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Even if an individual with various privileges checks his/her privilege, is his/her argument "worthy" of being analyzed solely on the basis of its logic? (self.SRSDiscussion)

HankHarrison_ が 投稿

I will begin by saying that I am a person with more than one type of privilege. I often find myself in various social justice-related discussions, usually with others who have similar privilege / backgrounds. But I have come to notice that in the vast majority of these conversations, the points made by those with the most privilege are usually dismissed by those with less privilege, on the pure basis that the (more) privileged have not had the life experience to be able to merely offer thoughts on the matter at hand.
 

It makes complete sense to challenge individuals to recognize their individual privilege. One an individual does this (at least to the best of his/her ability), however, what should the next step be? And what actually tends to happen in these types of discussions?  

I simply cannot understand how many people, as critical thinkers attempting to dissect and ultimately better society, feel not only happy to dismiss words simply on the basis of their speaker/author, but more fundamentally, feel that it is their absolute moral duty to do so.
 

Once one considers the fact of who the speaker is, which should be an ancillary exercise, he/she should move on and focus the majority of his/her mental efforts on analyzing the ideas in question, no? Is this wrong?
 

tl;dr - Why do many progressives dismiss the words of others who have various forms of privilege without truly considering what is being said or debated? Doesn't this hurt the entire push for social justice?

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[–]HistoryLessonforBitc [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

I read a really nice post on a sort of pro-social justice, anti-Internet bullshit "social justice" nonsense blog a while back which I'm trying not to paraphrase here, but, fuck it, it chimes with my views. When someone who is marginalised is talking about their experience as a marginalised person, then yeah, those people are probably best placed to talk about their marginalisation, and should more or less have the floor. Rape survivors kind of have more of an insight into the process of being in that kind of horror than people who never have; black people will have more acute and broad experiences of racism, so they should have the floor. But that doesn't mean that the things they say aren't subject to the normal rules of logic and sensible discussion, or that privileged peoples' opinions are necessarily worth less just because they happen to be privileged. There's no particular argument for that sort of treatment which doesn't basically boil down to "you're privileged so therefore fuck you."

TL;DR from that post: "TL;DR? People of the given oppressed group get priority when speaking about their issues, but other people are allowed to disagree if factually untrue, absurd or threatening comments are made."

On my soapbox, generally, I'd say that this is a symptom of what was talked about in another post - the gradual toxification of a lot of social justice talk online towards a more confrontational, "fuck you" style. There's a growing trend included in that of forgetting that while yes, white people are privileged, and men are privileged, they're still people - our opinions should be judged on their merits, not on our gender or the colour of our skin. The fact that that has to be said of social justice communities is fucking frightening.

[–]amazing_rando [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

But I have come to notice that in the vast majority of these conversations, the points made by those with the most privilege are usually dismissed by those with less privilege, on the pure basis that the (more) privileged have not had the life experience to be able to merely offer thoughts on the matter at hand.

Are you sure this is actually what's going on? Usually when I see people complaining about this sort of thing, it's either people offering their opinions on how they would respond in a given situation they haven't experienced, or using loosely related statistics to try to undermine the importance of certain experiences, or bringing up tired ideas as something new that an entire marginalized group somehow never considered before, or being generally condescending. "Checking privilege" isn't like some sort of penance you do before engaging in a discussion, it's recognizing the areas where your privilege makes your intuition unreliable, or may introduce bias, and deferring to other people in those areas within the discussion.

I've never seen a situation where a purely factual statement is accepted or ignored on the basis of the speaker. There's always more to it than that.

[–]npcdel [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Because privileged (especially whites) come into discussions with the same old tired arguments time after time that PoC are exhausted from having lived the counterfactual of for hundreds of years.

It's better to have a blanket ban and then conditional exceptions for privileged folk who have proven they aren't idiots showing up to their first night of progressivism then having the same basic arguments, forever.

[–]HistoryLessonforBitc [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Maybe you should wait until these people actually come out with the tired arguments before assuming they are talking shit?

[–]tumbl_weed [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

I think referring to someone's privilege to dismiss their argument could be considered ad hominem if the logic of the argument is clear, but being wary of someone's status and background can help you analyze their logic and bias more critically. I think it's total bs to wholly dismiss an argument from background alone.