Critical race theory

I'm heavily disturbed by such a broad essentialization. When you're born white and poor with cystic fibrosis in Littleville, Arkansas, you're not priviledged. When you're born black in a multi-millionaire family in Beverly Hills, you're priviledged. We aren't only the categories we're supposed to belong to, we're foremost individuals, all with our own story and our own personality, even when we face discriminations.

There's something rather dystopian in the contemporary American society. Politicians are billionnaires serving first the interests of other billionaires and stirring up identity politics, opposing poor people against one another, to grab some votes. Neither the pro-Trump guy cherishing his gun in Idaho nor the BLM activist in South Chicago have any actual chance to vote for someone really serving his interests. Everything is made by the rich for the rich. Yet that is this way because Americans accept it to be as such.

Now is it really the best way to make the country better? Before answering the question, I think it would deserve a second thought.
Indeed. Although I think the application of the word privilege as it’s being contemporarily used was done with good intentions, a good faith attempt to understand social processes, as it moves from academia to the mainstream it is poisoning political discourse.
 
I'm heavily disturbed by such a broad essentialization. When you're born white and poor with cystic fibrosis in Littleville, Arkansas, you're not priviledged. When you're born black in a multi-millionaire family in Beverly Hills, you're priviledged. We aren't only the categories we're supposed to belong to, we're foremost individuals, all with our own story and our own personality, even when we face discriminations.

There's something rather dystopian in the contemporary American society. Politicians are billionnaires serving first the interests of other billionaires and stirring up identity politics, opposing poor people against one another, to grab some votes. Neither the pro-Trump guy cherishing his gun in Idaho nor the BLM activist in South Chicago have any actual chance to vote for someone really serving his interests. Everything is made by the rich for the rich. Yet that is this way because Americans accept it to be as such.

Now is it really the best way to make the country better? Before answering the question, I think it would deserve a second thought.
GIT OOOOOOUT

You've essentialized it more than its proponents. You've aggregated all the privileges and oppressions into one score.
 
Privileged is easy to understand, since white people is very privileged.

my political agenda is far left side, Am I a woke?
i don't know if you're woke, but you've taken an openly racist position and appear to do so comfortably.
it's never clearly delineated who is woke exactly, but most of the time the term is used to paint a picture of horrific fervor. what that fervor actually DOES is left up to the imagination of whoever just don't like vague left progressivism.
i think you are correct in that "woke" meaning is nebulous and contains people who are at odds with each other. "broadly on progressive side" is definitely a requirement for the label, but after that it's less clear.

though here you mention fervor, and i think this is also an element of people who attract the label and react most strongly upon hearing it when it isn't being explicitly given to them, not just to people who assign the label. an aspect of what gets people called "woke" when it's used negatively is an apparent fervor for something inconsistent with reality (or at least the other's perception of reality). can be the case of a pot calling kettle black in that context even.

i'd estimate that a person who is dogmatic in a progressive belief and gets hostile when someone expresses a different belief from that is more likely to be called woke than someone who is just vaguely "on the left" in policy preferences. certain elements of the right would call both "woke", but a lot more people will call the former that than the latter.

as it moves from academia to the mainstream it is poisoning political discourse.
i don't think that's by accident. what policy government actually does appears more informed by particular interests/groups than interests of an average voter (or even a median voter of either party). a divisive topic is convenient.
 
I'm heavily disturbed by such a broad essentialization. When you're born white and poor with cystic fibrosis in Littleville, Arkansas, you're not priviledged. When you're born black in a multi-millionaire family in Beverly Hills, you're priviledged. We aren't only the categories we're supposed to belong to, we're foremost individuals, all with our own story and our own personality, even when we face discriminations.

There's something rather dystopian in the contemporary American society. Politicians are billionnaires serving first the interests of other billionaires and stirring up identity politics, opposing poor people against one another, to grab some votes. Neither the pro-Trump guy cherishing his gun in Idaho nor the BLM activist in South Chicago have any actual chance to vote for someone really serving his interests. Everything is made by the rich for the rich. Yet that is this way because Americans accept it to be as such.

Now is it really the best way to make the country better? Before answering the question, I think it would deserve a second thought.

*sigh*

Once again, privilege is not a binary status which one holds absolutely or does not hold absolutely. To be privileged in some respect does not mean one is privileged in all respects. A poor white man in Littleville, AK does not have to deal with the scenario I outlined above with TSA. He does not have to worry about being assaulted in the bathroom. He does not have to calculate the risk of going out after dark and potentially exposing himself to the risk of rape or lynching. These are things I do have to worry about. There are, of course, things that I also don't have to worry about that say, a black trans woman does. Similarly, there are aspects of my life that a poor white man with cystic fibrosis might identify quite strongly with, which a poor white able-bodied man might not. For instance we probably would have very similar relationships and outlooks on doctors and medical gatekeeping. We might think similarly about travel. There are also aspects of his life that are way harder than mine. Privilege is a description of amalgamated abstract social relations. It is not a moral condemnation. It is not a totalizing or essentializing label.

Think about it this way: my partner and I don't like being out at night. horsehockey is pretty sketchy for women out alone at night, much less queer women, much much less when one of them is trans. Now you might point to statistics to the effect that in reality on any given night things aren't *that* dangerous for us (trans women getting kidnapped is really quite rare, rapists are much more likely to be someone she knows, etc.). But we have both had enough bad encounters with harassers, with stalkers, with creeps, etc. on the street to really really hate being out at night. Now you, a man, might relate totally differently. You may well have spent all of your twenties gallavanting all over cities, bouncing from bar to bar with nothing having gone wrong for you ever. So you see nothing wrong when you invite us over to hang with you one Friday evening. The thought that you are asking us to walk over to yours at night never crossed your mind. For us we might conclude that you are insensitive to us as women, and we may well turn you down, or if we would agree, it'd be after a lot of thinking about it, and probably creating safety lines just in case, and the experience would be extremely stressful and terrifying for us. That's privilege, and the social dynamics created by privilege. The thought process that you might be having now of "well that's really silly, you can't live your whole life in fear of every single thing that could go wrong...etc." is also privilege. I think, if you really are a leftist, and actually want to build a multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-gender working class movement united in solidarity, you need to be mindful of these sorts of dynamics that arise from privilege. As I told rg in a different thread, if you cannot demonstrate that you are actually mindful of this, if you are unwilling to acknowledge that there are aspects of my experience that you do not have to deal with, if you are going to presume that this stuff is all just "billionaires stirring up identity politics," then I am going to conclude that your political outlook and your goals do not include me, that your movement is a white male movement for men, and that if I want my concerns to be recognized and addressed, then I am better off doing so with my own kind, and you'll wind up with a self-fulfilling prophecy: a bunch of small, ineffectual movements built around "identity politics."

Like this isn't even theoretical, this happened historically with the labor movement, with the civil rights movement, with every major communist and anarchist organization historically. When you approach political organization from the perspective of "let's limit ourselves to the issues that concern us all," you arrive at the lowest common denominator: only those positions which directly materially benefit white, able-bodied cis men. And the trans people, the women, the people of color, the disabled people, they all filter out, and you wind up with a movement by and for white men.
 
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I'm disturbed by such a broad essentialization. When you're born white and poor with cystic fibrosis in Littleville, Arkansas, you're not priviledged. When you're born black in a multi-millionaire family in Beverly Hills, you're priviledged. We aren't only the categories we're supposed to belong to, we're foremost individuals, all with our own story and our own personality, even when we face discriminations.

There's something rather dystopian in the contemporary American society. Politicians are billionnaires serving first the interests of other billionaires and stirring up identity politics, opposing poor people against one another, to grab some votes. Neither the pro-Trump guy cherishing his gun in Idaho nor the BLM activist in South Chicago have any actual chance to vote for someone really serving his interests. Everything is made by the rich for the rich. Yet that is this way because Americans accept it to be as such.

Now is it really the best way to make the country better? Before answering the question, I think it would deserve a second thought.
A Black billionaire can be arrested by the police and be killed, meanwhile even the porrest whiter is well treated by the police.
There is a certain privilege to be white in such countries of Americas and Europe.

i don't know if you're woke, but you've taken an openly racist position and appear to do so comfortably.
Why am I racist?
 
Think about it this way: my partner and I don't like being out at night. **** is pretty sketchy for women out alone at night, much less queer women, much much less when one of them is trans. Now you might point to statistics to the effect that in reality on any given night things aren't *that* dangerous for us (trans women getting kidnapped is really quite rare, rapists are much more likely to be someone she knows, etc.). But we have both had enough bad encounters with harassers, with stalkers, with creeps, etc. on the street to really really hate being out at night.
Then again, why make every topic specifically about trans women?
I didn't even think about that when opening this one.

You think me or basically any other white woman are in less danger of being harassed (or the major crimes you mentioned which i won't repeat), out alone at night?
I think you are wrong, and this mostly depends on where you are (which city part, country etc).
 
Then again, why make every topic specifically about trans women?

My partner is not trans. I talk about trans topics because I am trans. It is a mode of existence I am intimately familiar with. I also talk about women's topics because I am a woman. I try to stay away from the experiences of, say, cis women or BIPOC people because I do not presume to speak for people or on experiences which I do not and cannot know.
 
*sigh*

Once again, privilege is not a binary status which one holds absolutely or does not hold absolutely. To be privileged in some respect does not mean one is privileged in all respects. A poor white man in Littleville, AK does not have to deal with the scenario I outlined above with TSA. He does not have to worry about being assaulted in the bathroom. He does not have to calculate the risk of going out after dark and potentially exposing himself to the risk of rape or lynching. These are things I do have to worry about. There are, of course, things that I also don't have to worry about that say, a black trans woman does. Similarly, there are aspects of my life that a poor white man with cystic fibrosis might identify quite strongly with. For instance we probably would have very similar relationships and outlooks on doctors and medical gatekeeping. We might think similarly about travel. There are also aspects of his life that are way harder than mine. Privilege is a description of amalgamated abstract social relations. It is not a moral condemnation.

Think about it this way: my partner and I don't like being out at night. **** is pretty sketchy for women out alone at night, much less queer women, much much less when one of them is trans. Now you might point to statistics to the effect that in reality on any given night things aren't *that* dangerous for us (trans women getting kidnapped is really quite rare, rapists are much more likely to be someone she knows, etc.). But we have both had enough bad encounters with harassers, with stalkers, with creeps, etc. on the street to really really hate being out at night. Now you, a man, might relate totally differently. You may well have spent all of your twenties gallavanting all over cities, bouncing from bar to bar with nothing having gone wrong for you ever. So you see nothing wrong when you invite us over to hang with you one Friday evening. The thought that you are asking us to walk over to yours at night never crossed your mind. For us we might conclude that you are insensitive to us as women, and we may well turn you down, or if we would agree, it'd be after a lot of thinking about it, and probably creating safety lines just in case, and the experience would be extremely stressful and terrifying for us. That's privilege, and the social dynamics created by privilege. The thought process that you might be having now of "well that's really silly, you can't live your whole life in fear of every single thing that could go wrong...etc." is also privilege. I think, if you really are a leftist, and actually want to build a multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-gender working class movement united in solidarity, you need to be mindful of these sorts of dynamics that arise from privilege. As I told rg in a different thread, if you cannot demonstrate that you are actually mindful of this, if you are unwilling to acknowledge that there are aspects of my experience that you do not have to deal with, if you are going to presume that this stuff is all just "billionaires stirring up identity politics," then I am going to conclude that your political outlook and your goals do not include me, that your movement is a white male movement for men, and that if I want my concerns to be recognized and addressed, then I am better off doing so with my own kind, and you'll wind up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Granted, but why do you need to turn this into an "us vs them" rhetorics? Why the need to generalize to all men as if they were all sexual predators? Let's just denounce predators as predators, there's no need to encompass every men to make the statement stronger.

Like this isn't even theoretical, this happened historically with the labor movement, with the civil rights movement, with every major communist and anarchist organization historically. When you approach political organization from the perspective of "let's focus on the issues that concern us all," you arrive at the lowest common denominator: only those positions which directly materially benefit white, able-bodied cis men. And the trans people, the women, the people of color, the disabled people, they all filter out, and you wind up with a movement by and for white men.
The civil rights movement was about granting equal rights and dignity to everyone. The purpose was to put an end to a society in the old South where you should be ashamed and lower the head simply for being born black. Sorry but you're doing the exact opposite here, you're denouncing men as being men. I've always been very independent in my mindset, and that's very certainly the reason why I don't have any family past the age of 40. I don't recognize myself in that way to sort people into categories.
 
Why? Everything that Marla_Singer wrote made sense to me.
Maybe you should put more effort into explaining your opinion.
"Why?" It's self evident in the bolded.

Sometimes the most important thing is the simplest.

The poor white person with cystic fibrosis will have:
race privilege
wealth oppression
health oppression

Each of these things matters in their own lane, sometimes those lanes are big and overlap.

The rich black person in hollywood will have
race oppression
wealth privilege

Someone arguing that the entire frame is bad because it essentializes, while then endorsing a more essentialized version to arrive to a more comfortable-to-Marla position :crazyeye: It's a nonsense argument, either you accept the terms of privilege and oppression or you don't. If you do, you are obliged to intersectionally compartmentalize. If you don't, you must come up with an economic model that prices these things. As a napkin example I priced race oppression as being worth $600,000 purely on a jobs/earning avenue. Obviously there's more oppression than that. You could also price it to something like votes, what someone's vote "should" equal given the weight of their oppression. An even harder task.

But instead of essentializing to a dollar amount, as that's going to disturb us and Marla, before she does exactly that, we can just acknowledge harms done in each category and address them more directly.

The rest is the usual "both sides are equally bad" nonsense that is a backdoor endorsement of the Republicans. No, most politicians are not billionaires. No, they are not equally bad. No, they didn't introduce the idea of stopping racism as the method to divide us. People trying to stop the stopping of racism are doing that on their own, and most of them are.. well, saying it like Marla.

Being a billionaire doesn't exempt you from racism, but it does give you incredible privilege. The existence of one doesn't negate the other. Obviously. Indeed that's the attempted argument in Marla's post: but you can be white and poor and sick. But being rich doesn't negate racism nor prevents disability as well.

Marla's trying to have it both ways in multiple forms. The existence of privilege negates the oppression she cares about (shocking, the one that befits her identity), but the oppression of the other doesn't negate the privileges she doesn't want brought to attention (again, that befit her). To get there she complains about essentialization, but then essentializes the essentialization further to lead the reader to her inconsistent conclusion (where her preferred privileges and oppressions outweigh the others). You could argue scale (billionaire), and I would agree that being a billionaire is an incredible privilege. But I wouldn't essentialize it to one final score to exemplify why we should do away with all the uncomfortable categories of not-money.
 
"Why?" It's self evident in the bolded.

Sometimes the most important thing is the simplest.

The poor white person with cystic fibrosis will have:
race privilege
wealth oppression
health oppression

Each of these things matters in their own lane, sometimes those lanes are big and overlap.

The rich black person in hollywood will have
race oppression
wealth privilege

Someone arguing that the entire frame is bad because it essentializes, while then endorsing a more essentialized version to arrive to a more comfortable-to-Marla position :crazyeye: It's a nonsense argument, either you accept the terms of privilege and oppression or you don't. If you do, you are obliged to intersectionally compartmentalize. If you don't, you must come up with an economic model that prices these things. As a napkin example I priced race oppression as being worth $600,000 purely on a jobs/earning avenue. Obviously there's more oppression than that. You could also price it to something like votes, what someone's vote "should" equal given the weight of their oppression. An even harder task.

But instead of essentializing to a dollar amount, as that's going to disturb us and Marla, before she does exactly that, we can just acknowledge harms done in each category and address them more directly.

The rest is the usual "both sides are equally bad" nonsense that is a backdoor endorsement of the Republicans. No, most politicians are not billionaires. No, they are not equally bad. No, they didn't introduce the idea of stopping racism as the method to divide us. People trying to stop the stopping of racism are doing that on their own, and most of them are.. well, saying it like Marla.

Being a billionaire doesn't exempt you from racism, but it does give you incredible privilege. The existence of one doesn't negate the other. Obviously. Indeed that's the attempted argument in Marla's post: but you can be white and poor and sick. But being rich doesn't negate racism nor prevents disability as well.

Marla's trying to have it both ways in multiple forms. The existence of privilege negates the oppression she cares about (shocking, the one that befits her identity), but the oppression of the other doesn't negate the privileges she doesn't want brought to attention (again, that befit her). To get there she complains about essentialization, but then essentializes the essentialization further to lead the reader to her inconsistent conclusion (where her preferred privileges and oppressions outweigh the others). You could argue scale (billionaire), and I would agree that being a billionaire is an incredible privilege. But I wouldn't essentialize it to one final score to exemplify why we should do away with all the uncomfortable categories of not-money.
Things are far more complicated than that. There's a prettyness priviledge, a smartness priviledge, a thinness priviledge, an easy-at-socializing priviledge, a seduction priviledge, an atheliticism priviledge, a good-at-focusing priviledge, an ability-to-enjoy-life priviledge, a competitive-spirit priviledge, and you can go on and on and on in categorizing people as if we were all products on supermarket shelves.

Or you can go for the more straightforward way: I am who I am and others are who they are. Let's just take everyone for the individuals they are rather than being judgemental towards the categories we think they should belong to.
 
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The rich black person in hollywood will have
race oppression
wealth privilege
Sorry for picking this out, i appreciate your detailed reply.

I cannot get my head around this really being true, still being true in 2022.
A famous, succesful, rich, with tons of fans or whichever phrase we want to use - black person in Hollywood fighting with race oppression.
In their daily life (not on a big platform for the black community in general).
People like Denzel Washington do not strike me as being oppressed by that. Then again i ofc cannot know for certain.
 
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Things are far more complicated than that. There's a prettyness priviledge, a smartness priviledge, an easy-at-socializing priviledge, a seduction priviledge, a atheliticism priviledge, a good-at-focusing priviledge, an ability-to-enjoy-life priviledge, a competitive-spirit priviledge, and you can go on and on and on in categorizing people as if we were all products on supermarket shelves.

Or you can go for the more straightforward way: I'm a who I am and others are who they are. Let's just take everyone for the individual they are rather than being judgemental towards the categories we think they should belong to.
Well a bunch of individuals as they are are telling you they are a group, have been treated as a group, have landed in an oppressed back-footed position as a group, and to respect them as individuals, their context in groups matter.
 
My partner is not trans. I talk about trans topics because I am trans. It is a mode of existence I am intimately familiar with. I also talk about women's topics because I am a woman. I try to stay away from the experiences of, say, cis women or BIPOC people because I do not presume to speak for people or on experiences which I do not and cannot know.
All good, i am not part of any "OT group" or stance. Actually the things Narz wrote can easily warn someone about that.
I just know that many women are harassed without being trans. Heck i know / knew men who are being harassed.
It's an obvious general problem of society. Do i doubt that trans women can have it especially difficult? Nopes.
But any person can be hit hard by it, there's also a certain luck (or rather bad luck) factor involved.
 
Why am I racist?
i showed you why already. though i said you took a racist position, i didn't call you a racist directly, because i don't know. could be you're just parroting random stuff. but the position you stated is racist w/o question, simply on the assumptions it states.

A Black billionaire can be arrested by the police and be killed, meanwhile even the porrest whiter is well treated by the police.
lol good one

He does not have to worry about being assaulted in the bathroom.
not true

He does not have to calculate the risk of going out after dark and potentially exposing himself to the risk of rape or lynching.
excepting rape, men are overwhelmingly the likely targets of violent crimes. trans higher still.

but as a man, if you don't bother calculating this risk, it increases a lot. it's probably worth knowing that *generally*, being in some places vs others more than doubles the expected rate of violent crime against a person.

Privilege is a description of amalgamated abstract social relations.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/privilege

lack of abuse is not "privilege".

The thought that you are asking us to walk over to yours at night never crossed your mind. For us we might conclude that you are insensitive to us as women, and we may well turn you down, or if we would agree, it'd be after a lot of thinking about it, and probably creating safety lines just in case, and the experience would be extremely stressful and terrifying for us. That's privilege, and the social dynamics created by privilege.
nope. that's something, but that's not what "privilege" means, sorry.

I think, if you really are a leftist, and actually want to build a multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-gender working class movement united in solidarity, you need to be mindful of these sorts of dynamics that arise from privilege.
if you wanted to build such an environment, you wouldn't broad-stroke lie to people that they're privileged and get incredulous when they don't accept the notion.

and you'll wind up with a self-fulfilling prophecy
irony!

Like this isn't even theoretical, this happened historically with the labor movement, with the civil rights movement, with every major communist and anarchist organization historically.
communism does not belong with civil rights.

you wind up with a movement by and for white men.
what is observed does not fit predictions. you keep saying it though. maybe try another model that better fits observations? or is empirical evidence also for white men, lol?

the racism here is amazing. this kind of rationale is similar to what was used to discriminate against jews throughout history, and black people in america. there are enough white men that it's unlikely to result in the same outcome, but i'm not sure what part of parroting this open racism will result in a good outcome regardless. you'd be kicked off this forum in short order if you took a similar position about non-whites, which by itself says a lot about who has "privileges" in that particular context.

The poor white person with cystic fibrosis will have:
race privilege
wealth oppression
health oppression

Each of these things matters in their own lane, sometimes those lanes are big and overlap.

The rich black person in hollywood will have
race oppression
wealth privilege
sigh, more discrimination disguised as virtue signaling.
 
Sorry for picking this out, i appreciate your detailed reply.

I cannot get my head around this really being true, still being true in 2022.
A famous, succesful, rich, with tons of fans or whichever phrase we want to use - black person in Hollywood fighting with race oppresion.
In their daily life (not on a big platform for the black community in general).
People like Denzel Washington do not strike me as being oppressed by that. Then again i ofc cannot know for certain.
Are we debating over-essentializing or not? Wealth, location, fame, good looks, ability to socialize with police, stay calm under pressure, all the macro and micro-topics matter. But it doesn't eliminate all the racism.
 
i showed you why already. though i said you took a racist position, i didn't call you a racist directly, because i don't know. could be you're just parroting random stuff. but the position you stated is racist w/o question, simply on the assumptions it states.


lol good one


not true


excepting rape, men are overwhelmingly the likely targets of violent crimes. trans higher still.

but as a man, if you don't bother calculating this risk, it increases a lot. it's probably worth knowing that *generally*, being in some places vs others more than doubles the expected rate of violent crime against a person.


https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/privilege

lack of abuse is not "privilege".


nope. that's something, but that's not what "privilege" means, sorry.


if you wanted to build such an environment, you wouldn't broad-stroke lie to people that they're privileged and get incredulous when they don't accept the notion.


irony!


communism does not belong with civil rights.


what is observed does not fit predictions. you keep saying it though. maybe try another model that better fits observations? or is empirical evidence also for white men, lol?

the racism here is amazing. this kind of rationale is similar to what was used to discriminate against jews throughout history, and black people in america. there are enough white men that it's unlikely to result in the same outcome, but i'm not sure what part of parroting this open racism will result in a good outcome regardless. you'd be kicked off this forum in short order if you took a similar position about non-whites, which by itself says a lot about who has "privileges" in that particular context.


sigh, more discrimination disguised as virtue signaling.
Your understanding of racism is prepackaged by racists.
 
Or you can go for the more straightforward way: I'm a who I am and others are who they are. Let's just take everyone for the individuals they are rather than being judgemental towards the categories we think they should belong to.
But that doesn't dilute the contemporary guilt of the educated upperclass with the guilt of birth of the lowerclass.

End of line.
 
I would say the main reason corporate America is pushing diversity and diversity acceptance is because it creates a more professional and productive work environment, and also broadens their markets. I think it’s just straight up more efficient and good for business, no need for the conspiracy side.
The evidence says the opposite:





Ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.


Everyone should be privileged, or rather, have what privilege affords.

I agree with this 100%.
 
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