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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

Great read.

I've become allergic to words like "privilege" as they usually are seen in the company of ill-thought-out and grandiose/insulting/wrong proclamations about How Things Should Be Done,

..but this is none of that - it's an honest look and deep analysis of someone's experience.

And knowing how important upbringing is, and the sheer (almost superhuman) tenacity the author had to go through to even partially overcome the (poisonous? non-optimum?) mindset that was completely a result of things out of their control...

what the heck is everyone else supposed to do? How does society do right by people like this? Overall, we're pretty horrible at dealing with things that are as subtle as mindset.

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To be honest, one thing you can do is retrain yourself to be un-allergic to words like "privilege", and see their use as the consequence of a lot of people's suffering systemic unfairness and injustice.

When I see that word, "privilege," especially tied to attacks on white/male/hetero/whatever, my response isn't "oh jeez, not that again".....it's "yeah, that is a problem, and I really wish the other white male hetero folks in the room could see it and not just roll their eyes".

It sounds like you want to be an ally, and that's great. I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal, it really isn't about you, even though you're a beneficiary of it every day. Knowing about systemic injustice and doing nothing/remaining silent, though, that's pretty callous, and knowing about systemic injustice and perpetuating it, well, then it would be about you.

Or you could stop using the fact that someone is white, male, or straight as some kind of attack, insult, or excuse.

There are certainly issues in society, real problems but I'm tired of hearing it. Somehow all of my hardships in life are reduced to nothing, because I'm "privileged".

"...if you think having privilege means that you’re a bad person, or that you haven’t had struggles, or that you haven’t worked hard for what you have – then I can totally feel why you might be frustrated. If that were the case, then yes, it’d be completely unfair of me to claim that all white people or straight people or men or people of any other dominant group are living easy off their unearned privileges.

But having privilege doesn’t mean any of those things."

Maisha Z. Johnson, http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-me...

Then perhaps Ms. Johnson should take that up with 90% of the people who use the word "privilege" in arguments nowadays, because they're not using it the way she thinks they're using it.

I don't think it's solely Ms. Johnson's job to tell people that they're using the word wrong. Now that you know the meaning, you can help us spread the knowledge (like I did by sharing that link).

This sounds like linguistic prescriptivism. For most human communication, the most commonly used definition is the "correct" one.

Cf. "Literally", "I could care less", "Dapper"

That's the formal definition, used when being scrutinized. The angrier one is far more common in real life debate.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word...

Does it being said in anger make it any less applicable?

The definition used in someone's essay means ass all to me. It's he definiton uaee by the common man, if you'll excuse my microaggression.

It's usually used to quash disagreements. As in "check your privilege." It's often used as a way to categorically exclude people from a discussion, and this sense is the "angry" sense. So yes, it's less applicable because it's used as a shortcut to avoid forming a real understanding with someone else.

If people are invalidating your hardships because of your privilege, they are wrong. But that doesn't mean the term isn't useful.

"Having Privilege Refers to Systematic Benefits for Your Identity (But the Same Identity Trait May Still Attract Incidents of Prejudice)"

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-me...

I don't have a problem with that specific definition. The problem that arises is that we sort of assume as a society that certain privileges trump everything else and are the primary drivers in terms of the experience an individual will, or has had in their life.

Came across this a little while ago:

> “Even if you do not feel yourself to be guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}, you are guilty because you have a privileged position in the {sinful,racist,sexist,homophobic,oppressive,…} system.”

> For [that argument] to work, the subject must be prevented from noticing that the demand to self-condemn is not based on the subject’s own actions or choices or feelings, but rather on an in-group identification ascribed by the operator of the kafkatrap. [...]

> The subject must be prevented from asserting his or her individuality and individual agency; better, the subject must be convinced that asserting individuality is yet another demonstration of denial and guilt. Need it be pointed out how ironic this is, given that kafkatrappers (other than old-fashioned religious authoritarians) generally claim to be against group stereotyping?

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122

"I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal,"

Most times I've seen people talk about privilege, it got personal (as in, filled with obscenities, personal attacks, and thinly veiled threats) very quickly when others did not immediately agree with them. So your statement does not comport with my experience, at least.

I wonder what the value is for various types of "privilege"? As in, if you could pay so much and reap the benefits, how much should someone be willing to pay? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000?

It's relatively easy to quantify pay discrimination against various groups. Emotional pain and civil rights deprivation are harder to quantify, though.

It's relatively easy to quantify pay discrimination against various groups

Is it?

Would you then argue that since Asians in the US have a higher median income than whites, the difference is due to discrimination? If not, then what is the cause?

It is not ok to look at someone's gender, age & race and make assumptions about there life, full stop.

Applying a term like 'privileged' to an entire group of people based on a single characteristic is stereotyping at it's worst. This isn't to say that trends don't exist, but it is not ok to assume something about an individual simply because it's true, as a general rule for the group they belong to. Like it or not, that's the trap that many people fall into when talking about privilege.

But that's really the whole point of privilege - belonging to the group is enough to grant you the advantages of it. Period. It doesn't mean your life is great, it doesn't mean you don't have problems, but the members of a privileged class absolutely possess those privileges - that's how it works.

I get it, but I don't buy it. Rather, I don't buy that it's so cut and dried as to be accepted with "period". When you're part of the largest demographic, you're basically invisible: Generic 30s Middle Class White Guy #87473674282.

The term just isn't nuanced enough.

Well, that's part of the point, the invisibility.

Like, for example, there are those studies that show how people with names that sound traditionally black don't get called for job interviews nearly as often. Take the name off the resume and they get called with parity to traditionally white-sounding names.

Or, for another example, it used to be that orchestral auditions were conducted where you could see the player as they played. Orchestras of the period were heavily male-dominated. After they switched to blind auditions--that is, the player plays behind a partition, so you can't see whether they're male or female--suddenly a lot more women started getting hired for orchestral musician positions. The gender balance has begun approaching parity, when the listeners can't see who's playing.

You're right that generic white guy is "invisible," but another way to look at it is, we're the standard. We fit the type everyone wants already. We don't stand out, because we're basically the accepted definition of an acceptable person. We are who you hire, put in your tv shows, give housing loans to, etc.

Or maybe it's just human nature to identify with those who possess similar qualities. This isn't "systemic racism/sexism", it's perfectly natural. Minorities often favor other minorities in their own circles, women definitely favor other women, but because they're in the minority the behavior somehow becomes ok. If people are upset about broken job interview processes, then maybe we should fix the fucking broken job interview process rather than scream "racism" or "sexism" and force people to hire for quotas.

Just like you mention, blind auditions boiled the interview down to the only thing that matters - the music. And if they were truly better at playing than the others, the orchestra was hurting itself by not hiring them in the first place. Other competing orchestras could implement the blind-audition approach and play much better music and get more audience members as a result.

The last thing you want, however, is to swing the other direction and give people jobs based primarily on their minority status. That's as bad as nepotism/cronyism and it rots organizations in the same way.

Thanks for not denying that privilege exists, and for pointing out that some of it is likely due to the unconscious bias we can politely dub "human nature"! E.g. we hire people who look like us, even if they're not the best people for the job...

You know, in situations like this I'm often reminded of that Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

I think a lot of the pushback against awareness and understanding of privilege comes from that idea.

Being told that you're getting some lucky break because you're a hetero white dude, whether it's preferential treatment in job interview callbacks or orchestra hiring or any of the million other things that have been so insanely thoroughly documented.. well, kinda draws attention to the possibility that, if we were living in a meritocratic world, suddenly all us lucky white dudes would have to compete with a much wider group of people. A man's salary and all that.

As far as swinging the other way and preferring people for their minority status, quite frankly, I'm totally ok with doing so for a generation or two, since I would at least be trying to compensate for hundreds of years of systemic bias against those beleaguered groups of people. Forever? Naw. For now? Sure, even if it means I personally would lose out on contracts or whatever.

But our disagreement here is something to work out in the political arena, not something I think it makes sense to try and bridge from first principles or anything; I at least used to feel the way you do, and came to change my mind about it only through a lot of life experience that told me it made sense to change my mind.

I'd like to see some of those insanely documented things and look at them critically. For example, the job callback thing pertains to people with black-sounding names, not whether the the applicant is actually black. Perhaps that speaks to cultural privilege instead of racial.

Consider scholarships: if you're a white male, you have to be exceptional vs your cohort in some other way (academics, athletics, etc) to find a scholarship. If you're a minority, you have to... be a minority. That's a disadvantage of being Generic White Male #434242.

To be clear, I fully recognize that real, actual race-based discrimination on a systemic scale happened fairly recently in the US, and to an extent still happens today. 100% no argument there.

The problem with "privilege" as a label is that it describes a population, yet is applied consistently - sometimes weaponized - to individuals.

Frankly speaking, It kinda sounds like you're so invested in the idea of privilege being fictional that my guess is nothing anyone says to you via the internet would ever change your mind.

Which, funnily enough, is one of the benefits of it, you can ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, because the bias it implies wouldn't effect you anyway.

I don't try to convince climate change deniers either, because I learned long ago that you can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.

That's weird, because I said nothing of the sort. In fact my GP comment pretty strongly implies my belief that some privilege does exist.

My argument is fairly constrained in scope and can logically be broken down like this: privilege can be used to describe a group but not applied to an individual. This should be axiomatic; incorrectly applying group properties to an individual is known as an ecological or division fallacy. Whenever you hear (or invoke) an admonition to "check your privilige", consider whether this error is being made.

The thing is, people know this. I know they know this because any example of "anti-privilige" is summarily dismissed as a unique case representing the elastic nature of privilige.

The other thing that makes privilige hard to discuss is that when you question assumptions or ask for specifics, you are instantly dismissed as an enemy of the cause. Your reply here is a great example. Above you mention "a million other things" that have been "insanely thoroughly documented", I said I'd like to see them to look at them critically, and that trigged Red Alert. At that point you lumped me in with climate change deniers and considered me irrational, because asking questions makes me the Enemy. This is a pattern that occurs frequently; the CoC discussion on php-internals took a similar path. It's such a bizarre thing to me, because as engineers we all follow a rubric that's roughly: 1. identify and describe the problem 2. consider solutions 3. implement the best solution. But in the social justice arena, trying to participate in #1 gets you cast out as oblivious, ignorant, irrational, or worse -- unless you belong to a certain in-group.

In the quest for inclusion, it seems like there's a lot of exclusion happening.

"hetero white dude,"

So just curious: what's with referring to men as "dudes" when you're trying to make points about inclusive behavior and language and such? I'm seeing this a lot, and this weird language tic really detracts from whatever point the person is making. You don't refer to women as "chicks," do you?

> you're basically invisible.

That's the point - being invisible is a privileged state. Black people are not invisible the US, where some people (not all) will inevitably treat them with suspicion (or worse).

> That's the point - being invisible is a privileged state.

So compared to a rich, white expat in some African or Asian country, the typical resident of said country is privileged? Because in that country, compared to the expat, the resident is essentially invisible, and the white expat is decidedly not invisible.

And many people will treat the expat with suspicion, or worse. Are all of those people "privileged", and the expat "not privileged"?

> expat in some African or Asian country

There may have been some confusion as I apparently left out a word ("/in/ the US"). I'm only discussing privilege in the US.

I have no idea how these things work in Africa or Asia. Presumably there are similar situations in other countries, though that is a guess. Your scenario sounds reasonable - yes, the natives would have the privilege of starting with the "default" level of suspicion while the (white) foreigner has to overcome an extra scrutiny.

Privilege can be overcome. You specified a rich expat, and money can be a very effective way to make problems go away. However, a similarly rich native will probably have to spend somewhat less money in similar situations because of their privilege.

The problem with that definition is that it's nearly impossible to apply that to an individual without bias.

It predisposes us to assume that the privileges possessed by an individual are one of the primary drivers of the experiences they have had in their life. Privilege isn't uniformly distributed across all members of a group.

Let's say that group Y enjoys a much higher college acceptance rate. Due to their privilege, 80% of applicants from group Y are accepted to college. Do the 20% of applicants from group Y who were denied also posses the privilege of greater rates of college acceptance? Is it right for me to assume that since an individual belongs to group Y, they have personally benefited from this particular privilege?

Let me be clear: I think that taking a hard look at inequalities between groups and seeking to ameliorate them is the right thing to do, and something we should all be doing. What I find problematic is using broad statistics to make assumptions about individual people.

It's not 'nearly' impossible; it is impossible. It's impossible to make any decisions without bias. The important thing is knowing what your biases are and knowing what decisions you're actually making and the effects they actually have.

People like to imagine that they don't actually make policy decisions, then they have no influence on the world. That's really not the case, and the best course of action is to be aware of the influence you have, and make sure your biases aren't influencing things in a negative way.

Yes, but people don't belong to one group.

I would argue that height, intelligence, general health, economic class, propensity for addictive behaviors, wealth of your parents, children rearing skills of your parents, closeness of extended family, social network of your family, family religion, access to nutrition, country of birth, access to healthcare (I could go on and on) all help/hurt your potential in life.

Saying that "you're [white, male, rich] so you're privileged" is ridiculous when it only one of probably thousands of different factors that can impact your success in life. It's lazy thinking.

Did you not read all the comments here from people from poor, rural families for whom the post resonated? Many, if not most of them are likely white (some even explicitly stated it).

What exact privilege does growing up desperately poor in rural West Virginia bring you? A person from a middle class black family in NYC would have much more opportunity.

Yes, each person would face their own set of challenges (ie, the black person vis-a-vis the police, although believe me that unjustified police brutality happens to white people too). But it's wrong to judge one as being "privileged" based solely on their skin color, without knowing anything about them.

Sadly, I noticed that most of the people shouting "privilege" at others themselves come from very privileged backgrounds, and have learned this attitude at some expensive private liberal arts college. I'm not sure what is driving their crusades (guilt?), but again, I was raised that it's not right to judge people based solely on their skin color, regardless of the rational behind it. And fail as I may sometimes, I will continue to strive toward that goal.

Finally, what about those of us coming from a mixed-race background, with a grandparent or great-grandparent from a "non-privileged" group? If you look hard at some of us, you can see evidence of that group. Are we partially privileged? Or is being privileged a discrete state?

People with high IQ's are privileged. Tall people are privileged. People with happy demeanors are privileged. People who are beautiful are privileged. Yet I don't hear many people telling tall, beautiful, intelligent, or happy people to "acknowledge their privilege" and do something about those who don't possess it. I'd rather be black than be short, be female than be stupid, be beautiful than be rich, and be homosexual than be clinically depressed. And I don't hold it against those who possess those desirable qualities or expect them to make up for my lack thereof.

There's one problem here:

..(my response is) "yeah, that is a problem"

Well, no, not always. There are two huge problems with the whole "you are privileged therefore.." argument, so much so that I question the value of even using it:

- They extrapolate the general to the individual, which is unfair for the same reason that all prejudice is unfair.

- It's used disgustingly often as a throwaway attack to silence people. (In essence: You're privileged, shaddap) - The same people would use this to attack the author of this article, based on what's immediately visible about him (white male), without knowing a damn thing about his struggle.

For a very good recent example of this, look at what happened at Missouri U in the news.

I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal...

If only I could believe that. My experience on the greater internet in the last few years is that, perhaps nine times out of ten, anyone using the word intends it as an attack on a group (their intentions, however noble, are irrelevant), and the other time, it gets the serious, thoughtful treatment we see here.

The reason I'm allergic to "privilege" is that 9 out 10 times, "you are privileged" is followed by "and here is how we are going to fuck you over to fix that"

It's not the word that is the problem. The problem is that the word is used with intent to insult people for the sin of being white and male. No matter what word you choose to use for that insult, it will be met with an eye-roll.

mentoring. poor students.

Couldn't hurt, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't really solve the problem.

The author was poor, but appeared to have a positive, if difficult home life. Mentoring would have helped the knowledge problem, but his problem was lack of resource above everything else.

Lack of resource leads to instability, and it taints literally everything you do, even mentally.

I know, I know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It's not me you have to convince.

The mental training poor people, middle class people, and rich people get is completely different.

If you grow up poor there's a huge amount you need to learn - about law, politics, business ethics, finance, negotiation, social signalling, confidence and assertiveness, and how to find and deal with influencers - that the rich seem to be taught effortlessly.

Having more money doesn't change the basic life training, because the life training is itself a form of positional social signalling.

If you're middle class you're half in and half out. You have some idea how the world really works, but your ability to act on that learning is limited because you won't naturally have the right contacts - unless you cultivate them deliberately.

Most of the poor have no idea that any of this matters. They're caged inside a media-managed world view, and it takes exceptional ability to break out of that.

Mentoring can help some, but nothing helps as much as confidence and contacts.

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