My privilege rant. It bugs the hell out of me to read these

[HiPointDem]

110. The "popular" conceptualization of white privilege focuses on the fact that white people can

Last edited Sun Mar 3, 2013, 06:22 AM - Edit history (1)

take certain things for granted (like the air they breathe) -- being able to rent an apartment in any neighborhood, walk down a street without being harrassed by police, etc. etc. -- from the mundane ('flesh' crayons) to the life-threatening (lynching). I'm not saying that's the only conceptualization of white privilege that exists, but that's what it boils down to a lot of the time in popular discourse. I would link examples from DU but my aim isn't to point fingers. And I agree with that analysis, as far as it goes.

But that's generally as far as it goes in the 'popular' discourse, and when you ask, 'ok, i'm privileged, now what? What am I supposed to do with that fact?' -- what you get is (and you can see it on this thread and others) -- 'well, you need to pass that analysis on to others, treat others with respect, be a nice person....' And in fact I asked that very question in one of these threads & was given more or less that answer. Which to me was like -- well, I already try to do those things, so how does my saying 'I'm privileged' further that effort?

So in what sense is this concept of 'privilege' an advance over conceptualizations and terminologies that made more or less the same point, if the only goal is to get people to 'treat others with respect,' etc? As we see on these threads, the word 'privilege' gets some people's backs up, since it signifies some exceptional benefit -- whereas most people don't consider, e.g., walking in public without being attacked by police an exceptional 'privilege,' as it implies that getting harrassed by police = baseline normal state. Even on this 'progressive' board, a lot of the tension boils down to that *word* -- not the underlying idea of white experience being assumed to be normative.

So if that dynamic exists even at DU, how does telling a racist that he's privileged help change his thinking? Especially the stereotypical lower-class 'white trash' racist, who already feels class-based resentment?

Which brings me to my second problem with the conceptualization. The person who originally coined the term (1965) did so in the context of a larger historical & economic analysis:

Key Components of Theodore W. Allen's Analysis in
"Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race"

When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no "white" people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.

Throughout much of the seventeenth century conditions in Virginia were quite similar for Afro-American and Euro-American laboring people and the "white race" did not exist.

There were many significant instances of labor unrest and solidarity in Virginia, especially during the 1660s and 1670s, and it is of transcendent importance that "foure hundred English and Negroes in Arms" fought together demanding freedom from bondage in the latter stages of Bacon's Rebellion.

The "white race" was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to the labor unrest in the latter (civil war) stages of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676-77.

The "white race" was developed and maintained through the systematic extension of "a privileged status" by the ruling class to European-American laboring people who were not promoted out of the working class, but came to participate in this new multi-class "white" formation.

The non-enslavement of European-American laborers was the necessary pre-condition for the development of racial slavery (the particular form of racial oppression that developed in the continental plantation colonies).

The "white race" social control formation, racial slavery, the system of white supremacy, and white racial privileges were ruinous to the class interests of working people and workers' "own position, vis-à-vis the rich and powerful . . . was not improved, but weakened, by the white-skin-privilege system."

http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center__font_size__3__font_color__sepia___b_4__theodore_w__allen_br___font_size_86151.htm

I understand that this kind of analysis still exists -- but not so much in the popular discourse. People often speak as though racism were a purely individual characteristic -- without any reference to the way power & perception is structured by elites, through the state and through economic control.

To me, this kind of larger context is what renders the use of the word 'privilege' sensible -- whites are 'privileged' because the *real* baseline 'normal' condition of labor v. capital without resistance *is* a harrassed, oppressed condition -- from which whites were given some relief "in exchange" for their participation (active or passive) in the black 'super-degradation' of slavery below the lowest white prole.

Whereas Allen distinguished between the white ruling class and white labor, the modern popularized version loses this nuance and 'disappears' the ruling class -- all whites are equally 'privileged' and so, by implication, equally responsible for current conditions.

And far from just "treating other with respect" his thesis was that things would not change unless whites actively renounced their 'white privilege' which meant far more than listening respectfully to black people -- it meant being willing to risk the nice job, the nice house, the respect of fellow whites, etc.

I don't support a 'racial status quo,' I don't consider these two separate struggles, but completely interconnected struggles, e.g. WEB Dubois:

The race element was emphasized in order that property-holders could get the support of the majority of white laborers and make it more possible to exploit Negro labor. But the race philosophy came as a new and terrible thing to make labor unity or labor class-consciousness impossible. So long as the Southern white laborers could be induced to prefer poverty to equality with the Negro, just so long was a labor movement in the South made impossible.

I don't consider that blacks are the only party injured by racism -- and not only economically.

I don't think this 'privilege' narrative is very effective at reaching its supposed targets.

And also, it seems to me, there's a thread in the 'white privilege' narrative about racism -- where racism just *is*, free-floating, ahistorical & unconnected from economics, politics, class, etc -- that equals "things can never be different in any crucial way".