A motorcycle is a vehicle.
A bicycle is not a motorcycle. Why? Because a motorcycle has power.
Seriously, I don't know why the "prejudice + power" definitional distinction is so hard for well-meaning people to understand. It makes perfect sense.
For example, a white Appalachian coal miner and a black Ivy League professor have a power disparity based on income, education, and social class.
But the "prejudice + power" crowd will have you believe that the coal miner's membership in the elusive all-powerful "white people" monolith gives him more social cache´ (hence power) than the professor. That's because the professor's membership in the elusive "black people" monolith puts him near the top of the marginalized intersectional hierarchy.
Any rational person who isn't obsessed with the phenotypical categorization of individuals (aka a bigot) will reject this notion - recognizing the professor's freedom/power relative to the coal miner.
People are individuals (not groups) with complicated lives and experiences.
To reduce ALL "black people" to marginalized victims is the soft bigotry of low expectations. But worse, to elevate all "white people" above all "black people" is a vile and tacit view that all "white people" are the necessary saviors of all "black people". This kind of twisted illiberal thinking permanently infantilizes all "black people".
To insist that the "prejudice + power" argument is premised on bright-line "race == power" is to mischaracterize it to the point of being unrecognizable.
It's about relative power. If I'm black, and your boss, and have a prejudice against your race, I can be racist. If I'm black, have no meaningful kind of power over you, and have a prejudice against your race, I'm just prejudiced.
That's the position. This "ALL" lunacy is a multiple fallacies in one, and it remains a bitter disappointment to see a crowd of people who otherwise pride themselves aloud on being so smart, buy into it so unexaminedly.
It's almost as if the majority doesn't want us talking about it at all. That's how it's playing out in the culture.
Think about this when you attack terminology.
1. Which privileged majority?
> It's almost as if the majority doesn't want us talking about it at all. That's how it's playing out in the culture.
2. No one is censoring you. Talk all you like. Putting ideas and thoughts in the open is critical to arriving at common truth. But if these redefinitions and new language terms are to be pushed into the culture then expect inquiry, discussion, criticism, debate, resistance, dissent, and (when dialogue fails) mockery.
> Think about this when you attack terminology.
3. I don't accept that use of the terminology in question, in case that was unclear. Your redefinitions and new language are not sacrosanct to me. Here's how I see the three _P_ words:
* Prejudice, colloquially speaking, is to negatively judge people based on preconceived notions and stereotypes.
* A Privilege is a specific right or advantage gained through merit or inheritance.
* Power is the ability to exercise a freedom with low risk of sanction.
Remember, you're asserting your personal definitions over those that have developed through decades of academic discourse on the subject.
Why should we prefer your terms, again?
They're the generally accepted definitions.
The definitions you are presenting are therefore ideological at best.
They are not his terms. His definition is the one that has existed for much longer than the ones the academics prefer.
People don't have issue with the academics' need to make distinctions. The issue is that if you need to make a distinction, you should coin a word for what you mean - not use a very well established term.
2. I'm not being censored. Duh. Just because the right whines about being censored whenever someone disagrees with them doesn't mean I do.
3. Let's address the term "privilege" here again. I've defined privilege as "absence of discrimination". Discrimination is separate from prejudice - it's an expression of power (this is equivalent to the definition of "racism" that you reject).
Now you're going to have to think here, not just react. You agree that prejudice exists, right? Ok. So you agree that discrimination exists - that parties with power use their power to harm those who suffer their prejudice? Ok then. If you're arguing discrimination does not even exist, that's a different and unsolvable problem.
So what do you call an absence of discrimination? Because the absence of a thing is also a thing. We create words for that.
The generally accepted word for the absence of discrimination is "privilege". You reject this definition, disallowing the common English-language concept that words often have more than one meaning. So do you have a different word for the absence of discrimination? Do you have a way to express this in your pure vocabulary?
Didn't think so.
2. Whatever.
3. MW dictionary shows no such definition of privilege. Is it in wide use? Link?
Of course, I agree there's such a thing as "discrimination". When we make value judgements, we discriminate. You like blue better than red? That's discrimination. You like people with hazel eyes best? Discrimination. You like your family better than strangers? Yup - discrimination.
In the context of this thread. racial discrimination is to favor a race (positive discrimination) or devalue another race (negative discrimination).
And FWIW, I begrudgingly accept that the contemporary definition of racism is a superset that includes racial discrimination, racial prejudice, and racial antagonism.
I say begrudgingly because this wasn't the case 20-30 years ago. The words "racism" and "racist" were reserved for the most vile organizations or individuals that actively sought to discriminate/disenfranchise/injure people on the basis of their race or ethnicity. The word "prejudiced" was used to describe thoughtless or inadvertent discriminatory attitudes. The word "bigot" was reserved for people who hurled racial/ethnic epithets and found self-satisfaction from putting/keeping down people based on their race/ethnicity.
So you see - back then people used discrimination to sort these trespasses into a value hierarchy: the prejudiced person was annoying but okay, the bigot was an intolerable asshole, and the racist was vile and physically dangerous scum.
Would you mind clarifying the distinction between "differentially enfranchised groups" and "race == power" ?
One describes a tendency; the other asserts an identity relationship.
It doesn't map perfectly, but it's close enough for the bandwidth I have to keep contributing to this thread right now.
This is like saying that if someone were, e.g., operating from mistaken beliefs about the prevalence of some socially regressive attitude or other among technologists, it's appropriate for them to ask any random developer, "Why do developers think ____?"
Huh?
Not the subset of it I engage with — and that includes people who hold (graduate) degrees in things like "Gender Studies" or "Ethnic Studies", and such-like — which means we're playing some form of "dueling anecdata".
To that end, I'd invite you to speculate momentarily on how many people in this discussion have ever engaged in meaningful, substantive discourse with people from the "social justice crowd" (which, btw: ugh, dismissive name-calling, much?) about their positions, and aren't merely regurgitating their own narratives, of whatever other origin.
And with regards to "dismissive name-calling" - I wasn't aware that "social justice crowd" was a pejorative. If there's a better moniker that represents the broader set of ideas I'd be pleased to know and use it.
As for your claim that you're engaged in "other meaningful discourse" and that I'm "merely regurgitating my own narrative", I'd invite you to notice that your ad hominem attacks are not arguments.
I'm not asserting any specific person here is a member of either set — except myself, based solely and specifically on my own, direct experience. I'm also absolutely not asserting you're "regurgitating" anything.
Just, on the basis of the conversations I've had, and the independent reading I've done, there is no way some of the positions being fervently argued in this broader discussion are based on anything except internalizing some (usually agenda-serving) misapprehension of what "SJWs", or feminists, or whatever, are, want, and intend.
As for the term, itself, it's been seen as mostly pejorative for as long as I've been aware of it. How about, instead of a bucket you (the general "you") can dismiss people and their beliefs into, ("Oh, look. Another 'SJW'..."), we try something along the lines of, "Hmm. Someone who thinks differently from me. I wonder how..."
It's, in my "I've been online for more than 20 years now" opinion, a term that is vastly more often used to shut down discourse than it is to open it up.
I prefer to use "social justice advocates" - I used "crowd" here but there was no ill intent.
And if I didn't apologize earlier for making assumptions about your views, I'm apologizing right now. I'd rather learn what you truly think than insist a caricature upon you. It's the only way to have an honest conservation, I think.
I think "social justice advocate" is a reasonable term, though "social justice anything" is probably always going to risk evoking a reaction, and not a response; for example, I probably did with your use of "crowd", which might in turn have colored my reply.
I hope I'm offering you some food for thought, or at least another insight into a perspective that differs from yours.
There are people out there who hold considered, nuanced perspectives on these (and many other) topics. Our contemporary style of discourse makes it very difficult to be one of them. :(
The discourse does tend to quickly descend into defensiveness & assumptions of bad faith. For my part, I hope to do better the next time around. Cheers.
So yeah, speaking of dismissive.
Relative power is relative, and its associated with a distribution curve. One can acknowledge that different groups has different averages and distribution curves, and that those indicate social issues, while still object to lazy stereotypic that ignores the relative property of power. So much political fighting and polarization could be avoided if more people would see power as relative property between individuals.
The systemic part is a profoundly under-recognized force multiplier for the individual's power.
The systemic bias is an term for the result of gender stereotyping. It is lazy thinking by people who ignore individual attributes and reduces people down to a single bit of information. Does this happen? Yes. It is a probabilistic aspect that can have beneficial or negative effect on a person. As a force multiplier, both negative and positive, it is a sign of fault in society.
I agree it is a often profoundly under-recognized, but I will add that it is also profoundly misrepresented. Gender stereotyping is harmful to individuality in a such strong way that only seeing the benefits for one gender is to ignore the harm that it does to both genders.
I don’t think the people arguing for this alternative definition quite agree with you, anyways. I think that most of them prefer it because it means they can say “black people cant be racist agains whites,” for whatever reason.
Given how this new construction is used, my more cynical side wants to believe that what is gained is the ability of one side of the political aisle to spew any kind of hatred towards particular groups of people without criticism or consequence.
For a counterexample, look at the use of the word "privilege", a new definition introduced to the lexicon to explain one of the expressions of prejudice in society. (If you're already poising fingers over keyboard in angry rebuttal, stop and listen.) Privilege is conceptually very simple - it is the absence of discrimination. The absence of racism, or of sexism.
Yet the very term arouses righteous fury, to be even mentioned in the presence of many privileged people. Just watch the rebuttals this comment will draw for examples.
So to my original point, if you introduce new language to describe the prejudice + power concept, it will be vociferously attacked by those who do not face prejudice + power in their daily lives.
Likewise, if you more precisely define an existing word from this world - say, racism - it is also vociferously attacked, by the same people.
And attacking the very language being used to describe the problem is part of the problem.
Imagine you're gay, and you're hanging out with a new friend of your gender, who does not share your orientation. At what point is it appropriate for you to disclose your orientation to your friend? Too early, what if you're seen as coming onto them? Too late, what if you're seen as not trusting them? &c.
Not having to ask yourself that question is a form of "hetero privilege". It is a burden that, as a cis-het person, you will never face.
I no longer believe that. I think the people who are angry about the term "privilege" would be angry if we called it "bunnies".
It's not hard to understand, it's just a redefinition that was consciously created to justify claims that it was impossible for blacks to be racist, and which serves no good purpose. Yes, power dynamics are relevant to the impacts of racism; no, that doesn't make the effort to redefine racism in terms of them useful. Particularly because power isn't a binary trait, it's a multidimensional continuum, and prejudice is always accompanied by power, of some degree or scope.
And particularly, also, because he history of the redefinition is well-known and makes it divisive and redirects any discussion into a heated fight over semantics rather than substance, even if revisionists attempt to save the redefinition by trying to apply it in a more nuanced way.
It is easy to understand, but there is not consensus that the meaning should have been changed. Nor is there consensus on what "power" means.
Academics may have a good need for that distinction, but they made the mistake of overloading the word.
Before you get angry, go read your sentence again, at how you used "normal person". What does that say about those of us who live in places with more social diversity? That we're not "normal"?
Attributing qualities and intentions to someone you do not know is not a constructive way of having a meaningful discussion.