11 ways, that I, a white man, am not privileged

That’s good.

This section of the review is focused on the second book under discussion. Again, it’s worth the time to read the whole thing . . . and the two books sound well worth a look too:

The language of privilege, Bovy points out, battens on the contradictions between democratic ideology and structural inequality, and it flourishes where the pretenses to meritocracy are belied by the insularity, nepotism, and desperate striving for advantage that a rigidly hierarchical society encourages. “In an unjust society,” she notes, “small slights add up.” Where they irk and burn, the demand to “check your privilege” is ready to hand.

But, if the language of privilege has grown so rapidly because it is a way of addressing structural injustice, it is also the case, as Bovy points out, that, at least in its current usage, the discourse typically unfolds in highly individualistic terms. The focus, she points out, is relentlessly on “identity and personal experiences.” In this, the wider discourse follows the practice pioneered by Peggy McIntosh. We are asked not merely to recognize social injustice, but to respond first by working on ourselves — with the hope that unspecified political consequences will somehow follow from our deepened self-awareness.

One of Bovy’s major complaints is that those consequences do not often follow. Although the advocates of privilege discourse often speak of self-investigation and consciousness raising as halting first steps on a longer journey, the political strategies and organizations by which such insights might be converted into concrete action are rare. Quite typically, as Bovy notes, the language of privilege casts introspection as a good in itself. More frequently still, its defenders make the case for self-awareness by lambasting the smug or clumsy figures who haplessly reveal that they have failed to sufficiently confront their own advantages. When the accusation of privilege is most fiercely leveled, its target often appears to be less structural injustice itself than tactless people who reveal inequality too starkly. “Your privilege is showing,” Bovy remarks, has become something like a conventional gambit in the rituals of social media charivari, and she makes a compelling case that its most frequent victims (white women, crudely striving middle-class college aspirants, Asian Americans, Jews) are not in fact the most wealthy and powerful but rather people whose uncertain positions reveal the bald truth of social hierarchy. There’s “nothing wrong with being privileged,” a college admissions coach quoted by Bovy explains. “You just want to show that you have a realistic sense of the world and your place in it.”

wv wrote:

good stuff, BT.

How goes life?

w
v

It is, WV.

Doing fine. I recently started on a new novel, and when it’s finished, it will be my fourth completed since I went into semi-retirement. It’s my first foray into a ghost story. The idea is that the ghost comes back to the scene of the crime and works to solve the mystery of her death with her husband and her lover. They’re the only two people who can see her.

Anyway . . . also wanted to say thanks for the Lierre Keith video. I really liked it. She’s sharp, direct, gets right to it, and I agree with the vast majority of her model, though I think there’s more “blending” going on than she seems to acknowledge. A voice worth me looking into. Did not know about her before.

Hope all is well with you, WV.