It's the upper-middle class straight white cisgendered male's fault if he doesn't take the time to learn about his privilege. He has the resources, but chooses to ignore it.
(Note: I'm not saying the person from the article necessarily fits this description; I'm speaking more generally)
(I'm reading that you posit that, perhaps I misinterpreted)
If I read that correctly, under what strictures do you interpret reading about the idea of privilege (noting that this word in and of itself has contested and differing meanings) as a moral obligation?
My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought. I'm not sure this actually addresses the question you asked though.
You should be careful how you consider this though. We wouldn't hack a tall person's legs off at the knee to force them to be equally as tall as the rest of us, nor do we give geniuses lobotomies to try and equal out intelligence within the population.
It is no one's moral imperative to punish themselves for being placed in a good situation. If life was inherently fair we'd all still be a soup of completely equal unicellular organisms. Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either.
If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.
Unless, of course, you think that being made aware just how little of what they take for granted is available to others and how unimportant their own skills were is cruel to privileged people? Because if that's the case, fuck you. Seriously.
Upon re-reading the commenter I replied to said he was not quite at the point of speaking about it in terms of moral obligation, which I'll admit to having mis-understood.
But even so, I tried very much to phrase my warning as nothing more than that; a warning. It's perilously easy to get caught up in logical loops that take one far away from ethical and moral underpinnings. Nothing I said takes away from the importance of getting to a state in society where persons are completely able to achieve based on their actions and not their inheritance, but that doesn't mean that all such methods of achieveing that end goal are equally ethical. I hope that cllns takes it in the spirit it was intended, instead of as an exercise to bite back against yet another privileged "cis" piece of shit...
Nobody is arguing this. People that implore others to examine their privilege don't do so to make people feel bad (although this may be a side effect of having a new perspective).
> Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either.
That's the thing, privileged majority groups often enact or re-enforce policy or social attitudes that have the effect of keeping people not in that group from success. The call to examine one's privilege is so that members of the majority group recognize how their position and actions keeps other people from success. Note that by success I do not just mean financial success, but even being alive for members of some groups is a success based on the amount of violence they face.
> If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.
You cannot simply opt out of privilege. Privilege is just as much about how others view you as the social systems and institutions that back you over other groups of people. Also, people who are suffering from the systems and institutions do not want a hand out, they want to be free to have their own voices and agency, something that is hard to do when privileged groups continue to undermine their attempts at that agency.
And yet you're saying that just by not being (say) transgendered[1] I'm undermining other people's agency. And I can't choose not to. And that it's my fault if I don't think the concept is fully-baked and don't make certain incantations before I speak.
It seems completely transparent to me that this is meant to make anybody that doesn't adopt the terminology out to be a bad person--a sinner in other words. See the root of this thread: cllns has "just about zero tolerance left" for such people. Why would he need to invoke tolerance if it's just a matter of not having the same perspective?
[1] Or fat, vegan, illiterate, astigmatic, etc. The list of things people are apply the term "privilege" to is constantly expanding. Is there truly nothing amiss with the concept?
If you want to follow up in depth later on (rather than HN threads), my email is in my profile.
Because otherwise they become tyrants.
We're talking about the most powerful, most influential demographic in a particular place, whether that's Western European in the US or Han-Chinese in China. There is a dominant group that gets a tremendous amount of decision-making power, and those in power have the moral obligation of having perspective.
Because without understanding and perspective you don't just get silliness, you get real harm - "The poor are poor because they're too lazy to work" is a silly thought, until it influences policy, and then it becomes tragedy.
There is absolutely a moral obligation to seek perspective (cast another, understand one's own privilege), and this goes double if your race/religion/etc grants you power over others.
> There is absolutely a moral obligation to seek perspective (cast another, understand one's own privilege), and this goes double if your race/religion/etc grants you power over others.
Again, I ask why[1]. What precisely gives that moral imperative? My readings in history do not suggest to me that this ethical stricture has been a constant throughout history.
[1] 5 Whys, Question Everything, etc. Don't take it personally please.
Does it have to be? Slavery was the social norm for thousands of years and has only been widely considered unacceptable for perhaps <5% of recorded civilization.
Ditto race equality - we consider it a moral imperative today, but for thousands of years it was not really a thing.
The notion of morality evolves over time - the fact that a moral conclusion is new does not in and of itself make it less, well, imperative.
But there's also the flip side - in this case this is something that has been considered a moral imperative in history. The concept that the rulers have a moral obligation to be informed and just is well supported by historical societies.
Back when we gave power to people based on familial relations, we called this the noblesse oblige[1]. The concept was also applied to other figures of power, such as the monarchy. The concept is mixed up with a lot of notions that one might find offensive today (e.g., that the masses are unable to rule themselves and from which derives the obligation and responsibility to rule fairly in their stead).
Nowadays we don't give out power based on family (much), we do it instead based on wealth and many other secondary factors - race and religion being large among them.
What's in it for him?
Parent post was right for a good number of people.
A considered opinion deserves respect if not agreement. One formed on assumption, in a vacuum is more difficult to accept.
Terms like "champagne socialist" or "bleeding heart liberal" are invoked.
Perhaps it is seen as patronising to the poor because it makes the implication that the poor need the help of upper middle class white people to help them out of their problems?
That doesn't mean "upper middle class white" necessarily, but it does disproportionately seem to affect that group (because otherwise we wouldn't be talking so much about gender, class, race, etc. privilege)