I just wanted to pop back in to highlight that many of the posters who were arguing that this is all a made up controversy and no one is trying to limit the free exchange of ideas are now, lo these many pages later, arguing that it is perfectly fine to disrupt speeches by people you don’t like and get speakers disinvited so as not to lend legitimacy to their ideas. I find that kind of funny.
641 And I can't wrap my head around how pointing this out, or other examples of societal inequalities, is taken as a personal insult by some. It is what it is. Maybe we could just try and fix it as best we can, and not get agitated and defensive for being part of a privileged group. It's just an accident of birth, nothing more or less. Why should someone who doesn't benefit worry about hurting my feelings by pointing out that I do?
Although I’m doing my best, I can’t keep up with this thread…so many likeable posts, but just not enough hours in my day at present.
adding: It was helpful to learn “SQW” - interesting concept
@Ohiodad51, since you think the disinvites are an issue, can you please post the schools and student organizations that are disinviting people? Should be easy to do since this is a big issue.
Are you ok with inviting speakers who advocate violence against policemen?
I have sometimes been mistaken for black, because my skin color is darker than most blacks. I have occasionally been called the N-word, and once my friends and I were encouraged to leave a redneck bar. However, every encounter with police has been professional (even the one 30+ years ago when I was doing 83 in a 55 and was asked to step out of the car). Respecting the authority of the officer and answering his questions does wonders.
But apart from my anecdotal case, the only one well-designed study about this, by a black Harvard professor, suggests that blacks are 26% less likely to be shot by a police officer. There are many caveats to this, including that blacks are more likely to encounter non-lethal force by police officers, and that blacks could be pulled over more often. However, your central statement appears to be false.
;(
There are a lot of problems with that study.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a-massive-new-study-on-police
645
sigh
“Why should someone who doesn’t benefit worry about hurting my feelings by pointing out that I do?”
It’s not that “my feelings are hurt” if it’s pointed out that I have white privilege (or any other type of privilege). And it’s not as though anyone should really care that my feelings are hurt; if they are hurt, I’ll get over them. It’s just that the statement is used as a shut-down, invalidating anything else the person has to say on anything.
You know how upthread we’ve been talking about the extent to whether a university inviting a speaker “confers legitimacy” on their ideas?
This is almost the converse. Having it pointed out that you have X privilege is seen as de-legitimizing anything further you might have to say on almost any topic. It’s either " … and therefore you don’t know what you’re talking about and need to shut up and listen to me, because I’m right and you’re wrong" or " … and therefore, because you have privilege that I don’t, in this matter you need to accord ME privilege and let me have things my way."
649
Maybe you can start a campaign against Privilege Privilege since you feel so oppressed?
Like everything else in life, assertions of privilege can be abused. That doesn’t invalidate the value of the conceptual framework.
I’m not oppressed at all. No need for a campaign. But thanks for looking out for me!
So there’s value in the conceptual framework. So we are talking about Issues A, B, and C and someone points out that I have white privilege. Well, so? Now what? I also have green eyes and freckles. How does that advance the substance of the conversation? Wouldn’t it be better to … oh, I don’t know, talk about the merits of the actual ideas being thrown about, than label the participants as bearers of white privilege or non-bearers of privilege?
It’s used PRECISELY to take the onus off the discussion of the actual topic, and to throw it back at the person by invalidating whatever the person has to say because a person with white privilege can’t have anything worthwhile to say. That’s the problem. It’s not nuanced. Guess what? I could have white privilege. AND I could be advancing a more meritorious or rigorous argument about X than the person who doesn’t share that privilege. Those two things are not inconsistent.
This same dichotomy – one is either All-Good With All-Correct Opinions or All-Bad-With-Nothing-To-Say-or-Offer – is what permeates our political discourse today, and permeates discussions around such topics as Calhoun renaming at Yale or Condoleezza Rice being a college speaker. There’s no such thing as nuance. No one can possibly say “Well, you have some good points here, but some points I disagree with over there.” Nope, you’ve got to be All Good or All Bad. It’s ridiculous.
I’m extremely skeptical of “white privilege” as well. Every time I watch Cops, I see dozens of people that clearly have no “privilege” just because their skin is white. The people living in the back-hills of West Virginia and Appallachia seem to be fairly devoid of any sort of “privilege” as well. Seems like lazy thinking to me.
Let me see if I can shorten this up. Point one. The majority of places who report on disinvitations or disruptions of speechs at colleges are, in your world, untrustworthy crazy nazi right wing shills. And we all know that anything that is not comfortably left of center is bad, flawed, un true and probably causes cancer.
Like this one http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/04/virginia-tech-just-disinvited-a-black-conservative-from-speaking-on-campus/
Or they are written by some one from an organization that you have already decided can be safely ignored because of their association with the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad Koch Brothers.
Like this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/new-report-the-push-again_b_5417664.html
Or they are people who had it coming because they are purveyors of “hate speech”, or ar just plain weird.
Like this one http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/26/campus-protesters-try-to-silence-conservative-speaker-demand-college-presidents-resignation/
So whatever I post can be quite easily dismissed out of hand, and you can go back to claiming that none of this is happening at all, and we should all just let the kids do what the kids are going to do.
It is a refreshingly simple position, to be able to simply ignore every bit of evidence that does not fit your viewpoint by impinging the motivations of the source, is it not?
Point two. Yes, yes. Terribly clever. Because if you can get someone to admit that the colleges should exercise discretion, then it becomes a race to the bottom and well, if a "majority’ of students (with the obligatory digression on privilege, etc and who can actually have an opinion) doesn’t want to hear from a particular speaker, or finds that speaker to be a “purveyor of hate”, then who are we to argue? So yes, one thing is just exactly the same. No questions, no deviation.
In the real world, I do not believe that colleges should invite people who advocate murder or assault. Glad we got that cleared up. Not sure that excepting maybe you and @marvin100 any rational person thinks that Condi Rice is an actual criminal though.
552 @Pizzagirl
You comment about having green eyes and freckles betrays EXACTLY the kind of attitude that probably frustrates people who attempt to talk to you about issues of privilege. If you can’t see why that is, I think you ought to make an effort to educate yourself. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and heartache in the future.
653 @danfer91
“Seems like lazy thinking to me” is pretty unintentionally ironic way to end a post that uses the example of a highly edited reality show as conclusive evidence of the absence of white privilege.
Honestly, I don’t think either of you know enough about the concept of privilege to even have an opinion - I realize that’s kind of a rude comment to make, but there’s really nothing in these posts to even bother with any kind of serious response. It’s a free country and all, so everyone can have an opinion, I guess, but if you actually care about this issue enough to express an opinion on it, you owe it to yourself to at least understand what you are arguing against.
On a personal note, I definitely feel like my personal perspective on a lot of issues of gender and racial equality has been enhanced by discussing and reading about the privilege framework, despite occasionally being frustrated by people tossing it around a bit unfairly in conversations. All rhetorical strategies can be abused, as I said in my previous comment.
Well, we all can’t be as smart as you, NickFlynn. So sorry.
You think poor and destitute white people don’t exist? I don’t understand your point. And pretty much all the arguments I have seen for why white people are privileged just because they are white could apply just as well to Asians. Asians make more money, are less likely to go to jail, be killed by police, etc.
It’s pretty simple, if you live in the US, you’re most likely “privileged” when considering things on a global scale. The median household income in the US puts you in the top 1% globally. As I said, I’m skeptical of the notion of white privilege but I won’t say outright that it doesn’t exist. Your attitude and the notion that it’s a waste of time to even explain it to us whities is exactly the problem I have. If you aren’t willing to explain your position then I see no reason why I should just take your word for it. I don’t do that.
I have never ever had someone say to me, in a discussion, “check your privilege”. If this is something people often (or ever) say to you, what the heck are you saying to them?
Two quick points on Condi Rice
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There is documentary evidence that she personally authorized the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” program in 2002, prior to any opinion from the Justice Department. I very much doubt she will ever get the chance to defend herself in court, but the idea that she might be implicated in war crimes is not exactly “tin foil hat” type craziness.
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Her invitation to speak at Rutgers was not rescinded, she withdrew.
@Ohiodad51, I don’t know if you realize this but my posts still exist in this thread. 
So your falsehoods about what I wrote are easily verifiable.
I looked at the FIRE link. I think there was a disinvitation column. There was a list of over 300 disinvitations. Except under the column disinvitations, FIRE listed "no"many times. This means there weren’t disinvitations in these particular cases.
Then as @al2simon wrote about the Univ of Chicago, many of the incidents where FIRE said yes, there was a disinvitation, were not true.
I looked at every single case where FIRE said yes, there was a disinvitation. Many of the people who were disinvited, were invited back.
There was a nazi who was disinvited. There was at least one person who advocated killing cops. There were many more people who were disinvited. They weren’t nazis or advocates of killing cops. Both the left and the right pushed for disinvitations.
I have some questions but I am not going to bother. I never mentioned Condi Rice and I was in favor of the Iraq War in 2000 whatever. Just thought I would throw that out there.
Yes, it is. If you can’t see why that is, I think you ought to make an effort to educate yourself.
Your point being that an effort to silence someone you disagree with is only bad if there is cast iron proof that the effort succeeded? Why in the world would that be the standard?