Fuck your "pro-life" anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-white privilege arguments.

[Rilgin]

136. The Problem is that People who use "Privilege" are not talking about themselves

I am not a white man. I am a human being and an individual. The only group I internally accept is that of being a human being part of humanity.

I think that we should have a country of equality and consideration for others as part of humanity. That is the goal that I think progressive politics should seek. I do not believe that progressive politics is served best by identity politics and groups fighting with each other.

Now, it is obvious that the world has not obtained this goal yet. Racism, Sexism, envy, greed, hatred, sadism all exist in the world. Current civil rights violations seem to me to be a huge issue. In particular, the criminal justice system in this country is the institution that I believe has the most problems.

With regard to claims of racism or sexism, I have no problem whatsoever with someone talking about themselves to identify racism or sexism in the world that affected them. When I hear a statement or claim usually I can judge for myself if I believe the claim to be actual but I have no voice in what that person is saying about their own internal beliefs or interpretations.

However, when a person uses the phrase or concept of "White Privilege" to describe an incident where a person of color or a woman were discriminated against, they are NOT talking about themselves. They are not white or male (depending on the claim), they are talking about someone not even in the situation. They are clearly talking about some idealized non-individual who is not their particular race or gender. This is not treating people as people and individuals as individuals, this is judging a whole group of people who are not you.

If a PoC is stopped in a neighborhood by a racist cop (consciously or subconsciously racist), it is not white privilege, it is racism. There is no white person in the car, there is only a PoC. Describing discrimination that affects you is very easy to do in the first person. Example "I was discriminated against". If instead you use a complicated form to say someone who is not you and was not in that situation was not discriminated against, you are trying to do more than just talk about yourself and your experiences. You are talking about other people and trying to assert something about their internal experience and state. In this case, since you would call me a white man, you are implicitly talking about me unless I do something (totally unidentified) to avoid criticism from being a member of the villain group.

I totally reject this formulation of racism and do not believe it is progressive to divide individuals into groups. I believe it is the opposite of what I think progressive politics should seek. In particular, progressive boards, IMO, should not be about finding differences between groups rather than find points of identity and comity between individuals. Civil rights forever, identity politics should be put in the past as people not in the ruling class fighting amongst themselves.