A place to sit back, hang out, and make monkey noises about anything you'd like.
Who's privileged? Is it you?
6 years ago
Uh I'm not reading all that but I suppose if the OP scandalized COGites and had to be hidden away it's worth preserving before deletion:
pimenita
4h
Hi everyone, I’m Pime and this is the first thread I start, that’s why I chose a light subject as you all can see…
So, you’ve been called “privileged”, or more exactly, your identity has been labeled that way by someone else. We will call them Handsome Riley. Handsome Riley said being straight, white, and male has given you a set of tools or opportunities people who are neither of those things don’t get to have. “What are they talking about?” You say, looking around the 2x2 room you live in. “When did they give these privileges out? Because nobody gave me one of those!”
If you’re anything like me, you were probably born in the '90, you have a bunch of terrible jobs under your belt, and less than 50 bucks stashed somewhere in your small room (For a rainy day, you say to yourself as the fan box stops working for the tenth time in the day).
I’m a 27 year old woman living with my folks, I don’t have a proper job; I make cake toppers for a living (For a living, she says as a single tear falls on her 200 pesos bill). With that money I help my parents from time to time, but it’s a miniscule amount of cash, and doesn’t really make much of a difference in the end.
I’m privileged. You see, I don’t have any children, I don’t have to pay rent, I have a roof on my head and food on my table, I have a loving family that cares about me. People don’t look at me and see a possible thief, or a drug addict, and the police have never stopped me as I went back home after a horrible day at work --they have stopped their cruiser as I waited for the bus on one occasion, and tried to strike a not at all creepy conversation with me while staring at me as if I were a slice of delicious pizza, but cops will be cops.
Oh, on top of that I have fair skin, which always adds a bit more privilege into the mix.
If you read those last paragraphs and thought to yourself, “So, living a basic, content life is called being privileged now, huh?” You and your smug expression are right. Yay for both of us and your cocking eyebrows! The thing is, that stuff shouldn’t be privileges, but they are. Oh boy they sure are.
I could go on and on explaining why I don’t think we live in an equalitarian society, and why having certain physical attributes puts you higher on the ladder, but a guy on youtube said it all a lot better than I would ever be able to.
The video is about white nationalism in the USA (regarding the last election), mind you, so if you’re not a white nationalist, or from the USA, you might think it isn’t relevant to you or how you feel about the privilege topic, but believe me, it gives answers to a lot of questions. Anyways, here it is1.
For those of you that don’t feel like watching a 30 minute video --and rather spend that half an hour reading, for some reason–, here’s the too long didn’t watch points.
Shaun says:
“If the plain field is naturally already leveled, then any attempt to advocate for any type of social minority is coming directly and unfairly at the expense of straight white men.”
“It seems everyone but them has an identity that they’re allowed to be openly proud of. And that doesn’t make sense if we’re supposed to be in a leveled plain field.”
Everyone can be proud of being a woman, or latinx, or gay, but the straight white males. So he explains why this happens.
“With these minority identities come narratives that include being oppressed and working to overcome that oppression. If we don’t consider all the negatives of oppression (if we take the actual oppression out of oppression), it can seem quite romantic: succeeding despite being the underdog is a lot more exciting and heroic, narratively speaking, than succeeding when society expects you to succeed.”
“It seems to them that they’re being unfairly cast as “the bad guy”, without actually having done anything wrong as an individual. Society rather than being biased against people who aren’t them, is actually therefore biased against straight white men who are not allowed to have an identity or a narrative.”
And so:
“We’ve got a bunch of angry young white dudes on the internet without much historical, economic, or political context with which to understand the world and they’re feeling increasingly left out. If something unfair or embarrassing or upsetting or disappointing happens to them, they can’t say, Well, it’s probably because I’m white, or straight, or a man. There’s not socially acceptable explanatory narrative for them to rationalize the negative aspects of their lives. In fact, society is constantly signaling to them the opposite: that they should be doing great, You’re the best, You should be on top.”
How can someone be straight, white, and male and not be Indiana Jones by age 25? Or own their own Walmart, or whatever it is rich people do. That’s because you and me have been deceived, my friend. You, the men amongst you, were told all your lives you would grow up to be Han Solo, or Marty McFly, or any of the Good Guys that always get the girl and the nice house. Me? Hollywood told me I would get to date Christian Slater. So where is True Romance Christian Slater, Hollywood? Where is him?
Then Shaun talks about you know who and everything gets political and orange and my head hurts, but he says a couple of things I think are important to highlight.
“It’s always the minorities that get accused of being obsessed with feminism and identity politics, but in reality, those things ultimately exist to level the plain field. They are means to an end, that end being equality.”
“[White males] don’t want to be told that [a basic, content life] is as good as it gets.”
“In the Boom years, the system can get away with this; people have jobs, they’re earning money, things are taken over. But inevitably you get the Bust years, where suddenly young people’s expectations and possibilities start diminishing compared to their parents, which is one of the main parameters by which their success in life is going to be judged. It’s more expensive to go to school, harder to get a job, that job won’t pay as much money, it’s harder to afford a house (…)”
Now imagine being someone with your income, just not white or male or straight or cis. Don’t think about the Obamas of the world –I told you not to think about him! Now your face is stuck that way. Think about the black kid working at McDonalds or the hispanic girl that served your table. Of course, there are a lot of not straight white males in positions of power, but are there really that many to affirm we live in a fair society? And don’t get me wrong, asshole people come in all shapes and colors --the cops that ogled my tits were far from white–; someone calling me a dumb cunt will hurt me the same regardless of them being a homeless white dude or a rich dominican trans woman. I’m just saying, asshole people = bad; thinking you aren’t privileged because once you saw a rich black woman = bad too, or not factual, whatever.
Which bring us to the last point:
“Racism actually still exists and it’s coming back in fashion.”
“It’s comparatively difficult to learn about the economy, for instance, and how that operates, but white nationalists look at complicated systemic problems and make them simple racial problems. It’s not our banking system that’s broken, it’s the jews, It’s not the justice system, it’s a problem with black people, It’s not immigration law, or foreign policy, it’s the Muslims, If we just get rid of X type of person, then the relevant problem will go away.”
Which is of course, not how real life works. We can all agree with that, right? Right?
“[White males] have no choice but to take part in an oppressive economic system that’s heavily bias in favor of the rich. The lack of a political identity some white young men feel could ideally be filled with a class identity. Still talking about real problems but through an actually helpful economic lens, instead of a misleading and bigoted racial one.”
So, that’s it. If you want to rant or whatever that’s cool, I’m not the Queen of the Factual Facts and Unlimited Truths. I just watched this video some time ago and it helped me understand why some, some, straight white males are so so very angry. And I don’t know, being mad at everything seems such a futile thing to do with your time and energy… then again, I’m quite lazy.
Another thing, please be polite to each other, and try to think before saying something unfortunate about groups of people, remember we all come from different places (thank god), so your “X group of people…!” could be someone else’s family, mmhkayy?
Also, this thread is open to talk about ways to represent these issues in our works of fiction, or if something like that can be gracefully pull off without people going bonkers.
