On Nerd Entitlement | Hacker News Reader

On Nerd Entitlement

newstatesman.com

27 pointsdavidgerard6 comments

Inherent in the concept of "privilege" is that it is invisible to the person who is privileged. Social privilege is an elevated norm, but since it's a norm, it's extremely difficult for the privileged person to see it as anything other than normal.

By analogy: A person who has grown up in Denver is 5,000 feet higher in elevation than a person who grew up in New York. But to each person, their subjective experience is of a relatively flat city with tall buildings; their subjective experience is each that their city is normal. There's nothing remarkable about things we experience every day of our life.

It's only when they travel to each other's cities that they can tell a difference: the Denverite breathes easily in both places; but the New Yorker might get short of breath in Denver.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to travel into each others' lives the way that we can travel into each others' cities. So the only way we can learn about the different norms of each life is to listen to other people talk.

While you have good and valid points, I think some privilege is visible. Members of royalty likely know they are privileged, and in unusual circumstances. In a racially segregated community where white people own things and have money while black people work as the help and are poor then the differences in privilege are pretty visible, and part of the norm.

That is a different definition of privilege.

That's a good point and I agree with you. However I think maybe such visible privilege is a less difficult problem, because it is more visible.

In recent western cultures there's a tradition that the most obviously privileged--like royals, national politicians, celebrities, rich CEOs--also have an obligation. In the U.S. that often takes the form of philanthropy (see: Bill Gates); in monarchies it takes the form of public leadership and service.

I think the most pernicious and difficult social problems come when people are privileged but don't realize it and/or don't believe that it's true. Thus they feel no particular need to change anything.

There is also the problem of the highly privileged imagining that their level of privilege extends down to those who resemble them superficially. If the white guy at the grocery counter wishes to lecture me, another white guy, about white privilege, OK. If a member of the Rockefeller family wishes to, I might well resent it.

Nice quote - "Finding out that you’re not the Rebel Alliance, you’re actually part of the Empire and have been all along, is painful."

Conceptually agree but feel something is missing in the argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com