General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: White Men Rule [View all]MellowDem
(5,018 posts)is how overly simplified and broad it usually is, and how it alienates a lot of potential allies.
White males, as a whole, have the most privilege of any racial/sex combo in the US. But that's quite a specific claim. Not to mention, on an individual level, how much that privilege helps a person varies extraordinarily.
For many white males, their privileges they recieve from being white and male are outweighed by many disadvantages of class.
I'm all for making people understand the privileges they have in life. Very few people aknowledge them. But everyone has privileges, and to focus on just "white males" not only alienates such from considering their privileges when they can see many things working against them, but also ignores the many other types of privilege which are incredibly, if not much more relevant and powerful nowadays.
I see far more posts about white male privilege than class privilege, and class privilege has an incredible amount of power in the US, much more so than race or sex does anymore, on a general level.
For example, for the author to say that being a white male automatically makes it like "T-ball" is a staggeringly ignorant quote. The amount of privilege he has to say that is astounding. It's just a different sort of privilege he is unknowingly invoking, and in an article that's supposed to be about privilege at that. This type of argumentation is the worst sort.
The thing is, the article makes relevant points about privilege and especially the right's attitude, it just also makes several horrible points and does so in the worst possible way. If you want to convince white males on the right that people have privileges and to examine them, this is not the way to do it.