I really enjoyed that explanation, so thank you. I'll do some general musings, which I'm using as a type of feedback-seeking variant of asking questions. So, just read everything below in a voice that has an uncertain or questioning uplift during punctuation.
The difference between 'uplift' and 'put down' is very interesting. We sometimes think of the real world as 'hostile', and so create various tools and techniques and infrastructure to make the world less dangerous or hard. Stairs make a hill easier. Automated screening technology makes line-ups faster. Regulations limiting police power makes inter-personal violence less likely. All of these things are designed to benefit us from a more basal state. So, because these things are made, the people who benefit from them are 'privileged'. I didn't make the stairs leading up the hill, but my life is better for their existence.
In many of these cases, the arrangement wasn't designed to oppress anybody. It's just that some people weren't included. Even in the case of police violence (and this is a stretch), the basal state is that people oppress each other if they can. So, while one person can access regulations preventing that violence, not everyone can.
I think the reason why I thought of much of the conversation as being about "but fors" is that there is very much a side conversation being had at the same time about oppression, the deliberate creation of hierarchy that actually seek to put certain people down. If the walkway up the hill is replaced by stairs, not only are things changed to make it better for some, but also worse for others. Active profiling by police not only (thinks it) benefits the other people, but actively harms other cohorts. Some arrangements were made less to uplift some but actually push down others.
Obviously, some but-fors will be in zero-sum arrangement with privileges. If I inherit money someone else inherits the need to borrow from me to do something with money.
So, because there's a Venn Diagram crossover in the conversations, I crossed over the concepts (I still think headwinds and tailwinds observation is a real thing). There's nothing about the concept of privilege that requires that the privilege itself be taken away, the goal is to increase the spread of the uplift. I might be just showing little shower-thought inspiration, but we are trying to reduce either the spread (or the damage from) the 'but fors'. Being raised on clean water is a privilege, but the goal is to replace lead-tainted water supplies. Of course, lots of the world is in unfortunate allocation of compounding benefit, so a privilege that allows a compounding benefit can will have consequences. Being strong makes it easier to build houses. But being good at building houses means that you also have an easier time saving money (which means that someone else will have to borrow).
I think you basically have it, bit I don't think you are really appreciating the extent to which the "improvement" is what drives the whole thing. To borrow your metaphor, stairs do not make a hill easier. Stairs make a hill easier
for us. Everything proceeds from the question of who "us" is. The very decision to build the stairs in the first place begins from the assumption that "we" need to go up the hill. And thence, the manner that
we make going up the hill easier is arrived at on the basis of what is most efficient and economical
for us. Sometimes a decision that
we arrive at also happens to benefit
them. Sometimes
they are not able to take advantage of an improvement
we have implemented. Either way doesn't really concern us because our primary concern is that things are good
for us. Similarly, sometimes
they are in the way and they need to be pushed aside because they're blocking something that would be good
for us. Sometimes there are too many of
them taking advantage of
our stairs, and it's clogging things up and making it difficult
for us to go up
our stairs, so
we need to impose limits on how many of
them can go up at a time. Both ways concern us because our primary concern is that things are good
for us.
The issue with "but-for" analysis is that it presupposes that the stairs have always existed from time immemorial, that they will exist for all time, and that it is natural for a person to go up the stairs and want to do so. Understood in this way, "we" is constituted by those who just so happen to want to go up those stairs and are able to do so. "They" are those less fortunate, who for some reason or another are unable to go up the stairs. The two groups emerge naturally, and the deficits to one and benefits to the other are, alternatively, a happy accident with no agents or an act of divine providence not to be impeded. This is all wrong, though.
We and
they are groups
we actively, consciously constructed, and vigorously maintain through the stairs which we built for ourselves.
This creates problems. The first of which is that it obscures reality. We built the stairs. We put all the food at the top of the hill. We blocked any other means of getting up the hill but to climb the stairs. And the stairs don't "just exist": we are actively, regularly repaving them, we are stationing guards around the base of the hill to prevent climbers and destroy food that happens to roll down. The second problem is that we haven't actually achieved equality. We have, as Crenshaw notes, created an escape hatch for a lucky few of them to clamber up that hill. But the hatch exists at our convenience. We are letting them
be us for a time, but only insofar as allowing such an arrangement to exist is still good for us. We can rescind that arrangement any time we want. Any time it becomes a problem for us. Of course, thirdly, as Crenshaw describes in depth, the escape hatch we have created only works for those who can take the escape hatch. We haven't actually accounted "but-for". Rather, we have created a second set of stairs for those of
them who can climb stairs. We are a stair climbing people, and for stair climbing people, every hill demands a stair, and so we have provided a solution for those among them who are also stair climbers. And for those of them who still cannot climb the stairs: what's the matter with them?! Haven't we provided them every opportunity? The hatch is right there, and if they can't or won't use it, that is a problem for them to sort out. We wipe our hands of having to care or worry about them.
To synthesize, we have created a world where the only way to survive is to behave in a way which is good for us. Which we assume thereby to be objectively good. For those for whom it is not good, we create an escape hatch, to allow them to be like us, and thereby survive. We have, in other words, created a world where the only way for them to survive is to shed themselves, to deny their identity, and pretend to be more like us. That is, to willingly subject themselves to dehumanization. It is a world in which their survival is contingent on their ability to behave like us, where we judge their performance and punish them for performing insufficiently convincingly. It is a miserable existence for them to live, and the more so when the props which we provide them for their performance are all props which we have devised, which have sprung from our imagination, again, not on the basis of what would be good for them, but rather, what would be good for us were we to imagine ourselves being them.
