Sure, but economically equivalent white and black people have different experiences. That's a privilege under the definition.
That more affluent-appearing black people are treated like less affluent looking white people isn't proof that white privilege doesn't exist. It's the opposite.
You're technically right, but the argument that "given otherwise identical circumstances, white people are less oppressed than black people" (or whatever) has the issues that a) "otherwise identical circumstances" almost never exist and b) this argument is often even being used when the otherwise circumstances are clearly not identical (I remember an online discussion where people were called out for criticising Beyoncé, who must have it really hard as a black woman - which, sure, she might have, but she's also crazy rich and a prominent media figure, so she also has privilege; and then again, even not having privilege doesn't mean you should be immune to criticism).
I don't question the notion of privilege as much as how often it's applied to shut down dissenting opinion.
Privilege isn't a binary thing. You aren't privileged or not. Many people have some forms of privilege and not others.
An affluent white woman and a homeless black man have very different life experiences, each has privileges that the other doesn't.
Fighting about which is more privileged is silly (even if it may seem obvious to you). What's ultimately important is to understand situations in which those privileges will affect the experiences of those people.
As for Beyonce, that's so vague that I can't know. If she was describing the challenges of being black in the recording industry, then yes using her success to claim she can't understand the challenges she's had to overcome is ridiculous. But in other contexts, that she's affluent is relevant.
I don't disagree with you. Understanding privilege is important. But you may not have witnessed the ridiculous discussions that I have sometimes seen.
The context was that people were complaining about her sexualised persona and what kind of image that projects onto young women. I don't necessarily agree with that criticism (I think it's kinda complex, but I also don't think that sex or being sexual is "wrong" or anything), but I thought that the criticism of "she's a black woman, so if she wants to be sexual, that's her way of reasserting her black femininity and may not be criticised" is frankly ridiculous, when she's clearly benefiting financially so well from it.
> Fighting about which is more privileged is silly
And yet that seems to be the game people have to play in order for their statements to have any currency.
I even know people who had to take an "oppression index" in college to see who in the class had the least privilege. Interestingly, the person who had the least privilege was also the most ideologically opposed to the concept, for what it's worth.
> I'm sorry if I don't put much trust in third hand stories like this, it's easy for them to be blown out of proportion.
Fair enough, but consider the new SAT "Adversity" score[1]. Is that not essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale? It's still reducing the "vector" that oppression is supposed to be (from an intersectionality perspective) to a "scalar" value that is useful for sorting people into a hierarchy.
With regard to my first point, consider the NYT opinion piece arguing against the Adversity score[2]. The author spends the first two paragraphs establishing his own adversity/lack of privilege before he begins to actually make an argument. I don't think there's anything wrong with him doing so, and I think it's rhetorically effective, but do you think his opinion would be given a platform if he did not have that adversity score?
> My experiences, as a cis-het-white-affluent person would disagree. ;)
Perhaps because you benefit from (in Paul Graham's words) "orthodox privilege"? That is, your ideas are not questioned on the basis of your identity because they are the "right" opinions[3]. For someone to question the orthodoxy, they must first establish their own adversity or risk being discounted (or worse).
> Fair enough, but consider the new SAT "Adversity" score[1]. Is that not essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale? It's still reducing the "vector" that oppression is supposed to be (from an intersectionality perspective) to a "scalar" value that is useful for sorting people into a hierarchy.
I don't know that the SAT adversity score claims to be an explicit demarcation of privilege. It wouldn't, for example, encode racial privilege since none of the signifiers are the test takers race. Some may be racially correlated, but I think we've already established that those are different. As far as I can tell it really only applies at the granularity of a high school and not a particular student (although I may very well be mistaken here, it's hard to tell).
But this is mostly moot since the Adversity Score plan was withdrawn[1].
> but do you think his opinion would be given a platform if he did not have that adversity score?
Broadly, yes[1]. Worth noting that Williams is and has been a staff writer at the NYT for quite some time, he was also the author (like the actual author, not just a signatory) of the Harper's letter that's been in the news. He's got quite the platform, even when it comes to non-race related things.
> Perhaps because you benefit from (in Paul Graham's words) "orthodox privilege"? That is, your ideas are not questioned on the basis of your identity because they are the "right" opinions[3]. For someone to question the orthodoxy, they must first establish their own adversity or risk being discounted (or worse).
That's a bit of a catch-22 now isn't it. My opinions will be discounted due to my privilege, but if they aren't, that's also due to my privilege. But I also don't think this is true: there's all kinds of things that I do question with my more progressive friends. But they're usually around economic policy, or procedures (I'm pragmatic, many people I know are not, so there's ongoing debate I see about reformist vs. revolutionary action with regard to the issue du jour).
Being a reformist as opposed to a revolutionary is absolutely impacted by my privileges, and I recognize that. I'm much more comfortable with the world the way things are than some of my "colleagues" in this context, so reformism is safer to me. But some people aren't treated as well by the system today, so they are much more willing to throw the whole thing out, deal with the chaos for a while, and build something new from the ashes.
That's clearly worse for me, but probably gets them to where they're more equal faster. Interestingly, I'm not even sure which of those two opinions would be considered orthodoxy among progressive circles. But I don't think people discount my opinions on the subject because I have some privileges. In some cases I think they're actually valued more.
That more affluent-appearing black people are treated like less affluent looking white people isn't proof that white privilege doesn't exist. It's the opposite.