimination.” In other words, they are spared that particular type of injustice…They enjoy the unearned advantage of being spared from injustice simply by virtue of their skin color. Personally, I don’t see a problem with saying that white people have an advantage over POC in terms of being spared the injustice of being racially discriminated against. In that sense, it seems reasonable to call that advantage a “privilege,” though perhaps there is some other word or phrase that captures the same idea in a slightly more palatably intuitive way…idk.

          Maybe I’m just dull and missing the point, but I am still failing to see 1) how it is the case that racial discrimination does not entail spared injustice (for some others), and 2) how it is the case that all spared injustices are necessarily not privileges/unearned advantages.

          Even if we grant that some cases of spared injustice are cases of privilege — and that some might also NOT be, I still fail to see how it is the case that the spared injustice resulting from racial discrimination is also necessarily NOT a case of unearned advantage/privilege.

          …Please explain how it is the case that the spared injustice of not being racially discriminated against is necessarily NOT an unearned advantage. I am failing to see the logic.

          1c. Next, you said:

          “The awkwardness is immediately apparent when one tries to summarize what the ‘additional right or advantage’ precisely is, or what sort of law would we pass to remove the privilege.”

          Much of my response to this can be surmised from the previous section.

          In order to spell things out, I am not familiar with any arguments that suggest that privilege confers additional “rights,” but perhaps I am missing something or just not well-informed enough — I would certainly be interested in any work that does make that kind of claim or a larger explanation in general.

          As far as “advantage” is concerned…In my comments above, I attempted to make a case for how not being racially discriminated against is an unearned advantage — and therefore a privilege that people can enjoy.

          With regard to laws…that aspect is mostly beyond me. I suppose affirmative action, changes in crack vs. cocaine drug sentencing, etc. would be examples of how there have been steps made to legislate against discrimination, which would therefore also serve to decrease in some measure the effects of unearned advantage/privilege overall.

          1d. You said:

          “But does aggregating these wrongs statistically, and calling a mathematical artifact computed from them a ‘privilege’ really put the focus where it should be?”

          Perhaps we are in some agreement here…The short answer seems to be that directly legislating against unearned advantage seems much more difficult, if not completely foolish, since not all people who have privilege are necessarily perpetrators of injustice and/or unlawful actions. Thus, legislating against the injustice of actually existing discrimination (and its legacy) seems like a much more reasonable way to create a more equitable society.

          2. This section is the one that I am struggling with more…just because I think you raise some interesting points that I am still struggling with.

          2.a First, you said:

          “This brings me to another criticism, which is how privilege talk blurs distinctions between aggregate attributes and individual attributes.”

          You may be on to something here, and I am having a hard time pulling things apart…I’ll just keep working my way through your other statements and see where we land.

          Nonetheless, I worry that I’m not really able to satisfyingly “wrap my head” around your claim, and hence respond to it in a sufficiently appropriate manner.

          2b. You said:

          “It’s easy to imagine how one of Trumps coal miners in West Virginia would react to being told to check his privilege.”

          My initial reaction to this is just that, as you’ve rightly mentioned, “privilege” as a rhetorical device is deceptively easy to misunderstand. In other words, “privilege” sounds like an easy word/concept to understand, but its overuse has eroded the subtleties of the arguments that its discourse deploys. It’s just a lot more complicated than it sounds, and so people’s superficial understandings of it and gut reactions to it end up doing it a disservice. However, just because people easily misunderstand something, it doesn’t make it the case that the perspective/argument itself is wrong or unimportant.

          2c. You said:

          “The intention is to attribute this privilege at the individual level. This is the second sleight of hand that I alluded to earlier.”

          So yes, the statement “check your privilege” is meant to “attribute this privilege at the individual level.” But, I think that it is meant in a way that is different from the way that you are hearing it. Statements like “check your privilege” — as I understand them, are meant to attune the speaker to the fact that the perspective that they are asserting as universal, or as a universal possible course of action, is not in fact universal (or an equally universal possibility).

          For example, if a straight man walks the city streets and back alleys late at night, they should not assume that the riskiness of that behavior is the same for them as it is for women and LGBTQ+ people. Obviously, if a woman walked alone late at night in dangerous parts of a city, the risks for her are far greater than for a straight man (generally speaking).

          I think that this is an intuitively common sense generalization that aggregate statistics support. It does this without unjustly stereotyping and essentializing the attributes of any individual. In other words, there is a distinction being made in terms of what types of experiences different people are more likely to have as Person X (e.g., a man, a woman, a POC, etc.) vs. claiming that aggregate attributes are essential/natural features of individuals — for example, women have historically been underrepresented in STEM jobs, but this doesn’t mean that they are naturally and inherently bad at STEM…it just means that there are non-essentializing reasons why such is the case (e.g., sexism and it’s legacy).

          As I understand things, saying “check your privilege” is about asking someone to broaden their perspective and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. The way that life looks to person A just might not be the way that life looks to everyone else. This just means that if we care about justice, it would behoove us to appreciate the (unjust) struggles that others face so that we can do our best to not add to each others burdens.

          2d. You said:

          “Even after teasing apart the ‘spared injustice’ from the statistically arrived at ‘unearned advantage,’ it’s unclear to me how much this nebulous ‘wind at your back’ is really helping out some poor coal miner in West Virginia, particularly if he lives in a predominantly white community of Scottish ancestry. It’s unclear how discrimination in Alabama is helping him out much, statistically or not.”

          Again, it is not clear to me how you have disentangled “spared injustice” from “unearned advantage/privilege.” I just don’t understand.

          Beyond this, maybe you are already familiar with the “big 3” types of privilege — 1) race, 2) class, and 3) gender/sexual orientation. These constitute some of those intersectional privileges. Each one can be looked at on its own, but there is also a ton of overlap, such that you can never completely disambiguate one from the other. For example, there is a ton of overlap between race and class in some cases, such that we see that the average white family is wealthier than the average family of a POC.

          For me, it seems like you are conflating race privilege and class privilege here.

          So, for example, a poor white person might not enjoy the class privileges that come with financial wealth and lots of social/cultural capital, but they will still enjoy their white privilege(s).

          What does this mean?

          In general, it means that a poor white person will be better off than a similarly situated POC. Another way to think about it is to say that a poor white person will (probably) be discriminated against less than a similarly situated POC (see Wes and Laws’ back and forth in Part 2…I think).

          So — like a virus, the racial discrimination happening in Alabama helps to reproduce and reinforce racism writ large across the country, including the racism found in West Virginia. To the extent that most of the racist discrimination that happens in America is directed at POC and not directed at white people, then it follows that poor white people in West Virginia — since they are generally not the target of racial discrimination, are helped by not having to deal with the physical, emotional, and psychological trauma, epistemic violence, and credibility deficits of racial discrimination that POC have to deal with.

          This might still mean that poor white people don’t exactly have a strong wind at their back, but they certainly have much less of one blowing in their face as compared to similarly situated POC.

          I also think that discussions of privilege are kind of blunt force instruments that are trying to get at something really important about the way that different people’s lives are differentially constituted. Hence, race and class privilege should not be conflated — they are different aspects of one’s identity that can, for better or worse, be mutually reinforcing.

          These discussions of privilege are just meant to get people to look at the subtle ways that they themselves might be racist, classist, and sexist/LGBTQ+-phobic, as well as how their own behavior helps to reproduce those architectures of oppression/marginalization.

          2e. You said:

          “I think one’s reaction to white privilege may depend a lot on how they feel about notions of collective moral responsibility. I’m uneasy when the locus of moral responsibility isn’t located on the individual, though for some reason I’m more comfortable with collective responsibility when it’s in regard to acts of omission (feeding the poor) than when it’s in regard to acts of commission (shooting an unarmed black person).I will point out though that defenders of white privilege discourse will have to point out why applying aggregate attributes to individuals in okay in this instance but not okay in discussions of Muslims, African-Americans, etc… My guess is Trump’s coal miners are unconsciously picking up on some of this sleight of hand and inconsistency, and that is at least partly the reason for the backlash. If ‘check your privilege’ was merely a benign prompt to examine ones life to see if in fact one has benefited, then it should be possible to arrive at the conclusion that ‘no, I haven’t.’ Yet, the aggregate attribute must apply… if you reject it, you are in denial.”

          It is here that I find myself stuck and get the sense that much of what I said before was missing one of your essential points…that I was just talking past you.

          First — as a quick aside, I want to say that I respect your uneasiness with collective moral responsibility, but I also think that it is something that deserves to be reckoned with on some levels. For example, I do think that there is a collective moral responsibility to recognize that when Europeans came to what is now America, they killed and enslaved people, stole land, and destroyed entire ways of life.

          Generally speaking, people alive today don’t directly have anything to do with what happened over 100-500 years ago, but I do think that there is a collective moral responsibility to rectify in some measure those injustices which so many Americans currently continue to benefit from (e.g., the land on which they now live and work, the country in which they now inhabit, the forced labor that built economic/political power, the resources that have powered the American economy, the legacy of racism, etc.).

          Beyond that aside, I am particularly challenged by you when you question “why applying aggregate attributes to individuals is okay in this instance but not okay in discussions of Muslims, African-Americans, etc.”

          It seems like maybe you are somehow conflating (essentializing) “attributes” with something like “conditions of existence”/”features of experience.”

          I don’t think that anyone would consider white privilege to be a “biologically” and/or “culturally” essential and unchangeable attribute of white people. It just so happens that given the current conditions of existence that are now present in the culture, white people enjoy white privilege. However, this situation is not static and can certainly change as the culture and the conditions of existence change..

          I also think that it is okay to apply aggregate statistical attributes of a group to individuals when it is done in a qualified way. For example, (I think that) young men get more traffic tickets than young women. So, if you are a young man, you will be more likely to get a traffic ticket than a young woman. This doesn’t mean that you necessarily will, but just that you are more likely to. It also doesn’t mean that all young men are “naturally” and necessarily bad drivers, it just means that they get a lot of tickets and that the reasons for that are left somewhat open.

          Beyond this, it is my intuition that it is emotionally easier to apply statistically meaningful aggregate attributes to individuals who are popularly accepted to be victims of injustice and discrimination, in the sense that, for example, Jews are generally victims of anti-semitism, POC are generally victims of racism, women are generally victims of sexism, LGBTQ+ people are generally victims of homo/trans/queer-phobia, etc.

          For me, I just don’t think that it really makes sense to talk about things like racism, sexism, etc. as merely individual problems. Those things are injustices that are collectively constituted and intersubjectively reproduced and reinforced — people share values with each other, unjust ones as well as just ones.

          If we can accept that some groups are oppressed, then it seems fairly easy to accept that that oppression emanates from some other group. For example, women experience sexism and most of that sexism emanates from men (though of course some women have internalized sexism and can themselves be sexist too, while some men can also potentially be non-sexists). From this perspective, it seems pretty easy to generally conclude that even non-sexist men still enjoy certain unearned advantages that come from the fact that women are (to greater and lesser degrees) an oppressed class.

          In these types of situations, it seems okay to loosely apply aggregate attributes to individuals because of the injustices suffered by the oppressed class to which they belong. For example, it seems completely appropriate to say that generally, most (if not all) women will experience the injustices of sexism to a degree that is vastly more severe than any of the sexism experienced by men, but it is not acceptable to say that all women “naturally” like washing dishes and doing laundry.

          On the other hand, the impulse by a dominant group to apply aggregate attributes to individuals in the case of, for example, Muslims and POC, can oftentimes seem like an attempt to negatively stereotype a group in order to further marginalize and oppress them in an effort to maintain and reinforce a relationship of domination and oppression.

          For me, this particular distinction seems to hinge on what purpose is being served. If applying aggregate attributes to individuals is done in a way so as to mark the unjust mechanisms of oppression that they experience, then such an application seems reasonable to the extent that it is done in order to undo the injustice.

          On the other hand, applying aggregate attributes to individuals so as to negatively stereotype them, further oppress a marginalized group, and/or generally increase injustice seems to be completely unreasonable for what I’m sure you would agree were seemingly obvious reasons.

          —

          Now, I’ve clearly strayed far from your central thesis which seems to be that the rhetorics of difference are inherently divisive and that the nuances of their arguments lack political expediency and create confusion. I would generally agree with you on those points.

          To the extent that discrimination discourses only emphasize the disadvantages that others experience without also recognizing the subsequent advantages that result from those unjust exclusions, I remain unconvinced that those discourses will provide the necessary salve for the problems associated with racism, sexism, classism, etc.

          Part of the necessary work in combatting racism, sexism, classism, etc. is being able to recognize it and the ways that it manifests, benefits, and is reproduced in oneself. That can be a difficult task with no simple and easy solutions, but decreasing injustice whenever and wherever we can nonetheless remains a worthy goal.

          I don’t know if any of my arguments and stray thoughts can be considered “successful,” but thank you for the conversation and for reading any of it at all if you did.

          Reply

          • Alan Thomas says

            April 19, 2017 at 7:32 pm

            Athena Sophia,

            Hi there!

            I think it’s helpful to start off with the definition of “privilege”. This is from my American Heritage Dictionary, 5th ed. (the greatest dictiionary ever published):

            “A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste.”

            The “immunity” option would seem closest to the most controversial issue (whether a “spared injustice” is a “privilege”. But is that a “special” immunity? Many would say no.

            “So yes, the statement ‘check your privilege’ is meant to ‘attribute this privilege at the individual level.’ But, I think that it is meant in a way that is different from the way that you are hearing it.”

            I didn’t see you address the point s/he made that it is easier to assign collective responsibility for failure to feed the hungry than to individual cases of police brutality. Although I can buy it if someone does not speak up or at least vote for candidates who are leaning more toward criminal justice reform, citizen review panels, etc.

            “[W]omen have historically been underrepresented in STEM jobs, but this doesn’t mean that they are naturally and inherently bad at STEM…it just means that there are non-essentializing reasons why such is the case (e.g., sexism and it’s legacy).”

            This harkens back to our earlier debate, but once again (this time with sex instead of race) you are declaring “essentialism” invalid by fiat rather than with an argument based on evidence. Women’s historical underrepresentation in STEM does not necessarily mean they are “naturally and inherently bad at STEM”. But it does not necessarily mean they are *not” naturally and inherently bad at STEM, either. The proper perspective is to say the question is as of yet unsettled. But when someone like Larry Summers even raises the questions, he is attacked and vilified.

            “[P]oor white people don’t exactly have a strong wind at their back, but they certainly have much less of one blowing in their face as compared to similarly situated POC.”

            Here I agree with you. As I noted earlier, I think it is “poorly educated” whites who benefit most from unearned advantage. Mulling this more, I think the very top level corporate executive class also so benefits, particularly white men. But all through the rest of the white collar world (middle management and academia), I think these days well-educated minorities have a leg up. But minorities without much education really get the shit end of the stick. And this fact has historically helped maintain a strong level of racism among blue collar whites, as they (however unconsciously it has become in the 21st century) want to keep black and brown workers down so they can stay at least a rung or two up from the bottom.

            “Generally speaking, people alive today don’t directly have anything to do with what happened over 100-500 years ago, but I do think that there is a collective moral responsibility to rectify in some measure those injustices which so many Americans currently continue to benefit from (e.g., the land on which they now live and work, the country in which they now inhabit, the forced labor that built economic/political power, the resources that have powered the American economy, the legacy of racism, etc.”

            I agree. This is why I support reparations for slavery (and for Native Americans, descendents of those Latinos who were dispossessed in the Mexican-American War, etc.).

            “I also think that it is okay to apply aggregate statistical attributes of a group to individuals when it is done in a qualified way. For example, (I think that) young men get more traffic tickets than young women. So, if you are a young man, you will be more likely to get a traffic ticket than a young woman. This doesn’t mean that you necessarily will, but just that you are more likely to. It also doesn’t mean that all young men are ‘naturally’ and necessarily bad drivers, it just means that they get a lot of tickets and that the reasons for that are left somewhat open.”

            Agreed, but you also then need to acknowledge that sometimes group disparities in the criminal justice system are due to actual differences in criminality between demographic groups, not necessarily discrimination.

            “In these types of situations, it seems okay to loosely apply aggregate attributes to individuals because of the injustices suffered by the oppressed class to which they belong. For example, it seems completely appropriate to say that generally, most (if not all) women will experience the injustices of sexism to a degree that is vastly more severe than any of the sexism experienced by men, but it is not acceptable to say that all women ‘naturally’ like washing dishes and doing laundry.”

            Your examples are pretty clear. But what if someone said women “naturally” (on average) like “helping” jobs like social work and teaching more than men do, and like aggressively predatory jobs like commodities trading less than men do?

            “Part of the necessary work in combatting racism, sexism, classism, etc. is being able to recognize it and the ways that it manifests, benefits, and is reproduced in oneself.”

            I think this is emblematic of a difference often found on the (broadly defined) left between those who want to be pragmatic and assemble a broad coalition to move the ball a little to the left (or even just prevent it from being moved to the right), and those who feel it is important to divine, define, distill, and then inflexibly insist on very pure progressive platforms. That struggle has been going on a long time and will no doubt continue for the foreseeable future.

11. Seth B. says

    April 13, 2017 at 5:13 pm

    Very interesting discussion. But one issue that I felt needed more attention was the role of intergenerational mobility in perpetuating or dissolving racial inequality.

    During the podcast it sounded as though current inequality in outcomes between whites and minorities is prima facie evidence of current racism. I do not doubt that racism exists today. However, this does not logically follow.

    We know from a large body of economic evidence (for example see Raj Chetty’s recent comprehensive studies) that the social/economic status outcomes of children is strongly predicted by their parents outcomes. This is driven by factors like having a parent that isn’t incarcerated, having a parent that can fund a child’s education, have a strong social network that can be passed on etc. The importance of some of this factors in perpetuating racial injustice was noted in the podcast.

    However, it is clear that even if racism were to be completely eliminated in the present, past racisms would lead minority children to have worse outcomes today through these mechanisms. I suppose one could call imperfect intergenerational mobility a type of systemic racism, but I think this would be stretching the meaning of the term.

    So I would have liked it if there was a greater discussion of a white persons’ need to address racism today versus their obligation to deal with these knock on consequences of past racism. It also reinforces the need for us to keep a more general class idea in mind if we want to correct racial discrepancies (i.e. racial inequality should be reduced quicker if intergenerational mobility were increased for all). This distinction also has relevance for deciding what we want to call discrimination (which seems like should only refer to contemporary racial injustices) versus privilege (which may be grounded in past injustices, and in this framework would be something a poor white does not have).

    Reply

12. Athena Sophia Speculi Ustorii says

    April 21, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    Alan,

    This is in response to your comment that begins:

    “I think it’s helpful to start off with the definition of ‘privilege.’

    First, thank you for being so thoughtful. You raised many good points.

    I did my best to follow your lead, though I fear I may have gotten carried away here and there. My apologies in that regard, I tried to do my best…I implore you to look past those failings to the best extent possible.

    Again, thank you for the civil and measured responses!

    You said:

    “I didn’t see you address the point s/he made that it is easier to assign collective responsibility for failure to feed the hungry than to individual cases of police brutality.”

    You are right. I didn’t address the omission/commission distinction. I felt like I had already wasted too much “ink” on everything else and that I wasn’t really prepared to respond to that distinction in any meaningful way.

    If I were pressed, my initial response is that I don’t see a huge difference in those two examples. It seems like failing to feed the hungry could be just as much an individual failure as the failure to treat all individuals in an equal and just manner is a collective failure.

    I’m sure there are some holes in that perspective and/or that I’m missing the point, but that’s just my gut level response.

    You said:

    “…you are declaring ‘essentialism’ invalid by fiat rather than with an argument based on evidence.”

    You make the fair point that argument by fiat is an error in reasoning and that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

    Beyond this though, I just don’t know what purpose the questionable desire to (biologically) essentialize any person or group actually serves, other than to give oneself implicit permission to treat others differently because of *what* they are instead of *who* they are. I think that in the absolutely very best, most perfect situation — that particular road is just extremely, extremely muddy, undecipherable, tenuous, precarious, fraught, and utterly distasteful. It’s rife with dangerous potentials for abuse, and — as a default position, not particularly well-grounded from a philosophical or biological perspective (so far as I can see). There are reasons why no serious philosophers (to my knowledge) argue for the existence of social darwinism as a serious, rational and “scientific” discourse.

    I think that we have both shared our opinions on this particular subject quite enough, as have many others who are far better at it than me, so I have no desire to rehash this particular discussion. I think that we will just have to agree to disagree on this particular point.

    I will leave this quote from Carol C. Gould as a parting perspective on this and hope that we can just leave it at that.

    Gould, in her essay, “Private Rights and Public Virtues: Women, the Family, and Democracy,” says:

    “I think the preeminent value that ought to underlie the feminist movement is freedom, that is, self-development. This arises through the exercise of agency, that is, through the exercise of the human capacity for free choice, in forms of activity undertaken to realize one’s purpose and to satisfy one’s needs. Such activity is manifested both in social interaction and in human work as a transformation of the natural world. On this view, each human being is regarded as an agent with capacity for free choice and self-development. In this respect, all individuals are equal. Since they are all equal in this way, there is no reason for one individual or for any class of individuals to have more of a right to exercise this capacity for self-realization than any other. Thus, there are no grounds for making differences in gender the basis for differential rights to self-realization. The equal rights of women and men are thus grounded in the nature of human agency itself.”

    You said:

    “…you also then need to acknowledge that sometimes group disparities in the criminal justice system are due to actual differences in criminality between demographic groups, not necessarily discrimination.”

    Again, I really don’t want to travel very far down this road, as it continues to suggest a palpably vile racist impulse that undoes any potential rational legitimacy such arguments might charitably have.

    Yes, various communities have higher crime rates in general and/or have more of this kind or that kind of crime than others. This is true all over the world and in every way that one might decide to divide a demographic “pie.” The confluence of history, poverty, and affluence all create their own sets of conditions, incentives, necessities, and opportunities for “illegal” behavior.

    But, so what! With all due respect, that’s not exactly a “newsflash.”

    The criminal justice system and America have a long history that help to contextualize those differences far better than anything else.

    Again — with all due respect, if it is the case that you want to suggest a social darwinist approach to criminality, then we will just have to agree to disagree. If such is in fact the case, our worldviews are utterly incommensurate, and — I’m sorry, but I just have absolutely no interest in attempting to rationally debate such a debased and intellectually bankrupt perspective. For me, a social darwinist perspective — other than being an historical curiosity and an unfortunately “live” cultural thread, just doesn’t rise to the level of serious intellectual consideration.

    So — again, with all due respect, if that is your argument, then let’s please agree to just leave things at that.

    You said:

    “Your examples are pretty clear. But what if someone said women “naturally” (on average) like “helping” jobs like social work and teaching more than men do, and like aggressively predatory jobs like commodities trading less than men do?”

    First, I think that I (awkwardly) tried to make the distinction earlier between the “likelihood” of something X happening and the “being ‘naturally’ X” of some person.

    Beyond this, aside from noting the ahistoricity of such a perspective, I would say that comments like that sound pretty sexist.

    Moreover, I’m unclear what exactly your point is here. I assume that you’re wanting to make another essentializing social darwinist-type of claim.

    Mutatis mutandi…absence of evidence (that women are in “aggressively predatory jobs like commodities trading”) is not evidence of absence (of women liking or being able to like “aggressively predatory jobs like commodities trading”).

    There is no credible way to utterly disambiguate social constructionism from whatever kind of biological “imperatives” we think exist, other than those that are most base.

    Moreover, I’ll reiterate — the essentializing road is just extremely, extremely muddy, undecipherable, tenuous, precarious, fraught, and mostly, utterly distasteful — if not completely irrelevant, even in the absolutely very best, most perfect situation. More than that, such a perspective does a gross and despicable disservice to what it means to be alive. What’s the point of it, other than giving various different groups of people permission to feel “naturally” superior to various different groups of others in various different ways. No matter how we attempt to frame it, delimiting another person’s agency is just a way to delimit one’s own…as (I think) Law said in the Baldwin episode, to debase another is to debase one’s self. No thanks!

    You said:

    “I think this is emblematic of a difference often found on the (broadly defined) left between those who want to be pragmatic and assemble a broad coalition to move the ball a little to the left (or even just prevent it from being moved to the right), and those who feel it is important to divine, define, distill, and then inflexibly insist on very pure progressive platforms. That struggle has been going on a long time and will no doubt continue for the foreseeable future.”

    First, I was just talking about combatting privilege/social hierarchies, not political expediency. You are putting words in my mouth.

    That said, to some extent you are correct that the twin drives for political expediency and political purity is a “perennial” problem for politics in general. As philosophers have suggested, it is this natural friction between ideas that moves our world in new directions.

    The caveat to this being — I don’t think that any sort of leftist politics that actually and literally promotes and/or legalizes inequality, oppression, and injustice writ large has any place whatsoever on the left or in the modern world for that matter.

    In addition, there is no reason why a broad coalition of leftists can’t come together or aren’t coming together now. If someone sees a way to bring more people on board with a broad, populist economic agenda (or whatever), then go for it…most leftists are not going to stand in the way. If certain segments of the leftist community feel that such an activity is important, then they should get out there and do it…they don’t need to wait for “permission,” they can organize on their own, and to the extent that it supports leftist ideas/moves the ball to the left, I’m sure that other leftists would be willing to support it. If identity politics is not your “thing,” then don’t make it your personal project…plug into politics in the way that makes sense to you. That’s the best that any of us can do. Beyond that, it doesn’t hurt to know about identity politics, even if you disagree with it or don’t want to engage with it directly. Lastly, the terrain of possibilities for leftist political activity never has to just be dictated and determined by “the media” writ large, what’s “popular” among college students, or what happens in comment sections (for example) — the world is huge, and there are tons of opportunities to engage.

    What’s the point in bemoaning how things aren’t perfect the way you want them to be perfect — they never were, and never will be…The point is to participate.

    Reply

    • Alan Thomas says

      April 21, 2017 at 3:18 pm

      Athena Sophia,

      For a brief shining moment, I thought we were proceeding to a place of mutual respect that could serve as an model for how to express strong ideological disagreement without engaging in mudslinging. But then I got to your characterization of mine as a “debased and intellectually bankrupt perspective”. 🙁

      Reply

13. Luke T says

    August 5, 2018 at 5:37 am

    Identity politics coda:

    Elucidations episode #107: Linda Martín Alcoff discusses identity and history
    https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/elucidations/2018/08/03/episode-107-linda-martin-alcoff-discusses-identity-and-history/

    Reply

14. Sean says

    November 4, 2023 at 8:10 am

    Privilege may be the most accurate word. If someone who is triggered by the word white privilege, maybe when their family says “ I love you “ they should say. “ Aww. I love all people too”.

    I think the point is to make sure every living being has the opportunity to live up to their greatest potential.
    Because exceptional people can be born to any parents in any class or race.

    Reply