I have an ongoing struggle with the entire concept of privilege. I hear uses ranging from (on the positive side) real awareness of societal imbalances to (on the negative side) individuals using their lack of "privilege" as an excuse to not think about where others might be coming from. But there's something else about the questions that makes me itch a bit.
I think my problem is this: the ability to talk about privilege as a concept only occurs in people who are themselves privileged in some way. They may not be white, or male, or wealthy, but I do think that a certain level of education (formal or informal) or at least a certain breadth of cultural exposure is required. And having the cultural framework to understand privilege is itself a privilege, granting the power through a particular set of tools for responding to conflict.
What seems (to me) to be lost is the fact that huge swaths of the U.S. population -- including many poor Republicans and overt white supremacists, as well as many poor members of various minority groups -- hold the destructive views that they have because they have been deprived of certain types of privilege. It's easy for members of the Intelligentsia to criticize other members of the Intelligentsia for their lack of awareness of privilege, but I have trouble seeing how that type of discussion really gets at some of the deeper societal problems that result from deeply held beliefs that folks grow up with and have never had cause to question.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2010-02-17 21:21 (UTC)I think my problem is this: the ability to talk about privilege as a concept only occurs in people who are themselves privileged in some way. They may not be white, or male, or wealthy, but I do think that a certain level of education (formal or informal) or at least a certain breadth of cultural exposure is required. And having the cultural framework to understand privilege is itself a privilege, granting the power through a particular set of tools for responding to conflict.
What seems (to me) to be lost is the fact that huge swaths of the U.S. population -- including many poor Republicans and overt white supremacists, as well as many poor members of various minority groups -- hold the destructive views that they have because they have been deprived of certain types of privilege. It's easy for members of the Intelligentsia to criticize other members of the Intelligentsia for their lack of awareness of privilege, but I have trouble seeing how that type of discussion really gets at some of the deeper societal problems that result from deeply held beliefs that folks grow up with and have never had cause to question.