A friend’s son has a job orienting college students on the subject of privilege. The highlighted sources of privilege are primarily race and sexual orientation. Parental wealth also may get throw in.
The sources of privilege that are not mentioned, as far as I can tell, include:
–being tall
–having attractive features (or at least not being extremely unattractive)
–being naturally outgoing (extroverted)
–not having mental disorders, such as autism, depression, or schizophrenia
–not having debilitating physical ailments or physical handicaps
–growing up with your biological father (particularly if you are male). See Autor and Wasserman.
–having artistic gifts
Like race or sexual orientation, these characteristics are generally given to a person at birth and during childhood. On average, and other things equal, someone with one of these characteristics will wind up higher on the social scale than someone without them. I would bet that some of them have stronger impacts on average outcomes than race or sexual orientation. So to me, these characteristics look like privilege.
Is there a non-politically-motivated justification for only looking at race, sexual orientation, and economic class as sources of privilege?
I’m glad to see someone mention this. Thanks.
It’s a special case because of perishability, but nobody ever lectures college students on their youth privilege, but they all have it and it’s incredibly valuable: ask any older person.
I can guess how a progressive would answer this one, which is to say that those things are special because of historical systems of official oppression based on those factors, which were characterized by qualitatively different levels of cruelty and harm, and around which were constructed normative and ideological frameworks that are yet to be eradicated.
In addition to the material and practical legacy of this past unjust violation – which still persists to a substantial and intolerable degree in contemporary conditions – these ideas, attitudes, and whole mindsets still stubbornly linger on through various forms of cultural inertia (or simple bigotry and selfish interest for those in privileged groups). And, for whatever reason, as a kind of empirical observation of contemporary human nature, these particular biases seem both especially pernicious and hard to correct, and for this and the above reasons, deserve special attention.
So, yes, while there are unfair privileges deriving from innate advantages in beauty and height and so on, our current situation is not to any important degree formed by a history of anyone having formed any kind of exploitative and oppressive system of group solidarity over these features, which vary too much even within the same family.
And, while it is true that features like height are unequally distributed by gender and ethnicity according to average group statistics, if one concentrates on the big three of preventing disparate impact and leveling outcomes by race, gender, and class, then, as an incidental benefit, that will also make sure that to the extent these characteristics give individuals advantages, it won’t do so so in a way that tends to disadvantage any group on average more than the others.
For example, while it is of course unfair that, apparently even when correcting for productivity, tall people tend to enjoy better life outcomes, those outcomes to a large degree tend to be ‘legible’ in terms of of financial gains, and so by mean of progressive taxation and redistribution, the state will moderate the unfair disparity and bring matters to a more socially just condition, without having to go to crazy extremes like some kind of Harrison Bergeron world.
There is some philosophical disagreement to what extent winners “deserve” their market rates of compensation even in idealized hypothetical versions of meritocracy, but again, that’s the beauty of progressive taxation, which is that the highly productive individual isn’t robbed of all these gains by confiscation, and instead gets to split the difference with their less fortunate compatriots, keeping out best guess on the “just part”, and asked to forgo the “unjust part”, at a level of taxation that we try to refine towards the Rawlsian Optimum of social justice, technological progress, and future economic growth.
Great comment. Not sure whether you’re really a progressive, but you pass the ideological Turing test.
Well played
Yea, the key difference is the extent to which something can be considered an intrinsic part of your identity that justifies you being lumped into a certain group.
What I find interesting is the first five factors you mentioned:
–being tall
–having attractive features (or at least not being extremely unattractive)
–being naturally outgoing (extroverted)
–not having mental disorders, such as autism, depression, or schizophrenia
–not having debilitating physical ailments or physical handicaps
Are all traits that I would argue have an even more significant impact on how someone will perform with the opposite sex/how many opportunities they will have with the opposite sex. This form of inequality is the one that was highlighted by the recent incel killers and is analysed in the novels of Michel Houellebeq. Any solution to this problem would likely be worse than the problem itself so I don’t condone any action on it, but I do have sympathy with the unattractive men and women out there who find themselves excluded from a key part of the human experience that is prized so highly during our time.
Youth isn’t really a privilege; it’s one of the most evenly distributed things in the world. I got 365 days of being 18; a few people got 366, but I made up the difference at 16 and 20.
Age is a privilege; not everyone gets it.
The very concept of privilege is a loaded term. We could call a good heredity or upbringing a “blessing” and achieve the goals of humility and gratefulness that elicit charity.
However, “privilege” implies some special exception to the rules that gives one an unfair advantage over others. The King has privileges that the serf does not.
Remember the goal is to foster guilt is those that produce surpluses so that confiscation of those surplusses can be justified. The word privilege implies you stole what you have or are keeping someone down. If that’s true then it’s just to take from you.
By contrast if you are merely blessed by good fortune nothing is owed to anyone. You might help others out of charity, but that is a different positive and voluntary motivation then redistributive Justice forced on a sinner.
The thug is charity alone doesn’t seem to be enough for some parties to get whatever they want, while guilt yielded as a weapon can achieve results charity alone can’t (those results often being unjust but beneficial to certain parties).
“The very concept of privilege is a loaded term.”
Yes. Motte and Bailey. When it is used they mean to imply unfair, pompous, systemic injustice, but when pushed they can pretend they just mean “advantaged”‘ or fortunate. That is the power of the term, it allows one to denigrate ones opponent while putting up a facade. “Oh, you just took it wrong!”
To illustrate the trick with a different word, let’s use “handicapped.” One definition of the term is disadvantaged. But a darker meaning is one of intrinsic lower ability. I could call a gender or race handicapped and pretend I just mean disadvantaged (not “privileged”), but everyone would take offense as it clearly also implies lesser capability.
My point of course is that neither term is polite. Don’t call people privileged or handicapped unless you really mean to imply the darker side that rides along with the term.
I would also add to your excellent comment that the reason race, gender and orientation are used is because they foster tribalism. I think intelligence, looks, social skills and time horizons are substantially more important to inequality of outcome than the big three, but nobody can organize a sympathetic group which self identifies with the grouping.
“Ugly, stupid, awkward people unite!” Doesn’t have much rhetorical or political value.
Prof. Arnold asks:
>>”Is there a non-politically-motivated justification for only looking at race, sexual
>> orientation, and economic class as sources of privilege?”
Not entirely, but never underestimate stupidity and the desire to repeat exciting new concepts in simple phrases if given emotional and social approval.
Hanlon’s Razor may apply in part: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
“Race Class and Gender” have become a sort of a triumvirate or triune conceptualization. I believe it is propagated in part by English Composition readers taking that approach, which shows you that it caught on a while ago. Sexual orientation perhaps derives from those three in practice as an add on, or perhaps not–I don’t know.
Where these things originated? various theorists. In some disciplines they take root–thus the “Race Class Gender” textbook.
= – = – = – =
My Dear Arnold, let’s all get a clue.
A good working assumption is that the people who run these discussions of privilege are not rocket scientists. They are of average intelligence, well meaning (we hope), are excited by ideas, and enjoy repeating things they have been told. Many of them want to contribute to making the world a better place, and they hope they are helping.
The more zealous among them are sectarians with the zeal of a sectarian. But the average person is average. a little compliant, prone to social pressure.
The average person doing this, probably is actually below average, or toward the middle of the distribution of brains/curiousity/analysis. Most are not working as electrical engineers and many will never pass three semesters of calculus, let alone take calculus, differential equations, and organic chem (with lab!) all in the same semester. That is why they are functionaries on the consciousness raising train. And they have an audience of bright eyed 18 years who…don’t know nothing!
Here’s my guess: There is a stage in the development of sophistication that many people never read.
Many people never study a topic like multiple regression in which they become accustomed to thinking of a dependent variable and they have to take 30 variables, plug them in, see what looks important, notice that some have p statistics that are insignificant, some have the wrong sign, meanwhile you still aren’t sure what you are doing.
Then, to improve your sophistication, someone with real training comes along and tells you that you suck as a modeler, you are just fishing, you need a model specified in advance, and by the way your data set sucks, you need variables that you can’t easily get, etc. They demonstrate “the omitted variables” problem with an actual example to show how you can get the wrong sign on a variable in a poorly specified model.
Really–most people don’t think that way. I can only think in this manner because some professors tried to pound it into my skull. And I would read books taking that approach. _How we live_ by Victor Fuchs, which I ordered by mail on clearance and annotated diligently. It was easier than taking the math, which overwhelms me. So, being curious and reading a lot helps–and I could think this way at the age of 30, but not at the age of 18.
Correction of typo:
“There is a stage in the development of sophistication that many people never *reach*.”
Here’s my list of variables (to add to Prof. Arnold’s).
* adequately high IQ
* good manners (often learned in the home)
* absence of speech impediment or annoying voice
* social competence–knowing what’s appropriate in any setting
* athletic gifts
* being raised through adolescence in a moderately functional neighborhood (not “ghetto”, for example–most families have biological father present, streets relatively safe, gangs not present or not omnipresent, no street drug open sales spots, social strata not dominated and disdained by the rest of society (not ghetto, not hillbilly, not migrant worker, not Black sharecropper in 1950s Mississipp. Self-reliant peckerwood probably ok.)
* ability to read adequately well
* good test taking ability
* not abused / neglected as child
* adequate health care / dental care / glasses if necessary
* adequate nutrition
* ability to follow directions
* good impulse control
* high frustration tolerance
* “concerted cultivation” of talents
* ability to speak the dominant language with no accent or almost no accent
* growing up in top quintile or higher of socio-economic hierarchy
* lack of susceptibility to addiction to alcohol, hard drugs
* not a member of disliked minority (this is hard to say, as some minority sects do well–Mormons here, Hugenots in France, Old Believers in Russia, list can be expanded. The Nigerian sociologist distinguished between(1) immigrants,(2) sect-like minorities, and (3) caste-like minorities in USA–John Ogbu.
* absence of fetal insult to development (virus, fetal alcohol, etc
* reading at grade level by 2d grade
* no florid ADHD, uncontrolled, in classroom settings
* conscientiousness.
Permit me to suggest a good essay on conscientiousness by Bruce Charlton:
“Reliable but dumb, or smart by slapdash” (2009) online at Medical Hypotheses blog
Focusing on race and/or gender is a shortcut attempt at increasing one’s own status by bringing down the status of others. It requires no education or skill achievement, because it uses simplistic labeling to assign blame. It is, in fact, opposed to personal growth and learning. It deeply indulges the single cause fallacy. Don’t learn from those you perceive as successful. Destroy them.
Legendary Fortune editor Daniel Seligman used to say that the best looking women could be found on the campuses of selective colleges; the stereotype of the unattractive bookworm was exactly backwards. His theory was that powerful people mated with attractive people, producing kids who were at least somewhat both. After a number of generations, this would cause the average attractiveness of powerful people (who were pretty smart) to be pretty high.
The flip side of this is that the people on Jerry Springer are generally ugly.
Actually, from what I can tell, these are all accepted as forms of privilege. “Ableism” is well-known as a parallel to racism, sexism, etc.. In corporate settings, they aren’t lectured upon because there is little risk of an anti-discrimination suit or bad publicity in terms other than race and sex. (The lawsuit risk for “ableism” is due to lack of accommodation, not speech.) I work in Silicon Valley and have been a manager, so I’m very familiar with the institutional imperatives at work. The spark is the lawsuit risk (because unconscious bias classes are expensive and lots of work for the employees), but of course the managers usually agree with the content of the class and few employees challenge it.
I imagine a similar dynamic works for topic choice as well. One should never underestimate how much university/corporate ideology is actually driven by the risk of lawsuits and bad publicity rather than sincere belief. Or, rather, sincere belief is a phenomenon wholly springing from a need to believe personally in what your job requires of you.
Its been a few decades since I was active in the social change arena, but it surprises me that the Big 3 are not race, gender, and class. I also would be surprised to hear that sexual orientation didn’t come in a close 4th, and that “looksism” or “sizeism” didn’t also make an appearance, as well as “ableism” or whatever the word might be now.
But I must take your word for it!
Charles has a pretty good list in his second comment. There are many non-white or immigrant families that are able to send their children to school in posession of many of those characteristics. Iranians, South Asians, Nigerians, etc. Not to mention many African American and Hispanic families. So the “race construct” gets a little teetery.
Theres nothing wrong with trying to heighten awareness around issues. The approach described seems a bit simplistic. Without more info, can’t really say.
The factors you mention are for the most part discrete and generally agreed who is in what category. Of course there edge cases but for the most part there would be broad consensus.
The other ones you mention are continuously distributed and subjective.
I think this is sufficient for people to settle on focusing on the certain attributes.
Class is actually kind of slippery. Are professors workers or bosses? If you have a 401(k) full of stocks, are you a capitalist? What if you are part of a union-sponsored pension plan that is heavily invested in stocks?
I think that if we could come up with an advantaged / disadvantaged matrix, complete with sliding scales (e.g., degrees of beauty or intelligence) and calculated everyone’s “net privilege score,” we’d discover that we’re all individuals.
Probably, though, we’d never agree on how to weight the different attributes (e.g., location of birth vs physical health). I suspect that for the left, skin color trumps everything. Oprah Winfrey is “net oppressed,” while a poor, white, opioid-addicted man from Appalachia is a “net oppressor.”
Thank you Mr Kling for recognizing the effect of having no father while growing up.
Some of these privileges might not actually be privileges.
For example, having attractive features tends to have an IQ-lowering effect insofar as attractive people don’t have to think as hard to get ahead in life.
Think attractive blonde bimbos that become trophy wives for football players here. The unattractive women go on to become accountants and such. Accountants are smart; trophy wives, not so much.
There are exceptions of course. You can be both attractive and smart but I’m generalizing here.
“Beauty fades, dumb is forever.” —Judge Judy Sheindlin
Attractiveness and intelligence are correlated. Given a certain level of success, better looking people will tend to be less intelligent because of the mechanism you describe, but among the population at large, good looks predicts intelligence.
Garrison Keillor did a bit about a shy rights movement, years ago. Slogan: “Why not pretty soon?”
All other things (competence, diligence, etc.) being equal (or close enough to equal to get by), in the professional world in which I work, being nonwhite, female, or non-heterosexual gives one a large advantage. I think this is true in every professional and academic field in the United States and everyone knows it. But nonetheless we are supposed to pretend to believe that “whites” have some sort of privilege.
That Asians, on average, surpass whites in academics and income does not really fit the official narrative about “white” privilege. Presumably, if confronted with this fact, our pseudo-egalitarian masters would tell us that without white privilege, Asians would be doing even better. I guess that couldn’t be disproven.
The concern over “class” privilege is phony. When do you ever hear these diversity aparatchiks express anything but contempt for the white working class?
One clearly existing privilege that these cheesy ideologues are not interested in attacking is the privilege accorded to those (like themselves) who are willing to chant the progressive “anti-privilege” liturgy.
A country that obsesses over and cultivates this sort of sterile resentment and envy is a country in decline.
And I might argue – were I an HR executive at a Fortune 500 company – all things being equal (or close enough), why would the straight white guy be given the advantage?
Perhaps all things are not equal, and a workforce that reflects the client or customer demographic might be a competitive advantage.
How about not giving anyone an advantage based on race/ethnicity/religion/sex/orientation or other characteristics unrelated to performance of the task – and just letting the chips fall where they may? Why is that position now considered “racist”?
As to “client or customer demographic,” I assume you’re not referring to trivia like finding performers, writers, etc. for entertainment targeted to a particular demographic. So I guess you mean catering to the preferences of the customer or client for certain identity characteristics. E.g., black-owned businesses might prefer to be audited by black CPAs. This has a strangely familiar ring from when the shoe was on the other foot. Not sure why it is acceptable now when we vilify examples of it from the past.
Those are certainly counter-arguments.
As for letting the chips fall where they may…
So, all things being equal between two candidayes (as you say) how would the chips fall? And why?
Bill, why did you choose Bob? Because I felt we were on the same wavelength. Bill and Bob are both 40 something straight white men. Is this good enough?
Do you really think the scenario you’re describing is a major factor in the United States in 2017 – or has been for the last 20 years?
As Steve Sailer often notes, the Left never notices that they’ve been running the country for decades.
And the Left is not just demanding that “ties” go to members of their favored groups. It’s disingenuous to suggest that is what’s at issue.
Steve Sailer. Alrighty then. Later.
Steve Sailer deliberately writes to piss off the people he disagrees with and to make his supporters feel superior: less hypocritical, more willing to look unpleasant truths in the face, able to see when the emperor has no clothes and to mock him for it. More than anything else, he reminds me of the “counter-culture” writing of the ’60s. Some of it was over-stated crap, but some of it was indeed worth reading.
Steve Sailer is a great prose stylist, a brilliant satirist, and an irrepressible “noticer.” He writes not only to provoke and to debunk, but also to inform.
I would not accept everything he says without holding it up to scrutiny. He writes more than I can read, and doubtless he’s said various things that keep him from being published by respectable magazines / journals. Some of them may be howlers, just as Mencken had his howlers.
It’s not clear to me that he’s even a “race realist” so much as a “noticer.” I’ve never worked out the different between those two categories (race realist vs noticer) in my head.
In the mainstream media the fog of dissimulation and silence is often so great that I only know about certain things because Steve Sailer has asserted them. Some of those things are, upon inspection, apparently true.
“Crevasses in the Classroom”
and
“From Gladwell to Orwell and Back” are good to start with.
Sailer would probably be safer for polite company if he were Black. What’s up with that? Hasn’t Walter E Williams said many of the same things?
To a boy with a hammer … I just learned how to do links in HTML and it really does make for better comments if readers can just click on a link. One of the good things about this blog is its comment section. So:
Crevasses in the Classroom
From Orwell to Gladwell and Back
And if you forget how to do links (as I just did), you can google “HTML link”.
The race, class, orientation privileges are the ones millennials think they’re already fighting. They grew up believing they were post-ism and their parents the ones ignorant of their privilege in these areas.
No campus is going to make their millennials feel uncomfortable by calling out their ACTUAL areas of privilege. The point of the exercise isn’t to change minds but to make the incoming class feel good about themselves.
Speaking as a middle-aged white male who suffers from depression and is also deaf, the modern concept of privilege is complex and multifaceted. This is not something young people want to be forced to deal with.
Lots of people pride themselves on “speaking truth to power”, but that’s very dangerous unless you use a defanged symbol of bygone power. Many college students will happily speak “truth” to white southern rural men; it takes balls to speak truth to the Harvard admissions committee.
I’d add two large privileges:
(1) Time-privilege: Being born in the last quarter-century.
(2) Place-privilege: Begin born and/or living in a first-world country.
I think the best writers on the left, the best social justice warriors, acknowledge all forms of privilege – including ones in your list. But I think they put more focus on racial privilege because of the legacy of racial discrimination in our country.
Another way to ask the question is to ask what forms of inequality are important or unimportant. I think the three languages of politics my help us understand this as well. Being tall or short just isn’t seen as important along any dimension.
While everything in your list raises a person’s standing in society, not all of it is overt or intentional. Humans just view taller people more favorably, but our world is not built for taller people, it is built a little taller than the median.
Whereas, the world is built for wealth people and not poor people.
I think some things in your list do get some attention from the social justice community. I would expect mental and physical abilities to get more attention in the coming years.
Not to mention strength, health and athletic ability.