Social Justice 101: Power Privilege and Oppression

[Elfdude]

Hey Y'all, I've noticed a large number of disturbing sentiments posted by otherwise respectable posters and have set out on a mission to inform those around us about social issues. Now social issues are issues we've all experienced from not having enough change in your pocket, to being discriminated against, to the ability to live your life how you want. That's something which most do not understand; different people face different social issues. That might seem like a steep thing to say but it's not a slippery slope, legitimately there are different issues that one faces depending on the circumstances in which they live. We call these beneficial circumstances "privileges" and the negative circumstances "oppressions". Now it's important here to do away with the blame game. There is no one person at fault here and it's excessively arrogant to believe any one person or action can significantly alter the affect of social justice. That is not to demean efforts to address oppression but rather to act as a call to arms for as many as possible to get involved in doing just that. This is not about the oppression olympics or guilt or anything like that. It's about educating and attempting to provide people with a framework for understanding the problem of diverse social issues and building solidarity between oppressed groups as well as promoting social responsibility of the privileged.

As Ventos Mustel said:

--What people are discussing when they discuss privilege is one of two things--

1. two people, all else being equal, having unequal opportunities/chance to succeed/quality of life due to prejudice against their ethnicity/religion/gender/orientation/etc, ex an arab man being 'randomly' searched disproportionately often at an airport

2. two people having unequal starting points due to circumstances beyond their control, ex being born into a wealthy family and thus more likely to be able to afford to go to a good college



As chriscase so eloquently defined:

1. In a human population, not all individuals are able to contribute uniformly. Individuals' capabilities differ.
2. In a human population, individuals' needs differ. Some individuals require different types and levels of assistance.
3. Human existence is characterized and advanced by our sociability. We are social animals. One consequence of this is that every society has some practices about how weaker members are to be provided for, and how individuals with particular talents are to be encouraged and the products of those talents are to be exploited.

These we will call our basic philosophical premises. From these we can draw several conclusions which help us to categorize social justice into a conceptual framework that allows you to understand (ideally) what side of the issues you should be on based on your viewpoints. Particularly there seems to be a great deal of confusion as to which views are associated with which outcomes.

A population at the macro scale can be thought of on the macroscale as a single organism. As a single organism it prefers choices which are beneficial to the continued existence, perpetuation and spread of that organism. In the same way we can think of survival of the fittest to applying or organisms it also does to civilizations and societies. The crucial difference here is that unlike our cells, each part of this organism we call society is aware of itself and thus has the potential to influence the outcome of the entire organism. The first requirement to change is to understand where you are. My goal here is to paint out in broad strokes what beneficial practices are for society and civilization itself and why they are beneficial.

• Equity: The importance of equity is understood that appreciates the end of a hard day's work. Your work or contribution is dictated by the amount you accomplish given your starting circumstances. The ability to start on a level playing field is something most people assume but really isn't the case if we look at it in detail. Equity helps society because potential of a person is not dictated by their environment or circumstance in the theoretical sense. My inherent potential to be a great person is the same whether I'm rich or poor, white or black. In the practical sense however becoming a great person while being rich is nearly so easy as to be expected of every individual. Great of course being what is percieved to be great which usually involves some stone clad ideals and some basic philanthropy in my world. For anyone else to become great it takes far more. The potential to become great for everyone is the same, or at least so indistinguishable from background variables that we cannot within any reason hope to calculate it to an individual level, what differs is circumstances which allow them to pursue that potential, to take advantage of opportunity.
• Diversity: The importance of diversity is quite enormous. The reason for this is the necessity of different thoughts and ideas. It's no secret that different peoples think in different ways. What is secret is that no one has jurisdiction over progress, innovation or problem solving despite most believing that they have the perfect answer. Diversity gives us the ability to consider ideas we may have never come up with, to try solutions which may be better suited to solving the problem we have. Diversity of viewpoints acts more or less like a diversity of organs. If we want to live as a liver for the rest of our existence that's great but we'll die very quickly without a heart to pump its blood and a mechanism to excrete it's waste.
• Agency: Agency is a more ephemeral concept because it's really the ability of us to leverage our power to get what we want. A sense of agency is important in everyone in the form of self-esteem, however moreso the sense of agency is important because without it we cannot really call our lives "living" so much as "existing". I say this because when your power is oppressed, stolen and used by others your own contribution is really meaningless other than in the fact it can be utilized by others. If that is your desire so be it but for most when you take away their ability to choose they stop doing so entirely. An experiment comes to mind utilizing dogs. Electrical shocks are unpleasant to everything but when you strap a dog down and force them to experience the shocks after awhile they stop fighting it. Individuals who have lost their agency are used a resources by unscrupulous individuals with far too much agency of their own.
• Power: Everyone has power inherently. For the most part everyone is born with similar levels of power, what quickly affects that power is the processes of systems and society acting to limit or enhance that power. When an individual is oppressed that power does not disappear. Power can be supressed, stolen, or given to others but it always persists. A dog who has given up fighting the shock can be trained to resist again. I'll explain more on power as we go along.

Checking my Privilege:

I should note here that I'm extremely privileged. I have been educated and spent nearly a decade in school. I am rich. I come from a white family. I am male. I am healthy. I am cisgendered (I look like my sexual identity). I am ablebodied. These are all privileges that I have for no other reason than circumstance and chance. I would say the most important part is that I am rich and that I'm educated, this is a privilege relatively few people have. Regardless, I do not feel guilty for my privilege. I do not dismiss that it exists. I understand that my base-norm is a significant departure from the average base norm.

Where we are:

Odds are you've heard about a lot of forms of oppression, and despite whether you agree that they are in place there's certain aspects you should be aware of. Most of these forms of oppression we term the "ISMs" or institutions which perpetuate oppression. Overall there's two solutions to these, first is deconstructing the mythos which justify's their existence, the second is utilizing public policy to control for the statistically calculable biases. I digress, first let's discuss power.

Power is the ability really to make your will a reality, to do as you please, to be an agent of your own decisions. Some call it free will, we call it agency. Now this is really a hard concept to apply to the individual and we will find numerous distinctions but since we're still at the macroscopic scale bear with me.

Legitimate Power: is the power given to an individual via the status of a higher position due to the rules of the system in which that individual interacts. Your boss has legitimate power over you and they can leverage that power to a certain degree. If they leverage that power too much however, you have legitimate power to hold them accountable to professional breaches and abuses of that power. The United States was founded on the idea that no individual has true legitimate power over any other individual through a system of checks and balances, the ultimate purpose of this was to ensure an equity of agency, or equity of opportunity for those in the society to live their lives. However for a large portion of our history entire groups of people had little to no legitimate power. The two groups which are most obvious are Women and People of Color. Women often were considered to be property in the terms of the court, their ability to make their own decisions, choose their own paths, were severely restricted. It did not become rape to force your wife into sex until fairly recently. People of Color represented diverse groups that many could dissociate themselves from, while many laws instituted fairly quickly prevented indentured servitude of most whites, most peoples of color were never given that option. In the case of Asian and Hispanic individuals who had historically been considered white, rights were actually taken away and divisions were arbitrarily drawn. The symptoms of these divisions still exist and in many places very explicitly discriminatory practices are still on the books (if not enforced). However what is important to note is that even without the systems which prevented a more equitable diffusion of power, whites and males still held all of the legitimate power and the process of sharing that even slightly with the other groups was extremely slow and is still occurring today. We can conceptualize this by imagining that after Abraham Lincoln a black president was elected. What sorts of laws might he be willing to pass that white presidents would not have been? Reparations? Repeal of Jim Crow? Equal Pay? Equal Rights? No, these concepts while fought for by our founding fathers, were interpretted popularly to suit the current power structures. Which means before blacks could even become potential leaders of our highest offices many barriers had to be removed; even today you still see a dramatic political skew towards white males and considering most are encumbants the system hasn't diffused so to speak. Thus people of color and women find themselves significantly oppressed. They have fewer voices which can advocate for positions which help equitable distribution away from the former institution of power.

Coercive Power: This is the type of power individuals have when they can threaten or otherwise compell an otherwise empowered individual to make a choice which benefits the perpetrator. A bank robber has coercive power over a teller. A rapist has coercive power over their victim. How does this type of power intersect power and oppression? Well we can discuss the practice of redlining. Redlining is the practice of denying services or opportunities within certain neighborhoods based on racial, ethnic, or class make up of that area. Closely tied to gentrification, the practice of Redlining is infamous with regards to banks and insurers. Often banks would redline certain ethnic mixes out of an area of real-estate for example, this practice would mean a black family applying to live in X neighborhood would be denied with the same information applying to live in Y neighborhood, other practices such as price hikes, secretive application processes and corporate protections. It just so happens that when we talk about total wealth and proportion of wealth, almost all of it resides with whites, a quick look at the 1,000 richest in America will leave you wondering how a country with nearly a majority of minorities is still made up by nearly all white individuals. Other forms of redlining include things like healthcare. The rich don't need a health clinic nearby as often as the poor do, they don't need mass transit as often, they don't need police intervention or even a thriving business community. Often neighborhoods will restrict these services in efforts to keep certain groups of people out. Coercive power is also one of the greatest issues within Police and Law Enforcement. For example, if a cop makes a mistake with me and I know it, I can certainly protest, however that cop is well within their rights to lock me up for 24 hours, in some states this can mean an entire weekend spent in prison for nothing more than making the cop angry. It's a common tactic. If you've ever made enemies with a local cop you're probably familiar with being the target of traffic tickets and minor fines not ordinarily enforced. Ferguson is a great example of police leveraging Coercive Power against black communities.

Expert Power: This is the type of power which comes from education, knowledge and experience. People respect expertise and this always gives experts a certain type of power when it comes to influencing our views and the outcomes associated with them. Many people know of the importance of experts when it comes to Medicine, I certainly wouldn't let an unlicensed uneducated individual operate on me and you shouldn't either. There's a very good reason why black colleges and churches became targets of opposition to the civil rights movements. These were seen as places of formative development of future black leaders (rightly) because of their ability to impress upon others the cumulative experience and understanding of those who came before. At the same moment Experts are well known for their ability to allow politics cloud their judgement or worse. In criminal justice experts are particularly damaging when they interpret science to make conclusions that it cannot make to a jurry which implicitly trusts them. Many examples of experts misquoting materials, giving false materials, outright lying and otherwise harming the justice process are out there. Unfortunately the first admendment by it's very nature must also protect most false statements.

Informational Power: Any technology sufficiently advanced enough would appear as magic to the primitive. This is a truth which couldn't be more accurate here. Ever been arguing passionately for a position only to realize suddenly and without warning that you were totally wrong? The person you were arguing against likely had what we could call Informational Power. As opposed to expertise which requires proficiency, informational power simply requires one to be informed. For example, it's a form of informational power that we all have today to know that the orbits of objects are dictated by gravity, and this informational power makes the assertion that we live in a perfectly ordered universe (to many) laughable. Certainly the conceptions we held before gravity are recognizably wrong to nearly everyone today. Going hand in hand with expert power, informational power has the ability to unite people, by attacking an individual's ability to be informed and informed in a genuine and honest way we attack their power to act. Fear mongering outside entities (China, Russia, Taliban etc) is a great example of attacking informational power, why would you listen to someone's perspective that you feared? In fascist countries the ability to remain informed is usually the first to go.

Reward/Motivational Power: The ability to motivate or reward others gives us a certain degree of power or control over those around us. For example, I want a burger, I don't want to go to the store to buy one, I have money, I will pay my neighbor to run to the store for me. For me, the loss of time is of greater significance than the loss of wealth and thus I'm able to offer an incentive for someone to do something they ordinarily would not. This escalates when we start talking about compensation and pay. In a system which already pays in an inequal fashion individuals are caught between the desire to acquire rewards, and the desire to establish equity of pay. Most individuals (unsurprisingly) choose what helps them in the sort term, such as keeping silent about a sexist remark, or refusing to believe negative in the hope of achieving that reward. This type of power goes hand in hand with coercive power. Which goes back to legitimate power, even if the system which creates legitimate power falls, those with reward/motivational power are usually still in the same position which slows the eventual equity.

Connection Power: The ability to know people and for people to know you. In a similar fashion of being informed, being aware of someone elevates your concerns in their mind above the masses of nameless and faceless individuals they do not know. By building connections with people you can build a coalition of individuals large enough to motivate real change. Benjamin Franklin was rather infamous for his ability to leverage connections. This is also how criminal informants help police keep tabs on the "underworld". Often this is the type of power politicians most fear as the rich and elite and powerful are few and far between which means they're far more aware of each other than the nameless masses. This however makes it very difficult for anyone from the outgroup to enter in.

Referant Power: The power of the good, the wise, the respected. Referant power is basically the power of the Leader, the ability to take the power of others and put it to use for yourself (or whatever you want) comes with practiced charisma, the ability to make others feel safe and respected. Generally speaking someone with referant power can motivate others to do just about anything as long as they are respected. Martin Luther King is a great example of someone with a ton of referant power. Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, etc... most everyone we view as a hero in their day had a lot of referant power to play with. Anyone can acquire referant power but without broad respect leverage of that power is likely to end in trajedy and martyrdom.

OK.

So I've outlined a bunch of types of power here and now it's time for us to play a game of assigning which groups have which power. To keep this simple lets separate them into categories.

Power Group:

So it's important to point out here that the power group is the one with the most power impressed upon them due to their status. Usually this is pretty clear but occassionaly it can be difficult to understand the reasoning.

Class: Rich. Without a doubt the Rich have the largest effect on our day to day lives and existence, we write the policy, come up with the laws, and force the politician's to consent to our wishes. No other group has as much power.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sex: Male. Men have had historical control of everything, today they're still paid on average much higher than their women counterparts even when we control for other factors. Although I must point out to a lot of people that believe that females have privilege by sourcing things like war deaths and suicide, the single most important category here is Money, the second most important category is political representation. Neither of which the women are winning in.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Gender: Most people believe gender and sex to be interchangable, not in the social justice world. Sex is the biological traits you're born with, gender is the spectrum of identity you choose to exhibit. For example someone like myself is cisgendered if the sex I was born with looks like how I present, however many ambiguous individuals know the curse it is to look like a member of the opposite sex while identifying with a different one, I'm not talking trans here just people who are "manly" women and "girly" men. When we look at trans individuals we realize all of these numbers jump a full magnitude.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ability: Able-bodied individuals are significantly better served by everything in the community. The ADA exists primarily because of the difficulties faced by these individuals.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Religion: (Depends on Country) In the U.S. and most of the West the dominant religion is Christianity. Likely some religious folks will take issue with this statement asserting atheists like richard dawkins are blah blah blah without realizing that an Atheist still is less likely to win the presidency in the US than Black, Female, Disabled, Elderly, or even Criminal individuals.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Age: Middle-age between 35-55 has a disproprortionate representation. There are laws restricting people from being younger in many public offices and the statements that "hilary is too old" perfectly illustrates the public perception.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Culture: Anglo Western European. This is different in many countries but for most of the world being a westerner is a great thing. Unfortunately being a westerner comes with many cutlural values that are not shared across the world, some of which are arguably better, many of which are merely preference. However, imagine praying, giving a gift, acting indvidualistically or other trappings of American culture we take for granted were instead considered to be against the norm.

Race: White white white. In terms of shear numbers and power white wins the game. Now don't get me wrong, a few minorities on average can have it better than whites do but in terms of shear effect whites win this race hands down.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Language: English, across the world english is the language to speak, moreso if you're living in a dominantly english country. The US has no official language, it was made that way purposely (can you imagine the revolution without french support?) the language of english has grown so dominant that the phrase, "LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH" is not uncommon when encountering someone here who can't. Now unfortunately there's not many people who give a crap about Language oppression and title VII already says we have to provide any individual any document which they are expected to evaluate in their native language so I can't really baffle you with statistics on it however I would question any individual's ability to hold any sort of real power without being able to speak the common language.

Family Status: Married. The number of tax benefits for families alone should make it painfully apparent that we like families a lot which sucks for single people. I'd love to take the deduction having a partner and dependent would offer. More to the point divorce is similar to a criminal background and can often preclude you from a new relationship. Personally I see a valid reason why families should be appreciated but it still irritates me to see children treated differently because they're from a "broken" family.

Orientation: Straight. Walk down the street and kiss someone of the opposite sex and you're unlikely to see any real resistance. Do the same thing with someone of the same sex (if you're not opposed to trying it for science) and you'll see an immediate reaction. When the term for someone's orientation is slang for a pejorative applied to every aspect of life it's pretty obvious there's some real discrimination.

Immigration Status: Documented Born Citizen. Immigrants and sometimes even children of first generation immigrants report significant acts of discrimination from title VII violations to harassment to ineligibility for employment. Considering the numbers of international people who come to the US it's surprising the relative large lack of protections we offer for anyone who is not a citizen or capable of proving in the moment that they are. Individuals who are citizens have been deported, denied re-entry into the country. Surprisingly, most Americans can't pass the same citizenship exam required of legal immigrants. Legal immigration quotas haven't increased for decades leading to an undocumented immigration problem, undocumented families are often at a signficant disadvantage to their documented counterparts which is problematic because children who grow up with undocumented parents (while entitled to every right any american has) see signficant hardships when it comes to living their lives. Most undocumented individuals do pay the same taxes that the rest of America does while not benefitting from any of them.

That's just an overview of privilege. Now let's talk about oppression.

The first thing to realize is the power of silence. I don't support tax cuts for the rich, but I do benefit from them. Were I to not say anything about the unfairness of this I would be tacitly approving of that bias. Many people do not apply this with regards to other sorts of privilege because many people are very unwilling to believe that any component of their lives has been dictated by circumstances other than themselves and if they do they're generally unwilling to believe their lives have been easier for X Y Z reasons. It's important to note that if you're one of these privileged classes, at least as far as that privilege is relevant, you do have a leg up on those who don't. No matter if you oppose it or not. No matter what your thoughts of equity are. I could hate white people but that does nothing to undermine the fact that I have white privilege (the slight bit of melanin in my skin does that far more effectively).

Think of oppression as a scale with two piles of sand on either side, just because not all of the sand on one side is visibly contributing to the mass on that side of the scale doesn't mean it does not. Similarly without going out of your way to push power towards oppressed groups you are in fact helping to continue their oppression. This is a difficult concept to consider because in most situations we do not consider inaction to result in support but in this case without someone to say that's not right no diffusion of power can occur. The best possible example you can give is slavery. I can bet you that most people of color strongly opposed slavery (in reality most everyone did but society was even more plutocratic then than today) but what made slavery end was not a bunch of angry black people. No one cared about what the slaves had to say, it was not until white people also agreed that the issue was problematic that it could change. This is because white people did (and mostly still do) control the power almost entirely. In order to make change you must leverage power, if you have no power to leverage you cannot make change. This process requires the people who have privilege to understand that they are privileged and to make genuine comparisons to other individuals.

A lot more people would care that most black households have both parents working if it wasn't for the fact that common belief is that most households only have a single parent working. A lot more people would care that the amount of time black families can spend with their children is significantly lower due to the necessity to work if white families weren't able to spend the time that they can. The process of ending oppression REQUIRES empathy and the ability to consider your own situation minus the privilege you faced. Sometimes you might feel that privilege is unearned by anyone (such as being rich), othertimes you might feel that the privilege should be a central human right, regardless you must recognize the privilege that circumstance has impressed upon you. With great power requires great responsibility. It's disappointing how an entire group of people with more power can simply abandon that responsibility.

This is my plea to you forum to take these concepts to heart and to work towards equity of opportunity. In the race of life it is absolutely no surprise who comes out winning when we start them so far ahead of the others. If you at all take pride in your accomplishments. If you at all value your own ability to choose and to choose well. Then you must understand the implications of privilege. It is through this understanding that we cease oppressing and can continue with empowerment. How great a world would exist when we can look at someone and be sure that his life looks like it does because they choose it, whether that's because they were satisfied with that little, or ambitious to acquire that much. It may be insulting to think that my efforts in life have not contributed very much to me being rich and powerful, as long as we refuse to address why I can be rich and powerful regardless of my own choice we will continue to live in a society where circumstance, not hard work, where environment, not behavior, where gift and not value determine your place in the world. Frankly, I think if you hold any of these forms of power you owe it to yourself and the people around you to work to empower those without it.

Those of you who have questions or oppose this concept should post, air your perceptions so that they can be tried and evaluated.

[Enros]

Males are definitely the more privileged class 99% of the time. However, sometimes it happens the other way around. The citizens of Srebrenica were murdered for being male, the females were allowed to live.

[Elfdude]

That's definitely a true statement and yes when dealing with macroscopic perspectives it's relatively easy to find outliers. I would say when it comes to being NAACP's president being white isn't very helpful either. Whites and men in this country however have a distinct advantage in one area and that is money. The same applies to every other category. Personally that's why I believe that income redistribution is the center of the issue and that all of these other issues have been created by crafty rich (coincidentally white) folks to distract the public from tracing the purse strings. With everything you can really argue that there's ways being X Y or Z is more oppressive than something else. I enjoy walking up the disabled ramp compared to walking up the stairs. However I cannot think of any potential argument which would ever make having money less valuable than not having money. As long as we have a capital economy as opposed to a resource based economy where the means of production are universal to every individual that will continue to be true. Frankly I feel a large part of the issue is the rich attempting to prevent an environment where a resource based economy could be successful.

[Enros]

By "resource based economy", do you mean the totally-not-communism "Venus Project" proposed by that crazy French guy?

[Elfdude]

At the risk of sounding positively insane I will describe a bit of what I mean. Essentially speaking no, more like what Karl Marx was describing as the inevitable march of society towards progress. I'm sure he had no conception of 3d printing or fusion, or fission, or solar power that exists today (or will soon) which could be used to completely return the means of production to the individual eliminating any purpose behind currency as we know it, but the basic idea of what he was saying seems to me to be the way the future is heading.

The internet is already a great example of the means of production being controlled by the consumer, despite all attempts to reign in control of the "internet" it is beyond the capabilities of any entity to do anything other than utilize it. Even ISP's are unnecessary with expertise in networking. I believe that one day all resources will essentially present in the form of the internet, beyond the control or monopolization of any entity, at best entities could simply repackage those resources. Crowdsourcing to it's fullest potential. At that point the only real industry of the society would be the generation of new ideas and the responsibility to instill empathy, protect indepedence, and appreciate tomorrow. I really believe we are very close to the dawning of such a reality and I believe the first real step is the people reclaiming their wealth as a reflection of their productivity rather than circumstance. I see the potential cause as the staggering degree of inequality that is spreading throughout society and the growing dissatisfaction with that status quo, not unlike other feelings felt at other points. What makes this point special is that we do possess the means of theoretically accomplishing this in a practical and real way as opposed to just vagueries and educated guesses at what may be the best next system of governance.

As for the venus project, while I think the guy encapsulates some interesting ideas I feel like his sole desire is to claim prophetic leadership over such a society. Many of his ideas are just mishmashed sci-fi terribly translated into philosophy. What I'm doing is translating philosophy into science fact. Never before has the reality marx dreamed of been possible without governance structures that are hopelessly prone to fascism. Instead of control true liberation of the individual might indeed usher in the utopia described by Marx.

[fkizz]

Instead of control true liberation of the individual might indeed usher in the utopia described by Marx.

So elfdude, are you dreaming of communism? Just asking.

[Elfdude]

So elfdude, are you dreaming of communism? Just asking.

I'm dreaming of the reality described by karl marx, perhaps you're unfamiliar?

[fkizz]

I'm dreaming of the reality described by karl marx, perhaps you're unfamiliar?

Not at all. I'm an economics student, and marx happened to be an economist. Asides from many others economists of course, but Marx is one of them.

Do you really believe in Equality?

[Himster]

What about left handed people? And people who like Mondays? People with freckles? Gingers? Jews? Asians? People who like primary colors and who's first name begins with a vowel that isn't "A"? All of these people are "privileged" and/or "oppressed" when compared to the average human. The average human is a 28 year old (effeminate looking) China-man called Mohammed who is 2 months pregnant, he is left handed, he has a cell phone, but no bank account bla bla bla.
Drawing arbitrary lines around random groups with the intent of showing discrepancies in their statistics to push some kind of agenda.......... what sort of people do that again? Well racists and homophobes are the most obvious, but more recently it has been extremist far-leftist :wub:s tricking people into thinking correlation equals causation again with seemingly sound argumentation, like, as if the 1950s never ended.

Because the ends justify the means? Perhaps. It still does not sit well with me, I'm sure that's just my privilege talking.

I see the potential cause as the staggering degree of inequality that is spreading throughout society

Hold your horses there.
Spreading? Is the wage gap increasing? Nope. Is the incarceration of blacks increasing per-capita? Nope. Are Jews being herded into Ghettos again? Nope. Are women being denied the right to vote? Nope. Are Gay people being denied their civil rights? Not anymore. Progress is winning, not losing, you'd have to be insane to actually think it's the other way around. The most dangerous and damaging course of action is the tempting action of riding the wave to utopianism, that never ever ever ever ever works, progress must be slow, progress must be hard, progress must be done right.

and the growing dissatisfaction with that status quo, not unlike other feelings felt at other points. What makes this point special is that we do possess the means of theoretically accomplishing this in a practical and real way as opposed to just vagueries and educated guesses at what may be the best next system of governance.

Growing dissatisfaction: abso-ing-lutely. Yes yes and yes. A feeling that is easy to be spurred on with hysteria and sensationalist statistics by racists and radical"progressives".
But leaving that aside: the idea of the internet as salvation: yes. I have experienced the seminal effects of this idea, a world after nations, a world after race and gender, a world where one's interests and abilities are more important than those other pointless and superficial attributes that are ultimately meaningless such as race and gender and all that bull . I think we've all experienced it, right here on TWC. These fora could very well be the seven hills of Rome come again, it is a community in the truest sense of the word and there are thousands all across the internet, little microcosms with unique and competing cultures that are rarely divided by the meaningless and superficial attributes such as race, gender, sexual preference etc.

This is my plea to you forum to take these concepts to heart and to work towards equity of opportunity. In the race of life it is absolutely no surprise who comes out winning when we start them so far ahead of the others. If you at all take pride in your accomplishments. If you at all value your own ability to choose and to choose well. Then you must understand the implications of privilege. It is through this understanding that we cease oppressing and can continue with empowerment. How great a world would exist when we can look at someone and be sure that his life looks like it does because they choose it, whether that's because they were satisfied with that little, or ambitious to acquire that much. It may be insulting to think that my efforts in life have not contributed very much to me being rich and powerful, as long as we refuse to address why I can be rich and powerful regardless of my own choice we will continue to live in a society where circumstance, not hard work, where environment, not behavior, where gift and not value determine your place in the world. Frankly, I think if you hold any of these forms of power you owe it to yourself and the people around you to work to empower those without it.

Hurray for determinism: yes, nothing matters. Not your accomplishments, or the failures of some junkie that happens to be African-American. All is pre-ordained, the sun must rise, the sun must set, the poor must suffer and the rich must bemoan their guilt and/or boredom.
But seriously: what actions do you suggest that have not already been tried?
I fear we might disagree quite strongly, I think education is the key, it is painfully slow, but it works and works well. I'm afraid you might lean towards affirmative action and quotas and all that anti-meritocracy nonsense. Please say it ain't so.
Other than that the only thing I've actually disagreed with is the wording.

[athanaric]

Hey Y'all, I've noticed a large number of disturbing sentiments posted by otherwise respectable posters

You mean, you've been to the Mudpit.

[...] I come from a white family. I am male. I am healthy. I am cisgendered (I look like my sexual identity). I am ablebodied. These are all privileges that I have for no other reason than circumstance and chance.

Those are traits, not privileges. On another world, your gender or colour might mean nothing. Anyone who feels the need to make people apologize for their race, colour, sex, or sexual orientation, i.e. traits they were born with, is guilty of the the very things they are supposedly fighting against. The only anti-racist, anti-sexist position is that it's just as good, and valid, being a straight white male as it is being a straight black male. Etc. (repeat with all categories).

[fkizz]

Sommers makes a good point countering this;

[Phier]

Sweet, based on this list, I'm basically superman in the SJW power spectrum.

Kneel before Zod!

My greatest privilage is not being a white heterosexual male on paper Christian wealthy dude of the perfect age. Its purely my intelligence and healthy genetics. What ends up happening is people use like this does is piss on what I've accomplished as somehow just a "given" never mind that many end up like this...



This SJW garbage is just an attempt to silence people who are successful by claiming they are only successful because of privilege.

[athanaric]

Sweet, based on this list, I'm basically superman in the SJW power spectrum.

Don't you mean Sauron?

[Enros]

Its purely my intelligence and healthy genetics.

So if you got where you are through good luck and didn't have to work, why are you so against helping people who ended up in bad situations through bad luck? You can't claim people's lives are determined so strongly by their genetics, and also blame people for their misfortune.

[Copperknickers II]

Males are definitely the more privileged class 99% of the time. However, sometimes it happens the other way around. The citizens of Srebrenica were murdered for being male, the females were allowed to live.

No, they aren't. In Western countries they are generally underpriveleged compared to women. At the top flights, men tend to be richer and more likely to be in positions of power, and less likely to be victims of things like sexual violence. But most of us are not at the top flights, most of us are just average normal people who are never going to be rich or in positions of power so those criticisms of the 'patriarchy' don't apply. We don't benefit from the patriarchy. But we do have massively higher rates of undiagnosed mental illness, suicide, violence and murder, accidental death, accidental injury leading to disability, as well as prison population and addiction, plus lower life expectancy and educational achievement. Feminism is toxic and hateful, it's like the reverse racism of South Africa. A real grievance has become a tool for oppression of those who used to be the oppressors.

[LIST][*]Equity: The importance of equity is understood that appreciates the end of a hard day's work. Your work or contribution is dictated by the amount you accomplish given your starting circumstances. The ability to start on a level playing field is something most people assume but really isn't the case if we look at it in detail. Equity helps society because potential of a person is not dictated by their environment or circumstance in the theoretical sense. My inherent potential to be a great person is the same whether I'm rich or poor, white or black. In the practical sense however becoming a great person while being rich is nearly so easy as to be expected of every individual. Great of course being what is percieved to be great which usually involves some stone clad ideals and some basic philanthropy in my world. For anyone else to become great it takes far more. The potential to become great for everyone is the same, or at least so indistinguishable from background variables that we cannot within any reason hope to calculate it to an individual level, what differs is circumstances which allow them to pursue that potential, to take advantage of opportunity.

At the end of the day there are two important things: how well someone can improve, and what they can actually do. Someone with an IQ of 70 and the reading ability of a 5 year old child is never going to become prime minister. They might however improve to a reading age of 10. That might be considered a more impressive achievement than a rich upper class Etonian becoming prime minister when individual effort is considered. Doesn't mean that the former is as impressive an achievement as the latter in objective terms however. People are always going to be more impressed when they see someone driving a Ferrari, than seeing someone driving a BMW, even if the former was a present from billionaire parents and the latter was bought by someone born in the slums of Mumbai who built up an international business from scratch. Because a Ferrari is a nicer car than a BMW.

Checking my Privilege:

I should note here that I'm extremely privileged. I have been educated and spent nearly a decade in school. I am rich. I come from a white family. I am male. I am healthy. I am cisgendered (I look like my sexual identity). I am ablebodied. These are all privileges that I have for no other reason than circumstance and chance. I would say the most important part is that I am rich and that I'm educated, this is a privilege relatively few people have. Regardless, I do not feel guilty for my privilege. I do not dismiss that it exists. I understand that my base-norm is a significant departure from the average base norm.[B]

Well, on a national level, most people in the UK for example are white, healthy, cisgendered, heterosexual, able bodied, and educated. Most are rich by international standards.

Sex: Male. Men have had historical control of everything, today they're still paid on average much higher than their women counterparts even when we control for other factors. Although I must point out to a lot of people that believe that females have privilege by sourcing things like war deaths and suicide, the single most important category here is Money, the second most important category is political representation. Neither of which the women are winning in.

That is bollocks. Offensive, ignorant stupidity. Money is not more important than life, you can't use money if you're dead.

Age: Middle-age between 35-55 has a disproprortionate representation. There are laws restricting people from being younger in many public offices and the statements that "hilary is too old" perfectly illustrates the public perception.

Oh dear.

Language: English, across the world english is the language to speak, moreso if you're living in a dominantly english country. The US has no official language, it was made that way purposely (can you imagine the revolution without french support?) the language of english has grown so dominant that the phrase, "LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH" is not uncommon when encountering someone here who can't. Now unfortunately there's not many people who give a crap about Language oppression and title VII already says we have to provide any individual any document which they are expected to evaluate in their native language so I can't really baffle you with statistics on it however I would question any individual's ability to hold any sort of real power without being able to speak the common language.

I don't think you can really call English speakers 'priveleged' over non English speakers in an English speaking country. Moving to a country where they speak a different language and then complaining that you are undepriveleged is rather like cutting off your leg and then complaining about being disabled.



The problem with SJWs is that they are very keen that we all 'take these concepts to heart and work towards equity of opportunity', but they don't stop to think that a large proportion of their ideas are utter garbage, and some of them are actively dangerous. A little less bleeding heart, a little more common sense is in order. Perhaps if they got off their moral high horses and engaged in a little skepticism they'd see that not everything which makes people unhappy is because of the white patriarchy's conspiracy against minority groups.

[chriscase]

elfdude I think there is too much here to tackle in a single conversation. Also curious since you posted this in the EMM how you wanted to approach it. Are we to examine the concept of social justice in the abstract? Or does this really belong in the Mudpit?

[Elfdude]

Himster, I believe you've missed a large part of the point here. The point isn't to identify what makes us difference, the point is to look at rigorous differences and recognize that for different groups those differences are systemic.

What about left handed people?

The left handed commonly falls into the ablism category because we do design society to favor right handed people. However the degree of difference compared to the average is negligible and in some studies they find a benefit. That's not to say left vs right handism couldn't become a future social issue but right now compared to the ones I listed it's small beans.

And people who like Mondays?

While it's nice to like mondays relative to other days especially if you start work on mondays there's no significant evidence of oppression of people who don't like mondays we could concieve of an existence where liking mondays was a significant boon to your opportunity but as far as I know we have no information on this. The categories I outlined are ones we have very real information about.

People with freckles? Gingers?

There is a little evidence that gingers are mistreated more than their white counter-parts but everything I've seen has yet to demonstrate statistical significance.

Jews? Asians?

Both of these groups are ethnic and both have a history of marginalizaton. Yes see race/culture/religious oppression.

People who like primary colors and who's first name begins with a vowel that isn't "A"?

Again show me evidence these groups are oppressed significantly relative to the average. There is some out there for both of these topics and overall while they do have effects it's nothing that seems to affect overall success rate.

All of these people are "privileged" and/or "oppressed" when compared to the average human. The average human is a 28 year old (effeminate looking) China-man called Mohammed who is 2 months pregnant, he is left handed, he has a cell phone, but no bank account bla bla bla.

The average human is irrelevant because of the privilege you have being a member of a first world country. What should be prioritized is the bell curve of the community we're involved in. In our community any group which is not part of the power dynamic I outlined before is statistically and significantly oppressed. We find them disproportionate on one side of the curve than we do on the other.

Drawing arbitrary lines around random groups with the intent of showing discrepancies in their statistics to push some kind of agenda.......... what sort of people do that again?

I'm not drawing arbitrary lines (insofar as all language is arbitrary) I'm pointing out real differences that exist. I'm rather sad you're attempting to pull a colorblindness argument. What the colorblindness argument amounts to is ignoring the plight or others, it does nothing to improve equity in treatment of diverse peoples. It's sort of like me saying I'm not classist and drawing arbitrary lines around people who have less or more money is just classism. Ultimately racism exists when an in power group oppresses (intentionally or not) another group. We know absolutely that this is reality. There's no debating it. Not recognizing the differences simply diminishes the inequality that is rampant in our society. It's exactly the same idea as the media and the coverage of the south carolina issue. The media has a historic habit of ignoring white on black crime while reporting a lot about black on white crime. This helps perpetuate the idea that black people are more violent or criminal than their white counterparts when in reality an innocent black is 5% less likely to be hired for the same job (on average) as a white felon. That's a real distinction and if you want to bury your head in the sand and pretend it's not that's fine but realize you're digging your heals in when the bias of society is clearly one way and by doing so you're inhibiting moving that bias towards the center.

Well racists and homophobes are the most obvious

I would suggest you're missing a critical component of recognizing difference and assigning it environmental and circumstantial causes and recognizing difference and dehumanizing others because of it. Just search colorblind racism in google, there's plenty of very well thought out reasons why what you're saying not only is wrong but also is part of the problem.

but more recently it has been extremist far-leftist :wub:s tricking people into thinking correlation equals causation again with seemingly sound argumentation, like, as if the 1950s never ended.

We're not doing correlation = causation here. We're using real data which you can view yourself. The mention of far-leftist :wub:s makes me feel that you're disagreeing because of group think and not because of your own reasoning. You've made an assertion that defining people by group is racism (it's not by definition), you've made another assertion that a lot of different groups have oppressions/privileges relative to a lot of others. While I agree there's a lot of different groups out there with different privileges or oppression there is only one privileged group in western society, the relevance of this is questionable, what I did was point out groups in which real study and data have revealed huge discrepancies. That's not fair in the least bit, and despite us living in a society where legitimate privilege has more or less gone away, the nearly two centuries of it left a pretty sizable rut in the road.

Because the ends justify the means? Perhaps. It still does not sit well with me, I'm sure that's just my privilege talking.

It very probably is. I never said the ends justify the means. For someone I really respect when it comes to arguing you're seemingly reacting to this in a knee-jerk manner and aren't thinking through your responses to the level I know you're very capable of. Let's consider privilege just when it comes to interaction with the police. You know there's real differences regarding how police treat different races. When a white man (or yourself) get's pulled over by a cop what's your first thought? What do you imagine the effect on a group of people is when corrections and our justice system so one sidedly attacks them despite no convincing justification to do so? That is a privilege. It's a privilege that you feel safe if irritated when a police officer stops you. Let's talk about average income, what do you think the macroscopic effects are of 12-13% of the population controlling less than 1 trillion $ of a country with some $52 trillion in buying power? How does that affect families? Children? How does it affect where you live? How does it affect which opportunities you have?

Frankly when the reality is that different it sounds absolutely ridiculous to assert. You would have the same difficulty asserting a king doesn't have more power or opportunity than a slave. Here's how modern racism presents itself:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelblack...hu9#.mr73yOpA2

Hold your horses there.

Ooo, some corrections, I detect statistics I can quote. Now in general I agree with your thesis that society is ever marching towards better. Income inequality nonwithstanding and even that I believe will be overcome eventually. The problem here is that the subtle type of discriminaton I'm talking about are not overt. In some cases the relatively recent improvement does little to undo the damage done up till 2008.

Spreading? Is the wage gap increasing? Nope.

http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/08/...-worse/378704/



http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...ch-poor-widens



You're correct that there's month to month fluctuations up and down, however it's important to point out here that the overall trend from the 1970's is an increase.



Etc. Frankly it's pretty obvious that income inequality is increasing. The biggest reason it's important to note power privilege and oppression is to understand that if you can measure something on average, within an oppressed or marginalized group it is worse. For example, let's increase taxes by a flat $5,000, first we affect the bulk of people, most of which (given the average) can survive the increase while they might not appreciate. However as we consider the poor we realize that the 5,000$ tax increase is far worse for them than it is for the average. Now if we consider black and impoverished people recognizing blacks are already disproportionately impoverished we realize it's affected them even harder. Add in the difficulty in finding employment, historic issues like this, living in ghettos, gentrification, redlining and etc and you realize why it's very important to recognize. At the same moment, broad programs which help the average people affect the oppressed groups last and the least. A program which gives 5,000$ back in taxes, for the average and above this is bonus income, for groups which are already oppressed this only makes up some of that enormous difference. This is the reason why race specific programs must be put into place because honestly speaking, adding something for everyone helps those with power and privilege already the most while benefitting those who are oppressed the least. The effect of doing this is exactly the same as increasing inequality.

Think of power privilege and oppression in terms of a garden and a sprinkler. The privileged groups are near the sprinkler head and get tons of extra water, they grow very healthy. The oppressed groups are relegated to the edges of the garden and get very little water. Recognizing power privilege and oppression is simply recognizing that different spots in the garden get different amounts of water and before we can conclude that plants on the edge are bad at growing we need to appropriately distribute the water.

Is the incarceration of blacks increasing per-capita? Nope.

You're correct there's a small downturn there. You're sounding suspiciously like a republican here himster, you might as well tell me that a small drop in average temperature invalidates climate change. However incarceration rates in all categories are growing. Which is incredibly problematic when criminality rates in all categories are dropping (I.e. we're sending more people to jail for less than ever before to keep prisons full). More importantly there should be no gap there between white and black if what you say (arbitrary distinctions) is true. In reality this distinction is rigorous and valid.

Are Jews being herded into Ghettos again? Nope.

I live in the most Gentrified city in the country, Portland Oregon. While you're correct no one is forcing someone into a place (necessity really is dong that) they are definitely forcing them out. Gentrification is the subtle form of rounding people up and pushing them into ghettos but it accomplishes the same end result.

Are women being denied the right to vote? Nope.

Minorities are. Let's talk about sexual assault and women for a moment. What other crime do you know of where the victim has to prove they weren't asking for it? None. Only a few states have protections against this. If you were robbed do you think the defense lawyer might accuse you of drinking and dressing in fine clothes and asking to be robbed? Probably not.11

Are Gay people being denied their civil rights? Not anymore.

They are frequently denied their civil rights, you forget most of this implementation happens by people and people didn't just change with the supreme court. Adoption issues are common with gay couples. However when it comes to white gay men the distinction in terms of success seems to be disappearing, some studies even find that white gay men make more money than their straight counterparts, not so much amongst LGBTQ People of Color. Let's talk about the washing of American history to remove any homosexual people who contributed to the formation of this county? Do you know who Bayard Rustin is? Do you know who Martin Luther King is? Considering their equal importance (an argument could be easily made that bayard rustin was the true leader of the civil rights movement) it seems odd that schools until recently haven't even bothered printing his name in a text book. That is a form of oppression. What do you think it does to a child to think all of the great people in the world are White Protestant families because we refuse to teach them about the reality? What do you think it says to a child who is black when we patronize them and assure them that they can become doctors despite the medical field being stunningly white, how long do they believe us when every teacher assumes they have bad grades and every coach attempts to get them to play sports?

Progress is winning, not losing, you'd have to be insane to actually think it's the other way around.

I agree progress is winning, that's the nature of progress. The problem here is that further legislative input removing legal barriers probably isn't going to change much. We're left trying to repair the subtle racism that exists behind and informs people's perceptions and behaviors. We can do that via quotas by calculating the statistical bias or we can challenge ourselves to deconstruct the myths which perpetuate these inequities. Power privilege and oppression is a necessary background knowledge to do either.

The most dangerous and damaging course of action is the tempting action of riding the wave to utopianism, that never ever ever ever ever works, progress must be slow, progress must be hard, progress must be done right.

I wouldn't debate this.

Growing dissatisfaction: abso-fing-lutely. Yes yes and yes. A feeling that is easy to be spurred on with hysteria and sensationalist statistics by racists and radical"progressives".

It's not spurred on, the feeling exists without the spurring force, what individuals (attempt) do with it is use that feeling to accomplish something. "Progressives" (you're skirting group think rhetoric here) act to impose solutions to the issue. Racists act to prevent the efforts of progressives. Review your words kindly here and think about which side your words would put you on because frankly you're a bit right to the center when you should be on the opposite side of the bias. Don't pull the, I'm not taking sides bullsh!t. When oppression occurs silence is tacit approval.

But leaving that aside: the idea of the internet as salvation: yes. I have experienced the seminal effects of this idea, a world after nations, a world after race and gender, a world where one's interests and abilities are more important than those other pointless and superficial attributes that are ultimately meaningless such as race and gender and all that bull s. I think we've all experienced it, right here on TWC. These fora could very well be the seven hills of Rome come again, it is a community in the truest sense of the word and there are thousands all across the internet, little microcosms with unique and competing cultures that are rarely divided by the meaningless and superficial attributes such as race, gender, sexual preference etc

Correct, however the internet exists this way because these distinctions never truly existed, we figured out ways to represent them online. The effects in the real world of thousands of years of oppression do exist. The arbitrary distinctions we created out of prejudice have now become real borders in every sense of the word. You're correct that those borders are drawn in the sky, but the fences have been built by circumstance and the cumulative effect of prolonged differences. We have an opportunity to effectively end those issues however the equity movement is not held up anymore by (many) obviously discriminatory laws, it's by subtle perception and unfounded mythos which interacts to create an enormous effect on millions of people.

Hurray for determinism: yes, nothing matters. Not your accomplishments, or the failures of some junkie that happens to be African-American. All is pre-ordained, the sun must rise, the sun must set, the poor must suffer and the rich must bemoan their guilt and/or boredom.

I don't think determinism implies meaningless existences but that's irrelevant here.

But seriously: what actions do you suggest that have not already been tried?

The only real action that needs to happen is adjusting the average worldview to be reflective of the truth. There's many sources of this but it comes down to differences which are real. Socio-economic status, employment, treatment by police, corrections are areas where real discrimination occurs. Since we know the laws theoretically oppose such a thing the cause of the issue is basic perceptions. These perceptions are created at school, in the media, by our parents and families, on the internet. So how do we expect the average person to be more correct about their perceptions leading towards the point were differentiation is truly (again) arbitrary? The answer is education. The biggest issue that is brought up in response to the power privilege oppression ideals is your colorblindness argument, not because it's a valid argument, but because it sounds plausible enough that it gives people who are resistant to reality a scape goat. The common response I get from senators and representatives in response to diverse and accurate curriculum is exactly the colorblindness argument you're advancing, they don't see race or sex so the history books can just stay with all people of note being white men cause adding black leaders would be racist. Fine bed partners you find yourself with.

I fear we might disagree quite strongly, I think education is the key, it is painfully slow, but it works and works well.

Oh wow, you say education, I say education.

I'm afraid you might lean towards affirmative action and quotas and all that anti-meritocracy nonsense.

What? Anti-meritocracy? You mean Meritocracy. I was supporting a meritocratic system. As for affirmative action, I do believe it is a valid solution, the key is how we define it. The fact that Affirmative Action could be misused is not an indictment against it's use. Affirmative Action (depending on your definition of it) has been dramatically successful at improving equity.

Please say it ain't so.

No.

What is more interesting to me is to evaluate what you consider affirmative action to be, why you feel it's wrong and how that relates to reality. Don't get me wrong here, I understand where you're coming from and I initially rejected the ideas too, I was the dumbass that tried to advance a color blind argument only to be utterly smacked down by reality. The healthcare profession is one of the many places we see massive degrees of privilege and massive degrees of oppression interact. For example, in Oregon before cultural competency education was passed for healthcare workers, it was common to see a doctor recommend a tox screen for any Native, Hispanic or Black person who walked in. It was sickening how few healthcare workers knew what it was like to live in any sort of need. What do you get when you have a bunch of people who are elitists, self-justified in their own elitism, while ignorant of the reality faced by most people? Doctors here were getting to the point where they were having difficulty understanding even middle class daily concerns, making it difficult to diagnose and reinforcing biases which were often unfounded or individually irrelevant.

You mean, you've been to the Mudpit.

All of the D&D forums are rife with it.

Those are traits, not privileges.

Ok, if you want to debate semantics with me you should at least attempt to understand the definitions of the words you're using. Privilege to a certain extent is jargon but it's very plain definition from the dictionary fits perfectly well too. In short, no you're wrong and splitting hairs pointlessly.

priv·i·lege
ˈpriv(ə)lij
noun
plural noun: privileges
1.a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.
"education is a right, not a privilege"

The privileges I'm talking about are granted by circumstance and historical association.

On another world, your gender or colour might mean nothing.

Correct, something tells me you didn't read the post if you missed the part where I said the privileged group is relative to your community. Who is privileged changes if we change our scope or frame of reference. I'm looking at it from a national context of what is real in the US and most of the western world.

Anyone who feels the need to make people apologize for their race, colour, sex, or sexual orientation

Pointless exaggerating, no one is suggesting apology although I'm very certain if rich people could get away without giving up their profits in exchange for an apology most would. In fact I feel the blame game is entirely pointless. Something you must have (again) missed by not reading the post. The point of understanding power privilege oppression is the same point in asking your friend where they're coming from when giving them directions. If someone can't adjust their worldviews on which their predictions of capabilities, capacities, standards, behaviors and actions are all all based on to empathize with a group that is dramatically oppressed compared to their own then I would assert they have problems with their basic humanity. In certain cases, you're totally right, however in many cases we have stark proof of a systemic difference which is widespread and influences just about every aspect of people's lives.

i.e. traits they were born with, is guilty of the the very things they are supposedly fighting against

No they're not. Racism involves two components, discrimination and power to oppress. A black person is not racist when they lament white privilege, nor am I racist against myself for recognizing the privilege I hold. When you ask your friend where they're coming from before giving directions do you apologize for happening to live closer to the end point? Not likely (although it might be considered polite), but that doesn't undercut the necessity of identifying that difference.

The only anti-racist, anti-sexist position is that it's just as good, and valid, being a straight white male as it is being a straight black male. Etc. (repeat with all categories).

Correct. No one is debating whether it's 'good' to be white or 'gooder' to be white than it is to be black. What we are asserting is real differences in opportunities to present and act upon that goodness.

Sommers makes a good point countering this;

This doesn't counter anything, the first thing she says is that in many ways they're not doing worse than men they're actually doing better. I can say that for literally any group. I pointed out already that there are individual exceptions. However does she discuss the wage gap? She asks, why are women activists still so dissatisfied? I point again to wage gap. Let's talk about perception of masculinity vs feminity. "Feminist hardly acknowledge women's progress." (I call bull on this). Most women do not reject feminist activism. Women are perfectly aware of being oppressed, especially relative to men. It's very hard to find any women republican or otherwise that does not agree with this statement.

Then she gets into the details of how she diminishes the difference between men and women's pay rate, conveniently side-stepping the fact that in comparable countries the wage gap is often smaller. What this tells us is that, without barriers to employment women in other countries do not see a loss in earnings. Now it's totally possible that America's culture is to have women doing different sorts of jobs and in these other countries that culture isn't there however most would call this culture (or at least an aspect of it) patriarchy. I can pull out numerous studies which highlight the significant differences in pay gap and I can break it down by job title and control for hours worked. Her video is an attempt to prevent individuals from doing the actual math because it does not agree with her.

Let's be sure you realize you are quoting fundamentalist christian "university" with such stunning student life such as the ten commandments essay writing contest. I'm not saying this because fundamentalists can't be right but because this particular university is known for posting counter opinions on feminism, LGBTQ rights and all sorts of things most of which are patently wrong.

Let's use the International Labor Organization's numbers here so we can standardize them across the board.

http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-...--en/index.htm

Equal pay between men and women can be promoted by combating gender-based stereotypes about women’s roles and aspirations, addressing gender bias in wage structures and wage-fixing institutions, advocating for an equal sharing of family responsibilities, and strengthening policies on maternity, paternity and parental leave. The actual wage gap can be divided into an “explained” part – which is accounted for by observable characteristics, such as an individual’s level of education, that are expected to influence remuneration – and an “unexplained” part which captures what remains after adjusting for these observable characteristics and therefore suggests discrimination in the labour market.



As you can see, even accounting for the vast differences between the two you can see a major bias towards males earning more. The difference is such an extreme that were this unexplained (implied oppression of wages) wage gap to suddenly disappear in many countries the wage gap would likely go the opposite direction. The US is not one of them however.

Sweet, based on this list, I'm basically superman in the SJW power spectrum.

You're an atheist, you're not rich. That's two pretty big areas that you're likely to be oppressed.

My greatest privilage is not being a white heterosexual male on paper Christian wealthy dude of the perfect age.

You did some statistical calculations on that?

Its purely my intelligence and healthy genetics.

And as far as I know genetics can only really account for ~30% of the IQ difference between racial groups. What do you imagine the other 70% is? I agree, intelligence can trump all other things and it would be unfair to penalize you, however would it not be fair to offer help to those who don't have your naturally great circumstances?

What ends up happening is people use like this does is piss on what I've accomplished as somehow just a "given" never mind that many end up like this...

Yes because it's not statistically relevant. Yes, starting higher when throwing a ball upwards makes it easier to throw that ball upwards but privilege has little more than to do with the level of this starting circumstance. How you throw the ball so to speak can still affect your outcome. The problem here is that entire groups of people based on their Race, Sex, Gender etc. are starting at a lower hill and are still expected to throw that ball just as high. What do you think your life would look like if you were on average 5% less likely than a white felon to get a job as a black man? How much "wealth" do you think you could have gotten? If your application to university had a greater chance at being rejected solely because of your race, how successful might you have been then? What you're ignoring is that there's entire groups of people where that is the norm and no matter how many individuals you find that are exceptions to these macroscopic rules, that (again) are only really applicable to large groups, you won't change that reality.



Of course poverty is not a form of oppression. Oh wait. . I mentioned that didn't I? Is it possible that the oppression of being poor can overcome the privilege of being white and cisgendered? Yes. Furthermore it's important to point out given the knowledge we have the majority of the US homeless population has mental health issues and other disabilities as well, a large portion of them are also LGBTQ and trans individuals.

This SJW garbage is just an attempt to silence people who are successful by claiming they are only successful because of privilege.

No it's not. What part of this don't you get. I'm essentially saying that half our garden isn't getting water and you're interpreting that to mean that I think it's bad that the plants who do get water get water or that somehow if a plant grows without water it must invalidate that part of the garden needs water, or if somehow a plant dies with plenty of water that must mean that the plants getting water aren't benefiting from said water. Your statements make absolutely no sense and you know it. You're too smart to possibly not understand the significance of this. Which leaves me with two concepts,

1. You don't entertain the statistics reflect reality, I would love to go through them with you bit by bit.

2. You don't believe that the statistics are the result of oppression, again, I would love to go through them with you bit by bit.

Fkizz has taken the bait and posted some monstrous garbage but a least he tries. You simply refuse to open your view up to any real opportunity at discussion.

So if you got where you are through good luck and didn't have to work, why are you so against helping people who ended up in bad situations through bad luck? You can't claim people's lives are determined so strongly by their genetics, and also blame people for their misfortune.

I know right? It doesn't make sense.

No, they aren't. In Western countries they are generally underpriveleged compared to women.

Wrong. Fullstop.

http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-...--en/index.htm

At the top flights, men tend to be richer and more likely to be in positions of power, and less likely to be victims of things like sexual violence.

Uh no, the wage gap is thorough throughout the spectrum, it's just more visible in the rich area where the difference of 5% is tens of thousands of dollars.

But most of us are not at the top flights, most of us are just average normal people who are never going to be rich or in positions of power so those criticisms of the 'patriarchy' don't apply.

Yes they do.

We don't benefit from the patriarchy.

Yes you do.

But we do have massively higher rates of undiagnosed mental illness, suicide, violence and murder, accidental death, accidental injury leading to disability, as well as prison population and addiction, plus lower life expectancy and educational achievement.

True. Only relatively recently with regards to educational achievement. However again the real issue is the wage gap.

Feminism is toxic and hateful, it's like the reverse racism of South Africa. A real grievance has become a tool for oppression of those who used to be the oppressors.

Reverse racism in south africa? Are you kidding me? In a country which has been dominated by a white minority for most of it's existence you're asserting there's an issue with reverse racism despite south africa's wealth distribution looking far worse than the US's even?

At the end of the day there are two important things: how well someone can improve, and what they can actually do.

True enough.

Someone with an IQ of 70 and the reading ability of a 5 year old child is never going to become prime minister.

Probably true, can't really deal in absolutes there. However someone with an IQ of 70 might not have that IQ in the future. It's important to note that when it comes to treatment many entities which were considered beyond help only 30 years ago can now live a more or less normal life with a bit of coaching. It's a difficulty I have with dealing with older doctors who are of the opinion that X Y or Z group is just stupid, or when it comes time to tell parents their children might be developmentally disabled. For doctors who got their licenses in the 1980's the concept of many mentally damaging diseases being treatable or manageable is foreign to them. So given the amount of change on this particular topic I would say we theoretically remove those two barriers from him in the near future. If we can remove those barriers isn't it our responsibility to do so? We can never predict if someone will follow the path so to speak but at least it can open for them.

They might however improve to a reading age of 10. That might be considered a more impressive achievement than a rich upper class Etonian becoming prime minister when individual effort is considered.

Very true.

Doesn't mean that the former is as impressive an achievement as the latter in objective terms however.

Subjective*, also true.

People are always going to be more impressed when they see someone driving a Ferrari, than seeing someone driving a BMW, even if the former was a present from billionaire parents and the latter was bought by someone born in the slums of Mumbai who built up an international business from scratch. Because a Ferrari is a nicer car than a BMW.

Ok.... Where are you going with this line of reasoning?

Well, on a national level, most people in the UK for example are white, healthy, cisgendered, heterosexual, able bodied, and educated. Most are rich by international standards.

Correct, and last I checked the united kingdom was a form of parliamentry democracy. Of course you understand that in democracy, popularity and manipulation drive which policies are approved of and which ones are not. The UK has a wage gap very similar to the U.S. By national standards most in the UK are not rich, furthermore the middle class (2nd, 3rd and 4th quintiles) is progressively shrinking, while there's more people in the 1st quintile than before and fewer people in the 5th quintile (rich) than ever before.

That is bollocks. Offensive, ignorant stupidity. Money is not more important than life, you can't use money if you're dead.

You're correct, we're comparing the difference between being stabbed and coming down a serious illness. Neither is more important. When it comes to affect and influence and how power dynamics work, the more important part is money along with political representation. Which is to say, if MEN recognize there's an issue with the concept of Masculinity that perpetuates these mental health disorders, they are in a perfect position to change it. They don't need to appeal to a wider majority, they have the votes so to speak. Furthermore, if men challenge the concept of masculinity by extension they challenge the concept of feminity which means the solutions for both groups lay in the same direction, not at odds with each other.

Oh dear.

Don't understand this response.

I don't think you can really call English speakers 'priveleged' over non English speakers in an English speaking country.

Not an english speaking country, we are a country which predominantly speaks english but there is no official language of the United States. This particular truth is exactly why Title VII exists and mandates any document must be provided in the native language of whoever has to use it.

Moving to a country where they speak a different language and then complaining that you are underpriveleged is rather like cutting off your leg and then complaining about being disabled.

That's a perfect analogy. However we're not talking about complaints, we're talking about equity, power dynamics and how that plays out through the population. These people willingly cut off their leg because the status it gave them was worth it. However, the damage to themselves is not only affecting themselves, the damage is applying to our citizens in the form of their children. Furthermore considering there's only a handful of different groups and language groups that this is very much problematic for.

The problem with SJWs is that they are very keen that we all 'take these concepts to heart and work towards equity of opportunity', but they don't stop to think that a large proportion of their ideas are utter garbage, and some of them are actively dangerous. A little less bleeding heart, a little more common sense is in order. Perhaps if they got off their moral high horses and engaged in a little skepticism they'd see that not everything which makes people unhappy is because of the white patriarchy's conspiracy against minority groups.

It's not about a conspiracy and you do yourself continued disservice by describing the concept with such provocative terminology. It's important here to note that these are privileges imparted upon white people by circumstance. Whether you want to partake in it or not the privilege is there. It sounds like what you're saying is that you oppose the existence of privilege in the first place and don't believe it exists, my question is, because it's obvious it does exist, why don't you simply oppose privilege instead of opposing the group presenting it to you. Your perceptions should be rationally based in reality, the problem is that from what you've said there's no way to demonstrate that you are or you are not. I'm just going to cut away the assumption and going with what I've got is a bunch of half-hearted attempts at a counter argument, no real reasoning for said arguments and broad statements which are utterly meaningless. I can see you have trouble with this concept but you haven't broken down the boundaries of that trouble.

elfdude I think there is too much here to tackle in a single conversation. Also curious since you posted this in the EMM how you wanted to approach it. Are we to examine the concept of social justice in the abstract? Or does this really belong in the Mudpit?

I'm very much a glutton for punishment. This is a difficult choice about where it belongs because it's really about social responsibility but it would be equally valid to see that in either ethos or mores. I put it into ethos in the end because I consider it discussing philosophy of morality, and oppression of which ethos already deals with a lot. I get it's a huge amount of information and responding to the various critiques is even larger but it's been frustrating me for years to consider how Poster A is totally on target with one topic and then does a flip flop on another topic when it comes to race, gender or etc. I mean, most of the atheists who have posted already understand religious oppression, it's entertaining to see how much difficulty they have with far more obvious examples in other areas.

[Enros]

Perhaps if they got off their moral high horses and engaged in a little skepticism they'd see that not everything which makes people unhappy is because of the white patriarchy's conspiracy against minority groups.

Everything you've said in this thread so far contradicts data from governments and international bodies. Nobody claims discrimination happens because of a conspiracy. There were women protesting against the right of women to vote, for example. Mostly discrimination happens because of lots of close minded idiots of every description, some supporting discrimination against themselves. The conspiracy is the people who are acting against it.

[fkizz]

Hm, elfdude, Sommers is a Jewish Feminist, studied in the area that dinstinguishes herself from other feminists, she calls herself "equity feminist", while the rest goes for "gender feminist".

Her points on War on Boys..

[Elfdude]

Hm, elfdude, Sommers is a Jewish Feminist, studied in the area that dinstinguishes herself from other feminists, she calls herself "equity feminist", while the rest goes for "gender feminist".

Her points on War on Boys..

She is not a feminist and don't even attempt to believe her. She does exactly the same thing that radicalized extremists do in creating false fairy tails by linking together utterly stupid points. Like her point that rape in college decreases to 1 in 9 if we discount the number who took drugs/alcohol. Missing the very obvious point that, regardless of drugs or alcohol or how someone dresses it is NEVER ok to rape. Her statistics in her books amount to that exact sort of trickery and presentation of facts in such a way as to try and convince people there is no problem. It's exactly the same type of rhetoric you'd see in a video opposed to climate science. Unfortunately, all of the statistics I have used come from a variety of independent sources, while some may be in error in the brief checking I did none were significantly at odds with the calculations I came up with.

Let's go ahead and talk about the war on boys.

She starts off with sterotyping boys as messy, active, hard to manage, as a feminist she's pretty great at perpetuating this gender binary which first wave feminists abhored. It's hilarious to me to hear her consider herself a feminist. I believe her opposition to bra burning may have sparked a legitimate concern of radical feminism but she's now made a career at making feminists out to be radicals when the radicals she grew up with no longer exist.

She says, "Schools have little patience for what, only a couple of decades ago would be described a boyishness." Just to note as recently as 1980's school officials have called Rape boyishness.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.1616670

Oh wait, it's still happening today. So she fails to qualify what boyishness is or could be and just lets it hang that boyishness is to be assumed to be minor infractions. Carrying a gun or a knife to school within the last 30 years has also been described as boyishness. Michael thompson is far more ambiguous about the meaning of his studies than she is. Ugh. The biggest issue I have with her statements here is the assigning of the problem being the effects of feminism. Honestly we never would have been aware of any sort of male barrier without removing he much larger barriers to female education. The long term effect of these differences (if appropriately assigned to gender) will be a long term reversal. However in terms of wage and political representation that gap has not reversed. I do think we need to work harder on encouraging boys to achieve in school but I still am of the opinion that deconstructing the mythos of femininity and masculinity will accomplish that for both groups.