Check Your Privilege
- Thread starter Gary Childress
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Privileged people should not educate themselves because they will then become even more privileged
Damn cis-heterosexual (ie damn straight). If our world was not so eroded by the patriarchy we would all chop off a limb the moment the web news showed us footage reporting a person accidentally having lost a limb. Also, all must be equally dumb, ugly, miserable, in order to live in a fair society. Remember, blame is the prime enemy of all.
One can only hope
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
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Privilege politics is a Clintonian bourgeoisie lib tautology that separates marginalized groups from one another and destroys solidarity. It is a "divide and conquer" tool of the ruling class being used to execute what is essentially false flag class warfare.
Get past my buzzwords, every time you approach our problems through the lens of "privilege," you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Get past my buzzwords, every time you approach our problems through the lens of "privilege," you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
Eh, bad example (although I was basing it on a prior post in the thread). Variance in the quality of restaurant service is probably a better example. Unaccounted for lags in the speed of service (especially when other tables are getting prompt service), reduced quality of the food itself, and requesting money up front where custom is to do so at the end of the meal are all negative impacts that have been experienced based on appearance of the customer.
*The urge to insist the guy is not just resting there does show part of the problem. If the people who see a "vagrant" don't know, they assume.
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
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^Actually, i agree with you entirely there. I hope you weren't being equally ironic
Not at all. Oppressed people fighting over whose suffering is the purest and most unadultered doesn't do anything but help the oppressors.
Narz
keeping it real
Divide and conquer, exactly. It perpetuates victim mentality and the patronizing attitude that in evident in this thread that keeps things unequal.
The Socratic approach requires much more than simply telling someone they are wrong - the key is to help the other party understand why they lack knowledge, and then to work through that lack of knowledge to new-found understanding. To simply assert that the other person misunderstands, and that they should rectify the situation, does not move that person any closer to the point of 'known unknown' from which they can work towards a proper understanding. So from a Socratic perspective, it's entirely useless to tell someone to go educate themselves.
Often telling someone to educate themselves is another way of saying "you're an idiot". It isn't a dispassionate statement merely noting that education is generally going to improve one's understanding of a topic - it's a specific accusation that the other person doesn't know what they're talking about, and it's not worth the time bothering to explain it to them, because they lack the ability to comprehend the subject. Contempt isn't a particularly constructive discussion tone - again it's contrary to the Socratic approach.
Additionally, whether it be intellectual capacity or, say, financial capacity, there are entirely valid reasons why some people may not be in a position to adequately educate themselves. Telling someone that they should educate themselves ignores that this incapacity may exist.
As an aside, I think you're being much too generous to Socrates, but would make a far better teacher.
Well in regards to contempt being a core part of most of what Socrates says, yes. But the part for which he is remembered is the examination of prominent philosophy of his time. If you take away the platonic stuff (eide/archetypes, eleatic dialectic examination) Socrates sounds like Diogenes or another prominent cynic of the time whose name i forget atm (but who also loathed Plato)
Wolfbeckett
Jerkin' and nonsense.
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And it's funny, because this is actually really obvious to anyone who bothers to look. Look at all of the campus protests, BLM, intersectional third wave feminism, etc. and you notice a definite trend: the leaders of these movements are almost exclusively from wealthy families and they studiously (and obviously, once you know to look for it) complete avoid bringing up the single greatest source of privilege in the world: economic status. Whites are privileged, men are privileged, straight people are privileged, what you never hear them say is that rich people are privileged, despite the fact that wealth is clearly the single most important factor for determining how much power you have in the world.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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I'm thinking of becoming transrich
Well in regards to contempt being a core part of most of what Socrates says, yes. But the part for which he is remembered is the examination of prominent philosophy of his time. If you take away the platonic stuff (eide/archetypes, eleatic dialectic examination) Socrates sounds like Diogenes or another prominent cynic of the time whose name i forget atm (but who also loathed Plato)
Yes, it's easy to forget when you read it that it's not just an old man pretending to be a fool and using dubious arguments to trip up passers-by. There's a wider point, and that Socrates is, in his own way, puncturing the claims of powerful people to be all-knowing and above the questioning of ordinary people, in a time when, for the first time in history, that really mattered politically.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Your victim-blaming is disgusting.
It's a good thing most so-called Ess-Jay-Doubleyews actively combat Oppression Olympics then, because that's kinda the entire point of intersectionality: to bring different social movements together that at first don't seem to have anything in common, in ways that enable us to support one another.
This isn't a new concept, either. The Black Panthers and the Gay Liberation Front supported striking dock workers in West Coast ports, feminist protesters, and worked with SDS and the Revolutionary Student Movement in ways that bridged race, gender, class, and sexuality gaps to form a united front against each others' enemies.
During the late 1970s into the 1980s, the enthusiasm for that kind of united work fell by the wayside in light of the huge conservative victories and the rise of neoliberalism. Post-modernism at the same time came to the fore and brought with it the divisive attitudes that you're referring to: they preached that struggling against institutions was a waste of time and energy, and pushed people to try and reshape their immediate social vicinity instead. They were the ones who divided people against one another in defense of the state. Intersectionality was the rejection of this philosophy, and while it grew out of postmodernism and in some senses might still be called postmodern [certainly Queer Theory and 3rd Wave Feminism is], it's come into its own in the 21st century as a wholehearted rejection of this philosophy and a return to the cooperative umbrella struggles of the 1960s.
So when you try to lecture us about how we're being divisive and attacking our own and whatever, you're not only preaching to a choir that sung that song long ago, you're demonstrating your total ignorance of the actual practice and behavior of these groups and the ideas that drive their organization.
BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
I rather think the enthusiasm for those groups waned because many of them fell into becoming gangs of assassins and drug dealers with a paltry veneer of political ambition.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
The shoe was on the other foot. Organized repression of radicals was a favorite past time of the US government in the 60s and 70s. In fact, none of those groups I just mentioned "became drug dealers" or "gangs of assassins."
BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
Tell that to Alex Rackley, Crystal Graves, Betty van Patter, or any number of other victims of violence at the hands of the Black Panthers or the numerous people targeted by Weather Underground bombings.
Newton in particular was a violent degenerate who attracted other thugs. That the Black Panthers may have, at one point, vocally proclaimed commendable ideals in no way justifies support of the group after it devolved into political assassinations against innocents.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
I didn't mention the WU, and the BPP never committed acts of terrorism. The group calling itself "The New Black Panther Party" was formed in 1989, and is disavowed by the BPP as the jokers that they are. They have nothing to do with the group I am talking about.
I think if you really try, you can fit all the popular racist tropes into this post.
BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
You mentioned the SDS and you well know that it was the father of the WU by way of its RYM wing.
As for the BPP never committing terrorism, that's a lie. Members of the BPP assassinated people and hijacked planes.
