Check Your Privilege

[poliphilo]

American liberals have a guilt complex about the genocide of the Native American nations- as well they might.  Also about slavery. They can't undo the past so they try to make amends by putting the descendants of the people their ancestors exploited and dispossessed on an ideological pedestal. When one of these persons enters a debate they are elaborately deferred to- even if they are talking embittered shite- and it's bad form to interrupt or question.  Thereby arises a weird hierarchy of dispossession- a game of "my ancestors had it tougher than your ancestors so shut up!" (which reminds me of Monty Python's three Yorkshiremen.)  In many such debates no member of the oppressed minority is present so a white liberal has to ventriloquize for them- spouting a jargon dreamed up in the universities-  and everyone else in the room is expected to fall silent and cover their heads with theoretical ashes. This deep respect for the disinherited doesn't, of course, extend to securing social justice for them- because that would involve the elite actually letting go of some of the privilege they feel so burdened by.

Hey, guys, how about honouring some of the treaties you broke?

Anyway, this is an American trauma and I don't want to intrude upon private grief. By all means carry on with this talking cure carried out in public if it makes you feel better about the unrightable wrongs in your nation's past, only don't go laying your guilt trip on the rest of us- because that really is cultural imperialism. We have our own guilts- but we'll handle them in our own way, thank you very much.

Above all, child of the most powerful, murderous and exploitative nation on earth, please don't tell me to "check my privilege" because that really gets my goat.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I wanted to join in yesterday's conversation about cultural appopriation, but didn't have the time to write what I would have liked in the way that I would have liked to write it. I'll say something about this, though.

I have a problem with the phrase "check your privilege" too, most because it's irritatingly ambiguous. But most of the meanings seem pretty unexceptionable. At the most basic, it means "Be aware of your privilege." I'm sure even David Cameron had that drilled into him at Eton - and no doubt you did too. It's the standard mantra of public schools, as far as I can see, and as far as it goes there's nothing wrong with it.

Mere awareness can of course amount to little more than a superficial sense of nobless oblige. In addition, "check your privilege" often seems to mean "Don't speak and act as if your particular positiion (whether defined in terms of social class, nationality, culture, sex, etc) is universal and/or normative." So, when Mrs Thatcher advised the housewives of Britain to save money by buying a whole side of pork and putting it in their chest freezers, she was showing her privilege. When people say "I don't mind gay people but I wish they wouldn't ram it down my throat," while remaining silent about all the images, films, royal weddings etc that ram heterosexuality down people's throats, they're showing their privilege.

Of course, very often it's not a case of "remaining silent" - it's a case of not seeing at all. Privilege is like Orwell's orthodoxy: it means not having to think. Checking one's privilege is often just another name for thinking and caring about other people's point of view (cf. political correctness). Not much wrong with that, either.

By the way, I think "spouting a jargon dreamed up in the universities" is an unfortunate lapse.

On the other hand, this is right on the money:

"This deep respect for the disinherited doesn't, of course, extend to securing social justice for them- because that would involve the elite actually letting go of some of the privilege they feel so burdened by.

I don't think it applies only to Americans.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Checking privilege is- as you say- something we ought to do on a regular basis. I like the way you've broken that down.

What I hate is the phrase being used- which is how I've usually encountered it- as a way of shutting down debate.

I think I'm prepared to stand by "jargon dreamed up in universities"- unless , of course, it can be demonstrated to be false.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know where the sense of "privilege" you're referring to was coined - whether in a university or elsewhere. Denotatively you may be right; but connotatively I find that phrase (especially with the addition of "spouting") an uncharacteristic use of dog-whistle language, with a strange a hint of anti-intellectualism to it - as if the fact that something originated in a university were somehow indicative of its being self-regarding and effete. If you read a paper on DNA, or game theory, or any number of other valuable and useful subjects, you will be reading "a jargon dreamed up in universities". Actually, that phrase too seems designed to shut down debate (and to commit the genetic fallacy). It's a bit like when people use "bourgeois" as an insult - to which my mental response is always, "What, you mean like Shakespeare?"

On the other hand, Raymond Tallis once wrote that when the Emperor wants new clothes, he usually goes shopping in Paris. I did smile at that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When you explain it like this I begin to regret the phrase. What I was trying to get at is the disconnect between those doing the speaking and those being spoken for- but I've got nothing against universities as such- honest.

I like that line of Tallis's.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've got nothing against universities as such- honest.

*is mollified* :)