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Comment by weberc2 | Hacker News Reader

Is societal privilege even falsifiable? Can it explain anything? (Or rather, can it be made to explain anything and everything?)

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Sure. Look for example at studies of resumes with “black sounding” and “white sounding” names.

I don't doubt there are definitions of privilege which are falsifiable, as those pertaining to discrimination. But those are seldom used, and when challenged, the claimants fall back to some abstract unfalsifiable definition, i.e., a motte and bailey. Given that, perhaps it would be clearer if we stuck to a term that is clearly falsifiable, such as 'discrimination'.

And as for discrimination, it's difficult to study, and a lot of these bedrock studies/theories never even found anything substantial to begin with (the implicit association test, the blind orchestra auditions study, etc) and of course all of the others that have failed to replicate. Never mind that we are fond of using data from the 30s-80s as indicative of attitudes in 2019. Maybe we can finally begin to question whether social science has a groupthink problem?

> I don't doubt there are definitions of privilege which are falsifiable, as those pertaining to discrimination. But those are seldom used

Discrimination, both subtle and overt, are the most common forms of privilege. Why do you think it is seldom used?

Because there is very little supporting evidence for discrimination of any kind that could justify the “privilege” hoopla, and every time you press someone on their meaning of “privilege” they retreat from the “discrimination” definition to some abstract, probably circular definition (e.g., “men are privileged because there is no sexism against them; you can’t be sexist against men by definition because men are privileged”).

> Because there is very little supporting evidence for discrimination of any kind that could justify the “privilege” hoopla

The other poster provided significant evidence of discrimination

> https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

> To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase

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