Privilege. How can it be talked about and acknowledged in today's society

[chomalungma]

Just a follow up from the recent threads. Male privilege. White privilege. It exists. But some people think it is a poor concept as they don't seem privileged. This thread is just to carry on the conversation.

Didn't.

It doesn't but you won't get a reply here because the narrative is that ALL white people in ALL situations will always have white privilege

If you think that, then you clearly misunderstand the concept.

malylis

You're just making yourself look ignorant here. It absolutely did happen. Perhaps educate yourself.

People have more important things to think about, work, paying bills, etc. Plus few people care

People have more important things to think about, work, paying bills, etc. Plus few people care

With that attitude, many of the social changes over the centuries wouldn't have happened - especially when it comes to discrimination.

If these things hadn't happened, how would your life had been compared to if it had happened.

Many people are massively unaware of the social changes that have taken place - especially through leglisation - and the struggle needed to be bring them about and the resistance people faced.

Not at all making myself look ignorant, of course in London someone told white people to "go home".

So in the city with the largest mix of ethnicities in the country, but still where white british born are the largest group, someone shouted a well known racist slur at them. This story then gets used as an anecdote in a debate about race conveniently.

Hmmm yeah.

You really do.need to educate yourself.

Yes London as a city is diverse but individual areas are not necessarily. Go to Whitechapel for example.

I went out with a man of Bangladeshi origin for a few years and we often were subject to abuse from both black and white people depending on what area we were in.

If you really don't think that a group consisting of 2 pensioners, 2 young children and a woman could not be a target for a gang of youths in London then you are sadly mistaken. Good for you that you've never experienced it.

Someone can’t help being born white. Or born male. Or anything else for that matter. People with high IQ s or a genius for music have privilege.

I’m white, female, from a free school meals household, misogynistic father but went to a grammar school, got a degree, in well paid employment for 30 years. Am I privileged? Or disadvantaged? Or lucky? Or hard working?

All those white males sent to board at prep school at 8yo and then to Eton where they don’t have a clue how normal life works. They are often hopeless at genuine relationships as a result. So are they privileged or deprived of a normal intimacy with their parents & siblings.

I’d far rather concentrate effort on bolstering the life chances of those who aren’t white or male or rich, clever or musical then put down those who fall into arbitrary categories decided by someone else.

How do you think being white can be different to being BAME in certain areas of life?

How do you think being female affects you in life?

How does a grammar school education affect you?

It's not a zero sun cumulative addition and subtraction game.

The definition of privilege is not experiencing additional hardships due to your race, sex, sexuality, etc. It has absolutely nothing to do with “having a privileged life

Agreed but reading that back surely you can see how the language of privilege is confusing and unhelpful, as had been discussed on this thread.

It's not really complicated. The idea that you can be privileged in some areas and be disadvantaged in others because of various features about you isn't that hard a concept to grasp.

So, having read the whole thread, to summarise - white people just need to say they acknowledge that having a black skin puts you at a disadvantage that having a white skin doesn't. Then everything will be fine.

Sorted

Inequality is irrelevant - reducing absolute levels of poverty is what matters.

Nope. Economic and social studies show time after time (try Joseph Stieglitz "The price of inequality" for one summary) that people feel worse when they measure themselves against those whom they consider their peers and come out worse.

That is why keeping up with the Jonses is a really interesting phenomenon. We can talk about absolute poverty and we definitely should be doing something to address that on a global scale.

But we should also be addressing the more important for people in the UK notion of relative poverty too. One of the way some countries more or less successfully address that is through income (and other) taxes. So that those who earn way above the national average pay more than those who earn below. Those who earn below are given grants and subsidies and benefits to bring them up closer to a level that we would find acceptable in our country.

And this has a lot to do with privilege. Who earns more? people who were born into wealthy families, had private education, went to good universities (sometimes on grades far worse than those achieved by children from less affluent backgrounds) and so on and so on. The fact that people tend to marry into similar class/backgrounds consolidates that.

Girls, as a group, used to do worse at school than boys in terms of exam success and entry to university etc. This was because boys were privileged and education more tailored to their strengths and needs. After a few decades of redressing the balance we see that girls do very well. Working class boys as a group, it seems, are doing worse at school than other socio-economic groups and it probably means that we need to tweak the balance. Or find some way of bringing them up. It need not be at the expense of other groups having to do worse (ie. It is not a zero-sum game)

The same could be said about lots of things: recruiting more BAME to the police; getting women or POC in higher positions in companies; blind recruitment; making sure that accessibility is foremost in our minds when planning spaces where people congregate for work and pleasure.

It doesn't take away from anyone but it does enrich society.

That's a beautifully written paragraph.