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White privilege, male privilege, and related privileges
Yes, this is a controversial topic. Tread cautiously.
It bugs me how such an important topic tends to provoke hostility or denial rather than open discussion since it is often seen as a personal attack. The tricky part is that privilege tends to be fairly insidious, so people may simply not realize their inherent societal advantage. And yet, it's unnerving that those same people would be unwilling to confront and analyze it, thinking it's enough to think they're not prejudiced. Thing is, they're not the same thing. Understanding privilege is important to instigate social change towards equality of opportunity, and when you deny that some groups are more equal than others, you unconsciously perpetrate this disparity.
Comments
Talking about privilege and bias seems completely legitimate and worthwhile to me. However, I have issues with people discussing privilege in a way that encourages people to feel guilty about things they cannot really control. While I might like the idea of people with wealth and influence voluntarily sharing with those who lack them, I do not condone the practice of making people with those resources feel bad about having them in the first place (unless they personally and directly obtained them through illicit or inappropriate means).
That guilt stuff bugs me because I believe it ends up making people feel like they are responsible for things their ancestors did. That in turn can lead them to grow depressed about that shame or how they do not deserve their privilege rather than encourage them to work to make things better for those with the least. In any event, I strongly believe that while stuff like white privilege or male privilege may affect one's material status in life, they have no real effect on whether one is good or bad in the moral sense.
Sorry for the necro, but:
The best analogy I've found so far for privilege is that it's like tiers in a fighting game. It's totally POSSIBLE to beat anyone with Yoshi in SSBM, or with Zangief in SF2, but it's much more difficult than if you were playing Marth or Balrog.
Similarly it's totally POSSIBLE for a black guy (or a woman, or a Muslim, etc.) to do well in life, but it's much harder than if he was white.
Serves them right for not picking Kirby.
I like the tier analogy. It also allows room for the people who miss the entire point of tiers and instead rant about tourneyfags and how anyone can beat anyone as long as they're good enough, thus they judge people on their own merits will not acknowledging privilege.
PRIVALEGS DON EXITS
HURR I SET UP STRAWMNA 2 FYT SO I LUK GUD
Think of a better argument.
^This is intentionally ironic, right?
I don't even know who Hatter is trying to address.
Yes. I use ironic humor a lot. In this case, it's meant to show that using a strawman is a stupid debate tactic and makes you look stupid.
Okay, but who was using a strawman? Or even trying to debate anything for that matter?
You wrote "PRIVALEGS DON EXITS," as a strawman for people arguing against privilege theory. The intentional misspellings are supposed to give the impression that anyone who doesn't subscribe to the privilege theory is mentally handicapped or poorly educated.
You...do realize that that's a meme, right?
Hatter - I thought he was just doing funny misspellings for a laugh.
No. I don't. I haven't played SSB since the N64 version.
I've heard of the meme and I have never been even slightly involved in the competitive Smash community. It's possible that I've overestimated how well-known it is (there isn't a KYM entry for it).
The full extent of my exposure to recent titles has been seeing a flyer for a contest for SSB:M in the elevator. Oh, and seeing it in my friend's room.
Yeah, but I mean, I picked up the meme in contexts not directly related to Smash at all.
@Hatter: Kirby is actually the single worst second worst character in Melee. You're thinking of the original SSB.
Oh, and Nyktos' post is a reference to TIRES DON EXITS.
I had TIRES DON EXITS explained to me by a friend who'd never even played Smash before. And as far as I know, still hasn't. And this was AFTER I'd played Smash and Melee myself.
I hadn't heard of it, but I sure as hell know it now.
So should I continue the conversation or
^ Go for it; it was a pretty silly derail in the first place.
Okay, here's my two cents.
I kind of get tired sometimes of people ranting on the privileged demographics. Partly because I fit just about every single one except upper class and Christian, and middle class honestly isn't that bad, and atheism is probably more acceptable with the people I interact with than the alternative. Granted, life has been pretty sweet for me, and there's a lot of nice things I have in my life that I feel that I didn't do much to earn.
I am annoyed when people who make assumptions that I haven't had to make some effort to keep my life on track. Granted it hasn't been too hard in my opinion, but I could name several people who haven't bothered to work as hard to make use of nearly the exact same opportunities- one of which is my own brother. It's also annoying when it's assumed I haven't faced discrimination, or judgements based on superficial things; everyone experiences that, though I grant you it hasn't been anything worth complaining about. The third thing that bothers me is an assumption that if I can see all my own prejudices, I'll be able to improve how the system works. I grew up in a town of white people, I don't make friends very quickly, and I get awkward around girls. This means that a lot of my friends are white males, and that's not something that I can change by being more aware of whatever misconceptions I have about what correlations exist between demographics and other traits. I had a Korean friend for a while, but he graduated. I've made a few female friends, but I don't really see them that often.
Privilege is indeed a tricky subject, because for one to admit that they are privileged, they first have to admit a certain degree of randomness in their lives. People generally enjoy having control over things, so it's difficult for many to grasp the fact that there are honestly parts of life that are completely beyond one's control, even if it results in favorable outcomes for the person in question.
There's also the element of systematic racism. Not everybody is racist, of course, but there are many systems that encourage a racist element. Most of them are pretty obvious, so I probably don't need to point them out in too much detail (dogwhistle politics, Arizona immigration laws and Arizona in general, the judicial system, sociological libertarianism, the fact that many people still find nothing wrong with certain forms of eugenics, etc.).
And as touchy as the subject of privilege is when it comes to race, it's even worse when it comes to gender and sex, because not only is sexism easier to get away with than racism in many aspects, a large portion of men (and women) seem incapable of understanding the fact that a segment of the population above 50% can still be discriminated against. So by latching on to fake or meaningless ideas that seem to confirm their beliefs (many complaints against women actually stem from patriarchy, for example), they are utterly incapable of even understanding the concept of privilege, let alone recognizing it when it comes up and trying to fight against it.
To summarize with an analogy, too many people look at the disproportionate amount of crime committed by black people and think that they are committing those crimes because they are black, and not because black people are largely in worse socioeconomic conditions than white people.
It is amusing, but that is more true for harder drugs than softer drugs, or even cocaine. Of course, considering the fact that the numbers are skewed due to racism in the police force and fear of reporting, we will probably never know the true demographics of drug users.
"I grew up in a town of white people, I don't make friends very quickly, and I get awkward around girls. This means that a lot of my friends are white males, and that's not something that I can change by being more aware of whatever misconceptions I have about what correlations exist between demographics and other traits. I had a Korean friend for a while, but he graduated. I've made a few female friends, but I don't really see them that often."
It's not that big a deal to talk to girls. By the time I got out of high school, it was a natural thing because we only minimally cared if someone was male or female. I knew the people in high school that I did because we were in the same high achievers group from junior high onward.