[lbo-talk] Check your privilege?

[shag carpet bomb]

What's always funny about these conversations is that I remember a feminist 
blog war that ensued when a blogger supported some racist POV. I can't 
remember the details except that among the critics of said blog, the white 
bloggers were very keen to argue and very keen to call what had happened 
racist. It was the women of color bloggers who checked their white feminist 
allies, asked them to tone it down and, repeatedly, refused to use the "r" 
word - even in the face of some ridiculous Scarlett O'hara-like flouncing.

So, actually, I don't think I've been subjected to the kind of thing Andy 
or andie describes - it being used as a power play  to shut down a 
conversation. In these circles, it's usually used because the fact is that 
everyone is going to have privilege by contrast to someone else.

In other words, the reason why the women of color bloggers actually refused 
to trade in this kind of discourse was precisely because, because they 
banded together across all kinds of lines of stratification (as far as they 
were concerned - e.g., ethnicity, religion, sexuality, transgender, 
nationality) - there were far more familiar with the need to unpack their 
privilege in order to work together. They'd all fucked up, in other words, 
and said something that hurt someone else with whom they had to work, 
together, in order to accomplish political goals.

I suspect that this kind of practice works as *political* practice. online, 
it's all blah blah blah. It's not connected to any sort of political 
practice that unites anyone in shared goals.

it's all just more blah blah blah where the whole point is merely to win an 
argument, beat someone at some rhetorical game of who can hold out the longest.

All the blah blah blah has no practical end other than rhetorically 
snuffing out an opponent you (general you) don't think you actually need in 
order to achieve some shared political goal.


>A major theme of the FB thread was how the subject phrase gets used as a
>self-righteous bludgeon as Joanna describes, almost in contradiction to one
>of McIntosh's points, about moral will. I'd always thought of it in the
>terms that Wendy describes, but also seen it used in liberal online forums
>as a means to pull the plug on discussion.
>
>If you're still wondering why it matters, it's similar to one of things
>that was so alienating about the science wars back it the day -- the habit
>of attributing demands for evidence to science's social status as a way of
>shutting down any response, though the tone was more dismissive than
>moralistic.
>
>
>
>
>--
>Andy
>"It's a testament to ketchup that there can be no confusion."
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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