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Post-privilege is impossible by definition in any society where scarcity exists. Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance, the term "privilege" will simply be shifted to more nebulous concepts.

Finally, the conclusion that reaching post-privilege will result in a feasible post-privacy does not follow at all. What, is the implication here that white men "on stages" have nothing to hide? I don't get it.

Leave it to some people to turn a human rights issue into an identity politics issue.

> Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance, the term "privilege" will simply be shifted to more nebulous concepts.

Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

> Finally, the conclusion that reaching post-privilege will result in a feasible post-privacy does not follow at all.

From the claim that a post-privacy society would have to be post-privilege does not follow that all post privilege societes have to be post-privacy.

Right now, when people say "no privacy", that in practice means zero privacy for some or most people, and total opaqueness for others (e.g. the NSA, or people who can make things go away with bribes, etc.). It doesn't actually mean "no privacy for anyone". For that to be the case, society would have to be actually egalitarian, e.g. post-privilege.

> What, is the implication here that white men "on stages" have nothing to hide?

They don't get killed by drones for starters. Appelbaum lives in Berlin because he feels safer there than in the US IIRC, it's not like he doesn't have spook pressure in his life; but he still considers himself privileged, imagine that.

If someone says homeless alcoholics should be rounded up and put into camps, then the fact that they aren't that, and don't have a friend in that situation, is their "privilege" they may not be aware of. That has nothing to do with "identitiy politics" to me. And I don't see how that is nebulous either? "Privilege" is not a complicated word, it means what it means in context and is perfectly fine to use.

Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

We have. The question of how to eliminate "class privilege" has remained open for quite a while and will for as long as the optimal distribution of scarce resources is still an active field of study.

It doesn't actually mean "no privacy for anyone". For that to be the case, society would have to be actually egalitarian, e.g. post-privilege.

You're delving into Foucault territory here, which is fine but also somewhat tangential. Of course the people doing the spying and the people who fund it will be less affected (but maybe not with the bad state of infosec), that's a given where any power structure is involved.

How would egalitarianism fix this? I think you're operating under a wholly different definition of egalitarianism than is commonly accepted. The only way to solve your dilemma is through a stateless society with a totally flat hierarchy with a method of economic exchange that doesn't involve a market system, or any mechanism that awards having more information.

They don't get killed by drones for starters.

Not yet.

If someone says homeless alcoholics should be rounded up and put into camps, then the fact that they aren't that, and don't have a friend in that situation, is their "privilege" they may not be aware of.

That's just asymmetry. You can just as easily have it be an oppressed group calling for the internment of a dominant group, which by definition they will not be a part of, and may not even be in contact with if there are factors like apartheid put into play. Calling it "privilege" makes no sense.

"Privilege" is not a complicated word, it means what it means in context and is perfectly fine to use.

The sociological concept of privilege is in fact an inversion of what we generally call a privilege. Sociological privilege often refers to constant and immutable characteristics that cannot be taken away, and moreover makes the value judgment that the group with privilege is bad, and that said privilege must be abolished. This is totally ass-backwards: it should be that the disadvantaged group is elevated to the same level of privilege, because more often than not (excluding class) "privilege" simply refers to the baseline that preferably all groups should be held to.

> We have.

No; you said "Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance", I say, let's do that first, even though it may never be perfect. Unless you're saying "acceptance" itself is some kind of scarce resource? Of course, it's not a great consolation to say "everybody should have access to clean drinking water", but it's a start, kind of the pre-requisite to do anything about it.

> Of course the people doing the spying and the people who fund it will be less affected (but maybe not with the bad state of infosec), that's a given where any power structure is involved.

Call it privilege or structure of power, does it really make a crucial difference?

> How would egalitarianism fix this? I think you're operating under a wholly different definition of egalitarianism than is commonly accepted.

Yeah, mine is the one a Kindergarten child might have: people striving to be fair to one another. Doesn't make everyone the same, doesn't change genetics, but it's still a neat concept.

> Not yet.

Doesn't change the point.

> That's just asymmetry. You can just as easily have it be an oppressed group calling for the internment of a dominant group, which by definition they will not be a part of, and may not even be in contact with if there are factors like apartheid put into play. Calling it "privilege" makes no sense.

Look, whatever. It's still just a word. Call it asymmetry or inequality or structures of power or privilege. It means what it means in the context of people arguing for mass surveillance because they themselves either aren't or think they aren't affected negatively. If you want to talk about some abstract unrelated stuff I'm not interested.

> This is totally ass-backwards: it should be that the disadvantaged group is elevated to the same level of privilege, because more often than not (excluding class) "privilege" simply refers to the baseline that preferably all groups should be held to.

... and because everybody has it ass-backwards, feminists are clamouring for men to be groped all the time? I'm of a mind to just delete my comments to get out of this, this is leading nowhere and adding nothing.

>Sociological privilege often refers to constant and immutable characteristics that cannot be taken away, and moreover makes the value judgment that the group with privilege is bad, and that said privilege must be abolished.

Privilege is no more or less than a source of cognitive bias in political opinions.

"I support drone assassinations because they make the world a safer place" is an understandable thing to say as a white guy in Iowa, but comes from a place of privilege: said white guy in Iowa probably does not understand or even consider the realities of living in constant fear of summary execution from the sky with no warning, has never seen a friend lose his children because they were within the blast radius of someone on the kill list.

No one is suggesting that we sic the drones on white guys in Iowa too out of some ridiculous idea of fairness. What we are suggesting is that his opinion is wrong, and should be excluded from American foreign policy, because when you remove the lens of privilege, drone assassinations stop looking like a good thing.

"I oppose welfare because if those poor people weren't lazy, they would have jobs" is a reasonable thing to say when the only world you know is one where your parents' friends offer you jobs and internships at dinner parties. This comes from a position of privilege: unemployment predominantly affects people of color in poor inner-city communities where people do not have such social networks, have in been deliberately excluded from those social networks, in a world where having a Black-sounding name on your resume makes you many times less likely to get the interview. (It is entirely possible to rationally oppose welfare on other grounds: poor incentive structures, support for alternatives like public works projects instead, ideological commitment to the free market, etc. But specifically the claim that poverty is a personal failure of character, unambiguously comes from privilege and is therefore not correct.)

When someone makes this argument and we call them privileged, we aren't asking for them to get laid off, we're arguing that their idea of social policy is immoral and people who believe it ought not to be voted into positions of control over government budgets.

tl;dr: privilege isn't why you're evil, but it is why your opinion is wrong

This comment is thoughtful, polite, and not redundant. It should not be downgrayed

What are his ideas to 'fix' the system?

That's a big question about someone who gives a lot of talks: https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=ja...

Man, if there ever was an instance of alienating a sympathetic audience, this would be it.

How does one take a golden argument like "privacy is an inalienable right," turn it into a tired "you should be ashamed for being white, check your privilege shitlord" flamebait, and still get taken seriously?

> you should be ashamed for being white, check your privilege shitlord

You had to work pretty damn hard to get this out of that quote. His point was that a lot of people who say they (and by extension society, this part is important) don't need privacy probably don't need privacy because their privilege protects them. So then the goal has to be to convince them that their privileged position makes them a special case, and that they should care about the unprivileged. It isn't just white people who have privilege, that's just an example.

This general idea really isn't controversial, but the terminology elicits very strong negative reactions in people for some reason (I honestly don't understand it). If I pointed out that the TSA screens darker-skinned people with extra vigor, often inconveniencing those people, most people would agree with me. If I then said that I don't care about this issue because I'm white, so I breeze through TSA checkpoints without any problems, many people would tell me I should be a little more considerate of others.

But if I call myself "privileged" in this instance then all of a sudden people would be whining about social justice warriors or something like that. Very strange.

> But if I call myself "privileged" in this instance then all of a sudden people would be whining about social justice warriors or something like that

No one has ever managed successfully to divorce the concept of privilege from the implication of blame, so saying that someone has privilege (or, worse in this context, is privileged), is tantamount to saying that they're a bad person and they should feel bad. Is it any wonder there's pushback?

Whether privilege and blame should be so inextricably linked is a separate discussion, and one I've seen from time to time in progressive circles. But, to people who aren't deeply enough immersed in such circles to be familiar with all the theory around the concept, that's how it comes across.

I guess I've never really associated privilege and blame. Maybe other people do, I can't speak for anyone but myself. I do, however, think that blame is appropriate when a person refuses to admit that privilege exists.

For example, the way I see it, I can't help that I'm white, it isn't my fault, I didn't do anything to "earn" my white privilege. However, if I refuse to at least acknowledge that I have privilege, then that is my fault, for that I would deserve blame.

>is tantamount to saying that they're a bad person and they should feel bad

What makes you (hypothetically) a bad person is having privilege and supporting policy which benefits the privileged at the expense of the unprivileged. The blame is assigned not for being a member of a privileged class, but for forming and acting on political opinions (including acceptance of the status quo) based on that privilege.

People who use privilege as an argument aren't asking you to be ashamed of being white, they're asking you to be ashamed of being conservative.

People who use privilege as an argument aren't asking you to be ashamed of being white, they're asking you to be ashamed of being conservative.

Well that's a big problem too.

It's essentially erasing the experience and stories of an entire swath of the political spectrum, and shaming people for their political orientation.