White Privilege

I wonder if this language is more off-putting, self-referential and divisive than it intends to be. I had a larger, rambling autoblogographical post struggling to give thought shape on the matter, but it needs more work and maybe I'll never post it.

For now, I wonder if self-reflective privilege sniffing isn't ultimately more a badge of conscious, clumsy revolutionism than it is actually revolutionary.

I understand the point of not using inherited or unjust advantage. I walked away from Omelas because it was no longer possible for me to reconcile how I fed myself with how I actually felt about the world.

I'm certainly sympathetic to the argument, but that's perhaps easier for me than others. My non-whiteness falls within acceptable parameters. Indians are noble, Italians are lovers and no longer even consigned to the "southern races," Jews have done a whole lot worse for many centuries before.

But, to turn it into a testing scheme for determining value and membership in a movement, or the Movement?*

Down that path I can only see recrimination, schism and the unintended reinforcement of race, gender and privilege.

Attacking a dude who's on the cusp of making the right connections because he hasn't yet reached the point where he understands privilege or the social construction of gender? Seems like a really good recipe for strengthening his biases, not eliminating them.

It's also lazy. It assumes that a personal familiarity with a tool, tradition or critique is also a universal one.**

But (and this is not a developed position for me, more of a series of sensibilities) I think using existing and culturally valid opinions about racism and patriarchy as a litmus test for proper or acceptable attitudes is dumb.

We're just at the tools to make the tools stage, really. Perhaps, more time and effort needs to be expended on disseminating the skills for fashioning these tools, and a broader awareness of them, than in setting up judgment schemes which begin with an attack.

In my experience, going for the jugular gets you enemies, not allies.***

Far be it for me to say or imply something like "put yourself in the place of the white guy," but if you really are interested in getting him to understand his privilege, his protected status and his own socialized internalization of gender, attacking him for not understanding and mocking him for lacking an expansive and reasoned critique seems like a good way to get him to abandon resistance, harden his attitudes and generally spend his time on the defensive.

Which is, I think, a really good method for developing intransigent reactionaries who are easy prey for fascists who clothe themselves in anti-power rhetoric.

* - this is how I read it, consequentially. I don't know if the author intends it, literally.

** - Both of my children play the violin/fiddle. I do not. I know that violins exist, because I can see them, hold them and name them. I know that it's possible to play the violin, because I can watch my children do it, and I have watched them learn to do so. But the knowledge of a technique is not the same as practice in it; knowing that the violin is playable doesn't magically provide me with the ability to play it.

*** - yes, you, Michael Dawson...