Privilege & Passive Racism

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Great piece that clearly and sympathetically goes into the concepts of privilege and passive racism. A few posts in other threads over the last few days have bothered me, but I haven't felt comfortable confronting them directly. Hopefully the people concerned can read this and gain some perspective.

And it's a good read for anyone.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/artic...

I've felt the same way.

I ran across this more academic piece called White Fragility that absolutely nailed the responses of some posters.

Edit: nevermind, if a real discussion is desired, it can be held in the thread that this is referring to.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Great piece that clearly and sympathetically goes into the concepts of privilege and passive racism. A few posts in other threads over the last few days have bothered me, but I haven't felt comfortable confronting them directly. Hopefully the people concerned can read this and gain some perspective.

This is the key right here to 'confrontation'. Too often in these threads, it's Social Justice Whiteboys patting each other on the back and comiserating with each other about how *hard* it is to be an ally. I know I've said it before, but the job of an ally isn't to win an argument on the internet. The job of an ally is to change the minds of people using your extra time and patience. To use that shared priviliege to talk to someone on a level that a marginalized person cannot.

Or...maybe shaming people is the best tactic for a world where so many people are shame based and are more attracted by being part of the 'in' group by anything else. I guess that's a question everyone has to answer on their own. The important thing, though, is for whatever answer you come up with to be a product of having actually asked yourself the question.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

This is the key right here to 'confrontation'. Too often in these threads, it's Social Justice Whiteboys patting each other on the back and comiserating with each other about how *hard* it is to be an ally. I know I've said it before, but the job of an ally isn't to win an argument on the internet. The job of an ally is to change the minds of people using your extra time and patience. To use that shared priviliege to talk to someone on a level that a marginalized person cannot.

I love the way you put this, cheeze.

Thanks! Being an ally is like, being customer service, I guess? And while there are limits, basically, The Customer Is Always Right. The person who you think is wrong is your 'customer' and your job is to get them to change their mind. It's tough sometimes to ask that question of one's self, of whether what you're doing at any particular moment is motivated by getting someone to change their mind, or by something else.

There are probably times when that "something else" is a valid goal, but the important thing is to always be asking yourself (edit: and the thing allies have the time and patience and privilege to ask themselves) that question: what's my goal here? and are the actions I'm taking more likely to make that goal happen?

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Great piece that clearly and sympathetically goes into the concepts of privilege and passive racism. A few posts in other threads over the last few days have bothered me, but I haven't felt comfortable confronting them directly. Hopefully the people concerned can read this and gain some perspective.

And it's a good read for anyone.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-05-20-concept-corner-passive...

Great article. It effectively communicates the issue without resorting to gross over generalizations and accusatory tones.
I agree with the premise, but so often it is hard to communicate when one's words are constantly twisted or ignored completely, and they are forced into a preconceived set of ideals.

Thanks for posting it.

Thanks, DeVil. Great article. It's always cool to get a glimpse into the intellectual life of South Africa.

Farscry wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

This is the key right here to 'confrontation'. Too often in these threads, it's Social Justice Whiteboys patting each other on the back and comiserating with each other about how *hard* it is to be an ally. I know I've said it before, but the job of an ally isn't to win an argument on the internet. The job of an ally is to change the minds of people using your extra time and patience. To use that shared priviliege to talk to someone on a level that a marginalized person cannot.

I love the way you put this, cheeze.

Same. Cheese, probably your best post ever.

Thanks for the article, Devil. They mention a study done at NYU in 2009 about stereotype threat, here is a book written by of the leaders in that field of research:

http://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Viva...

I know I've linked to/mentioned it a couple of times before, but if you are at all interested in how stereotypes affect us, it is a mandatory read. It's a pretty easy read too, for an academic book based on research.

SallyNasty wrote:
Farscry wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

This is the key right here to 'confrontation'. Too often in these threads, it's Social Justice Whiteboys patting each other on the back and comiserating with each other about how *hard* it is to be an ally. I know I've said it before, but the job of an ally isn't to win an argument on the internet. The job of an ally is to change the minds of people using your extra time and patience. To use that shared priviliege to talk to someone on a level that a marginalized person cannot.

I love the way you put this, cheeze.

Same. Cheese, probably your best post ever.

Thanks again! I think part of it is that we're still operating with the horror we rightly have for active racism when confronting passive racism. Again, just talking about allies here, but we've never recalibrated our reactions for that different type of prejudice. I also think a lot about how much of an increasing emphasis there is on emotion, and how that's a two-way street. How can you ask another person to open their heart when you won't open your own to them? Like in another thread it came up about modeling the change you want to see in the world.

Of course, I'm old and cynical about all that, but I can always put my thinkin' cap on and try and remember that mindset. ; D

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

Great piece that clearly and sympathetically goes into the concepts of privilege and passive racism. A few posts in other threads over the last few days have bothered me, but I haven't felt comfortable confronting them directly. Hopefully the people concerned can read this and gain some perspective.

This is the key right here to 'confrontation'. Too often in these threads, it's Social Justice Whiteboys patting each other on the back and comiserating with each other about how *hard* it is to be an ally. I know I've said it before, but the job of an ally isn't to win an argument on the internet. The job of an ally is to change the minds of people using your extra time and patience. To use that shared priviliege to talk to someone on a level that a marginalized person cannot.

Great post and I largely agree, but... confrontation doesn't need to be aggressive, and when you address someone's privilege often no matter how carefully you couch it they can take it as aggressive confrontation. It's the nature of privilege to see its exposure as an attack.

This leads to the cycle of:
mention privilege>
defensiveness>
explain privilege>
more defensiveness>
repeat cycle x times>
accusations of accusations or racism/sexism.or actual accusations of racism/sexism

And how many times can an ally expect to go through the same cycle and remain polite? Whether it's the same person over & over again, or a new person coming into page 700 of a thread with their hot take which is exactly the same hot take that has been shared 350 times already and which is the reason the thread is 700 pages long in the first place.

And forget the allies, how draining must it be for the people whose lived experiences are being discussed?

Or...maybe shaming people is the best tactic for a world where so many people are shame based and are more attracted by being part of the 'in' group by anything else. I guess that's a question everyone has to answer on their own. The important thing, though, is for whatever answer you come up with to be a product of having actually asked yourself the question.

Honestly I'm not sure. It's nice when you're a person of privilege to have your feelings pandered to, but I'm not convinced that changes behaviour in most cases. I think establishing that a behaviour or viewpoint is socially unacceptable changes things faster, despite being more traumatic for everyone involved.

Slavery wasn't overthrown because Lincoln sweet talked every plantation owner into freeing their slaves, it took a war. It may not take a war to get more equal representation in Western society, but it won't be peaceful.

Rust developers push an update that procedurally generates players' appearance, including skin tone, based on their Steam ID. Players rush to decry how the choice of how they look was taken away, ignoring the fact that the original player appearance was a white man and you couldn't choose that either.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinion...

Elegantly brilliant.

Maq wrote:

Rust developers push an update that procedurally generates players' appearance, including skin tone, based on their Steam ID. Players rush to decry how the choice of how they look was taken away, ignoring the fact that the original player appearance was a white man and you couldn't choose that either.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinion...

Elegantly brilliant.

Yeah, mentioned that in the Television and Race thread. Very cool stuff.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Honestly I'm not sure. It's nice when you're a person of privilege to have your feelings pandered to, but I'm not convinced that changes behaviour in most cases. I think establishing that a behaviour or viewpoint is socially unacceptable changes things faster, despite being more traumatic for everyone involved.

Yeah I'm roughly with this. Propaganda and being blunt works. The US motor industry basically changed everyone's opinion about who had right of way on roads by launching an advertising/propaganda campaign which told everyone in the US they were moronic simpletons for walking in the street. Check out this podcast;
http://99percentinvisible.org/episod...
The correctly applied message can be blunt as hell. If you have to hold everyone's hand and care for all the fee-fees along the way; well that takes a load of time and implies a huge amount of additional emotional labour. Who has got time for that?

As an aside and at the risk of derailing this thread. I utterly loathe the 'Ally' nomenclature. I'm not a feminist ally; I am an actual feminist. When it comes to gender equality I am absolutely on board with the project of feminism. I'm not approximately with some parts and not others nor am I part of some partially aligned other grouping. And the other problem with 'ally' as a label is that it is literally a way to police whose voice is authentic and well that it always crap.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

And how many times can an ally expect to go through the same cycle and remain polite? Whether it's the same person over & over again, or a new person coming into page 700 of a thread with their hot take which is exactly the same hot take that has been shared 350 times already and which is the reason the thread is 700 pages long in the first place.

If those were the only cases when allies get nasty, I wouldn't have written the comment (we've already been down the road of how our SJWs dispute the operating principle we've been told over and over on here that as long as someone is civil and presents an opinion they think contributes to the discussion, they're welcome here and not to be junior moderated). It's more about when it's the same person who is usually in agreement with you, but in some particular case is not, and gets treated like a stranger. Or someone who seems to be working things out for themselves but needs some help getting there. So what if there's been 349 other times--no one said being an ally was going to be easy.

And forget the allies, how draining must it be for the people whose lived experiences are being discussed?

That's why I'm only talking about allies here, and talking about using that extra patience and time. How many times can you be expected to go through the same cycle and remaine polite? For an ally, the answer is: "as many times as it takes." And if you can't take it anymore, maybe it's okay to just sit that one out. I mean, there are times probably when an ally should probably do "bouncer" work, but there's a whole lot of times when they shouldn't.

Or...maybe shaming people is the best tactic for a world where so many people are shame based and are more attracted by being part of the 'in' group by anything else. I guess that's a question everyone has to answer on their own. The important thing, though, is for whatever answer you come up with to be a product of having actually asked yourself the question.

Honestly I'm not sure. It's nice when you're a person of privilege to have your feelings pandered to, but I'm not convinced that changes behaviour in most cases. I think establishing that a behaviour or viewpoint is socially unacceptable changes things faster, despite being more traumatic for everyone involved.

Slavery wasn't overthrown because Lincoln sweet talked every plantation owner into freeing their slaves, it took a war. It may not take a war to get more equal representation in Western society, but it won't be peaceful.

Sure, that's why I included that option. The thing is, if that's your reasoning for not being nicer to people, then own it. Admit it that you believe that being an asshole to people is necessary because it's effective. Just don't do it on autopilot. And like I said above, when you do it to someone you know or someone you think has good intentions, don't use a strawman example to justify your actions. Take responsiblity for how you treat people.

edit: oh, almost forgot--and be honest with yourself about whether you actually think it's more effective, or you just find it a lot more fun. No one gives a crap about Social Justice Whiteboy feelings. There's a difference between "he deserved it because REASONS!" and "he needs it to improve." Who cares if someone's being pandered to if you're making the world a better place by pandering to them?

DanB wrote:

As an aside and at the risk of derailing this thread. I utterly loathe the 'Ally' nomenclature. I'm not a feminist ally; I am an actual feminist. When it comes to gender equality I am absolutely on board with the project of feminism. I'm not approximately with some parts and not others nor am I part of some partially aligned other grouping. And the other problem with 'ally' as a label is that it is literally a way to police whose voice is authentic and well that it always crap.

Sure, just there's an issue of identifying who is "on board" and who never had the choice of getting on board in the first place. The people who are "on board" with the project don't own the project the way the people who are part of the marginalized identity the project is taksed with liberating own it. The best word we have for that right now is "ally" I guess, but whatever the semantics, there's a distinction between people who are there to help others, and people who are helping themselves.

DanB wrote:

As an aside and at the risk of derailing this thread. I utterly loathe the 'Ally' nomenclature. I'm not a feminist ally; I am an actual feminist. When it comes to gender equality I am absolutely on board with the project of feminism. I'm not approximately with some parts and not others nor am I part of some partially aligned other grouping. And the other problem with 'ally' as a label is that it is literally a way to police whose voice is authentic and well that it always crap.

Yeah, it actually bothered me that I used it, but I let it lie for the purpose of what I said because I differentiate between people who live the minority experience and those who don't, no matter how on board we may be in support. Which I think was Cheeze's reason for using it.

cheeze_pavillion wrote:

Sure, that's why I included that option. The thing is, if that's your reasoning for not being nicer to people, then own it. Admit it that you believe that being an asshole to people is necessary because it's effective. Just don't do it on autopilot. And like I said above, when you do it to someone you know or someone you think has good intentions, don't use a strawman example to justify your actions. Take responsiblity for how you treat people.

Yeah, fair point.

*edit*

And to respond to your edit. Do you think anyone actually engages in this for enjoyment? I don't find it fun to argue fundamental human rights with people. I find it extraordinarily frustrating, but I do it just in case I can reach either that person or someone who is reading along silently. It's how I got my eyes opened.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
DanB wrote:

As an aside and at the risk of derailing this thread. I utterly loathe the 'Ally' nomenclature. I'm not a feminist ally; I am an actual feminist. When it comes to gender equality I am absolutely on board with the project of feminism. I'm not approximately with some parts and not others nor am I part of some partially aligned other grouping. And the other problem with 'ally' as a label is that it is literally a way to police whose voice is authentic and well that it always crap.

Yeah, it actually bothered me that I used it, but I let it lie for the purpose of what I said because I differentiate between people who live the minority experience and those who don't, no matter how on board we may be in support. Which I think was Cheeze's reason for using it.

Yup, that's the reason.

cheeze_pavillion wrote:

Sure, that's why I included that option. The thing is, if that's your reasoning for not being nicer to people, then own it. Admit it that you believe that being an asshole to people is necessary because it's effective. Just don't do it on autopilot. And like I said above, when you do it to someone you know or someone you think has good intentions, don't use a strawman example to justify your actions. Take responsiblity for how you treat people.

Yeah, fair point.

*edit*

And to respond to your edit. Do you think anyone actually engages in this for enjoyment? I don't find it fun to argue fundamental human rights with people. I find it extraordinarily frustrating, but I do it just in case I can reach either that person or someone who is reading along silently. It's how I got my eyes opened.

I actually do. I mean, we all saw what went down with GamerGhazi or whatever it was called. I think people take a certain amount of enjoyment in arguing when they get to tell the other person their ideas are bad and they should feel bad. I think there's a corollary to why establishing that a behaviour or viewpoint is socially unacceptable changes things faster. Shaming changes things faster by making the shamed person feel like they're part of the 'out group'. However, shaming makes the person doing the shaming feel more like they're part of the 'in group'. That pessimistic view of human psychology works both ways, I think.

Sometimes when I see a comment in these threads that I know is going to cause a ruckus, I'm reminded of that Vincent Vega scene from Pulp Fiction where he talks about how angry he is that someone keyed his car. In fact, he's *so* angry, that it would be worth having his car keyed if he could catch the guy just because of how satisfying it would be to catch him.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Sure, just there's an issue of identifying who is "on board" and who never had the choice of getting on board in the first place. The people who are "on board" with the project don't own the project the way the people who are part of the marginalized identity the project is taksed with liberating own it. The best word we have for that right now is "ally" I guess, but whatever the semantics, there's a distinction between people who are there to help others, and people who are helping themselves.

There is certainly a distinction around who lives what experience. I'm certainly not going to experience what it is like to live as a black woman any time soon. And also as a dude it's certainly not for me to set the agenda for feminism. But these are issues around what it means to have a voice and what it does or doesn't mean to access certain forms of privilege when you use your voice. Policing authenticity (even accidentally) I don't see helping. I'd (personally) rather do the work to understand when my voice is best used and just 'be a feminist' than be labelled and ally.

I'm also not convinced that there is much distinction over who is helped; I don't see that equal rights (be that gender, race, sexuality, ableness, etc...) are a zero sum game, and one where I (as a moderately well-off white guy) only stand to lose . That's only true if the only things of value with regards equality are currently the privileges I have access to. I think I greatly stand to benefit from equality of all forms.

DanB wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Sure, just there's an issue of identifying who is "on board" and who never had the choice of getting on board in the first place. The people who are "on board" with the project don't own the project the way the people who are part of the marginalized identity the project is taksed with liberating own it. The best word we have for that right now is "ally" I guess, but whatever the semantics, there's a distinction between people who are there to help others, and people who are helping themselves.

There is certainly a distinction around who lives what experience. I'm certainly not going to experience what it is like to live as a black woman any time soon. And also as a dude it's certainly not for me to set the agenda for feminism. But these are issues around what it means to have a voice and what it does or doesn't mean to access certain forms of privilege when you use your voice. Policing authenticity (even accidentally) I don't see helping. I'd (personally) rather do the work to understand when my voice is best used and just 'be a feminist' than be labelled and ally.

I'm also not convinced that there is much distinction over who is helped; I don't see that equal rights (be that gender, race, sexuality, ableness, etc...) are a zero sum game, and one where I (as a moderately well-off white guy) only stand to lose . That's only true if the only things of value with regards equality are currently the privileges I have access to. I think I greatly stand to benefit from equality of all forms.

Sure, I agree with a lot of that, but for purposes of what's being talked about here, I think it's a necessary distinction. If we've both got the same invisible knapsack, you can make demands on my time and patience in terms of being polite and helpful that you couldn't make on the person with less privilege than us.

Policing who has the right to speak to a given issue was one of the core tools used to break labour movements worldwide and is routinely deployed to undermine civil rights movements as part of a Divide and Conquer playbook.

Maq wrote:

Policing who has the right to speak to a given issue

No one's talking about policing the right to speak to a given issue. What's being policed is when to grant that exception from the normal rules of politeness and civility because of the issue being discussed. It's granting for the sake of argument that any tone discussion is tone policing when a person is speaking of their own experience, but asking what the exception should look like when the person speaking to you has a similar life experience to you.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
Maq wrote:

Policing who has the right to speak to a given issue

No one's talking about policing the right to speak to a given issue.

Appeals to authenticity entirely police the right to speak because it sets speech to a scale of legitimacy. Once that is in place it becomes easy (and inevitable) that the speech regarded as least legitimate gets discounted. And this plays out most pointedly and harmfully in the domain of the TERFs and their policing of "authentic" women.

Another problem with the ally label is the it lumps together a plurality of voices that often don't have a great deal to do with one another. With regards feminism, my perspective will be radically different to someone who is non-gender identifying or anyone who has switched genders (female to male). To my mind, in order to achieve gender equality we should embrace diversity of experience and voice but the "in-group plus allies" model actively works against that (while also playing in to the mindset of folks like the TERFs).

I regard myself as a feminist if you need more context to my voice then labelling me an ally doesn't really resolve that whereas knowing that I'm male goes a long way to contextualising my experience of gender.

I'll stop derailing this thread now. Perhaps if there is more to be discuss we could spin this off to it's own thread.

DanB, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying, and while I think I understand what you're saying, I don't think it's relevant; but if you think you're derailing the thread, I'll leave it at that.

edit: eh, on second thought, probably *too* much time has passed to address this.

Cross posting this from the Race in Cinema thread:

nel e nel wrote:

https://medium.com/@johnmetta/i-raci...

But here is the irony, here’s the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.

This is almost entirely about passive racism and a great read.

I recently got pretty upset after being called racist in a discussion where I was calling out white privilege. Other participants were arguing that there is no racism anymore and that by pointing out white racist culture where it 'doesn't exist' I was, in fact, the racist. I received this response as a white male calling out my own whiteness. It's no wonder people of other colors can't get anywhere in these kinds of discussions.

LouZiffer wrote:

Other participants were arguing that there is no racism anymore and that by pointing out white racist culture where it 'doesn't exist' I was, in fact, the racist.

I'll hazard a guess that the other participants were also white...

OG_slinger wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

Other participants were arguing that there is no racism anymore and that by pointing out white racist culture where it 'doesn't exist' I was, in fact, the racist.

I'll hazard a guess that the other participants were also white...

Yes. I was also repeatedly asked to prove how it affects people's daily lives. After having each example rejected by their mental twister I asked if they had spoken with someone of another color about it, and really listened. Received responses like "I have lots of asian friends and they don't see any problems at all! This is all in your head!" It's frustrating repeatedly trying to get people to see what they're surrounded by when they flat out refuse.

Adding some more:

I honestly get angry about this. Really, really upset. I grew up with black friends who lived in the neighborhood behind mine, with about an acre of woods between us. They had stores with bars on the windows. We had stores with candy out front. They had houses built so shoddily they were falling apart, some with wood right on top of the dirt. We had houses which were built way above code specs with brick foundations.

Not much has changed since in those Durham neighborhoods. Some of my friends from back then have gone to prison for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time while being black. One lives in Oakland, CA... and he tells me what he sees out there, too. I've been a witness to their lives. There's not one doubt about my privilege.

Thanks for the cross-post garion, I had forgotten about this thread, which I guess is also pretty telling.

I found myself considering that the overall gist of that article could work for just about any underserved/underprivilieged/minority demographic, just swap out race for gender, sexuality, etc and the sentiments are pretty much the same.

nel e nel wrote:

Thanks for the cross-post garion, I had forgotten about this thread, which I guess is also pretty telling.

I hadn't seen it, so it must not exist!

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