“The oppressive effect of privilege is often so insidious that dominant groups complain whenever it’s brought up for discussion. They feel impatient and imposed on. “Come on,” they say, “stop whining. Things aren’t that bad. Maybe they used to be, but not anymore. It’s time to move on. Get over it” But people who are white or heterosexual or male or nondisabled or middle- or upper-class have to ask themselves how they would know how bad it really is to be a person of color or a lesbian or a woman or gay or disabled or working- or lower-class. What life experience, for example, would qualify a white person to know the day-to-day reality of racism? People of color are, by comparison, experts in the dynamics of race privilege, because they live with the oppressive consequences of it twenty-four hours a day.”
— Allan G. Johnson
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
2 comments
November 21, 2016 at 5:19 am
roughseasinthemed
Very accurate. From a fem perspective, this is the equivalent of people (men) saying, you have equal ops/rights leg, you have health care, you have education, girls do better than boys at school, young women earn more than young men (bet they don’t in Kerala), men commit more suicides, women live longer etc etc etc. What’s your issue?
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November 21, 2016 at 10:46 am
The Arbourist
@RSitM
I think it is one of the selling points of the neo-liberal critique is that it purposefully looks past the (glaring) inequalities in society and then claims on an individual level, that people from any class can make the same choices and thus are equally privileged.
Furthermore it almost seems like a kind of virtue signal for the dudeish atheist left as they can can claim they are the ‘true’ egalitarians working to make society better for everyone by of course, focusing on issues that only affect them. And, at the very same time, throwing stones at marginalized groups for organizing and working toward solutions that would lessen the oppression or actually change society.
Wow this Allan Johnson fellow has good things to say, and I’ve ran across his words previously.
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