“Check Your Privilege” is Actually Just a Lousy Argument
notes.brianmayer.com
notes.brianmayer.com
"Check your privilege" in an argument is short for, "your experiences don't extend to those who don't have your particular skin tone/gender/sexual orientation/citizenship/etc."
It is shorthand for, "for you, this is a pleasant debate. For me, this is my life and I don't have the emotional energy to give you 45 minutes of my personal experiences just to have you say that it isn't prejudice/it is justified/you didn't really experience that/ you're just unlucky."
It's shorthand for "I've had this 'discussion' before and it almost always boils down to someone who is more interested in keeping their blind spots than actually listening."
I've been on both sides. I would like to believe that today I actively look to acknowledge my privileges where they exist. I wasn't always like that, and the concept of knowing that I have blind spots due to my experience helps me have empathy for others.
And how hard is it to go, "maybe my experience is altered because of something outside my control? I will choose to accept on face value that people have less than acceptable experiences based on things outside their control, and in the small ways that I can, not be an asshole to them."
That's checking your privilege. And it's a bare minimum for being a decent human being in 2014.
Good job questioning people's humanity, it's cool of you to include another good silencing technique.
I've had people try to "debate" gay marriage.
I get "facts" by anti-gay organizations that spout bullshit. Now, I have two options.
I can counter with my own statistics and studies, but that's a losing strategy. Neither of us will accept each other's sources. There's no way we'll even be able to agree on the facts. (Consider Stanley Kurtz's argument that acceptance of gay relationships increased divorce: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/stanley-kurtz-tr... is a refutation.)
I have my story. I have the stories of people in my position. However, if they're dismissed as irrelevant in favor of "logic," we have a problem.
Why? Logic depends on a few things:
1. A shared agreement on the facts. 2. A shared basis on axioms.
From there, the logical structure can be built upon the facts and axioms. However, if there is no agreement on the facts or axioms, what use is logic going to be? Certainly, it can be used to show internal inconsistency, but these arguments are often logically inconsistent.
For example, take the (very bad) argument:
1. Children with low IQ parents are more likely to have low IQ. 2. Black people statistically have lower IQs than white people. (Hidden axiom: children with lower IQs are inferior to children with higher IQs) Thus, interracial marriage is socially harmful.
Now, this is a logically consistent argument. However: Premise 1 may or may not be flawed: People in poverty statistically have lower IQs, but this is not known to pass on to future generations. Poverty is a major confounding variable here, and there may be alternative explanations even if the premise is generally true.
Premise 2 is flawed. Many of the IQ studies are based on older tests, for example, and do not take poverty or education level into account. Older tests sometimes have cultural knowledge fundamentally embedded. However, it is paraded as a "fact" and has for a while, long before "The Bell Curve" came about.
The hidden axiom is also flawed, but this one is hairier and is a much longer conbversation. However, the conclusion depends on the exposure of this axiom. (Consider that what is true for the whole is not necessarily true for an individual case.) However, if there is no agreement on the axiom, the overall argument cannot be rationally discussed.
Thus, what is the logical basis of such an argument?
Further, can you imagine a black person being forced to try and have this discussion? He's implicitly being attacked by the argument itself. If he gets emotional, is that because he's not "logical" enough? ___
Now look at an argument like racial profiling. There are two flawed premises that come up. First is that because there are more black people in jail, they are more likely committing crimes. (Consider that most studies have shown that an equal amount of white and black people smoke marijuana, but black people are significantly more likely to be arrested for it.) Second, and to the point here, is to deny that black people are disproportionately targeted.
The argument may be that white people are stopped on occasion too. However, the experience of my black friends and the experience that I have with the police are substantially different. If I went by my own (middle class white man) experiences, I would think that the police are generally helpful. This ends up being complete bullshit.
However, unless I talked with people who weren't white and middle class, I would have a fundamentally untrue assumption of the experience of others. If I value my own experience without questioning if I have blind spots, I am not checking my privilege.
The correct response to someone who argues out of this type of ignorance is to tell them that their experiences are not indicative of many others. There's no "debate" to be had because you will never even agree upon the axioms.
Why waste the emotional energy?
A reasonable equivalent that is somewhat less loaded and suggestive, but equally less powerful, is to admonish someone to "check your assumptions". Do your assumptions include the fact that people are poor because they are lazy? Why do you assume that? Is it based on empirical evidence, or your own unwillingness to acknowledge the fundamental randomness of the circumstances surrounding your own success?
“You’re white, and your built-in privilege makes it
difficult for you to see how affirmative action merely
levels the playing field.”
THESE ARE NOT VALID ARGUMENTS.
I wouldn't take an argument about privilege over the results of high quality scientific trials. But against anecdotal evidence from someone anonymous on the internet? I'll consider it.
For example, if argument A is "I've never seen a black person having trouble hailing a cab", I'd be relatively more convinced by argument B, "That's because you're a rich white guy, what would you know about getting a cab when you're black?"
On the other hand, if argument A is "These peer-reviewed scientific studies, which sent black and white researchers to hail cabs in different parts of the city, and controlled for day, time, age and dress showed that problems getting a cab are independent of race" and I would be relatively less convinced by argument B.
(For what it's worth, when I leave the opera or ballet, no-one has any problem getting a cab, be they black or white, male or female)
That's a bit ironic, considering this entire post is nothing but a school of red herrings.
For example :
> What’s weird is that this line is almost exclusively employed against those who challenge the liberal-Democratic axis of thought on political or economic issues, even though no one seems to apply the logic consistently
> I’ve actually seen, in the heat of an impassioned discussion, a “check your privilege” practitioner contort their definition of privilege to include the very, very, unprivileged individual who had taken a contrary view.
> To present that opinion you must have evidence and support for your claims, of course, but you need not settle for a life of lazy rhetorical flourishes in pursuance of quick debate points.
> Hold your position against the ad hominem, because it’s likely that when the “check your privilege” card has been played, your interlocutor has already run out of counterarguments and you’re winning.
Evil white males especially Christians that oppress everybody all the time that have no culture and are non-contributing zeros. I think we've all gotten the memo.
No.
Privilege is by definition[1] not something you can control, ergo not something you say or do. It doesn't have to be something you're aware of[2], or that has helped you at all[3], or that has anything to do with you personally[4], or that you can shed by admitting[5], or denying[6]. To check your privilege means you acknowledge someone else's perception of you[7] and shut up[8] while they judge you[9].
[0] http://groupthink.jezebel.com/to-the-princeton-privileged-ki... [1] Ibid. "Privilege is when you get conscious or unconscious benefits from a demographic trait about yourself that you cannot control." [2] Ibid. "These benefits may be overt or they may be covert." [3] Ibid. "...it can simply be the lack of something negative." [4] Ibid. "You have privilege because you are part of a group that has privilege. [...] remember once again, this isn't a personal conversation." [5] Ibid. "Looking deeply at things you're offering up as the ways in which you are privileged are going to show you that you are in fact privileged in the ways that you just denied." [6] Ibid. "All you'd like to do is keep staring at Megan Kelly's breasts and being blissfully oblivious that the world is a sad, fucked up place and dealing with your feelings of guilt that you got an okay deal?" [7] Ibid. "So when someone says "check your privilege", what they mean is embrace and admit that you have preconceived notions and a specific world perspective..." [8] Ibid. "...and to set those aside for a second and just listen." [9] Ibid. "Otherwise you'll just look like a complete fucking asshole when you write a hypocritical article completely missing the point of everything."