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Comment by rosser | Hacker News Reader

This is not the position.

To insist that the "prejudice + power" argument is premised on bright-line "race == power" is to mischaracterize it to the point of being unrecognizable.

It's about relative power. If I'm black, and your boss, and have a prejudice against your race, I can be racist. If I'm black, have no meaningful kind of power over you, and have a prejudice against your race, I'm just prejudiced.

That's the position. This "ALL" lunacy is a multiple fallacies in one, and it remains a bitter disappointment to see a crowd of people who otherwise pride themselves aloud on being so smart, buy into it so unexaminedly.

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That's nice because you reduced it to actual authoritative power. I can respect that. But that's not how it's playing out in the culture.

So what is playing out in the culture? A privileged majority angrily attacking any attempts to refine the meaning of existing words to describe the real-world consequences of prejudice (racism), and attacking attempts to introduce new language to describe the structure of non-prejudice (privilege).

It's almost as if the majority doesn't want us talking about it at all. That's how it's playing out in the culture.

Think about this when you attack terminology.

> A privileged majority angrily attacking any attempts to refine the meaning of existing words to describe the real-world consequences of prejudice (racism), and attacking attempts to introduce new language to describe the structure of non-prejudice (privilege).

1. Which privileged majority?

> It's almost as if the majority doesn't want us talking about it at all. That's how it's playing out in the culture.

2. No one is censoring you. Talk all you like. Putting ideas and thoughts in the open is critical to arriving at common truth. But if these redefinitions and new language terms are to be pushed into the culture then expect inquiry, discussion, criticism, debate, resistance, dissent, and (when dialogue fails) mockery.

> Think about this when you attack terminology.

3. I don't accept that use of the terminology in question, in case that was unclear. Your redefinitions and new language are not sacrosanct to me. Here's how I see the three _P_ words:

* Prejudice, colloquially speaking, is to negatively judge people based on preconceived notions and stereotypes.

* A Privilege is a specific right or advantage gained through merit or inheritance.

* Power is the ability to exercise a freedom with low risk of sanction.

By that same token, we don't need to regard your definitions as sacrosanct, either.

Remember, you're asserting your personal definitions over those that have developed through decades of academic discourse on the subject.

Why should we prefer your terms, again?

>Why should we prefer your terms, again?

They are not his terms. His definition is the one that has existed for much longer than the ones the academics prefer.

People don't have issue with the academics' need to make distinctions. The issue is that if you need to make a distinction, you should coin a word for what you mean - not use a very well established term.

Because they're not my definitions.

They're the generally accepted definitions.

The definitions you are presenting are therefore ideological at best.

"Generally accepted" by whom? In my circles, the definitions rosser and I have offered are the generally accepted ones.

1. Duh. Don't be obtuse.

2. I'm not being censored. Duh. Just because the right whines about being censored whenever someone disagrees with them doesn't mean I do.

3. Let's address the term "privilege" here again. I've defined privilege as "absence of discrimination". Discrimination is separate from prejudice - it's an expression of power (this is equivalent to the definition of "racism" that you reject).

Now you're going to have to think here, not just react. You agree that prejudice exists, right? Ok. So you agree that discrimination exists - that parties with power use their power to harm those who suffer their prejudice? Ok then. If you're arguing discrimination does not even exist, that's a different and unsolvable problem.

So what do you call an absence of discrimination? Because the absence of a thing is also a thing. We create words for that.

The generally accepted word for the absence of discrimination is "privilege". You reject this definition, disallowing the common English-language concept that words often have more than one meaning. So do you have a different word for the absence of discrimination? Do you have a way to express this in your pure vocabulary?

Didn't think so.

On HN, please don't do ideological flamewar to begin with and please don't get personally nasty as you did here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your arguments aren't wrong, but your phrasing isn't helping them.

1. Aw shucks - I guess I just ain't as sharp as you :-B

2. Whatever.

3. MW dictionary shows no such definition of privilege. Is it in wide use? Link?

Of course, I agree there's such a thing as "discrimination". When we make value judgements, we discriminate. You like blue better than red? That's discrimination. You like people with hazel eyes best? Discrimination. You like your family better than strangers? Yup - discrimination.

In the context of this thread. racial discrimination is to favor a race (positive discrimination) or devalue another race (negative discrimination).

And FWIW, I begrudgingly accept that the contemporary definition of racism is a superset that includes racial discrimination, racial prejudice, and racial antagonism.

I say begrudgingly because this wasn't the case 20-30 years ago. The words "racism" and "racist" were reserved for the most vile organizations or individuals that actively sought to discriminate/disenfranchise/injure people on the basis of their race or ethnicity. The word "prejudiced" was used to describe thoughtless or inadvertent discriminatory attitudes. The word "bigot" was reserved for people who hurled racial/ethnic epithets and found self-satisfaction from putting/keeping down people based on their race/ethnicity.

So you see - back then people used discrimination to sort these trespasses into a value hierarchy: the prejudiced person was annoying but okay, the bigot was an intolerable asshole, and the racist was vile and physically dangerous scum.

Please don't do this kind of flamewar on HN.

Thank you for calling it lunacy since that is exactly what I feel every time I read on HN comments that say that black people can not be racist or women can not be sexist. Worse is when people talk about privilege in regard to race or gender as if those automatic resulted in power.

Relative power is relative, and its associated with a distribution curve. One can acknowledge that different groups has different averages and distribution curves, and that those indicate social issues, while still object to lazy stereotypic that ignores the relative property of power. So much political fighting and polarization could be avoided if more people would see power as relative property between individuals.

Yes, it's a relative property between individuals, but asserting it's just that ignores the systemic aspect, which is never not also in play.

The systemic part is a profoundly under-recognized force multiplier for the individual's power.

This is a bit late reply but I will post just in case you read it.

The systemic bias is an term for the result of gender stereotyping. It is lazy thinking by people who ignore individual attributes and reduces people down to a single bit of information. Does this happen? Yes. It is a probabilistic aspect that can have beneficial or negative effect on a person. As a force multiplier, both negative and positive, it is a sign of fault in society.

I agree it is a often profoundly under-recognized, but I will add that it is also profoundly misrepresented. Gender stereotyping is harmful to individuality in a such strong way that only seeing the benefits for one gender is to ignore the harm that it does to both genders.

I much prefer the definition of "racism" that has been in use since its inception, why change it?

Because, given the demonstrated ways racism "works" (as in, how it's practiced, and what effects it has when practiced between differentially enfranchised groups) it's not accurate?

> To insist that the "prejudice + power" argument is premised on bright-line "race == power" is to mischaracterize it to the point of being unrecognizable.

Would you mind clarifying the distinction between "differentially enfranchised groups" and "race == power" ?

By analogy, membership in a group that is more or less enfranchised than another could be seen as a Bayesian classification, while "race == power" is more Boolean.

One describes a tendency; the other asserts an identity relationship.

It doesn't map perfectly, but it's close enough for the bandwidth I have to keep contributing to this thread right now.

Because someone saying mean words about someone who looks like you is far different if they have the power to do bad things.

Similar to what ankushnarula said, I think this interpretation is fine, but what’s the benefit of using it? What, then, do we call the white minimum wage worker who uses a slur to describe a black CEO? Mean?

I don’t think the people arguing for this alternative definition quite agree with you, anyways. I think that most of them prefer it because it means they can say “black people cant be racist agains whites,” for whatever reason.

Well, for one thing, that's not what the "you can't be racist against white people" folks say. Instead they say, "you can't be racist against white people".

WHY, dear fucking g-d, do people expect me to defend positions I neither hold nor agree with in these discussions?

This is like saying that if someone were, e.g., operating from mistaken beliefs about the prevalence of some socially regressive attitude or other among technologists, it's appropriate for them to ask any random developer, "Why do developers think ____?"

Huh?

I can't speak for "dear fucking g-d" but my it would appear that your position is distinct from that of the mainstream critical theory/intersectionality social justice crowd.

> ...it would appear that your position is distinct from that of the mainstream critical theory/intersectionality social justice crowd.

Not the subset of it I engage with — and that includes people who hold (graduate) degrees in things like "Gender Studies" or "Ethnic Studies", and such-like — which means we're playing some form of "dueling anecdata".

To that end, I'd invite you to speculate momentarily on how many people in this discussion have ever engaged in meaningful, substantive discourse with people from the "social justice crowd" (which, btw: ugh, dismissive name-calling, much?) about their positions, and aren't merely regurgitating their own narratives, of whatever other origin.

I'm not clear on your point of view - so perhaps you're correct that we're talking past each other.

And with regards to "dismissive name-calling" - I wasn't aware that "social justice crowd" was a pejorative. If there's a better moniker that represents the broader set of ideas I'd be pleased to know and use it.

As for your claim that you're engaged in "other meaningful discourse" and that I'm "merely regurgitating my own narrative", I'd invite you to notice that your ad hominem attacks are not arguments.

Where am I making an ad hominem? It's my — all too often — repeated experience that there are people who meaningfully talk with "SJWs" and there are people who talk about them.

I'm not asserting any specific person here is a member of either set — except myself, based solely and specifically on my own, direct experience. I'm also absolutely not asserting you're "regurgitating" anything.

Just, on the basis of the conversations I've had, and the independent reading I've done, there is no way some of the positions being fervently argued in this broader discussion are based on anything except internalizing some (usually agenda-serving) misapprehension of what "SJWs", or feminists, or whatever, are, want, and intend.

As for the term, itself, it's been seen as mostly pejorative for as long as I've been aware of it. How about, instead of a bucket you (the general "you") can dismiss people and their beliefs into, ("Oh, look. Another 'SJW'..."), we try something along the lines of, "Hmm. Someone who thinks differently from me. I wonder how..."

It's, in my "I've been online for more than 20 years now" opinion, a term that is vastly more often used to shut down discourse than it is to open it up.

Excuse me, but I expressly avoid the term "SJW" because it's a known pejorative.

I prefer to use "social justice advocates" - I used "crowd" here but there was no ill intent.

And if I didn't apologize earlier for making assumptions about your views, I'm apologizing right now. I'd rather learn what you truly think than insist a caricature upon you. It's the only way to have an honest conservation, I think.

Thank you for the clarification.

I think "social justice advocate" is a reasonable term, though "social justice anything" is probably always going to risk evoking a reaction, and not a response; for example, I probably did with your use of "crowd", which might in turn have colored my reply.

I hope I'm offering you some food for thought, or at least another insight into a perspective that differs from yours.

There are people out there who hold considered, nuanced perspectives on these (and many other) topics. Our contemporary style of discourse makes it very difficult to be one of them. :(

I agree there are many nuanced views. And I found our interaction useful in illuminating your views - I suspect they're not entirely dissimilar from my perspective.

The discourse does tend to quickly descend into defensiveness & assumptions of bad faith. For my part, I hope to do better the next time around. Cheers.

Somewhere downthread, someone else said that we'd think differently if we lived among "normal people" rather than in the liberal-oriented big cities.

So yeah, speaking of dismissive.

fwiw, critical theory is distinct from intersectionality. Intersectionality is more or less a 21st century concept. Critical theory dates to the Frankfurt School's work as far back as the 1930s. And conceptually, they have very little to do with one another, other than being "left". Critical theory is largely a Marxist critique of culture, targeted at all totalitarian systems - fascism, Stalinism, and capitalism (why they say capitalism is totalitarian is worth reading). The term "intersectionality" was first used in the late 1980s, one of the first shots of third wave feminism, but really didn't hit vogue until a decade or more later. Totally separate things.

I hear this all the time from my guilty white friends, it's such a confusing perspective.

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