Hmmm. Well, I agree it should be poverty that needs to be "attacked".
But I don't think poverty is due to lack of privilege, unless by privilege one means having educated parents who don't abuse you or drugs and who have steady work. I've got blood relatives who range from having been on welfare at one point (not now, I think) to rather wealthy, and we've all come from intact families with supportive parents and okay educational opportunities (I do admit that NCSSM is well above the opportunity most people get -- but then, most people wouldn't have been able to take a fractal geometry class.) Among my cousins, let's see -- my sisters and I are the most educated, and two of us make more money than the rest (my other sister is still in medical school, but I'm sure she'd have no problem making money once she becomes a doctor.)
Or, unless one is referring to global poverty, in which case the privilege might relate to not being run by a kleptocracy, where all foreign aid gets consumed by the rulers and the common people have no protections whatsoever. Huh, wait -- corrupt govt siphoning off money to boondoggles benefiting cronies -- reminds me of Louisiana. So maybe there =is= a common thread.
My immediate reaction to that summary is "Will Shetterly is white."
I like WIll, but this feels uncomfortably like the endless ways that women are told that we can worry about sexism after we've dealt with $other_problem.
Racism is a real problem, though in this country race and class are entwined.
Sure, he probably is white. At the same time, there is a design flaw with having the prevalence of and solutions to ick-ism being declared exclusively by Ick civil rights leaders (where Ick is some value that could be, but is not limited to "sex", "race", "Semite", "Mormon", and so on). We can hardly expect Jesse Jackson to let us know when racism has been eradicated and then fire himself, nor should we expect sensitive white males to say "Yes sir, I'll get right on that" when every charge has been filed.
I think it would be pretty clear to establish in New Orleans that rich blacks got out and poor whites couldn't, and so the charges of racism in this instance strike me as both false and insulting. It seems like it should be cleansing for people like Laura Bush to stand up and say essentially "Fuck you" to people who make such spurious claims. There IS racism in our society, but we'd be better able to work on it if people stopped clouding the waters with false positives.
Oh, and for extra "diversity points" a couple of my blood relatives are black. They grew up in a 2-story home, with our grandmother providing some extra, free daycare (they live the next town over) -- their parents are sober, evangelical Christians, both of whom have full-time jobs. They're definitely solidly middle class. Just as are the black families, the Indian families, the Chinese families, etc. in my co-op in Queens.
So I'm still trying to figure out how race = poverty here. I have had my run-ins with rural poverty (overwhelmingly white), so I'm guessing that race = poverty because the media mavens live in big cities, where most of the poor people are not white. The same problems plague the white rural poor: drug abuse, alcohol abuse, low schooling, violence, teen pregnancy. But you don't see so many stories about that.
That's just the point -- race != poverty, but many (not all, but many) of the ills/problems attributed to race in modern society should be attributed to poverty/class. And while racism has been a major problem in the past, and is not 100% eradicated now, the problem we as a society need to stop ignoring is poverty.
And I think that all the things you list in your first comment -- educated parents who don't abuse drugs or you, steady work, educational opportunities, etc. -- are signs of privilege.
Racism is still a problem, but not like it was 40 years ago.[1] It seems to me that classism is a much more serious problem now, one that needs to get much more focus thaqn it does. Because race and cass are entwined, and because we're used to thinking about race, there appears to me a tendency to point at class issues and say "Look! Racism!" Focusing on the larger issue of privilege, regardless of race, would make it easier to see the remaining tendrils of racism, in my opinion.
Will is white -- I've met him, and I'd guess redbird has, too, or at least seen pictures.
But your second paragraph is dead on -- we need to stop looking at classism and calling it racism. I'm not saying there is no racism, but the real cases are getting lost in the noise.
I read it, but the author's tone (or something) does not inspire trust in me. I looked at the thinktank's website and didn't see any blatant evil, but this definitely seems like a very slanted piece, and I want to know what's being left out.
Privelege. From latin privi and lege; meaning private law. And that, IMHO, says it all. "Your rules do not constrain me."
Despite all the ridiculous claims of shadowy starchambers of older white males with names unknown among the glitterati, who run the whole show and for whom presidents, captains of industry and the glitterati themselves are mere pawns and figureheads... ...any claim that privilege (in the above sense) does not exist either is equally ridiculous.
I believe privelege has pretty much Always been there, even before man evolved. The strong have always taken what they want, because they can; as in nature the gazelle takes, and the cheetah, and the hyena pack. "Private law" is the law of the jungle, modern style; adapted into human society by the redifining of what gives power to who.
What is amazing is that the opposite notion exists at all. The very idea of Fair must be utterly incomprehensible to most animals. Where did We get this notion that even the lowest "Deserve" better? It must be some new idea.
If you ask me, I think we're still working on it...
You know, there is such a thing as privilege -- if Paris Hilton started out in my family and behaved the way she has, she'd be in skid row by now (of course, nobody in my family behaves like that -- and one reason is that we know we'd pay for it. Having a middle class family can do only so much for a person.)
However, all this means is that the very rich can do certain things and not end up destitute or in prison. There aren't very many of the "very rich" out there. Privilege isn't keeping poor people poor, it's keeping rich people rich. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game - we're not in a society where wealth is based on gold and there's only a limited amount of it. There is plenty more space for more rich people in this society.
So it would help poor people not a bit to talk about privilege, unless it's to point out that the reason that other people can abuse drugs and alcohol, have affairs with several people, have out-of-wedlock children, do no work, get no education, etc. and not suffer any material consequences is because they're rich (and have somebody else managing their money... somebody elses who are not total crooks). Trying on the morals of the privileged class is deadly for those who don't have their material resources to soften a fall.
There have been people who come to America poor, people who aren't white and don't even speak English, and who have provided a better future for themselves and their children. Some came to America as refugees from Vietnam, for example, after/during the Vietnam War. Their "privilege" is that they work really hard, save up their money, and make their kids take education seriously -- but if any of them did what I said above, they'd be in trouble just as much as any other poor person.
My idea is that the High and Lordly, occupying the top of the pecking order, have, yes, been getting the best of it since we lived in trees. The biggest gets the nicest hunk of whatever's around. Then progress happens and the little folks can get it too, while their betters have found better themselves. Repeat as required. Common understanding has it that the rich of ancient days never had it so good as an American on minimum wage: Health and medicine, abundance of food, clothing variety, entertainment at hand, rapid travel, chance for bettering oneself. The stuff once reserved for kings now is available to the masses. All good; a beautiful, world-changing concept, this "fairness".
One notices, though, that never before in history or prehistory have the haves had so much more than the havenots - in preclassical Greece, for instance, the landed rich made only a about hundred times more than their lessers. To me, the gap indicates that not only are benefits not trickling down, but that the concentrated power - in the base sense of the ability to cause change - which has always been instrumentality of the elite, has outpaced its balance with that which it changes. Think of a child in "those awkward years" where growth outstrips previously learned reflex and body familiarity, and suddenly coordination and grace fall away, bumps and bruises happen and things get knocked off tables. In a situation where power is concentrated far in excess of its surroundings, minor fluctuations create massive disturbance.
The 'Butterfly Wings' effect is relative to the size of the butterfly.
I personally know a case where an upper manager, combing through figures, realized that imposing niggling, nitpicking restrictions on a distant set of subordinate underlings (amounting to immense hassle and a savings of maybe a whole cent) created a profit large enough to multiply justify his salary. It made his career, especially since the negative consequences wouldn't come home to roost till the next guy's administration. With new position and clout, it was easy to find someone to deflect blame until then. And blame there was, because it was a Bad Idea - which in smaller circumstances wouldn't have been worthwhile, but here made big money, and far bigger problems.
We may not yet have starchambers of priveleged titans who change the face of the world with the wave of their smallest fingers - but that kind of ratio of cause to effect may yet happen by accident. I'd like the gap smaller, please, just for safe's sake.
And, dangit, I want private supersonic jets and anti-agathic treatments for me & my friends, too...
Ah. I see your point now. Yes, and I'm about to come head-to-head with this phenomenon soon. A group of people I'm part of at work are getting a nice, intimate Q&A session with our CEO. I said "What the hell?" and sent a couple of extremely touchy questions to said CEO, and I've convinced a bunch of other people to do the same.
The deal is -- in this age of asking for more and more transparency, and the "hiveminds" that some blogs and other distributed groups have -- it's becoming increasingly difficult for single individuals to impose their will on other people. The UN-o-crats are finding that their little realms of corruption are being exposed, the Louisiana boondoggles are being revealed, cronyism working in domestic emergency planning at every level - local to federal - yeah, some of those responsible will never pay a fine or spend time in a prison. But they can't pretend about what they're up to.
I say this started with the printing press. But people had better watch out for the actions of the mob. In the English Civil War, in the French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, the Cuban Revolution -- the "power to the people" ended up with an elite, too. It's pretty impossible, as you say, to prevent an elite from forming. How to keep the elite from abusing others is interesting. People have woken up to the abuse of eminent domain for the benefit of commercial development, as well as other abuses. I'd say the American system is the best currently, but there are plenty other liberal democracies (in the old meaning of the term) who have the possibility to surpass America.
I have no use for a private supersonic jet... a seat in one is good enough for me. ;)
Hooray exposure! Of course, the other side of this is that with too much publicity, people get used to it being right out in the open, and it gets almost accepted as How Things Work. Think of Richard Hatch on the first Surivivor: a manipulating, predacious and self-aggrandizing jerk who won by being exactly that - PROUDLY. My first thought when I heard he'd won was - "It's finally happened. They've gone right out and admitted on global TV what everybody knew but didn't want to really credit: that Nice Guys Lose and @$$#oles win."
Sometimes I think that the schadenfreude of watching one of these Pigs On The Wing fall into a justly deserved sausage machine is the way dramatic depictions of Classic Tragedy (as in fall of a Great Figure) got popular...
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But I don't think poverty is due to lack of privilege, unless by privilege one means having educated parents who don't abuse you or drugs and who have steady work. I've got blood relatives who range from having been on welfare at one point (not now, I think) to rather wealthy, and we've all come from intact families with supportive parents and okay educational opportunities (I do admit that NCSSM is well above the opportunity most people get -- but then, most people wouldn't have been able to take a fractal geometry class.) Among my cousins, let's see -- my sisters and I are the most educated, and two of us make more money than the rest (my other sister is still in medical school, but I'm sure she'd have no problem making money once she becomes a doctor.)
Or, unless one is referring to global poverty, in which case the privilege might relate to not being run by a kleptocracy, where all foreign aid gets consumed by the rulers and the common people have no protections whatsoever. Huh, wait -- corrupt govt siphoning off money to boondoggles benefiting cronies -- reminds me of Louisiana. So maybe there =is= a common thread.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/opinion/09eberstadt.html
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I like WIll, but this feels uncomfortably like the endless ways that women are told that we can worry about sexism after we've dealt with $other_problem.
Racism is a real problem, though in this country race and class are entwined.
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I think it would be pretty clear to establish in New Orleans that rich blacks got out and poor whites couldn't, and so the charges of racism in this instance strike me as both false and insulting. It seems like it should be cleansing for people like Laura Bush to stand up and say essentially "Fuck you" to people who make such spurious claims. There IS racism in our society, but we'd be better able to work on it if people stopped clouding the waters with false positives.
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So I'm still trying to figure out how race = poverty here. I have had my run-ins with rural poverty (overwhelmingly white), so I'm guessing that race = poverty because the media mavens live in big cities, where most of the poor people are not white. The same problems plague the white rural poor: drug abuse, alcohol abuse, low schooling, violence, teen pregnancy. But you don't see so many stories about that.
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And I think that all the things you list in your first comment -- educated parents who don't abuse drugs or you, steady work, educational opportunities, etc. -- are signs of privilege.
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[1] I wasn't there, but I've read about it.
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But your second paragraph is dead on -- we need to stop looking at classism and calling it racism. I'm not saying there is no racism, but the real cases are getting lost in the noise.
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Despite all the ridiculous claims of shadowy starchambers of older white males with names unknown among the glitterati, who run the whole show and for whom presidents, captains of industry and the glitterati themselves are mere pawns and figureheads... ...any claim that privilege (in the above sense) does not exist either is equally ridiculous.
I believe privelege has pretty much Always been there, even before man evolved. The strong have always taken what they want, because they can; as in nature the gazelle takes, and the cheetah, and the hyena pack. "Private law" is the law of the jungle, modern style; adapted into human society by the redifining of what gives power to who.
What is amazing is that the opposite notion exists at all. The very idea of Fair must be utterly incomprehensible to most animals. Where did We get this notion that even the lowest "Deserve" better? It must be some new idea.
If you ask me, I think we're still working on it...
',
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However, all this means is that the very rich can do certain things and not end up destitute or in prison. There aren't very many of the "very rich" out there. Privilege isn't keeping poor people poor, it's keeping rich people rich. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game - we're not in a society where wealth is based on gold and there's only a limited amount of it. There is plenty more space for more rich people in this society.
So it would help poor people not a bit to talk about privilege, unless it's to point out that the reason that other people can abuse drugs and alcohol, have affairs with several people, have out-of-wedlock children, do no work, get no education, etc. and not suffer any material consequences is because they're rich (and have somebody else managing their money... somebody elses who are not total crooks). Trying on the morals of the privileged class is deadly for those who don't have their material resources to soften a fall.
There have been people who come to America poor, people who aren't white and don't even speak English, and who have provided a better future for themselves and their children. Some came to America as refugees from Vietnam, for example, after/during the Vietnam War. Their "privilege" is that they work really hard, save up their money, and make their kids take education seriously -- but if any of them did what I said above, they'd be in trouble just as much as any other poor person.
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Wealth not a zero-sum game? That's my point...
My idea is that the High and Lordly, occupying the top of the pecking order, have, yes, been getting the best of it since we lived in trees. The biggest gets the nicest hunk of whatever's around. Then progress happens and the little folks can get it too, while their betters have found better themselves. Repeat as required. Common understanding has it that the rich of ancient days never had it so good as an American on minimum wage: Health and medicine, abundance of food, clothing variety, entertainment at hand, rapid travel, chance for bettering oneself. The stuff once reserved for kings now is available to the masses. All good; a beautiful, world-changing concept, this "fairness".
One notices, though, that never before in history or prehistory have the haves had so much more than the havenots - in preclassical Greece, for instance, the landed rich made only a about hundred times more than their lessers.
To me, the gap indicates that not only are benefits not trickling down, but that the concentrated power - in the base sense of the ability to cause change - which has always been instrumentality of the elite, has outpaced its balance with that which it changes. Think of a child in "those awkward years" where growth outstrips previously learned reflex and body familiarity, and suddenly coordination and grace fall away, bumps and bruises happen and things get knocked off tables. In a situation where power is concentrated far in excess of its surroundings, minor fluctuations create massive disturbance.
The 'Butterfly Wings' effect is relative to the size of the butterfly.
I personally know a case where an upper manager, combing through figures, realized that imposing niggling, nitpicking restrictions on a distant set of subordinate underlings (amounting to immense hassle and a savings of maybe a whole cent) created a profit large enough to multiply justify his salary. It made his career, especially since the negative consequences wouldn't come home to roost till the next guy's administration. With new position and clout, it was easy to find someone to deflect blame until then. And blame there was, because it was a Bad Idea - which in smaller circumstances wouldn't have been worthwhile, but here made big money, and far bigger problems.
We may not yet have starchambers of priveleged titans who change the face of the world with the wave of their smallest fingers - but that kind of ratio of cause to effect may yet happen by accident. I'd like the gap smaller, please, just for safe's sake.
And, dangit, I want private supersonic jets and anti-agathic treatments for me & my friends, too...
',
no subject
The deal is -- in this age of asking for more and more transparency, and the "hiveminds" that some blogs and other distributed groups have -- it's becoming increasingly difficult for single individuals to impose their will on other people. The UN-o-crats are finding that their little realms of corruption are being exposed, the Louisiana boondoggles are being revealed, cronyism working in domestic emergency planning at every level - local to federal - yeah, some of those responsible will never pay a fine or spend time in a prison. But they can't pretend about what they're up to.
I say this started with the printing press. But people had better watch out for the actions of the mob. In the English Civil War, in the French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, the Cuban Revolution -- the "power to the people" ended up with an elite, too. It's pretty impossible, as you say, to prevent an elite from forming. How to keep the elite from abusing others is interesting. People have woken up to the abuse of eminent domain for the benefit of commercial development, as well as other abuses. I'd say the American system is the best currently, but there are plenty other liberal democracies (in the old meaning of the term) who have the possibility to surpass America.
I have no use for a private supersonic jet... a seat in one is good enough for me. ;)
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Of course, the other side of this is that with too much publicity, people get used to it being right out in the open, and it gets almost accepted as How Things Work.
Think of Richard Hatch on the first Surivivor: a manipulating, predacious and self-aggrandizing jerk who won by being exactly that - PROUDLY. My first thought when I heard he'd won was - "It's finally happened. They've gone right out and admitted on global TV what everybody knew but didn't want to really credit: that Nice Guys Lose and @$$#oles win."
Sometimes I think that the schadenfreude of watching one of these Pigs On The Wing fall into a justly deserved sausage machine is the way dramatic depictions of Classic Tragedy (as in fall of a Great Figure) got popular...
',
ê
no subject