Unmarked categories

“That group is privileged even if there is no active discrimination against others, or if some groups are given (implicitly, given by the dominant group) apparently equal status, as in formations like Judaeo-Christian[2]. Even where members of the marked categories receive equal treatment, it is always provisional.”

Usually with privilege we’re looking some advantage. This is instead looking at the potential for losing an advantage. That’s a kind of advantage in itself, sure enough, but it’s derivative. It seems like an odd way to look at something like “white privilege” and trying to see how that’s different from “racism.” That privilege only matters to the extent racism might justify getting rid of that “provisional” equality. But without racism why would anyone care enough to exclude someone from some right or privilege? That’s why the Irish are now “white” in American, instead of “others.” They didn’t used to be, but then anti-Irish racism disappeared and nobody cared anymore.

This also assumes a lot for what means to be “unmarked.” A christian church is a “church” only until some large enough group thinks it isn’t. The “Church of Satan” isn’t protected much because it calls itself the “Church of Satan” instead of the “Mosque of Satan.” “Christian” being a default for “religious” is fine enough until you’re a liberal Episcopalian fighting evangelicals who think you are not, actually, Christian. There’s a reason “default” terms keep changing all the time; people are constantly being included or excluded from them.

Being “unmarked” doesn’t seem to add anything to white privilege that “racism” doesn’t completely answer. “White privilege” still is a useful way to talk about things because people are more willing to own up to benefitting from “white privilege” than racism, but does it add anything to the concept of “racism?”

John,
“For example, we might consider a situation where one religious group is subject to discrimination, but others are not. That does not, in itself, make the other groups privileged.”

I don’t understand. How could this be anything other than “the one group is discriminated against”? I mean, maybe there are legitimate reasons, but that’s extraneous. One way or another, they’re treated worse than groups in the otherwise-same position.

I -do- agree that being in the default-unmarked category is more than merely “not being discriminated against”. I remember reading of many, many studies that show that women are not enrolled in medical studies at the rates that men are, that diseases that attack women are less-studied and their study is less-funded.[1] There have been many articles about this, right down to the lack of attention to the neuromuscular anatomy of women’s genitalia (which leads to gynecologists just cutting-and-slashing, and real horror stories).
I’d bet the “default patient” is a white male, age (let’s say ….) 30-65. Or something like that.

[1] I could have written this about Black Americans, but felt it was more obviously a constructed thing with no basis whatsoever in anything other than privilege, to describe the state of women in this regard. I mean, everybody has a mother.

Thanks John.

Your discussion of multivariate regression reminded me that I had thought of you when I was reading Chris’s last two posts. Is there a straightforward way to separate effects of class versus effects of racism, such that one could compare how much variation in killings by police, or incarceration rates, say, is explained by class and how much by race? I kept thinking when I read the OPs and the comments that surely we were debating questions for which there were empirical answers.

@
”Following on from the discussion between Chris and Kenan Malik, I thought I would take another look at this post from last year, where I used the term “default identity”

Ahhh! –
that was the post – where in comments was the following comment:

”One thing that I don’t think is so obvious to a lot of people, is why people from certain minorities make such a fuss about their ethnic/religious identities. And I think the answer is actually pretty simple. First, nobody wants their children to grow up handicapped in life. And this includes immigrants. So of course they want their children to be completely conversant in (e.g.) American culture, and even in those cases where they do not (I know of such) the children want it anyway. So why do these children (who often are extremely immersed in American culture) reach for ethnic identities? I think it’s a reaction to the racism they see every day”. Every day they’re taught that they’re not the normal American, that they’re different and by implication less worthy. And so, they reach for attributes from their ancestral ethnicity, as something they can be proud of — to push back against the racism they receive every day…”

Yes – as traveling a lot with ”(mixed) minorities” who can’t be ”identified” that easily anymore – and always get asked:
”What – or who are you – woman or man? black or white – or perhaps – even ”asian”?

The only solution is – to completely ”mix” it up – with no possibility anymore to say that – for example – likbez – is the –
”tough guy –
chest always so puffed guy”
(in the green shirt at TC 1:01)
of –

https://youtu.be/DyDfgMOUjCI

AND sometimes I think –
we should make every white man only marry black woman – that would help –
a lot!

Bob, that would have been easy for the author to do with a Poisson regression model, but the author did not have access to specific data on the population of black, white and latino people in each census tract, which makes it impossible. Also, even if they did, the author does not know the income of the individuals, so the analysis of the confounding effect of class and race is necessarily ecological. The counterfactual presented is a nice attempt to work around that (a kind of simple version of direct standardization) but not quite sufficient due to the lack of data.

Wealth and race in the data presented in the other thread are not that heavily correlated, so the problem JQ alludes to in comment 8 is unlikely. It’s a classic, absolutely perfect example of the task of distinguishing between confounding and effect modification, and then building the correct model to handle whichever one it is. It could easily be handled if the population data were available, but in this case it’s not.

But it has always just been the married with children white protestant middle class men that was “unmarked” in the sense of being the ideal, the societal norm of whats supposed to be normal even so it always just represented a small minority. No one could ever win that. Not now and never before.

Being in the unmarked category represents more than “not being discriminated against”… That group is privileged even if there is no active discrimination against others… Even where members of the marked categories receive equal treatment, it is always provisional.

I think there’s some truth in this but it’s also true that white supremacists and fascists organise and campaign on the basis of their white identity. By this kind of reasoning you might think they’d want to play it down.

With the greatest respect, John, you no longer have the right choose your own category, or those of others. https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1300897705858928646

Ritual self-denunciations are the new order of the day.

Remember about not speaking up when they came for ? This how the end begins.

Good luck holding on to your academic freedoms.

much of the support for Trump comes from white men who were once the unmarked category and are now marked as a distinct category

Yes but they’re not motivated by their loss of “unmarked” status. In many cases it is they who are choosing to “mark” themselves as white. While I think there is some truth in the idea at being “unmarked” can be an advantage, emphasising this tends to be part of a liberal politics of foregrounding ethnic and other divisions, which isn’t necessarily progressive.

engels @ 10: “Yes but they’re not motivated by their loss of “unmarked” status.”

Of course: they’re motivated by the loss of the privileges that come from enjoying that unmarked status. Look at SF&F for an instructive case study: I remember, growing up, there were few writers who wrote with a “female voice”. As a boy, I didn’t seek them out, and didn’t care that they even existed. Today? Heh, so many, so many, so many. And now I can look back into the past, and see Joanna Ross, and Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr. and so many others. You can see how ANGRY it must make (also white) males, to see all these WOMEN foregrounding their stories, and their points-of-view, and their VOICES. Why, it makes them FURIOUS! What is that, if not loss of privilege? And yet, all those white male writers are still out there. I’m sure there’s a latterday Jerry Pournelle, churning out his libertarian fantasies of Welfare cities and upright Businessmen who save the Galaxy …. sure of it. But that’s not enough: these guys want those smelly women to SHUT UP!

One last thing: If there were no racism, then “multiculturalism” and “ethnic divisions” today would be as salient as “Italian culture” was 20 years ago: that is, interesting, and used-to-be-somewhat-problematic, but today, just picturesque and mostly useful for culinary variety.

Engels: oppressed people reach for things like their ethnic roots, because when confronted by the vast mass of the majority culture and its interlinked state, with its power and brutality, they need something to cling to, in order to bolster their spirits and their resistance. The idea that you think somehow this “isn’t necessarily progressive” is pretty damn disturbing. It’s a shameful characterization and you should be ashamed of it.

More on unmarked categories: We’ve all been taught that the reason that the civil rights campaigners all came out in their Sunday best, was to show White America that they were just as respectable, just as trustworthy, as any White American. What else could this be, except their attempt to present a pass for admission into that unmarked category?

The one that gets the “WHITE CARD” — the one that Dylann Roof had, that Robert Dear had, that Kyle Rittenhouse has, and that Jacob Blake, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Philando Castile, Mike Brown, Laquan McDonald, Stephon Clark, Oskar Grant, Eric Garner [ok, fingers getting tired] most definitely don’t have.

The WHITE CARD, that guarantees that you won’t be murdered by the police, no matter what you do. That WHITE CARD.

Two further thoughts about “unmarked categories” and oppressed classes of people.

TL;DR These “class above idpol” types reserve for themselves the right to decide who is “in with the revolution” and who is a “class enemy”. They are setting up their own “unmarked category” — just one that excludes (for the moment) the rich (but George Orwell had their number, and we know how Animal Farm ends).

(1) setting aside racism and minority gender communities, to focus on the giant elephant in the room: women, and let’s go ahead and just say “cis-het women” to make really, really simple. Is there anybody in the “class supersedes and obviates identity politics” crowd (like “engels”) who will argue that men in our stipulated Communist of Socialist or what-have-you utopia will not rape? Will not sexually harass and assault their underlings (and any society will have overseers and underlings) ? I mean, just to ask the question is to already answer it: NO, arriving at your posited Communist Utopia will not change that some men are pigs, and some men are unlucky in love AND pigs, and some men are fundamentally broken.

Going on from there, nobody explains how in the passage to a Communist Utopia, somehow magically all workplace discrimination against women vanishes. Nobody has anything like a credible story for how this happens.

The travails of men are what matters, and those are the ones privileged. Just as (as a feminist once noted) Every Month is Men’s History Month. Every Month.

(2) There’s a deeper and more deplorable thing about all these “class above idpol” people: they simply refuse to even -credit- the lived experiences of people of color, gender communities, women. I’ve noticed that every time anybody brings these things up, the “class crusaders” just skip past it, and get back to banging on their drum, arguing that anybody who wants to address other iniquities is somehow a class traitor, a member of the PMC (“professional managerial class”) etc. Not to put too fine a point on it, we’ve heard this story before: we hear it from the Trumpist Fascist populists, who accuse anyone with an education of being an elitist, even when those people earn a pittance, and laud anyone without such an education as a working-class hero, even though we know from extensive social science research that in fact, the Trumpist base might be less-educated, but they’re hardly poorer — it’s a Poujadist rabble of one-truck contractors, inherited small-chain restaurant owners, and other assorted well-off small-business owners. That a poorly-paid teacher is an “elitist” to these Trumpists, isn’t so different from the way that women trying to get an education, get a job, and not be groped or raped for wanting to keep that job, are treated as “class traitors”.

It makes taking these people seriously very difficult, and after a while of hearing them bang that damn drum over and over, and ignore the lived experiences of oppressed peoples over and over, it becomes inevitable that one starts to hold these people in contempt.

bad Jim @ 19: Indeed. A female politician who isn’t well-coiffed, -dressed, and perfectly made-up, is automatically suspect, thought-less-of, roundly criticized. Whereas a man ….. well …. he can look like Donald Trump, and be accorded respect. There’s this recent scandal involving Speaker Pelosi and a hairdo (happily, it appears that the salon owner was both duplicitous to her (and the actual hairdresser) and was breaking the law flagrantly, opening to business when her salon should have been shut. If Speaker Pelosi had appeared before the media in any sort of disheveled state (say, after months of not going to hairdressers) her appearance would have dominated the news cycle.

“Gym” Jordan can show up without a suit coat to Congress, but no female congressperson can afford to; when Rep. Ocasio-Cortez dresses as required by her job, has her hair cut as required by her job, she is adjudged to be wasting the people’s money. If she’d instead dressed like any tourist visiting the Capitol, she’d be pilloried for conduct unbecoming of a Congressperson.

It’s the most blatant sort of privilege.

JQ 20: (repost from the other thread) Most poor people don’t vote, and those who do favor the Democrats (e. g. https://edition.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls; note there is no breakdown by race and income). It is however true that many poor whites do vote right wing and that the trend has been pointing rightward. One remarkable fact about the 2016 election is that income wasn’t a meaningful predictor of voting behavior any more. The strongest predictors are now: race, religion, urban/rural divide, age, education, gender

Since many analysts conflate education and class, Trump’s success among rural whites of low education has been interpreted in terms of class (more precisely, SES). But education is highly correlated with age, which I suspect explains much of the discrepancy. There are also widespread misconceptions about Trump-supporting white rural areas being predominantly poor, which is not the case. Rural poverty exists but generally less pronounced than urban proverty, furthermore many rural poor (e. g. in the Mississippi delta) are African American. It is misleading to compare urban and rural average incomes without controlling for cost of living, nevertheless this is often done.

One further aspect about the income variable. In your 2012 post, you tried to define class by income and found that lower income Whites were about evenly split between the parties. I stated above that income has almost ceased to predict voting behavior, based on the national level exit polls. I don’t have the time and the data to really verify this but income is also confounded with age (most retirees have low incomes but still vote right-wing), as well as geography as mentioned. It would be interesting to disentangle these variables, for example analyze voting behavior vs income on a county level while excluding retirees and students, but I doubt we have sufficiently detailed data. I suspect that if we could look at income without the confounding variables, some predictive power would be restored.

This is an interesting piece.

Among other things, whiteness is a kind of solipsism. From right to left, whites consistently and successfully reroute every political discussion to their identity. The content of this identity, unsurprisingly, is left unexamined and undefined. It is the false foundation of the prototypically American model of pseudo-politics. The most insidious form of white pseudo-politics is white guilt. Whether it is as dangerous or as ethically reprehensible as the open racism of white supremacy is a misleading question. Both reinforce the delusion of whiteness….

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/01/06/white-purity/

Adolph Reed on class vs race

https://nonsite.org/article/the-trouble-with-disparity%5C

Richard Melvin @ 15

A perhaps minor point of pedantry.

”white people can actually get at least a good approximation of that by going and living in a foreign country”

Having the means and opportunity to do so is far from universal, and may even be less available to those who might benefit most from it.

“What’s actually harder to reversibly simulate is being a different class.”

Perhaps, but also perhaps not – do you have any data on this?

”You can’t travel to an alternate reality by a jet.”

Why would you need to visit an alternate reality in order to simulate being a different class? My experience (and take this as purely anecdotal) was that many class markers are things which can be simulated (at least sufficiently for a while, though of course with pitfalls), such as (in the UK) adopting a RP accent, extending your vocabulary, knowing the correct order of cutlery to use, etc.

I would agree that simulating a different wealth might be incredibly difficult (and perhaps with consequences far more extreme than most would risk), but my understanding is that wealth (though often correlating to) does not necessarily equal class.

(to avoid any more “misunderstandings” let me just state for the record I am in no way offering a comment of the relative impact or importance of any of these factors on one’s actual experience, nor am I suggesting that anyone thing is easier to simulate than another – I am merely slightly surprised that you seem to think the only way to simulate the experience of being a different class is to visit an alternate reality).

Engels: oppressed people reach for things like their ethnic roots, because when confronted by the vast mass of the majority culture and its interlinked state, with its power and brutality, they need something to cling to, in order to bolster their spirits and their resistance. The idea that you think somehow this “isn’t necessarily progressive” is pretty damn disturbing. It’s a shameful characterization and you should be ashamed of it.

Well I didn’t actually say that (although I admit I wasn’t very clear) but I wonder if you’d make this argument about nationalism? I take it you’d at least agree that white people adopting an explicit white idenity isn’t necessarily progressive though…

engels @ 39: “I can not logically see how white racists who are actively choosing to “mark” themselves can be doing so because they want to be “unmarked” (psychoanalytic explanations aside).”

When all cereal commercials feature cis-het non-interracial families (and let’s face it: mostly white families), then white racists feel that they are the unmarked category. And they can see that all of society is structured to make that so and preserve it. When they start seeing interracial families, when they start to see LGBTQ families, in those same commercials, and see them celebrated, they start to see that they are being dislodged from this position of being the unmarked category. And then, well, they need to re-assert their position.

I mean, can’t you see it? When White racists argue for the preservation of “White culture”, they’re noticing that their dominance is threatened, and they’re pushing back. I mean, it’s pretty simple, isn’t it? They want all those scurrilous brown people (and weird pink people, and the uppity wimminz) to go back to being silent, so they can return to being the dominant category.

Dude, it’s not a special badge you get from your local “unmarked category lodge”. It’s a very real assumption on the part of society that you are the norm, and that others are the outliers. And when that assumption starts to change, what do you think these folks are going to do? They’re going to argue that this is an unjust change, and they’re going to attempt to restore the prior state of affairs. And you don’t do that by walking around with a sandwichboard saying “Make Whites The Default Again!” You do it by arguing that “White culture is valuable and under threat”.

Once upon a time, when I thought I was a feminist, a friend told me this saying: “What’s mine is mine, now let’s divide yours equally.”

At the time, I thought I was all liberated and shit. And I wasn’t. I had so completely assimilated the above saying, that I thought women’s rights activists were the ones using that slogan as a plan. Shocking, but true. Eventually, I wised-up: it took reaching a point where I knew I no longer wanted to contribute to the gene pool, in order for me to actually confront my misogyny, and I no longer call myself “liberated”; just “recovering from misogyny.”

That phrase is another way of talking about “unmarked categories”. “What’s mine is mine”: we’re not going to discuss the many, many injustices that were built-into the system by our grandparents and their grandparents; let’s instead talk about deviations from that “norm” which might disadvantage me, and hence are injustices.

In case it’s not clear [b/c it probably isn’t] I thought I would lay it out point-by-point:
(1) I used to believe that that saying, was what some feminists practiced
(2) not realizing that in fact, it was what I was practicing at that very moment

And just to give you an example of what I mean, I used to believe shit like “well, if women don’t want to have abortions, why do they have sex; when a man has sex, he signs up for being a father, after all, and with no further input into the process at all”. [no, I’m not defending that — it was stupid and bigoted at the time, and nothing can defend it.]

Nastywoman at 12.

“we should make every white man only marry black woman – that would help –
a lot!”

I’ve seen the theme, “Black women are asked to do too much to solve what are, really, white men’s problems,” in a few things I’ve read lately, and I’ve heard it said among my acquaintances.

This? No way. That’s too much to ask of anybody.

nastywoman @ 12: “we should make every white man only marry black woman – that would help – a lot!”

Sadly, it would not change a thing.[1] Every Black American who can trace their lineage to actual enslaved Americans is already the descendant of such marriages. I cannot do justice to this; so instead I turn to my betters. Recently Caroline Randall Williams, a poet, wrote about her body being a monument to slavery: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/slavery-rape-confederate-monuments.html

Because I recognize no rights of FTFNYT (fascist enablers that they are) I would encourage you to read what bits of the essay are available elsewhere, e.g. at LG&M: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/06/i-have-rape-colored-skin

Here is what LG&M quoted:

It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children.

What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past. My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their Lost Cause. And I ask you now, who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.

[1] I recognize that you mean more than merely that all white men should marry Black women. That what you really mean is, that white men must learn to value and cherish children of Black parents, in the same way they cherish children of white parents. But what I’m saying is, this change in the mental attitudes, is the hard part, and it won’t be made any simpler by facts of paternity. Those facts of paternity have been evident for centuries, to no positive effect.

nastywoman @ 12: “we should make every white man only marry black woman – that would help – a lot!”

I don’t want to be hectoring about this, but …. I’ll just note that you didn’t switch the genders around, to wit “we should make every white woman marry a black man”. The …. dehumanization of black women and their bodies continues — right thru to living memory (search “Recy Taylor”). I have read accounts that many black families in the South made the Great Migration when they first noticed white boys paying attention to their daughters, and knowing what would come soon thereafter — rape. And right alongside of that is “fear of a black penis” — and the racist libel that black men rape white women, when in fact it was the opposite that was the norm. The two go hand-in-hand, the latter a cover for the former.

J-D @ 57: oops, sorry, typo, I swear. Gettin’ old, and I make more spelling errors than I used-to.

The idea that Silverberg thought Sheldon/Tiptree wrote in a masculine style …. well, I guess I can see it … somehow … ok, I can’t. I remember reading my first Tiptree story since reaching …. “real adulthood” (45yo), and wow, I was blown away with the difference in the viewpoint. “Houston, Houston, Can You Read?” And so many of her works speak of just a different way of approaching the world, than what a man would write. I used to be a big Marion Zimmer Bradley fan, back in the day. [now, well, can’t read that shit, for the obvious reason] When I re-read a little of that around the same time I started re-reading Tiptree, I was dismayed at how she basically wrote using a male voice. Or, y’know, a man’s idea of what a female voice should sound like. It was all from the point-of-view of a horny 16-year-old. Which is about when I read ’em the first time, so maybe that accounts for why I really liked all her work back in the day.

Another example of “self-marking”:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/03/jessica-krug-white-professor-pretended-black

There’s a town in I think Virginia where the locals identify as black, and are seen as black by other local black and white communities. But in terms of skin color they’re unambiguously white. Racial politics in America has these weird complications due to the legacy of slavery.

It’s hard to know what really happened with the Oprah Winfrey thing. She was in a different culture, the Swiss tend to be pretty rude, etc. But I’ve often wondered if the marker in that particular situation was what she was wearing. Wealthy Europeans tend to dress the part, wealthy Americans typically don’t (at least not in a way that a European would recognize). I suppose it’s possible that a shop assistant in Zurich, international destination of choice for African oligarchs and looters, might not have encountered a wealthy black person before, but it does seem a little unlikely.

M Caswell;

Regarding, “I wouldn’t say, for example, that a man who escapes slavery is thereby privileged to live free. But maybe you’re using “privileged” as just a synonym for “lucky”?”

There is no analog to slavery in the “White privilege” debate. My error was using the word “escape”; White people don’t DO ANYTHING for their White privilege. They don’t “escape” it.

So, let me correct myself:

If a right is owed or required by justice but routinely denied by our culture; then to be spared that denial by our culture is a privilege.

If the oppressive regime selects you to be spared oppression; then that is a privilege.

sean s.

The original post is vitiated by equivocation between “marking” and “stigmatizing.” None of the discussion is valid.

This post is a defense of the personal abuse of individuals for attributed sins and the endorsement of abuse of people for disagreeing with this. If you must announce your revelations from God about other people’s morals, it is still advisable to attribute moral faults for what people do to get these so-called privileges and when they exercise them, and never, never forego the opportunity to show how they can actually abjure them. If white privilege is a matter of white skin, the inescapable consequences of this supposed fact is, flaying is the only cure. All I can say is, you first.

It is a poor standard of morals that condemns people for their birth, rather than what they do. As for condemning them for what they do not do? Morals do not stop at the border. There are many people who make these religious damnations who support the US foreign policy that kills—surprise, surprise!—so many more people of color than fellow “whites.” This should be very curious to anyone who is sincere in their claims.

The OP is on the face of it copied from Paul Campos. This is poor judgment. Campos, like all the posters at Lawyers, Guns and Money is an unholy tangle of malice, stupidity, dishonesty and a hack political agenda astounding for its shameless corruption. Campos’ personal low may have been endorsing the Michael Epstein conspiracy theories, where Epstein never made any money but just used spy funds. Campos was too cunning to announce that the money was Jewish, because LGM is all about making it sound left. Yes, the anti-Semitism and crypto-fascism of Epstein conspiracy theories is a valid generalization. Like Ukraine, though, the superior lifestyle left prefers fascists to tankies. The anti-Communist imperative is common ground with Trump too. Taking Animal Farm, with its pretense that capitalism didn’t bring us the Great War, as honest, much less profound, matches Trump’s IQ too.

Sadly, there’s no point to reviewing the comments. Outrageous nonsense has already passed as more than pompous malice, with the necessary mindless abuse of people who dare to argue. But futile as it is to expect common sense and common decency, I can’t help but say: If I were the son of parents who went to a wealthier country to have a better life, I would not ignore a son of privilege myself. (Being myself, I am inclined to think that blaming the child for the parents’ moral—or immoral—acts is morally wrong. If the child takes up reactionary causes in their own person, well, that’s another matter.)

Equally, it is futile to expect that people with such diminished empathy could possibly have the imagination to realize that feeling outnumbered and hopelessly pressured by the majority culture is a feeling religious Christians or Jews or Muslims can all feel in the determinedly secular culture. (Being myself, I am inclined to think such narcissistic agonies may be pitied but simply cannot determine public policy, or justify personal abuse.)

In particular, if black people have attacked you, if you take the concept of white privilege serious, you should draw the proper conclusion: They have your number. If they despise you, it is because you are contemptible. Getting called on your privilege makes you feel “abused” only because you perceive yourself as privileged but deny it consciously. I think this is useless and stupid and worst of all, too often malicious and deceitful way of talking and acting. But you should follow your own principles.

““The WHITE CARD, that guarantees that you won’t be murdered by the police, no matter what you do. That WHITE CARD.””

This is an interesting inversion of reality. White people get murdered by the police all the time in the US. In fact a majority of the people killed by the police are white. But police violence is marked black in the US anyway.

Which is an interesting issue in itself. If the issue MIGHT be race or class, race is marked while class is unmarked. This is especially odd because the unmarked class for police interactions is “rich” but the huge majority of police actions are against poor people. I fully agree that we should have the police treat all people the way they treat rich people, but we should understand that poor white people don’t get treated that way (and indeed poor black people even worse).

Nearly all markers in the US function to erase class. If it might plausibly be anything else at all, the class issue is erased. This is true even in very clear examples where class predominates. If a person is black, female, trans, and rich living in SF and negotiating for a raise, she has a much better chance than a white, male, cis, poor person living in Detroit.

Sebastian H;

Regarding, “White people get murdered by the police all the time in the US. In fact a majority of the people killed by the police are white. But police violence is marked black in the US anyway.”

I’m sure you’ll be getting a number of responses pointing out that your comment ignores the size of the populations from which the killed persons come. When measured per capita, Blacks are something like 5 or 6 times more likely to be killed by the police than Whites.

The rate is even higher among Indigenous Peoples.

sean s.

General ramblings:

I’m can conceive that various forms of categorising can occur, that sometimes that discrimination can result from categorising, and that this can constructively or destructively superimpose, and that sometimes sorting into one category can lead to being sorted into another. But I think that sometimes it can also be useful to take a step back and try to deconvolute the concept a bit.

As I’ve previously attempted to explain, for me there are a broad swathe of ways in which we categorise other people (for example, by sex, or sexuality, or gender, or, etc.). One possibility may be, as previously suggested, that – to an extent – we have a “prototype” and note the differences between our “model” and the people. I’m sure other possible explanations may also exist – I don’t pretend to be an expert on the psychology of such matters.

Regardless, it seems to be fairly self-evident that this sort of categorising does indeed happen. It is often carried out on the basis of a range of different “factors” which can include many different things (for example, it might include accent, cultural references, body language, etc.). While sometimes the categorising gets it wrong (for example, it may be predicated on faulty assumptions – someone might be believed to be “posh” simply because they like opera, when of course opera could be enjoyed by anyone) and can be fooled (for example, someone might pretend to love football when in fact they don’t and prefer opera, just to make themselves seem more “relatable”). Sometimes the categorising may not result in any differences in how you are treated, sometimes it might.

For me, when there is discrimination it can happen along many different lines (and, I suspect, the degree, importance of category, selected markers, etc. may differ depending on many different things, such as where you are, when you are, etc.). Often these might overlap – for example, it may be a society which discriminates (even if only to a small extent) against a certain category, could see people in that category on average become less wealthy (which might be another factor determining treatment in society). In this way, it is possible for things to feed into each other – a sort of “categorising by means of unnatural selection”.

To give one example of how this might occur – if it is generally believed that women will want to raise children, therefore will not be “reliable workers” and so should be paid less (regardless of the actual facts), women will liekly – on average and overall – be less likely to be as financially stable as men (all other things being equal). That doesn’t mean there will be no wealthy women, and it doesn’t mean there will be no poor men. It doesn’t mean that no other factors exist – a woman who is a medical doctor from a middle class family may well be relatively better off than a man who is an unemployed alcoholic from a working class family. But it does mean than in a situation where everything else is adjusted for, there is a for of inequality. But what can be concluded from this? For me the important point is address the issue. There could be a number of way to do this – for example, we could pass a law making it illegal to pay people differently based on gender (everything else being equal), we could point out that many women do not want to have children, we could change the stereotype that women should/must/will be the ones to raise children (e.g. men and women are equally likely to raise children and or share responsibilities), and many other approaches besides, we could abolish the concept of money so that being paid is a concept which no longer exists, etc. etc. Some of these approaches may be more beneficial than harmful; some may be more harmful than beneficial. Some of these approaches may have a range of consequences – more beneficial than harmful; some may be more harmful than beneficial. Some of these approaches may be more likely to be successful than others. Some may be more likely to take longer to implement than others. And again, I’m sure there are many other factors too which should be worth considering. But as it is addressing the issue which is important, perhaps what we should do is find the “best” approaches and use those to try to address the issue.

As far as I can tell, one benefit of being “unmarked” is that you are assumed to be the default in society, so these are things which mostly pass you by. If you are talking to someone, your voice doesn’t affect how they think about you. If you get a math problem wrong, it is because you struggle with math (you aren’t reduced to a stereotype of a group). If you are walking around a supermarket, you won’t be followed by security who are suspicious of you purely on the way you are presented. Etc., etc.

It also seems possible that whether or not you are “unmarked” may be situational – for example, the factors associated with being “unmarked” in Oxford’s Young Conservatives Club may well be (and I suspect likely are) quite different to those associate with being “unmarked” in the Liverpool Capoeira studio. But this should also be considered carefully – the implications of being unmarked for a book-reading club in Rotherham may well be significantly less than being unmarked for politics in Westminster, and it would be perhaps unwise to equate the two as being equal.

Personally, I would like to live in societies which are fair, equitable, and treat people with dignity and respect. I would also quite like to be able to fly using the power of my mind (it would be useful for avoiding traffic, at the very least). At this point, both seem equally likely to ever happen.

It is possible that, by working together to address issues as we can, we can slowly move towards a better society. If there is a “one magic trick which will solve all problems”, then it has yet to be presented to me – so it seems likely that it will be slow and demoralising work which will have to be undertaken along many different lines. I find those who insist otherwise confusing, as they seem to have a perspective which they do not attempt to justify (except by means of insults and acusations, which I find less than convincing).

As someone who currently is focussed on the environment (no, that doesn’t mean I ignore other areas, I just currently have a particular focus because I’ve yet to discover how to fit 3,000,000 hours of work in one day) I think there will be big changes in the coming years – and it is possible that civilisation as we understand itwill cease to exist (rendering some speculation somewhat moot). So, while in the long run we may have a fair and just society, we should also remember that in the long run (and maybe even in the not so long run) we are all dead.

Perhaps that too is a form of equality, but sadly one doesn’t tend to be in a position to appreciate it.

I have -no- idea what relevance this has to anything we’ve been discussing.

I just thought it was extremely weird. Why would people do this? I’m not claiming it’s equivalent to anything.

Sebastian H @ 68

This is true even in very clear examples where class predominates. If a person is black, female, trans, and rich living in SF and negotiating for a raise, she has a much better chance than a white, male, cis, poor person living in Detroit.

Surely you are including too many variables to make that determination based on two data points? To make a proper comparison between all those variables you would need to conduct a full factor expansion (if we were to only compare a “high” and “low” value difference for each variable, that would require 2^5 data points – which of course then would require reproducibility). While this might be preferable (we could then start drawing conclusions regarding the interactions between each variable), I suspect the magnitude would be a little overwhelming when considering the necessary sample sizes.

Instead, might I recommend taking a one-factor-at-a-time approach?

i.e. compare black, female, trans, and rich living in SF to white, female, trans, and rich living in SF; compare black, male, trans, and rich living in SF to black, female, trans, and rich living in SF; etc.

While it will miss fully exploring the whole manifold, it will at least give some ability to compare. Otherwise, how will you determine which variable was the key deteminer?

The many discussions of these matters resolve little in me except for the feeling that I need to read and know more about history and culture in India, Southeast Asia and China.

We constantly frame the discussion about these matters in the context of the relationships between people of European (Caucasian) descent and those of African descent, and the mixed race ancestries that arise from those relationships. It’s right and proper that we continue to dive deeply into this and hopefully drive policy and cultural changes.

But it also seems that we could perhaps gain some excellent perspective on how matters like these play out in cultures and geographies that do not really overlap with either Europe or Africa. Yes, I know about the silk road and I know about the global world that we’ve lived in for 50-100 years now. But realistically, the relationships between “races”, tribes, religions and so forth that have existed in India, SE Asia and China evolved for thousands of years without reference to anything going on in Europe/Africa (I think! Maybe I should learn more!)

To be fair, the same is true of the Americas before 1491, but that has the problem that there seems to be essentially no written history from the Americas. For better or for worse, I find oral history traditions suspect (if only because the oral histories of my own lifetime are clearly flawed beyond usability).

What can the history of the rest of the world tell us about these matters? What happens when we start considering class, priviledge, “race”, discrimination, oppression etc. etc. in cultures where “white” and “black” are not meaningful terms, and where the philosophical and cultural foundations are theoretically so different?

The authors of that article [Adolph Reed]

‘The authors of that article’ and ‘Adolph Reed’ are not synonyms. I wrote ‘The authors of that article’ and not ‘Adolph Reed’ because I noticed, as apparently you did not, that it has authors in the plural, two of them. That you have incorrected me in this way justifies some doubt about how carefully you have attended to the article’s content.

Adolph Reed is black, was very active during the civil rights era and has been involved in a ton of organizing work since then (most recently very difficult organizing work in South Carolina).

I take your word for it. That would make him somebody who has far more admirable achievements in the cause of anti-racism than I have, or ever will have. But it still wouldn’t change the text of the article.

It is impossible to maintain honestly that

antiracism is both admirable and necessary

at the same time as maintaining that

antiracism functions more as a misdirection that justifies inequality than a strategy for eliminating it

and

antiracism and antidiscrimination of all kinds would validate rather than undermine the stratification of wealth in American society

and

antiracist politics rejects universal programs of social-democratic redistribution in favor of what is ultimately a racial trickle-down approach

and that

antiracism as a politics is an artifact and engine of neoliberalism

and

It does a better job legitimizing market-based principles of social justice than increasing racial equality.

and that

contemporary antiracism presumes the Thatcherite ideological victory

and

the emptiness of antiracism as a political agenda

If you genuinely believe that antiracism is empty, how can you also genuinely believe that it is admirable and necessary? Answer: you can’t.

Just to add a little more to my last comment: we would have piles and piles of videos of police unjustly murdering otherwise completely unremarkable and law-abiding white people. We would know their names. Instead, the only one that comes to mind is that pretty Australian lady, Justine Diamond. Yes, she was unjustly murdered. But guess what? She’s the exception that pretty much proves the rule! There isn’t some epidemic of this shit goin’ down.

nastwoman @ 61: no worries, I also have said and written things that were …. well, let’s say, somehwat insensitive. I was corrected, and learned something each time. It’s all good.

BTW, I’ve always read your nym as “nastywoman” and thought “oh, an homage to Hillary!” Only just now do I realize that there’s no “y”. grin

@Paul Davis, 78
I love looking for historical parallels, but the potential for derailing and whataboutery and so on is just terrible.
E.g. ‘slavery’ is a huge historical subject, but the only slavery relevant here is the enslaving of Black people in the US and the colonies that became the US, and bringing up anything else will not, in my experience, improve things.
Nothing wrong in keeping the discussion focused on America, as long as people understand its limitations.

I used to be a big Marion Zimmer Bradley fan, back in the day. [now, well, can’t read that shit, for the obvious reason]

Another brief tangential note, again for the benefit of those who don’t know: the reference here is to revelations of Bradley’s involvement in the sexual abuse of children.

I think I can answer Paul Davis’ question at 78 a little, because I live in Japan and have lived here for 15 years, where I am now in the marked category. There are many forms of privilege that Japanese people have over me, and more so over some of my foreign friends. What’s interesting is how quickly foreign white men arriving here discover the concept of privilege and also micro-aggression once they are the marked category. Of course they can’t become aggressive about the shift in category the way white men in America are because they chose to come here and the decision to come here has benefited them, but they are still suddenly aware of how privilege works and the minor unpleasantnesses of navigating a world where you stand out.

You can even have the experience, once your Japanese is okay and you’re used to the world you live in, of feeling like you’re unmarked, and then suddenly and unexpectedly being reminded in an interaction that you stand out like dogs balls. An experience I think black people in America have a lot, and white people in America don’t understand at all. It can be a shock when you’re living in a country you chose to for your own benefit; I’ve no doubt it is very unpleasant, grinding and dispiriting when it happens in the country you were born and comes with the threat of institutionalized violence on top of everything else.

“If the oppressive regime selects you to be spared oppression; then that is a privilege.”

Ok, the idea emerging seems to be something like: privilege is an advantage arising from a third party’s unjust conduct. (see your “White people don’t DO ANYTHING for their privilege.”)

That is interesting to me, because it implies that no one can seize privilege for themselves. This sort of fits usage: if someone steals from me, we wouldn’t say they enjoy the privilege of using my stuff; or if they enslave me, we wouldn’t say they have the privilege of using my labor. But you would say that my neighbor, from whom they chose not to steal, or not to enslave, is privileged to still have their stuff or their freedom? (I would say, ‘lucky.’)

One question I still have is whether this is general enough. Don’t some privileges arise without any unjust conduct on anyone’s part?

80

If you genuinely believe that antiracism is empty, how can you also genuinely believe that it is admirable and necessary? Answer: you can’t.

Really? Those quotes (in 80) all seem to reinforce the point that antiracism, by itself, is not an effective strategy for achieving black economic equality specifically. I would assume they believe that and still believe that less racism is a good thing for many other reasons, or in and of itself.

Sebastian H, sean samis:

Again, race and class both matter, whites are killed about 40% as often as blacks (greater than 20%, less than 100%), and there are plenty of gruesome videos and accounts of white men being murdered by police, I give some at the link.

A clarifying question might be: what reforms of the police, courts, and local government would be most effective? I would think reform of qualified immunity, cash bail, civil asset forfeiture; firing bad cops; not re-hiring bad cops; stopping the use of fines to finance local government; electing better DAs. Many of these have broad support, and that support would not be made broader by invocation of the WHITE CARD.

I wonder if endless use of the term “po-po” by the non-BIPOC constitutes cultural appropriation?

If you genuinely believe that antiracism is empty, how can you also genuinely believe that it is admirable and necessary? Answer: you can’t.

Really? Those quotes (in 80) all seem to reinforce the point that antiracism, by itself, is not an effective strategy for achieving black economic equality specifically.

That’s a fatal understatement. Those quotes go well beyond suggesting that antiracism is insufficient by itself (a judgement which would be consistent with a qualified but positive evaluation of antiracism) to an evaluation of antiracism which is definitely negative. Somebody who says that antiracism is empty is not merely saying that there are some things it can’t achieve but also saying that there is nothing it can achieve (that is, nothing worth achieving).

I would assume they believe that and still believe that less racism is a good thing for many other reasons, or in and of itself.

Nobody can stop you assuming, but the question for the rest of us is whether there is any basis for your assumption. The text doesn’t specify any reasons why antiracism should be considered a good thing; on the contrary, it affirms that antiracism is a misdirection that justifies inequality, a validation of stratification, an artifact and engine of neoliberalism, all reasons for considering it a bad thing.

Tm @ 87:

way to not actually engage and refute anything. I’ll assume, then, that you agree that Black Americans are disproportionately targeted and oppressed by police.

Starry Gordon @ 93: “Why don’t poor White people demonstrate, make videos, and so forth, when any of their number suffer police abuse? A question about whose answer we can only speculate. But based on personal experience and observation, I sure wouldn’t conclude the abuse doesn’t happen.”

The idea that somehow white people, and esp. young white people, who put -everything- they do on Instagram, somehow do not put this one thing on Instagram/Twitter — police brutality visited on them — beggars belief. You’ll have to try a little harder than that.

So in conclusion:

”Sociologists have a very useful concept: the unmarked category. An unmarked category is present when the category is considered so normal or ordinary in a particular context that it goes unnoticed. The category is the default setting in regard to social expectations, and it in a sense remains invisible precisely because it’s so dominant. Being black in Boulder is a marked category, which means (white) people won’t see a man picking up trash, they’ll see a black man picking up trash. They see something, so they say something”.

Which finally also solves the problem about ”race” or ”class” – FIRST!
Right?

Or do I really have to repeat – that all of you (white) guys – who believe ”class first” – NEED to travel with a ”Black” companion – in order to find out – that if both of you show the same ”class” (marking”-”lot’s of dough”-”clothes”-”Lancia Delta”) –
the weird… thing? –
and that happens even in Italy –
when for example a ”white” (marked) person is driving the Delta – or a marked ”Black” -(in the same Beanie) – the reaction of ”police” or ALL kind of (white) people is – ALWAYS:

”Race FIRST”.

@102

A perfect example of how race-first doesn’t always mean race-only is illustrated by this short clip:

http://welovemediacrit.blogspot.com/2009/10/oh-im-sorry-maam-i-thought-you-were.html

Or the lyrics to this song (third verse is the relevant one):

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/specials/blm.html

In both cases, the common factor is that the american lacks any language other than race to talk about what they mean.

Chetan Murthay, you’re exposing the problem right now. White people get murdered by the police for completely stupid reasons, while not resisting arrest all the time. The fact that you are so shocked by the fact, all the way into denying that it is true, just shows how silly the discourse around the topic has gotten. US police are far too violent. It is absolutely true that they are EVEN more violent against black people. But even if they were treating black people just like white people, both would be subject to far too much senseless police violence in the US. Rhetorically turning this into a race only or race mainly problem is cutting off huge avenues of common ground for no reason. Most of the reforms don’t need a race only/mainly approach. Qualified immunity doesn’t need that. Bail reform doesn’t need that. Incarceration reform doesn’t need that. Being able to track cops for misconduct doesn’t need that. Being able to interrogate cops like regular suspects doesn’t need that.

As for why similar white videos haven’t gone viral? I don’t think I understand why anything goes viral while other things doesn’t enough to explain that. I’m not one of the people who assumes that the existing ones don’t go viral because “they don’t fit the narrative” though maybe that is part of why. Maybe it was the length of the Floyd video, or how super clear that he was well under control. But you repeated insistence that similar encounters and similar videos just don’t exist for white people is just factually incorrect and I have no idea why you find the need to erase them.

notGoodenough

“Instead, might I recommend taking a one-factor-at-a-time approach?

i.e. compare black, female, trans, and rich living in SF to white, female, trans, and rich living in SF; compare black, male, trans, and rich living in SF to black, female, trans, and rich living in SF; etc.”

You can recommend it, but it doesn’t help the race first side in a vast number of cases.

Black/female/trans/rich living in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google.

Black/female/trans/poor WORKING in SF (because obviously she has to live 2 hours away) negotiating for a pay raise at Google. Class predominates. (and also note that this person will have an additional 3-4 hour a day commute to make things harder).

White/female/trans/rich living in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google.

White/female/trans/poor working in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google. Again class predominates.

Black/female/trans/rich living in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google.

White/female/trans/poor working in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google. Class predominates even though we now have introduced white privilege.

Black/female/trans/rich living in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google.

White/male/trans/poor working in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google. Class predominates even though we now have introduced white AND male privilege.

Black/female/trans/rich living in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google.

White/male/cis/poor working in SF negotiating for a pay raise at Google. Class predominates even though we have now have introduced white AND male AND cis privilege.

The logic of privilege (excluding class) strongly suggests that switching to white, or cis, or male should have been important. But it often isn’t because the power differential based on class is so enormous.

That is why these discussions always insist on holding class the same. Because when class is different, the privilege by class is enormous. Does it ALWAYS overpower racism? No. But very often it does. And there is a lot of class oppression that is erased in these discussions which doesn’t need to be.

Nasty woman, I travel with black and Hispanic people all the time (and we code as middle class at best). We’ve never had problems at any hotels in NYC, SF, Dallas, Minneapolis, Denver, or even Gatlinburg Tennessee. I’m sure there are some cities where that isn’t true but you’re proposing a universal that just isn’t reality.

Sebastian H @ 106

You can recommend it, but it doesn’t help the race first side in a vast number of cases.

I didn’t suggest it to “help the race first side” (whatever that means, I suggested it because I care about making decisions based on data. Because, as a scientist, that’s kind of what I’ve dedicate my entire life towards. That sort of thing just gives you ridiculous ideas like that sometimes.

I would also refer you to the fact that literally the first post I made on these topics said [modifiers] “there can be others (which may or may not be more or less significant), such as sex, gender, sexuality, class, length of time family is established in country, etc.” I literally said that class oppression is important. How is that erasing it?

It may be the case that class is a more impactful factor in some situations, it may not. It may be that many other factors can be important. It may be the case that class is the most important factor in most situations, it may not. It seems likely that what is important and to what degree is probably dependent, somewhat, on the society about which you discuss. I try not to get into too many details because I don’t want to generalise from my specific experience to the whole world, and because other people may disagree with me (and they may be right to do so!).

I have, to the best of my memory, never proposed “let’s solve class/race/sex/gender/etc. issues first”, because I don’t think that it is a useful approach. What I propose is to engage in activism by acknowledging that we want to improve things for everyone, looking for areas of synergy, and trying to remember that people may prioritise things differently to us and that that doesn’t necessarily make them monsters.

Personally, I focus a lot on environmental issues. This doesn’t mean I don’t care about race, or class, or sex, or etc., it means I am focussing my efforts predominantly on where I can make the most impact, and where my skills and knowledge are most applicable. It doesn’t mean I won’t support other areas as being equally important, it just means I would prefer – if it isn’t too much of a bother for everyone else – not to see the end of civilisation in my lifetime. Yet, somehow I manage to contain myself and not demand that everyone drop what they’re doing and prioritise talking about what I want to talk about right now.

My perspective (which I by no means hold as absolute, but seems to be not unreasonable to me) is that people are likely to be motivated to address the problems which they care most about. By building bridges and looking to support each other, we can be a formidable force to change the world for good. Or, we can people can keep making rude and condescending remarks, gatekeeping supposed moral and intellectual high-ground, and demanding that people abandon things they prioritise in order to prioritise what we prioritise in the order we prioritise it. I would suspect that one approach is better than the other – I’ll leave you to contemplate which.

Social change and positive activism is, as far as I can tell, self-reinforcing – does being a feminist mean you can’t care about race or class? No, of course not. You can focus your efforts and still help out with other causes too. I mean, do people really think that no-one who cares about race also cares about class issues? Really? Or is it just that they don’t care in the way class-first activists want them to care…therefore they are evil, or stupid, or….

To be honest, this sort of thing is rather irritating – because it seems that rather than working together to do anything effective, people are more interested in engaging in circular firing squads. And while I try to remember that people are passionate, and look to advance the things they care about, demanding that people who are at the sharp end of these things aren’t allowed to care or do anything about them until we resolve something else seems….unlikely to be convincing.

And now for the punchline – I actually think that (for where I lived) class is likely to be more impactful than race on many people’s lives (though again, it is only a tentative guess, as I haven’t had time to delve too far into the literature – and because, guess what, I’m going to be biased because of my experiences!). But because I won’t demand that people who care strongly about race activism renounce their interests, people tar me as not caring about class (or not knowing anything about “real” left / class politics). I’m someone who should in fact be an easy sell on this – I already agree with much of what people seem to mean. In pretty much every post on this I’ve talked about the importance of intersectionality. I’ve repeatedly said I think that we need to solve both race and class discrimination (and all the others too). Yet the majority of class-first posts have been combative, accusative, condescending, hostile, and just plain rude.

Personally I care about effective activism which results in meaningful change. And I think the best way to do that is to get people on side. And a good way to do that, is to work alongside each other in order to adress injustice as a whole – because I have this crazy notion that there does not have to be opposition between people working on racial issues and those working on issues of class, or sex, or gender, or even the environment. And that it is perhaps more productive to find solid goals that everyone can agree on, rather than getting exercised because someone cares slightly more about one particular thing than you do.

Just a thought.

Callum @ 105: It’s not even uecessary to impeach this Coleman Hughes article at City Journal merely by the publication. One can go further, and nearly-as-easily. Just google “coleman hughes police brutality” and notice the hits you get: Quillette and Daily Wire [alt-right dumpster-fires]. Look at the Newsday column, and notice that the column cites “professional Black Conservative Pundits”[1] The guy isn’t cited by any reputable social science folks. Tells you all you need to know about him.

[1] following Brad Delong, these are people, like “professional conservative economists”, who earn their living by being conservatives, not professionals who happen to be conservative.

@108
”We’ve never had problems at any hotels in NYC, SF, Dallas, Minneapolis, Denver, or even Gatlinburg Tennessee”.
+109
@
”Since I’ve had the opposite experience in numerous situations I guess this just proves that anonymous people trading anecdotes online isn’t going to settle this”.

That’s why we played ”candid camera” with a few doormen of luxury Hotels –
(after the Oprah Incident) – in order to check what these doormen saw first – ”class or race” – and there never was a ”problem” – ”problem” as all of them were very professional and polite –
BUT – as ”Sociologists have this very useful concept: the unmarked category. An unmarked category is present when the category is considered so normal or ordinary in a particular context that it goes unnoticed.

And so –
all of us – sometimes very ”classless” and sometimes very ”classy” marked ”whites” were very obviously considered ”so normal or ordinary in this particular context” – that we went ”unnoticed” – while most of our Black and Brown friends were (always politely) noticed like ”the black in Boulder – as ”a marked category, which means (white) people won’t see a man picking up trash, they’ll see a black man picking up trash.
So –

”They see something and so they say something”.

In our case mostly –
and very politely:
Can I help you sir?

@Chetan, you can just read the paragraph and follow some of the links to different sources and stories, you don’t need to agree with anything in the article.

I actually thought about adding the caveat “needless to say I don’t agree with most of his views” but just thought that was unnecessarily defensive and didn’t need saying. But, needless to say I don’t agree with most of Coleman Hughes’ views.

@Chetan, I understand that you might be finding this conversation frustrating and I’m sorry for my part in that, I have actually found lots of what you’ve written very instructive. But your accusations of racism seem pretty off base. Please refrain.

@
”Look: you guys clearly don’t want to engage with the evidence of your eyes. Hey, go ahead and believe your theories. We have a word for your kind:

I am a ”class warrior” too – just NOT like Angel or Sebastian -(or Callum?) with the luxury – or luck – of having had their ”opposite experience” or ”no problem in numerous situations” – and so we always HAVE to engage with the evidence of our eyes –
we on the other hand –
also could decide to ignore –
as some of our fellow ”class warriors” – who believe there is class before race…

I am a ”class warrior” too – just NOT like Angel or Sebastian -(or Callum?) with the luxury – or luck – of having had their ”opposite experience” or ”no problem in numerous situations

That isn’t what I said. I haven’t had the uniform experience you say you have of “race” causing problems and being noticed and class not.

Chetan Murphy 100 etc, I find your hostile demeanor quite regrettable. Your are defending an indefensible claim, period. I am aware of a number of police killings of white victims. The police usually get away with egregious behavior, period. That is true even in countries where these incidents are orders of magnitude less frequent than in the US.

Sebastian 106 “the race first side”: I don’t know what exactly that slogan is supposed to mean but in my understanding, intersectionality is not consistent with such a view and in my understanding, most commenters here are not on “the race first side”. I can only speak for myself, I am certainly not.

AND so –
AGAIN!!
– in an effort of some kind of conclusion – when CHETAN R MURTHY wrote:

”Class dominates? Really? Maybe you should tell that to all the Black people, Black professionals, stopped… ”
WE actually don’t have to tell that to any ”Black people, Black professionals” –
as they know – what the majority of the ”White” commenters here –

Don’t know!

intersectionality is not consistent with such a view

Intersectionality doesn’t seem to have very precise meaning (to put it mildly) but I think part of it is:
1 there are multiple, independent systems of oppression which “intersect”
2 race and gender are among these
And this is perfectly consistent with class denialism, and definitely with assigning class a relatively low importance, even if class-as-identity is sometimes bolted on as a third or subsequent factor. (Ofc as MisterMr has been explaining quite well, this isn’t really how socialists conceptualise class anyway.)

Callum @ 116: “you can just read the paragraph and follow some of the links to different sources and stories, you don’t need to agree with anything in the article.”

There’s a thing, it’s called “sealioning”. Look it up. Polluting a conversation with citations that only circulate in the alt-right and associated wingnut communities is not good-faith engagement. You cite a guy who gets approving writeups from alt-right and fascist outlets, and expect me to take you serioiusly.

Tm @ 124: way to not engage with my argument at all. Really, bravo.

This is actually excellent, all of you. All of you. You have your own reality-distortion filter, and that filter excludes ALL of the mainstream consensus. Because while you’re rapidly repeating to yourselves these “home truths” (“black people aren’t disproportionately targeted by the po-po, nosirree”; “class not race”), out in the streets Americans are showing that they don’t agree with you, in the mainstream press, in almost all the mainstream cultural icons of our time, the intellectual and cultural leading lights of our society are showing that they don’t agree with you.

The massive demonstrations of this summer didn’t start because of some economic injustice; they didn’t start because of some class-consciousness. They started because Americans are fed up with police brutality towards Black Americans and people of color.

There’s only one class of Americans who agree with you: Trumpists. Think on that.

I’m done here.

engels 128: I have never heard an account of intersectionality that doesn’t at least include the three dimensions race, class and gender. (There’s also the related concept of triple oppression). Furthermore, in my understanding, a slogan like “class first” or “race first” is inherently incompatible with the concept. I cannot exclude that somewhere on the internet somebody uses the concept differently but I’m quite certain that such usage is not representative. As evidence I’ll just point to wikipedia since it’s easily accessible. If you have contrary evidence, please let me know.

“how socialists conceptualise class”: It used to be very clear how socialists, or at least those inspired by Marx, conceptualized class. Not in terms of income and education – that is how bourgeois sociologists define social strata and is different from class – but in terms of a person’s role in the production process: there is essentially one class consisting of people who own the means of production and one class of people who are forced to sell their labor. One can make some adjustments and try to define intermediate classes. But it is very clear that the way you for example (and most others) use the term class in this comment forum is absolutely unrelated to Marxian class theory. So please refrain from lecturing me about “how socialists conceptualise class”, unless you are able to provide an actual Marxian class analysis of the topics discussed here. Also, see https://crookedtimber.org/2020/08/27/on-an-objection-to-the-idea-of-white-privilege/#comment-804214.
[Corrected the second paragraph]

Gorgonzola misrepresenting the Oprah story, Kiwanda et al refusing to accepted settled facts about poverty, race and police violence, and now were told Obama isn’t African American when his dad is from Kenya…

Hmm I wonder what all this denialism has in common?

AND –
AGAIN:
”Even our soon-to-be-president noted, after meeting Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”—
is perhaps the best example – for the ”Unmarked Categories” – and how ”not noticeable” the ”Race First” -(or ”White Privilege”) truly is.

BUT if you find out – that doormen of Luxury Hotels prefer to ask ”Blacks” – who are trying to get in the hotel about ten times more often than similar dressed ”Whites” –

May I help you Sir?

Something get’s noticed –

Right?

“How can you misidentify it in the beginning”

I believe I identified it correctly. When Mr Biden (or your doorman) see someone with a dark skin, he might misidentify them as having a lower social status than they actually have. For example, a man with a briefcase, wearing a suit and tie is — Mr Biden would probably assume — a clerk of some sort. When in fact the man might be a lawyer.

It’s a case of intuitive profiling based on the life experience; error-prone, because the times a-changin’.

But it is very clear that the way you for example (and most others) use the term class in this comment forum is absolutely unrelated to Marxian class theory.

Er how is that clear? Most of my comments have been snarky one liners.

I have never heard an account of intersectionality that doesn’t at least include the three dimensions race, class and gender.

Try reading the paper where Crenshaw coined the term:

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics

Kiwanda;

In my humble opinion; elimination of qualified immunity is necessary; hiring more women as cops; a federal registry of Bad Cops (like registries of sexual offenders); and response to calls by social workers and mental-health professionals instead of police would all be effective.

sean s.

@138
”When Mr Biden (or your doorman) see someone with a dark skin, he might misidentify them as having a lower social status than they actually have. For example, a man with a briefcase, wearing a suit and tie is — Mr Biden would probably assume — a clerk of some sort. When in fact the man might be a lawyer”.

That’s why – in our ”experiment” – we dressed the ”Whites” and ”Blacks” – who tried to enter ”Luxury” – very much alike – in order to make sure – if they got ”noticed” – they didn’t get noticed because because of the ”class” of their clothes or briefcases…

Of relevance:
https://www.vox.com/21418125/biden-harris-pelosi-defund-the-police-criminal-justice-reform-2020

“In terms of concrete policy proposals, the bulk of the platform’s policing agenda focuses on preventing officers from abusing their power and holding them accountable when they do. Drawing on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 — which received unanimous support among House Democrats but has since been stymied in the Senate — it proposes policies like reining in qualified immunity, banning chokeholds, developing stricter use-of-force standards, creating a national registry of officer misconduct, and limiting no-knock warrants.
It also outlines specific mechanisms for holding state and local departments accountable to these reforms, namely tying federal law enforcement funding to implementation of these measures and strengthening the Department of Justice’s ability to investigate police misconduct in individual departments (which can often result in concrete reforms). …

The 2020 platform specifically calls for “reorienting our public safety approach toward prevention and away from over-policing” in order to “prevent law enforcement from becoming unnecessarily entangled in the everyday lives of Americans.”

Democrats propose two ways of doing this: First, by decriminalizing marijuana use and diverting those struggling with substance abuse away from the criminal justice system and into treatment-based interventions. Second, by investing more resources into underserved communities to prevent the problems typically associated with law enforcement from arising in the first place.”

engels, according to Marxian class analysis, an upper middle class (“middle class” here referring really to a stratum, not a class) university professor and a Walmart shelf stacker are both working class

Did it ever occur to you that you don’t really know what you’re talking about?

TM, Apologies I didn’t reply, it was a lot of different questions and I didn’t think the thread would benefit from my personal views on them. What I was trying to do in that comment was frame the disagreement more starkly in an attempt to create better understanding of where each side is coming from in response to what I thought was a good observation from Richard (who is on ‘your side’, so to speak). I think I occupy a more nuanced somewhere in between the two framings I gave.

For what it is worth:

Wow, that statement does sound class reductionist! Which is it, exacerbated or caused? [sometimes both, sometimes just one] And what is the “underlying economic inequality”, the one between rich and poor, the one between white and black, between men and women? [wealth inequality] Or is that all the same? [they overlap in complicated ways] Do you mean to suggest that racism and sexism mostly affect the lower class? [no] Are mostly perpetrated by lower class people? [no] That they shouldn’t distract from class struggle and will go away on their own after the revolution? [no]

Argumentum ad hominem is a term that refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious.

Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

For example, if someone says “my understanding of X is Y, because of reasons A, B, and C” and the response is “you just don’t know anything about X” without ever addressing the argument or justifying the response.

This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue. While comments regarding attributes of a person may be useful if it is relevant to the point, where it is not this represents a logical fallacay.

Ad hominem fallacies are considered to be uncivil and do not help creating a constructive atmosphere for dialogue to flourish.

TM 132: I have never heard an account of intersectionality that doesn’t at least include the three dimensions race, class and gender.

Screeching goalposts

TM 149: This [analysis in terms of race and gender] doesn’t preclude activists using the term intersectionality in a broader sense…

Nothing of substance is forthcoming from the “class reductionist” side. Big surprise.

Callum thanks for explicit answers but they are … vague. “racism and misogyny(?) are social pathologies that are [sometimes] significantly exacerbated and [sometimes] even caused by underlying [wealth inequality]”? And what does that mean for the struggle?

@151
”This reminds me of something Viktor Pelevin wrote in Generation “P” (although that probably was mostly a joke)

Ahhh – I loves jokes!

So – joking back:
Did Tatarsky ever see a BLACK or BROWN hand –
or only ”white” ones?

And if Tatarsky never had seen a BLACK or BROWN hand – do you realise how… hilarious your quote – truly – IS?

Back in 1949 the black communist Paul Robeson gave a speech in Paris in which he said (per wiki):

We in America do not forget that it was the backs of white workers from Europe and on the backs of millions of blacks that the wealth of America was built. And we are resolved to share it equally. We reject any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on anyone. Our will to fight for peace is strong…

Person’s unknown, presumably the FBI or some such, changed that to:

We colonial peoples have contributed to the building of the United States and are determined to share its wealth. We denounce the policy of the United States government which is similar to Hitler and Goebbels….

Those historically unknown actors would have had a reason to make that change.

Society is complex, confusing and politically controversial, with ambiguous boundaries, anomalies, and exceptions. Any description of it that entirely loses those aspects can be dismissed as obviously wrong.

And what does that mean for the struggle?

It means that if you fail to understand them, you fail to understand what the struggle is about, what the stakes are, and what can be done. You might even be wrong as to which side you are actually helping. Politics is not easy.

The Fox News version of the narrative of ‘white privilege’ is close to the core of the reasons why those who voted for Trump choose to do so. It has been argued here a bunch as to whether it is the #1 or #2 reason; the point is it is unarguably up there.

No-one can predict the future. But publicly pushing that narrative, in the belief it is so obviously wrong no-one would actually act on it, does seem perhaps unwise.

“And if Tatarsky never had seen a BLACK or BROWN hand – do you realise how… hilarious your quote – truly – IS?”

No. What difference does it make? You feel “BLACK or BROWN” hands are different somehow?

The Fox News version of the narrative of ‘white privilege’ is close to the core of the reasons why those who voted for Trump choose to do so. It has been argued here a bunch as to whether it is the #1 or #2 reason; the point is it is unarguably up there.

No-one can predict the future. But publicly pushing that narrative, in the belief it is so obviously wrong no-one would actually act on it, does seem perhaps unwise.

It’s not clear what you mean by ‘The Fox News version of the narrative of “white privilege”‘.

@162
”You feel “BLACK or BROWN” hands are different somehow?”

Unmarked categories.