The problem with telling privileged people to shut up and listen to marginalized people

This blog post makes the case that it doesn’t work to have a rule for privileged people of “Shut up and listen to marginalized people,” which actually prevents marginalized people from being listened to. Excerpt:

The formal social justice rules say something like this:

• You should listen to marginalized people.
• When a marginalized person calls you out, don’t argue.
• Believe them, apologize, and don’t do it again.
• When you see others doing what you were called out for doing, call them out.

Those rules . . . don’t actually work. It is impossible to follow them literally, in part because:

• Marginalized people are not a monolith.
• Marginalized people have the same range of opinions as privileged people.
• When two marginalized people tell you logically incompatible things, it is impossible to act on both sets of instructions.
• For instance, some women believe that abortion is a human right foundational human right for women. Some women believe that abortion is murder and an attack on women and girls.
• “Listen to women” doesn’t tell you who to believe, what policy to support, or how to talk about abortion.
• For instance, some women believe that religious rules about clothing liberate women from sexual objectification, other women believe that religious rules about clothing sexually objectify women. . . .
• When “listen to marginalized people” means “adopt a particular position”, marginalized people are treated as rhetorical props rather than real people. . . .

Since the rule is literally impossible to follow, no one is actually succeeding at following it. What usually ends up happening when people try is that:

• One opinion gets lifted up as “the position of marginalized people”
• Agreeing with that opinion is called “listen[ing] to marginalized people”
• Disagreeing with that opinion is called “talking over marginalized people”
• Marginalized people who disagree with that opinion are called out by privileged people for “talking over marginalized people”.
• This results in a lot of fights over who is the true voice of the marginalized people.
• We need an approach that is more conducive to real listening and learning. . . .

The rule also lacks intersectionality:

• No one experiences every form of oppression or every form of privilege.
• Call-outs often involve people who are marginalized in different ways. . . .
• For instance, black men have male privilege and white women have white privilege.
• If a white woman calls a black man out for sexism and he responds by calling her out for racism (or vice versa), “listened to marginalized people” isn’t a very helpful rule because they’re both marginalized.
• These conversations tend to degenerate into an argument about which form of marginalization is most significant.
• This prevents people involved from actually listening to each other.
• In conflicts like this, it’s often the case that both sides have a legitimate point. (In ways that are often not immediately obvious.)
• We need to be able to work through these conflicts without expecting simplistic rules to resolve them in advance.

Hillary Clinton is asked about her "white privilege"

I'm less interested in her answer to that question than I am in knowing when and how the word "privilege" started to take over virtually all discussions of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. It seems to have happened fairly recently — I'd say within about the last 10 years. When you hear the explanations of what it's supposed to mean, you can probably think of other words that would have been used in the past. But today, simply uttering the word "privilege" has become a signal that you're one of the enlightened ones.

I have some thoughts on what might be motivating the constant use of this word, but I'll have to get to that another day.

Deconstructing "privilege"

Econ prof Don Boudreaux writes:

One challenge that I encounter often when writing is that of finding an accurate adjective for describing the typical upper-middle-class American (and typical rich American). A common convention is to use the adjective “privileged” – as in, for example, “A disproportionate number of minimum-wage jobs will be filled by privileged teenagers raised in affluent suburbs.” As used in this now-conventional way, the word “privileged” describes the state of being more prosperous economically and better connected socially than is the typical working-class or poor American. . . .

I resist using “privileged” in this way. The reason is that the word “privilege” still conveys also a sense of undeserved special treatment. And so while someone might be made economically more prosperous and socially more well-connected because he or she receives undeserved special treatment, becoming economically more prosperous and socially more well-connected does not require undeserved special treatment. Many prosperous people (indeed, in America, still the vast majority of prosperous people) achieve their success through hard work, economic risk-taking (using their own money), prudent behavior, and honest dealings with others. . . . To call such successful people “privileged” . . . wrongly, if subtly, suggests that they’ve been granted some unusual special treatment that accounts for their success.

Many people are tempted to assert that it is a “privilege” in modern America to be born white, or to be born into a loving two-parent family that instills bourgeois virtues, or to be born without any significant physical or mental disabilities. It’s true that people so born are dealt a better starting hand in life than are many other people. But such a use of “privilege” is too expansive and, hence, runs the risk of verbally papering over important distinctions that should be kept visible. Such an expansive use of the word “privilege” has no obvious boundaries. If we accede to this use of the word “privilege,” then we can say also that it is a privilege to have been born in the U.S. to start with – even, perhaps, regardless of one’s skin color (post-1865) or ethnic background. Even the poorest American today is, by this expansive use of the word “privilege,” privileged in comparison to at least a couple of billion people living today throughout Africa and south and central Asia. So, too, then is anyone born in the modern world “privileged” compared to the vast majority of people born just a few centuries ago and earlier. Such an expansive use of the word “privilege” is misleading.

The etymology of the word “privilege” is obvious if you think about it: “privi” – private; “lege” – legislation. Private legislation. (“Special privileges” is, therefore, a pleonasm.) A person who is truly privileged, therefore, is a person who benefits from a special use of government force wielded in his or her favor. This use of force is not generalizable beyond the individual (or small, closed group) for whom the privilege is created. A genuine privilege is a benefit that government bestows on only an individual or on a small select group with the intention of benefiting that individual or members of that small group even if such benefits come at the greater expense of the general public.

According to this correct understanding of the word “privilege,” the vast majority of upper-middle-class and rich Americans are not privileged. While some of these people attained their wealth through favors conferred illegitimately upon them by the state (and, hence, are indeed privileged), the vast majority earned their prosperity without any such favors. . . .

Such a use also strongly suggests . . . that the best, or only, way for “underprivileged” people to become more prosperous is for them to manage to get for themselves some privileges. That suggestion is widely mistaken, as well as one that, if accepted, creates social strife rather than encourages social cooperation.

What's the point of talking about "white privilege"?

John McWhorter writes:

[T]he idea is supposedly that we need to disseminate this awareness of White Privilege before we can start on the political part of the project. But the case for White Privilege as a necessary prelude to change relies on a premise that America is a nation “in denial” about racism past and present. That premise has rhetorical punch, but doesn’t comport with reality.

Take the usual phrasing that America needs a “conversation” on race. Our country engages in an endless “conversation” about race year round, in the media, academia, and barstool talk, while schools, museums, the media, the publishing industry, and government organizations treat coverage, exploration and deploring of, as well as apology for, racism as ingrained aspects of their mission.

Many foreign observers would be baffled by the notion that this is a nation that refuses a “conversation” about race or even racism—just last year involved fervent discussions of not only police brutality, but microaggression, gentrification, the N-word, reparations, and much more. The fact that this conversation doesn’t lead to all whites bowing down to all black complaints, an outcome tacitly desired by a certain cadre of academics and journalists, does not disqualify it as a conversation.

The question, then, becomes: Precisely what benefit do White Privilege 101 lessons add to all of what there already is? (Again, “knowing about White Privilege” is not an answer.) What are we hoping will happen in the wake of these lessons that hasn’t been happening before, and crucially, upon what evidence has that hope been founded?

America is by no means post-racial, but it is not 1960 either; change happens. Example: The U.S. Justice Department has officially faulted the Ferguson police department for discriminatory ticketing and could even shut it down. I cheer that development, but the protests over the Michael Brown verdict, magnified by social media, are what created this attention. The White Privilege lessons the DOJ’s outreach body imposed just made local whites angry. What popped the lock was good Old-Fashioned Civil Rights law. What’s the gain from White Privilege rhetoric? . . .

White Privilege 101 lessons require endless reiteration of key principles to retain. In many ways, taking them from words to action is such a logically fragile proposition that it must be billed as endlessly “subtle” (or “messy”)—a strange kind of pitch for something supposedly so urgent. And those questioning the whole affair are heatedly dismissed as “not getting it.” It all sounds familiar—but less as politics than as religion. . . .

In a society where racism is treated as morally equivalent to pedophilia, what whites are seeking is the sweet relief of moral absolution. Inside they are pleading, “Please don’t hate me!” And I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an accompanying feeling of purification (redemption, even) that comes with such consultant-given absolution. I can honestly say that I would be engaging in exactly this kind of moral self-flagellation about racism if I were white in today’s America.

However, not being white, I can’t help but see it from a different perspective.

If “I know that I’m privileged!” is a statement made largely for one’s own sense of security, then it’s unclear to me how, say, the private school programs’ White Privilege sessions are “challenging” White Privilege, as the Times story’s headline put it. Semi-coerced self-interest rather than genuine enlightenment or understanding seems to be the vehicle for this racial revelation. . . .

So let’s start this stage of our “dialogue on race” with a simple question: When our mandated diversity director says, “This is messy work, but these conversations are necessary,” we have every right, as moral persons, to ask: Why, and for whose benefit?

What should "white privilege" mean?

Reihan Salam writes:

I wonder if the racial self-flagellation of ‪#‎CrimingWhileWhite‬ is like buying an indulgence. If you engage in ritualized expressions of white guilt, you are free to enjoy your white privilege, comfortable in the knowledge that you are nothing like those ignorant and presumably terrible white people who refuse to do so. I have little patience for this kind of privilege-checking. As Phoebe Maltz Bovy observed back in May, invocations of white privilege are more often than not a way for one privileged person to “win a sensitivity competition” with another privileged person. What, then, is a useful way to think about what white privilege means and how it works? . . .

It’s also important to understand the social and economic components of white privilege. The basic idea, as described by scholars like Nancy DiTomaso, author of The American Non-Dilemma, and Daria Roithmayr, author of Reproducing Racism, is that all kinds of valuable social goods are transmitted through social networks. If you hear of a job opening at your company, you will likely pass that information along to a close friend or relative. I’ve shared information in this insider-y way, and I’m guessing that you have as well—if you don’t, then the people you value and respect might value and respect you a little bit less.

Why does white privilege come into play here? Because most Americans, like most humans, associate with people much like themselves. Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute has found that the social networks of white Americans are 91 percent white, and three-quarters of whites have entirely white social networks. This shouldn’t be too shocking, as most Americans are non-Hispanic whites and there are many neighborhoods in which making nonwhite friends would take a great deal of effort. Looking at these relationships through an exclusively racial lens can be misleading, as factors like the neighborhood you live in, the high school you attended, and your religious background could be doing more of the work than any preference for associating with other people of your own race. But the neighborhoods we live in and the high schools and churches we attend tend to be segregated by race, so even the mildest same-race preference will get magnified by these other avenues. Since white people hold a disproportionately large share of the most lucrative and the most powerful jobs, the natural tendency to help those you care about most ends up reinforcing racial inequality.

There is nothing intrinsically white about helping your friends and relatives. When it comes to building self-reinforcing social networks, one could even make the case that other groups are beating whites at their own game. Recently, Chris Martin, a graduate student in sociology at Emory University, and John Nezlek, a social psychologist at the College of William and Mary, found that people consistently underestimate the median household income of Asian Americans, and that people who believe that whites are highly privileged were particularly likely to assume that Asian-American households earn less than white households. This is despite the fact that Asian-American households have had higher incomes than white households for more than 30 years.

Does this mean that we ought to talk about Asian-American privilege more and white privilege less? Not without acknowledging what “privilege” means in the context of different groups. If anything, newcomers to American society and their children might find themselves more dependent on friends and relatives than deeply rooted whites, and thus more likely to cultivate and maintain these ties in an environment that seems alien and at times hostile. Those who arrive with high levels of educational attainment are particularly well-positioned to take advantage of job opportunities, and to share inside information with their co-ethnics. Virtually all Taiwanese immigrants benefit from the fact that 74.1 percent of American adults of Taiwanese origin have at least a bachelor’s degree. Similarly, the life chances of college-educated Hmong Americans are affected in all kinds of ways by the fact that 37.9 percent of American adults of Hmong origin have less than a high school diploma.

Imagine if we could rigorously apply a similar subgroup analysis to white Americans. The Census doesn’t capture data on educational and labor market outcomes for religious minorities like Jews and Mormons, yet there is evidence that people have a much greater tendency to associate with narrower ethno-religious groups than with fellow members of larger racial groups. Even so, we don’t generally speak of Jewish privilege or Mormon privilege. The language of white privilege also obscures the ravaging effects of poverty in heavily white regions like Appalachian Kentucky, where drug abuse is rampant and privilege-checking seems almost totally irrelevant.

Why does the white privilege conversation ignore the ways in which Asian Americans have used their social ties to achieve success, or the yawning chasm that separates upper-middle-income Mormon Californians from impoverished Appalachian whites? The simple answer is that we talk about white privilege as a clumsy way of talking about black exclusion.

Even white Americans of modest means are more likely to have inherited something, in the form of housing wealth or useful professional connections, than the descendants of slaves. In his influential 2005 book When Affirmative Action Was White, Ira Katznelson recounts in fascinating detail the various ways in which the New Deal and Fair Deal social programs of the 1930s and 1940s expanded economic opportunities for whites while doing so unevenly at best for blacks, particularly in the segregated South. Many rural whites who had known nothing but the direst poverty saw their lives transformed as everything from rural electrification to generous educational benefits for veterans allowed them to build human capital, earn higher incomes, and accumulate savings. This legacy, in ways large and small, continues to enrich the children and grandchildren of the whites of that era. This is the stuff of white privilege.

There's an interesting analogy to be made between Asian Americans and Jewish Americans. Both groups are richer than the average white American. But they reached that point only by doing a lot to compensate for discrimination and historic oppression.