Of dreadlocks and cultural appropriation

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

12 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

ME,

Regardless of that point if the effect of the use of "privilege" in this context is to entrench existing problematic behavior and opinion... why keep using it?

That's a fair point. I agree that a better word or term or descriptor could probably be found here. Built-in advantage, perhaps? 

All I'm trying to say regarding peterbound's criticism is that you can understand the idea that is being expressed regardless as to whether or not you think the term fits. 

[Sullen]

38 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

That's a fair point. I agree that a better word or term or descriptor could probably be found here. Built-in advantage, perhaps? 

Same connotation, you'll get the same reaction coming from people who feel targeted by it despite some of them being equally disadvantaged, if not more so, than some members of the oppressed group in general.

From what I've gathered speaking to them, the main cause of hostility from reactionaries is the fact that there is usually very little focus on economical class when talks of privilege arise, it's mostly focused on gender/sexual orientation/ethnicity, leaving out what is the most determining factor in whether someone is privileged or not: wealth, or lack thereof.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 minutes ago, Sullen said:

Same connotation, you'll get the same reaction coming from people who feel targeted by it despite some of which being equally disadvantaged, if not more so, than some members of the oppressed group in general.

From what I've gathered speaking to them, the main cause of hostility from reactionaries is the fact that there is usually very little focus on economical class when talks of privilege arise, it's mostly focused on gender/sexual orientation/ethnicity, leaving out what is the most determining factor in whether someone is privileged or not: wealth, or lack thereof.

Sullen,

And that... choice to focus on catagories other than class is part of the hostility, I'm confident.

[TrackerNeil]

It's curious that so much space has been taken up with the discussion of The Term That Dare Not Speak Its Name, and not the concept behind it. I'm curious...does anyone think there is something to [concept], no matter what you call it?

[TerraPrime]

1 hour ago, Swordfish said:

So does talking about the issues that are creating the injustices you are talking about directly, rather than attempting to make people feel accountable for things they do not control, and then attempting to them feel undereducated, complicit,  or lacking in empathy, for disagreeing with you.

 

It's almost as if some people here think that the conceptual framework of "privilege" and "intersectionality" sprang forth from the void just a decade ago, or something.

 

"Yeah, go ahead and stop using that term and just talk directly about the issues. Have you all tried that? You have? And didn't work as well as you'd like? Well, just keep trying harder doing the same, then, because this new way you're doing things? It's pissing me off."

 

Very convincing.

[Swordfish]

16 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

 

It's almost as if some people here think that the conceptual framework of "privilege" and "intersectionality" sprang forth from the void just a decade ago, or something.

 

"Yeah, go ahead and stop using that term and just talk directly about the issues. Have you all tried that? You have? And didn't work as well as you'd like? Well, just keep trying harder doing the same, then, because this new way you're doing things? It's pissing me off."

 

Very convincing.

 

I'm not pissed off at all.  

it's almost as if some people here are incapable of making a concrete argument without resorting to strawmen, reductionism, and projection of their own emotions onto others.

[TerraPrime]

24 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

 

I'm not pissed off at all.  

it's almost as if some people here are incapable of making a concrete argument without resorting to strawmen, reductionism, and projection of their own emotions onto others.

Yeh I just used your quote as a starting point. I didn't mean to imply that you're personally pissed. You'd have to be personally invested in this topic first to be pissed at it, and I just don't have any evidence to make such an assumption. My apologies.

[Sullen]

52 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

It's almost as if some people here think that the conceptual framework of "privilege" and "intersectionality" sprang forth from the void just a decade ago, or something.

Could be born out of a sentiment of frustration at the lack of social change/slowness at which change was arising, it doesn't mean it's entirely right, or an effective agent of change. In fact, it could have created a flawed "Us vs. Them" narrative that antagonized potential allies who could have advanced social justice instead of vehemently opposed it because they feel under attack.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sullen,

And that... choice to focus on catagories other than class is part of the hostility, I'm confident.

I'm a little bit astounded at your profession of confidence in a subject that you seem to acknowledge you know little to nothing about. 

For the record, "class privilege" is totally one of the types of privilege that people who talk about privilege recognize and talk about. It's listed right there at the start of the Wikipedia page on privilege. 

Quote

Privilege is a special right or advantage available only to a particular person or group of people. The term is commonly used in the context of social inequality, particularly in regard to age, disability, ethnic or racial category, gender, sexual orientation, religion and/or social class.

 

[Sullen]

5 minutes ago, NestorMakhnosLovechild said:

I'm a little bit astounded at your profession of confidence in a subject that you seem to acknowledge you know little to nothing about. 

For the record, "class privilege" is totally one of the types of privilege that people who talk about privilege recognize and talk about. It's listed right there at the start of the Wikipedia page on privilege. 

 

I don't think he ever said it wasn't recognized, or that it wasn't being talked about, simply that it wasn't focused on as much as the other types of privilege.

[sologdin]

the dubois essay cited in nestor's wiki article is nice place to start.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

4 minutes ago, Sullen said:

Could be born out of a sentiment of frustration at the lack of social change/slowness at which change was arising, it doesn't mean it's entirely right, or an effective agent of change. In fact, it could have created a flawed "Us vs. Them" narrative that antagonized potential allies who could have advanced social justice instead of vehemently opposed it because they feel under attack.

It "could" be - but there's little actual evidence to believe this is the case. 

The idea of "privilege" started as an analytical tool in academia in the late 1980s, although the underlying issue - those benefits that people receive because of some personal characteristic they have that others do not - is obviously an issue that's been discussed in some form for much longer. But "privilege" is a very useful descriptor for identifying the phenomenon and talking about it. And the idea of privilege HAS been debated in academia for the better part of two or three decades, but even the people in academia who have criticized the "privilege" framework (often from the "left") aren't out there claiming that somehow they are being attacked and turned off of "social justice" issues because they think the privilege framework is flawed or incomplete in some manner.

What we are seeing is the inevitable push-back against a concept that has filtered down from academia into common usage. And as some of my own posts in this thread indicate, I think there's a lot to push back against. Not because I think that the idea of privilege is wrong. I don't think it is. I think that, in some form, it is obviously true and, in many cases, empirically demonstrable. But, I do think that the manner in which people use and discuss the idea of privilege, particularly people who aren't actually that well versed in the academic origins of the idea, can sometimes be highly flawed, self-serving, and unhelpful to conversation.

I said as much when someone, much earlier in the thread, basically threw up their hands and refused to participate further in the thread because everyone else was apparently too privileged to understand their points. But, honestly, that's more a failure of that individual poster than it is about the actual idea of privilege. And if we're moving off of the original topic, and trying to understand the idea itself, it behooves us to do a little homework and educated ourselves about the topic, so that when we discuss it, we're not discussing it in its shallowest, most popular form. And I think that's what a lot of people on the "other" side of this issue are doing, and most of what they are saying about privilege reflects their own, often admittedly uninformed, beliefs about what this privilege thing might mean.

 

 

[Ormond]

12 minutes ago, NestorMakhnosLovechild said:

I'm a little bit astounded at your profession of confidence in a subject that you seem to acknowledge you know little to nothing about. 

For the record, "class privilege" is totally one of the types of privilege that people who talk about privilege recognize and talk about. It's listed right there at the start of the Wikipedia page on privilege. 

 

Just because class is on the list on the basic Wikipedia page definition does not refute in any way that the way the term has been used in everyday discourse focuses on other issues.

I don't know if anyone keeps statistics on that. But it wouldn't surprise me, knowing how class tends to get ignored so often as an issue in the United States, if it is actually brought up much less in discussions of privilege than race and gender are. 

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

6 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Just because class is on the list on the basic Wikipedia page definition does not refute in any way that the way the term has been used in everyday discourse focuses on other issues.

I don't know if anyone keeps statistics on that. But it wouldn't surprise me, knowing how class tends to get ignored so often as an issue in the United States, if it is actually brought up much less in discussions of privilege than race and gender are. 

Where's the evidence that anyone, ever has refused to discuss class privilege or denied that it was a thing? I'm sure it's happened somewhere, but Scott is a person that has (i) zero understanding of how privilege is discussed or understood in an academic setting and (ii) apparently zero experience with people talking about privilege in a non-academic setting other than on this message board. And the people that talk about privilege on this board recognize class privilege and don't deny that it's a thing.

What often times DOES happen is that you have someone who DOES NOT recognize "privilege" as being a thing, claim that they don't have it because they came from a lower social class, and then get upset, confused and/or offended when someone acknowledges their experience while also pointing out that race and class intersect in different ways for different people, and that people of different races can have different experiences even if they are in similar economic classes. I mean, it's literally happened within the past few pages. 

[sologdin]

am not sure how privilege relates to the appropriation of dreadlocks?

[Swordfish]

45 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

Yeh I just used your quote as a starting point. I didn't mean to imply that you're personally pissed. You'd have to be personally invested in this topic first to be pissed at it, and I just don't have any evidence to make such an assumption. My apologies.

Apology accepted.

[Tywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, sologdin said:

am not sure how privilege relates to the appropriation of dreadlocks?

The argument is that white people rocking dreads don't have the same negative connotation as it does for black people rocking dreads. Basically the hair style has been appropriated but the stigma hasn't. 

[TerraPrime]

11 minutes ago, NestorMakhnosLovechild said:

What often times DOES happen is that you have someone who DOES NOT recognize "privilege" as being a thing, claim that they don't have it because they came from a lower social class, and then get upset, confused and/or offended when someone acknowledges their experience while also pointing out that race and class intersect in different ways for different people, and that people of different races can have different experiences even if they are in similar economic classes. I mean, it's literally happened within the past few pages. 

Very much this.

I've been talking about social justice issues on this board since, well, as soon as I started. The argument around privileges and the enjoyment thereof has a constant common denominator wherein people argue against the idea of being privileged on account of their lower economic status (see, for instance, peterbound's posts in this thread). The response, from me and others, has been that economic privilege sometimes trumps racial privileges, and sometimes it's the other way around. So at least on this board, class/economic privilege is indeed often referenced.

 

I can't, obviously, speak of other venues.

 

That said, I think Ormond's general observation that class advantages tend to take a back seat to racial and gender advantages does ring true in the general discourse in mainstream media. I do see more and more inclusion of economic factors in the race discussions, however, such as the exposition of racism against black residents of Ferguson being tied to uneven enforcement of traffic laws on account of the city's need to raise revenue. And although Sanders caught flack for it early on, his message of social justice problems requiring economic justice solutions is not entirely lost to the public. So I think there're positive steps taken to make economic privileges more relevant to discussions of other forms of discrimination.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

40 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The argument is that white people rocking dreads don't have the same negative connotation as it does for black people rocking dreads. Basically the hair style has been appropriated but the stigma hasn't. 

I don't see that being true. I'd guess that the little guy in the video might have trouble getting a job outside of a record store, or a marijuana dispensary, or the like.

[lessthanluke]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

The argument is that white people rocking dreads don't have the same negative connotation as it does for black people rocking dreads. Basically the hair style has been appropriated but the stigma hasn't. 

Yeah this is bollocks. I see a black guy with dreads he normally rocks it pretty well, you see a white dude with dreads you think he's probably jobless and takes a lot of drugs. 
I think it must be a UK vs American thing. Black people with dreads do not get a negative reaction over here from what I have seen.