Yes, it is. I disagree. Not getting murdered by the police can still be a privilege and the system can also simultaneously be irredeemable. Both things can be true at the same time. Just because...
Yes, it is.
The liberal who claims that it is time to “recognize our privilege” is actually saying that this system of policing and justice is salvageable for we the privileged are proof of its potential functioning. By loudly stating that we do not suffer as they Black Americans do, we are separating ourselves off of the Black Continent and saying that over here on the White Continent (and its smattering of Asian occupants) the system is working just fine.
I disagree. Not getting murdered by the police can still be a privilege and the system can also simultaneously be irredeemable. Both things can be true at the same time. Just because the aristocracy in old pre-revolution France was enjoying the privileges afforded to them by virtue of their nobility, it did not mean that the system was salvageable. Far from it.
The problem as I see it is the framing of "privilege" as if it is a special position that brings on benefits beyond what everyone should have. This can make sense in some very specific scenarios...
The problem as I see it is the framing of "privilege" as if it is a special position that brings on benefits beyond what everyone should have. This can make sense in some very specific scenarios (you know the thing where if you're white and dressed like you're supposed to be somewhere, you can get into places you absolutely should not be?), but for the most part when people say privilege, they mean basic rights that are denied to some other groups but not to the one you're referring to.
Nah, not getting murdered by police isn't a privilege, it's how it fuckin should be for everyone.
The author here only touches on the part I'm talking about a little bit, but I do think privilege is a very individualist and in some cases harmful way to frame these issues. It's usually done with good intentions and understanding the extra burdens placed on oppressed groups and what you don't have to deal with is an essential thing...but again, the problem isn't that white people and white-passing people have a shiny unfair privilege, it's that other groups do get the basic human treatment that we all deserve.
To be clear, I refer to it as a privilege because it is a benefit that has clearly been afforded to a group that is smaller than the whole. That having been said, I very much believe that police...
To be clear, I refer to it as a privilege because it is a benefit that has clearly been afforded to a group that is smaller than the whole. That having been said, I very much believe that police should exist "to serve and to protect". Neither function involves wantonly killing innocents.
Serving and protecting sounds nice, but what you seem to end up with is serving the interests of the rich, mostly white powerful, and protecting their ownership of all the stuff and their rights...
Serving and protecting sounds nice, but what you seem to end up with is serving the interests of the rich, mostly white powerful, and protecting their ownership of all the stuff and their rights to make decisions that other people in fact live or die on, such as who to hire and fire, how much or little to pay them, and whether to afford them health care or not.
In a consequentialist analysis, the police might be doing more harm by preventing poor people from seizing all of Jeff Bezos's extra stuff than they're ever going to do shooting people one at a time.
"Privilege" is the term of art for all the stuff people are given for free because of their identity. If you go through the Invisible Backpack essay, it breaks down pretty cleanly into things that...
"Privilege" is the term of art for all the stuff people are given for free because of their identity. If you go through the Invisible Backpack essay, it breaks down pretty cleanly into things that nobody should have and things that everybody should have. But it's all usually called "privilege", in the sense of law that works differently for some people than others.
The article here seems to be arguing that looking at the problem as a problem of privilege is too individualizing, and counterproductive invites the notion that the problem can be fixed by going down the list of privileges and patching each one, when in fact that strategy cannot work for structural reasons.
This hints at why I (and other lefties with a similar mindset) keep espousing why identity politics are a distraction from class politics. We are all affected by systemic state violence. From the...
Rather than creating barriers, it is the utter failure of liberalism to create social bonds between Americans at large, through which the affront of state murder can be communalized by all. We exalt individual rights to be unmolested and protected by the police, but we skip over the notion of the contractual obligations that police have as an appendage of the state towards society at large, in exchange for which they are granted the monopoly of violence.
This hints at why I (and other lefties with a similar mindset) keep espousing why identity politics are a distraction from class politics. We are all affected by systemic state violence. From the inequality it props up. Some of us are privileged, in that the gun is not pointed at us.
But any of us could have the gun pointed at us instead. If we magically eliminate police killings and systemic racism tomorrow, we'll still be facing the top to bottom oppression which criminalizes being poor.
Yes, it is.
I disagree. Not getting murdered by the police can still be a privilege and the system can also simultaneously be irredeemable. Both things can be true at the same time. Just because the aristocracy in old pre-revolution France was enjoying the privileges afforded to them by virtue of their nobility, it did not mean that the system was salvageable. Far from it.
The problem as I see it is the framing of "privilege" as if it is a special position that brings on benefits beyond what everyone should have. This can make sense in some very specific scenarios (you know the thing where if you're white and dressed like you're supposed to be somewhere, you can get into places you absolutely should not be?), but for the most part when people say privilege, they mean basic rights that are denied to some other groups but not to the one you're referring to.
Nah, not getting murdered by police isn't a privilege, it's how it fuckin should be for everyone.
The author here only touches on the part I'm talking about a little bit, but I do think privilege is a very individualist and in some cases harmful way to frame these issues. It's usually done with good intentions and understanding the extra burdens placed on oppressed groups and what you don't have to deal with is an essential thing...but again, the problem isn't that white people and white-passing people have a shiny unfair privilege, it's that other groups do get the basic human treatment that we all deserve.
To be clear, I refer to it as a privilege because it is a benefit that has clearly been afforded to a group that is smaller than the whole. That having been said, I very much believe that police should exist "to serve and to protect". Neither function involves wantonly killing innocents.
Serving and protecting sounds nice, but what you seem to end up with is serving the interests of the rich, mostly white powerful, and protecting their ownership of all the stuff and their rights to make decisions that other people in fact live or die on, such as who to hire and fire, how much or little to pay them, and whether to afford them health care or not.
In a consequentialist analysis, the police might be doing more harm by preventing poor people from seizing all of Jeff Bezos's extra stuff than they're ever going to do shooting people one at a time.
"Privilege" is the term of art for all the stuff people are given for free because of their identity. If you go through the Invisible Backpack essay, it breaks down pretty cleanly into things that nobody should have and things that everybody should have. But it's all usually called "privilege", in the sense of law that works differently for some people than others.
The article here seems to be arguing that looking at the problem as a problem of privilege is too individualizing, and counterproductive invites the notion that the problem can be fixed by going down the list of privileges and patching each one, when in fact that strategy cannot work for structural reasons.
This hints at why I (and other lefties with a similar mindset) keep espousing why identity politics are a distraction from class politics. We are all affected by systemic state violence. From the inequality it props up. Some of us are privileged, in that the gun is not pointed at us.
But any of us could have the gun pointed at us instead. If we magically eliminate police killings and systemic racism tomorrow, we'll still be facing the top to bottom oppression which criminalizes being poor.