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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

I think it's because the accusation of "privilege" is conversation-stopping. There is no where to go once this is said, because it's a fundamental attack on who the person is, which is something that cannot be changed, discards any merit of a point being argued, and provides no solutions.

It essentially asserts that the person saying something is to be disqualified and/or the opinion is inferior without any logical proof. And it suggests "my position is inherently more correct than yours" because I'm not privileged. It signals the end of rational discussion.

Is it any wonder that many people (when their private opinions are polled, rather than asked to join shouting in a crowd) actually dislike the tactic?

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I think you can distill that further.

Talk to anyone you don't know... and tell them what you know about them based on their race as if it is fact.

Generally, not a good way to connect, and you have a good chance of being wrong.

It's a backwards framing of the problem. Think about it: in a country where everyone is white, is there “white privilege?” How can the majority of people in a country be “privileged?” Is that how normal people talk? The issue isn't white privilege. By almost any metric, the most "privileged" demographic in the U.S. is actually Asians. (A U.S.-born Asian growing up in the bottom 20% of the income distribution has a 27% chance of ending up in the top 20%. That's far ahead of whites born in the bottom 20%.) The real problem is that African Americans are disadvantaged. The "privilege" that whites enjoy is that they don't suffer all the social disadvantages of being African American.

Framing is a challenging problem but you are right that it is important.

Locally we have a lot of black immigrants, they of course have a lot of challenges. They often get lumped into a "black" group.

But looking at the statistics closer indicates they are making fast progress in many areas, similarly to a local immigrant Asian population made many years ago.

However, the local African Americans generally are not making a lot educational or economic progress.

The differences are striking and really change where you think more / different resources are needed and what is going on for a given group.

I read somewhere that the vast majority of black students in elite universities are either biracial (like Obama) or of Caribbean descent, not of former US slaves.

Yeah, I think a better framing is "black disadvantage". Whites won't object to this.

As I understand it, "privilege" has nothing to do with income metrics and what have you. Privilege means that you can assume that society and all its mechanisms will work in your favor. Privilege means that if something horribly unfair happens to you, you can shout about it, and people will listen. Lacking privilege means that, when you shout about it, society will tell you to STFU. Having privilege means you can forget about having privilege. Lacking privilege means you need to constantly worry about losing it.

The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.

The minority can never, ever forget that they are the minority.

> As I understand it, "privilege" has nothing to do with income metrics and what have you. Privilege means that you can assume that society and all its mechanisms will work in your favor.

When an Asian American born in the bottom 20% is much more likely to end up in the top 20% than a white person in the same situation, how is that not “society and it’s mechanisms working in favor” of the Asian person?

> The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.

That’s just a roundabout way of saying that minorities have disadvantages. Obviously that’s true. But expressing it as “white privilege” is a bizarre rhetorical device that doesn’t reflect how normal people talk. We don’t talk about the “privilege” of being average height, we talk about the challenges of especially tall people fitting into airplane seats or of especially short people in finding suits that fit.

Exactly. The absence of disadvantaged isn’t privileged.

Besides, all those people in America talking about other people’s privilege often neglect the massive one they have - living now, in a first world country.

At the end of the day, thumping your chest saying you’re a bigger victim because x, y, z will only go so far. It will get you favor with some, but eventually people tire of being attacked.

It seems to come as shock that lots of white men don’t support people who call white men the root of all evil. There seems to be another shock that white women often support the men. I don’t know why they’re surprised. They have fathers, brothers, and sons.

Guilt by born identity is a farce. This isn’t the Bible. We don’t have original sin, and while we do have historical sins, everyone has it. everyone.

>I think it's because the accusation of "privilege" is conversation-stopping.

I agree it signals the end of rational discussion, but not the end of the conversation. It's usually immediately followed up with all the ways privileged people need to give X, Y, and Z to everyone else, in perpetuity, to "make things even." Unsurprisingly, that's an unpopular idea.

It's not an attack, though, and it's not a reflection of who a person is. Privilege is about the circumstances the person is in, how lucky they are in the cosmic lottery of life. Being privileged doesn't make you a bad person. Failing to recognize your privilege may, depending on your moral framework.

>Failing to recognize your privilege may

What does that even mean? This is code for “you should feel guilty for who you are” and generally a big reason why people become combative when the term “privilege” gets brought up.

It's part of the kafkaesque mentality that denial is the strongest proof of guilt.

Denial is proof of guilt? Someone tell the justice system they’ve been doing it all wrong.

>Denial is proof of guilt?

It's part of the bizarro "privilege" narratives. In their framework, if you deny the existence of your privilege, you are proving you have it even more, because only a "privileged" person is capable of ignoring the concept of privileged/unprivileged

The parent is referencing the "Kafka Trap", which I believe was originally coined on ESR's blog a decade or so ago. This rhetorical construction is used a lot in these kinds of discussions, and, because of its crudeness, is why people tend to get pretty bent out of shape during said discussion.

>One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}.” I’ve been presented with enough instances of this recently that I’ve decided that it needs a name. I call this general style of argument “kafkatrapping”, and the above the Model A kafkatrap.

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

It's not feeling guilty of who you are, it's being aware of who you are.

I would believe that except for the “white” part. It is used to make people feel guilty for advantages that they may not even benefit from purely because they fall into a certain group.

It's used to make people aware of the advantages they often have because they fall into a certain group. The goal isn't to make someone feel guilty, it's to make them conscious of their advantages in hopes they help to dismantle them.

It's used to attribute individual excellence to generalized advantages of a certain group of people. If these advantages were as powerful and prevalent as you suggest, there wouldn't be more millions of white people in poverty. They certainly have some effect but it is often exaggerated to diminish the accomplishments of all people in the group. It is more fruitful to highlight the disadvantages that a group of people experience so that we may fix them and bring everyone up.

> It is more fruitful to highlight the disadvantages that a group of people experience so that we may fix them and bring everyone up.

I see it as the same. It's one thing to say, "I don't have to worry about X because I am white" and basically the same to say, "They do have to worry about X because they are non-white".

> If these advantages were as powerful and prevalent as you suggest, there wouldn't be more millions of white people in poverty.

I don't think anyone who believes in white privilege believes that it is a monolithic escalator to success. It makes some things easier. But there also exists privilege due to class, health, access to education, gender, climate, family support, etc.

There are many, many types of privilege, and being white is just one of them that has an interaction with the others. (e.g. is it more advantageous to be white and able bodied or white and not able bodied? Is it more advantageous to be white and poor or black and poor? etc.)

> It's used to attribute individual excellence to generalized advantages of a certain group of people.

If you believe that individual excellence is the only factor, then how would you explain the demographic data about fortune 500 CEOs? One hypothesis is that privilege played a role -- that they had advantages due to race, class, gender, health, etc. that combined with their individual achievement resulted in their success. If privilege didn't play a role in their success, is it just a coincidence that the demographics overwhelmingly skew white male?

I'll try to explain with an example: I am able bodied, I can walk and run easily. When I visit a store or bus depot or whatever, I can navigate it with ease. This is privilege, and I am not a bad person for being able bodied.

I shouldn't feel guilt because I can walk. But it's important to recognize that my experiences and my abilities might be different than others.

An architect designing a public building with only stairs or narrow doors, or a traffic planner optimizing crossing times for an average pedestrian are cases of failing to recognize their privilege in being able bodied. If, after being made aware of their privilege, they continue to design for themselves then they may be considered immoral by some people.

It's the wrong word then. The etymology of privilege:

Middle English: via Old French from Latin privilegium ‘bill or law affecting an individual’, from privus ‘private’ + lex, leg- ‘law’.

In fact, in France privilèges have been abolished during the revolution. And it's not just the wrong word, it's kind of opposite; privilege generally meant the benefit of a minority, but here it's used to describe when the majority benefits, because they are the majority.

Unfortunately, that's not how language works. Words get adopted to mean things independent of their etymology all the time. I find it confusing a lot of the time. (eg "literally" used to mean "figuratively").

That's actually how language works. We use the common, dictionary definition of words, not whatever some academic with an agenda made up.

Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Whose made up agenda is behind this and what is it?

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1576/

And at least according to makers of the OED, it does not define words, it describes them: https://languages.oup.com/about-us/how-we-create-language-co...

You believe that language is prescriptive -- that there are 'correct' usages of words. [1] I believe that language is descriptive -- that dictionaries follow common usage rather than define the usage. Depending on your cultural heritage, one or the other may be more common.

Descriptivism allows for expressions like, "To boldly go where no man has gone before!" which is a split infinitive, and an 'incorrect' use of language. If a native speaker would say a thing in speaking, then it's valid. Native English speakers use language in all sorts of ways that would be 'incorrect' -- from jive to rhyming slang to 1337 sp34k to adoptions from queer culture like 'shade' or 'yass'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription

Recognizing your privilege means keeping aware that other people may struggle with things (sexism, racism, disabilities, etc.) that you don't struggle with. That can have far reaching implications in terms of design, how you frame advice, instructions, policy, etc.

For example I have given friends advice before on how to get somewhere, and been told that it won't work for them, for reasons such as them not wanting to walk alone in a certain area/time due to being a small woman, or lack of handicap accessible infrastructure making something take longer than it would for me.

If being confronted with your own privilege makes you feel guilty, that sounds more like you are bothered that others are less privileged

It's one thing to be self-aware and think about who you are when you formulate the arguments and opinions and solutions you put out in front of the world and to others. It's quite another thing to judge the merit of someone's opinions and solutions based on who you think they are. Figure out which you're talking about.

People say that privilege isn't an attack. But when I search for it on my Facebook, 4 of the 5 were used to deride and the other is "May you, at least once, have the privilege of writing code that never goes away and is never looked at again."

Also if you search reddit for whether trans women or trans men possess male privilege you will find people arguing as if their life depended on it. And these people seem to very involved in movements where the use of the term is the most frequent so should be the most acquainted with it's use and definition.

Privileged is used interchangeably with oppressive, there's implications to that label.

It's not. Oppressors typically implies privileged, but the reverse is not true. I am not an oppressor because I am able bodied.

Also, you wouldn't use the word privileged to talk about regimes in places with oppressive governments. You'd use the word oppressive.

I don't really see it that way? The history behind it can be pretty depressing, but basically it's saying you've benefited from good luck. Having good or bad luck is something that happens to you; the merit or blame comes from what do you do about it.

I think that a lot of times white privilege is used incorrectly as the predominant reason why someone did/did not succeed, rather than one of many complex factors. It's even hard to point to a specific event that exemplifies it, rather an a shift in distribution of potential outcomes (getting into a particular college, for example).

Maybe there's a useful parallel to folks arguing that climate change isn't real when there's a bad winter (particular event vs the overall trend).

"White privilege" isn't one out of many factors though. It's the underlying reason for why so many factors came together to help you succeed in the first place.

White privilege is having your application go through the first time because your name is spelled how webdevs expect.

White privilege is your assigned recruiter giving the extra 0.x seconds of time to look over your resume if they consider you as one of their tribe and "deserving" of placement. These judgments, while often rationalized consciously post-hoc, really mostly happen at the subconscious level before we're even aware that we're thinking about it.

White privilege is knowing where to start to achieve your goals because there are people in your community that can provide mentorship who have probably benefited from white privilege to the point that they can point you in the right direction and even give you some connections to break onto the scene.

etc.

Your "useful parallel" is relying on tokenism as a sort of reverse no-true-Scotsman attack.

Factors that have helped me:

- Having well educated parents able to help me with my school and putting an large emphasis on its importance

- Having both parents in the house

- Having access to, and the ability to participate in extracurriculars in school

Those are all correlated with my race, but there are also white people who lack them. Those are the many factors I was talking about. They are specific and identifiable.

The useful parallel is that people do a poor job of identifying trends, when counter examples to the trend exist.

> Those are all correlated with my race, but there are also white people who lack them.

No true Scotsman again. The counter examples do not negate the overwhelming influence of the causes to which the trend is attributed.

... but you created the same No True Scotsman in the inverse, up thread?

Your definition of "white privilege" assumes a complete homogeneity of experience that is absolutely not the case. Do you actually believe that all white people experience life in the exact way you described?

#NotAllWhitePeople is not a very useful line of rhetoric if the goal is to solve the problem of equity in opportunity.

It is a given and openly acknowledged that not all white people have the same chances. But it doesn't seem particularly accurate to assert that a difference in equity is insignificant between folks who only differ in race because of some pre-existing intra-race variance.

And #AllWhitePeople is? If it's a "given" that "not all white people" have the same life experience, then why is it a useful line of rhetoric, in your case, to pretend that they do? I'm not following your last sentence. Is your claim that the intra-race variance of experience is sufficiently [edit: not] different to a degree that it's useful, rhetorically speaking, to pretend that one race's experience is homogeneous?

The differences in equity within the cohort of white people is in general of a lower magnitude than differences in equity between white folk and black folk. That's the starkest and, in America at least, the most historically important comparison between races and thus the thing that usually ends up getting talked about most.

Not all white people, but a large majority of white people, have it better off than most minority folks, with some notable exceptions.

This kind of language is exactly why people respond poorly to the term. Most people have worked hard for the things they have including white people, there isn't a secret check that you get every year for being in the pale people club. If you're middle class or lower there's no reason for a white person to side with a politician who is making their platform based around white priviledge because all it means for them is that they get to get to pay the same taxes to be less of a priority.

The term privilege is used in many ways by many people. Sometimes it means luck but I don't see it used that way very often.

I've seen it used most often to

- deride a person or group of people

- describe oneself in a funny way

- describe oneself in a way that is serious but ultimately in a positive light

Specific recent examples from my Facebook is whether voting for Biden is privilege or not voting for him is privilege or whether being pro quarantine is a privilege or anti quarantine is a privilege. The subtext is always you REALLY don't want to be on the side of the privileged.

Every single time it seems to make the argument dumber and nastier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fragility_(book)

It's no wonder that people dislike it if people repeatedly ignore the subtleties of the concept and take the attack as a personal affront to their identity.

Would you prefer it to be rephrased? Should we spend the time to shield egos or should we encourage egos not to be so fragile?

They take it as a dismissal of their ideas, not necessarily of their identity.

"No matter how thoughtful your opinion that differs from mine, I'm going to regard it as invalid because you're white" is how it comes down to many people. Which side is the one with the fragile ego there? The one that takes offense at having their ideas dismissed on such a basis, or the side that has to use such an excuse to not listen?

The point of "because you're white" is, you have no personal experience in that matter. Despite an obvious lack of expertise, privileged people (and I consider me part of that group) feel that their opinion is of at least equal value, and that it should be listened to.

Personally, I quite easily give my opinion unasked (like here), and do feel rejected if it isn't listen too. Likely, because I grew up the way, that my opinion matters.

I would imagine, the experience would be quite a different one, if your thoughtful opinion would be voiced after being asked for it.

Those are fair points.

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