Summations Only

I would go further, and suggest that the principle of "equal before the law" implies that the law has to be neutral according to almost everything - gender, race, class, sexual orientation wealth, and so forth. Isn't that what we demand from the law? Like I said a dozen times before, I'm trying to evaluate these competing models by how they accord with reality, not how they perform in a handful of extremely unlikely hypothetical corner cases. I don't think I have. Being able to control someone, having power over them, or being afforded special treatment that they aren't - all those things are privilege when they stem from membership in a restricted group.

And I don't see what's contentious about that in the least, since it's just a form of the argument that "words mean things." How do we know when discrimination is "sexism", or "racism", or "classism", or any of the other "isms"? Well, quite simply, when the discrimination is on the basis of privilege that accrues according to race, that's racism. When it is on the basis of privilege that accrues according to sex, that's sexism. And so on.Words mean things. Why would we use the word "sexism" when someone is discriminated against on the basis of their race? That would make no sense at all. Ergo, it's certainly the case that discrimination on the basis of a specific form of privilege is required to qualify as a specific form of "ism", otherwise how on Earth would we know which "ism" it was? But would it actually be? You never responded to the examples I gave. Why would an academic merit scholarship only given out to white people be considered racist, while a academic merit scholarships only given out to black people (for instance, any of these) aren't? By the definition I've been defending, it's easy to see why. By the definition Straggler, Rahvin, and others are defending, this is an intolerable, ongoing racist outrage. But then they'd have to explain why nobody seems all that outraged by it. Like, nobody at all - except white racists.How do they explain that? They can't, without privilege.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

In this, at least, you're not misrepresenting me in any way. Exactly as you say, Straggler need not presume that I would put whites in America "at the top" of the racial-privilege pyramid; the white race is the race afforded the most racial privilege. I don't see how that can be disputed. That's false, Hooah. I've given many examples of racism that doesn't involve white people, including an example that involves only blacks, and you failed to respond to any of them, or supply any reasoning according to your definition that would indicate how you know they're racist. No, I didn't. As far back as Message 290 I told you that a black person could perpetrate racism against a white.

Well, yes. We do. What's the issue with that? That it doesn't allow you to reduce the complex phenomenon of racial discrimination in America to an absurd simplicity that equates being called a "cracker" with being called a "n*gger"?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

That's not "confusion", that's the clarity of using the privilege model. It reveals the fact that it's not "reverse discrimination" when colleges use Affirmative Action, that there is no discrimination "against privilege", and so on. The confusion you're feeling is the confusion that comes on when you try to understand racism without the notion of privilege, and you erroneously categorize a lot of things as "racist" that, confusingly, nobody ever acts like they are except a handful of white racists.

They both possess racial privilege; I think you're asking who has more than the other, and that I can't tell from the information given. Where is this, for instance? America? Where in America? Somewhere else?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Where in the US?

But that's a lie - I did respond. It doesn't require an "alternate universe." It just requires that black people have a racial privilege advantage over white people that they use to discriminate against them.That would be anti-white racism. No alternate universe required. I've addressed your examples at length, only to face your false accusation that I never have. How about you address even one of mine, for instance? Start with the NAACP scholarships and why they aren't racist. Explain to me how that works under your model.

I dunno. I don't know anything about racial privilege in New York City, I guess. No, I got that. And what do you mean by "pedantic clarity"? Don't you think there's going to be a difference in the level of privilege afforded an Indian of Bihari descent in New Delhi, vs in New York where all they know is "dot versus feather"? Again, you're crafting examples specifically for the purpose of confounding any analysis of privilege. But we're talking about competing models for recognizing real racism, detecting actual instances of it in the real world, not gaming hypotheticals to favor one model over another. What would be the point of that? Suppose you guys do have the better model for detecting hypothetical racism in alternate universes where black-on-the-right-side discriminates against white-on-the-right-side.What on Earth would be the usefulness of that if it can't tell you why a scholarship only given to whites is racist, but a scholarship only given to blacks is not? That's actually something that happens. Here, on Planet Earth.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

But there are different classes of privilege. There is privilege that accrues on the basis of race, privilege that accrues on the basis of sex, and so on. I mean I've been saying that since Message 283. That's how you can have a situation where Martin Luther King, Jr. can be discriminated on the basis of his race, but he can also be the sexist who said that the woman's role in the Civil Rights Movement was for "coffee and blow jobs." Different classes of privilege. Is this your admission that I am, in fact, being unintentionally misrepresented by my opponents, here?

I don't have any desire to use the summation to settle scores, so for my summation I'll just repeat the original lay-out of my arguments I made back in Message 373:

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1) "Elevator Gate" was a far bigger deal to Watson's detractors, who have largely criticized her for things she didn't actually say, than it was to Watson. The controversy surrounding "Elevator Gate" should be properly understood as an issue where movement atheism had an incredibly sexist response to an incredibly mild criticism of a culture that largely pays little heed to the contributions and safety of women at atheist conferences - not as a woman being "perpetually offended" at the mere idea that she might be found sexually attractive.

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2) The worst excesses supposedly attributed to feminism - "all sex is rape", etc - are largely either the invention of detractors or legitimate discourse taken completely out of context.

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3) Privilege is crucial to understanding forms of bigotry such as racism, sexism, classism, and other "isms"; where one does not have privilege over another, one cannot discriminate against another. That's how we're able to correctly recognize "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as a fundamentally racist text and "Stuff White People Like" as fundamentally not racist in any way, the "n-word" as fundamentally racist when white people use it but not when black people do, the word "cracker" as an epithet against white people as not racist in any way, etc. Those that insist that privilege is not central to discrimination and therefore racism are obligated to explain under their model why it's not racist to refer to a white person as a "cracker" or to invoke white stereotypes like "can't dance", "love cheese", etc.

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I dunno, I thought all of that was pretty interesting. I wish we could have had a conversation about it.