On privilige

[sqbr]

EDIT: *cough*, meant to post this to debunkingwhite. But hey, you guys may be able to help too :)(*) If you're unfamilar with the concept of "white privilige" I reccomend White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

A statement I've seen pop up fairly frequently is "I don't want to give up my white privilege, I want to share it with everyone". I've seen enough criticisms of this statement not to say it myself, but I don't have quite enough of a grip on it's wrongness to explain it to other people.

The counterarguments that I can see (which combine together in complex ways):
-Maybe POC don't want to live exactly like white people, but to have their own lifestyles validated (ie it's like turning women into men to remove male privilige)
-It may not be possible (ie it's like giving all peasants a castle to remove class privilige)
-Certain priviliges only work if there's another, less priviliged group (ie "not getting suspected of shoplifting")

But I have a feeling that's not all there is to it, and can't express it very well.

So, in words of one syllable: why is this wrong? It is wrong, right?

(*)n.b. to sonnlich, I realise this oversimplifies the position you were taking in our particular discussion, but I decided to pare down the question to it's simplest form rather than adding a bunch of qualifiers etc, esp. since I'm interested in general.

Comments

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Hmm, quite. I'm pretty sure the original discussion in which I said that I was still being pretty specific.

Re: movies: Yeah, I realise that the assumption that the audience is white will come to an end, more or less, in a Truly Equal Society. But I ALSO think that - assuming Equality - that doesn't mean the default assumption is going to be that the audience is NOT white - in theory we're just going to lose the default assumption, and seriously, as far as I am concerned that will only make the entertainments more awesome. I like the idea of a world where there isn't a default race. I like the idea of a greater nuance and variety in the experience of identity, and I don't think that should really count as a loss.

Or if it is, it's one which will be more than amply compensated.

I think my view on history is different from yours, since I have read histories which either don't angle as Go Europeans (e.g. Zulu-sympathetic histories of Africa), or are Eurocentric but not Anglocentric. After all, when you're reading French history, the English aren't generally the good guys.

I can readily expand that to a happy conviction that looking at history more widely is going to be a good thing. Especially including the argument that, as far as knowledge of history affects the future, a balanced view will be better.

Which means not demonising the Europeans, either. It's all very well to acknowledge that they Did Wrong Things, but nobody ever sets out to do things that they BELIEVE are wrong. So you look at WHY they thought they were right. BOTH sides are important, and I think it would be good to acknowledge that it's rare that you have Good Guys and Bad Guys - you just have people, sometimes doing good with bad intentions, sometimes doing bad with good intentions, and so forth.

I just tend to think that when you have equality, everybody wins, overall. Equal doesn't have to mean identical, after all.

[alias_sqbr]

I just tend to think that when you have equality, everybody wins, overall. Equal doesn't have to mean identical, after all.

Absolutely. I mean, I think white people have already lost a lot of privilige over the past century or so, but I also think we're all better off.

Something I totally meant to make a bit point in my reply and compltely failed to say at all: obviously I can't speak for you. But I often find myself somewhat alienated by non-white protagonists. Not enough to stop me enjoying a story, but enough to be noticable. The fact that I don't feel this way very often is a privilige. One I am quite happy to give up, especially since I'm sure I'd get over it pretty quickly wth enough exposure to a wider variety of protagonists (same way I've learned from a young age to identify with men and non-australians, etc), but it's still there.

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see.

I don't feel alienated by non-white protagonists. In thinking about this as I wrote a whole lot of text I just deleted because I realised I was on the wrong track, this is probably because I've never really seen a television or movie protagonist with whom I do identify, ethnically speaking. My ethnic background is moderately odd, and I would argue that white South Africans tend to be portrayed rather negatively as a rule, and first generation immigrants are generally treated as a study in alienation all by themselves - which I can't really argue with.

When mild cultural alienation is the norm for you, alienation in films is lost in the noise. I don't really see protagonists in films as people I would identify with no matter what their skin colour, so I'd perhaps be putting it better if I were to say that I don't feel more alienated by non-white protagonists than I do by white ones. (Often less, since a non-white protagonist is more likely to have a mindset that encompasses non-Eurocentric notions, which, when your cultural background is partly African, matters.)

Skin colour isn't everything, not by a long chalk...

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, yes, I mean cultural/ethnic background more than skin colour, although of course the two are pretty closely linked.

Anyway, that's really interesting. Hmm.

I feel the need to note that I do sometimes identify very strongly with non-white protagonists more than white ones, ie Gunn from Angel(*), it's more of a tendency than a rule.

(*)Which I guess ties into me finding few characters to identify with class wise. But that's a whole nother thing :)