[OT] Terminology [was: Affecting Institutional Change (Yeah Right)]
Calejar wrote:
> > Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > There are those of us who believe that claims of
> > > discrimination became trite many years ago.
> >
> Amy Templeton wrote:
> > I'm inclined to disagree; it is more subtle now, but it still
> > exists. Do some reading on the concepts of privilege and
> > intersectionality and if you don't buy it, we can talk more
> > then (or if you do, either way).
>
> Can you briefly explain the issues (preferably without jargon, so a
> laymen can understand them) or at least provide link?
Certainly!
Privilege tends to be an especially tough one for a lot of people,
because nobody really wants to acknowledge it. Basically, it's the
idea that, based upon the "statuses" (sociologically speaking--so
race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.) people hold, some
people start off, by default, in a better position than others. For
example, a man doesn't have to worry as much as a woman does when
walking down a dark alley in the big city at night, doesn't have to
overcome a stigma associated with going into scientific and
technological fields (in many places, girls are implicitly and
explicitly told in school that they're "not as good" at these
things and far too many accept this analysis unquestioningly), is
allowed to be upset without "that time of the month" jokes, etc.
These are just a few examples of "male privilege." Conversely, if a
man cries he is in a position in which he could be thought less of
by his peers--so there are some privileges men don't have, like
access to certain forms of expression. Similarly, white people are
well-established as "in charge" in, say, the corporate world.
Although thanks to affirmative action there are now some (often
tokenized) people of color in the upper echelons of some
businesses, for the most part it is white people who gain
promotions (not due to racism, but not necessarily due to
differences in ability either). These are just a few examples...if
you would care for more I could give you a more extensive and
possibly better-written list at a later date, or point you to a
citation for such a list.
So, fine--this could be called a lot of things, if not for the
defining aspect of privilege: not having to think about it. People
in a position of privilege have the option to pretend that these
things are not going on under the surface (a man doesn't have to
think "boy am I glad I'm less likely than a woman to get sexually
assaulted walking down the street," for example).
Perhaps an example of how this can be particularly damaging is that
an able-bodied person doesn't have to think about the steps leading
to the only door of a shop--so there is no pressure to make the
shop more accessible, leaving people with certain types of physical
handicaps out on the street. On a large scale, this leads to
normalization of certain unwholesome practices (like not making
buildings universally accessible) throughout a society, which in
turn leads to marginalization of the people who don't have the
option of "activating" that privilege and not thinking about it.
Intersectionality is simpler to explain: basically, it's a refusal
to examine only one aspect of identify in isolation of all others.
A lot of social movements end up being single-issue; for a long
time, for example, the women's movement did not acknowledge issues
of race, class, and sexuality, but lately there's been a growing
awareness of these issues. This single-issue problem tends to come
from activations of privilege; the heterosexual, white,
middle-class women dominating the movement, for example, simply did
not have to think about the particular issues that women of color,
queer women, lower-class women, and women with more than one of
these "other" statuses face, and so only the problems facing
middle-class heterosexual white women would get discussed and
worked on. Put simplistically, it's just acknowledging that
"racism" can't be separated from "sexism" can't be separated from
"classism" can't be separated from "ableism" (quotes because I
don't like "ism"s, because they tend to oversimplify things)
because they're products of the same systems, ultimately, and
because it's the people who bear the brunt of multiple "ism"s who
are in the worst position, generally speaking. And this particular
analysis doesn't really allow for too much
oversimplification--after all, a lower-class, able-bodied,
heterosexual white man does not have access to the resources
available to a rich, able-bodied, heterosexual black woman; but
then again, he still doesn't have to worry as much about being
attacked on the street. So by refusing to gloss over the fact that
not all white people, not all women, not all able-bodied people,
are in the same position as each other, it's possible to create a
more nuanced analysis of how the various systems of race, class,
gender, sexuality, religion, ability, etc., interact, instead of
just screaming about racism or sexism or ableism. Yes, these
problems exist, but none of them are simple and they really can't
be boiled down to "some people are just *bad* and discriminate
against other people because they're *bad*," and they are much less
obvious if taken in isolation. Again, if you would care for
statistics, citations, and better articulation, I would be glad to
provide these at a later date.
Amy
--
You too can wear a nose mitten.
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