[seebs]

Originally Posted by Demimonde

The thing is there are two kinds of discrimination. There is active discrimination and passive discrimination (privilege). The example of "not being beaten up because of skin color" is the counter part of active discrimination, targeting an individual and dominating them because of their race is not a symptom of privilege- it is a hate crime. Not being the victim of a particular hate crime is not privilege it is another part of the social injustice dynamic.

Okay, so. I've now been told once that not being the victim of hate crimes is a kind of privilege, and once that it isn't.

Can someone help me understand why I am getting, from credible sources, what appear to me to be contradictory information?

seebs, giant bolded letters aside, perhaps you did not notice that in my post I did qualify that the language is loaded and offered an alternative? You made the statement that privilege is the "wrong" word and that it is "bad" but I disagree. It is perfectly consistent with its historic usage. I think the issue arises in that the concept of privilege in social justice is a new concept, it is a product of the twentieth century and many are not used to the term being used in this way even though it is accurate.

Yes!

And I will pass on: I told Jesse that "privilege" was a translation, and that "primacy" was a possible alternative someone suggested, and that helped immensely.

I think the thing is... That historic usage has tended, in the US in general and especially among people who are Big On Social Justice, to be eclipsed by a stronger negative connotation. We thus end up with teenagers who are crusading for social justice and who have ended up with the formal notion of what "privilege" is, and yet who are applying their sense that it is a Bad Thing associated with Bad Abusive People.

I am not sure that this is an outcome which could have been predicted when the relevant choices were being made, although it's an outcome that seems pretty predictable now.

I think the issue arises in that when speaking of privilege we are not speaking at the personal level but at the group level. When I say I have white privilege, I am acknowledging that I am part of a group which has historically been given dominance, power, control, and yes an unfair advantage over other groups. However, when you take it to the personal level some are very bothered by the fact that they are part of this dynamic and find it both distasteful and beyond their control. Connotation wise it is a loaded phrase that people do not want to be identified with, no matter how accurate. Something something <<<white guilt goes here>>>.

I am not even sure that guilt about things you can't control is a useful response.

But like most words, it is the largely accepted term thanks to Mr. Derrida, and the best we have. (That is a lie, I prefer "primacy" as I stated, but no one else uses that word as I do so it fails as communication.) There are a huge number of words though that change their meaning greatly depending upon what field you are discussing. I love the crap out of this meta-engine I found, Onelook.com for this reason. Today's word is mantle and it has very different meanings based on the field you are discussing, science, art, etc.

Yeah. The thing is, right now, empirically it is the case that the use of "privilege" is also frequently failing as communication, and I am not sure how this could be fixed.

This is one of those things where we have inherited a set of words with connotations such that we Can't Win. (It's like pronouns; you simply can't win in English because we don't have a pronoun for people-of-unknown-gender.)