On privilige

[alias_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]

There's a reason I don't express it as "I want to share my privilege". It's "I think those are things everyone should have." I posted about (http://sonnlich.livejournal.com/947357.html) that very article, by the way, a while back.

See, I don't think that we should be making everyone's experiences identical. I like diversity - on equal terms, like, let's trade Shakespeare for Shosholoza and everybody can enjoy the fruits of one another's cultures.

But if something is a part of the white experience that non-whites don't want, because it's a cultural distinction they would prefer not to have subsume their own?

That's not privilege! It's a cultural difference! The privilege, perhaps, is one being seen as superior to the other, if such applies, which it often does, and that's something that we need to jettison.

The idea that !culture is Good is one of those elements of white privilege that I just think should be things everyone has. Stay-at-home mothers should be valued - as should stay-at-home-fathers - but that's not to imply that making the choice to work the fifty-hour-a-week job and go for Partner needs to be devalued.

[alias_sqbr]

The privilege, perhaps, is one being seen as superior to the other, if such applies, which it often does

Well, yes. And afaict (and I can't really tell, thus this post :)) the issue is that getting rid of that privilege will mean a bit of difficulty for us, as we are forced to watch shows with non-white protagonists(*), and study non-white authors, and learn a version of history which doesn't place us at the centre and pinnacle of everything. Etc.

I think.

(*)On the plus side, they might be gay or female or something else crazy like that too :)

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Yes and no.

See, I don't think that having shows with non-white protagonists means that, magically, there will be no white protagonists ever. (I also don't have a problem with non-white protagonists, because why the hell would I.) It just means there'll be more balance, which is not, imo, a loss of privilege to me.

As for history - again, yes and no. I'm all in favour of accuracy in history, which means taht quite a lot of history will still look at European history, because, hi, Europe conquered the world for a couple of centuries, and European history IS world history in that period. On the other hand, I think including other histories, less earth-shaking but still interesting, or different perspectives on that history, is a great idea. So again, I'm in favour.

The Battle of Blood River is less important, in the long run, than, say, the Dreyfus Affair. That's no reason not to look at both.

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm. Last time I tried to reply to this my brain melted out my ears, but here goes again :)

First off: I am sorry this turned into "lets all talk about how TOTALLY DUMB an oversimplified version of sonnlichs POV is, so she has a choice of putting up with it or having everyone tell her she's WRONG WRONG WRONG", it's something I was trying to avoid but I am fail. Sorry :(

Anyway: Yes, obviously, unless something Very Unlikely happens, there will always be SOME movies etc with white protagonists. And I'm sure most white people have no problem with non-white protagnoists from time to time (see the popularity of the "Rush Hour" movies) But currently such films are the exception, and even with most of them they're still aimed at a mostly white audience, with the white experience as the default. *flails at getting across how this would be different, apart from pointing to foreign movies, and that's not quite the same*

Also: Obviously you can't ignore europe in world history, but at the same time it is way disproprtionately priviliged over other histories (ie, from my very limited POV, the history of maths tends to go quickly over Egypt and China, then lingers on Greece, then acts as if nothing happened until the renaissance (and nothing after then outside europe), despite the many advances made by indian and middle eastern mathematitians. And did you know african tribes have been using fractals for centuries, and indirectly inspired current fractal theory? But I digress) And to a certain extent it's still taught/thought of (in everyday circles anyway, I realise uni level history is different) with europeans as not only important but as the (sometimes villainous) protagonists of the story, with all other countries only mattering in how they affect Europes Journey Into The Future.

Hell, listening to an american POV on european history was enlightening, since they're less likely to see England as the Hero Of The Piece unlike all the anglocentric history I tend to encounter (I wish I spoke a LOTE well enough for a non-english language history book/doco, that would be really interesting)

Um..I had a point in there but I think I lost it. I may stop before my brain dies again :) (Stupid cold)

[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 :)