A student from Greenwich, Connecticut, who had attended Phillips Exeter Academy (an expensive private boarding school), explained that I was too privileged to understand the harm these professors had caused. At first I was stunned. But later, I came to understand the intellectual acrobatics necessary to say something like this. The student who called me “privileged” likely meant that due to my background as a biracial Asian Latino heterosexual cisgender (that is, I “present” as the sex I was “assigned” at birth) male, this means that I have led a privileged life.
-Rob Henderson
(This piece was inspired by an exchange with The Unhedged Capitalist).
Students are the new vanguard against ‘privilege’… except of course their own: American citizenship, happy homes, family wealth, education, ambition, intelligence, able-bodiedness…
Except for these forgotten factors they oppose the entire idea of PRIVILEGE (in theory anyway). Meanwhile they grasp for choice internships and work for fantastic wealth and home-ownership and personal status. Incoherence truly doesn’t capture the phenomenon. Hypocrisy does.
A decade or two ago, I don’t think I’d ever heard the modern term ‘privilege’. Certainly I knew the word, and I understood its meaning but-like anti-racism (which is an ideology which proclaims that racism is everywhere and in everything and should be addressed by enthusiastic policies and ideas of racism against white people)-its modern meaning is profoundly different from the inherent concepts tied to the word. There are many new terms and similarly twisted words: gender-affirming care; equity; de-colonization; indigenous; appropriation; genocide; liberal; trigger; violence… I could probably name a hundred at this sitting with ease.
‘Privilege’ in the modern sense is a trait or attribute which grants a person especial advantages or status and which was not earned through one’s own efforts (although even the concept of ‘earning’ something is disreputable among the people who use these words-no matter, it’s still widely understood, and will remain so… at least until the release of our new edition of the Newspeak Dictionary). This meaning would obviously include: intelligence, attractiveness, and even character traits like work ethic and honesty and compassion (inasmuch as they are functions of genes and environment, which they mostly are). The modern sense of privilege doesn’t include those.
It is, in fact, by paying attention to what ‘privilege’ does NOT contain that we see its true meaning and intent: a memetic cudgel to be used to beat the successful and compliant into line and demotivate those with initiative and ambition and personal goals, in order that a new society-wide regime of bureaucratic control can be exercised with de facto power over job selection, hiring, promotions, wages, benefits, housing, and association.
Not only does privilege not include immutable traits like height or natural intelligence or attractiveness (which are certainly social privileges and ones with FAR more social salience than race or sex), its converse (marginalization) also seems to completely neglect:
veteran status
psychological struggles and trauma (although the concept is often deployed it never relates to the real experience and mechanics of trauma; this is yet another hijacked concept used for political ends)
substance or behavior addiction
social anxiety
anti-social or borderline personality
orphanhood
introversion
autism and learning difficulties
being raised in a single-parent home
being raised in communities in which education is deprioritized
The last two are particularly noteworthy, for they are incredibly important in predicting the outcomes of many key areas of a person’ life and so should absolutely be included in the any coherent scheme of privilege and its lack. All of the factors above are deeply marginalizing factors. They are all generally not chosen and they are all disadvantages (to some extent) in many areas of life and achievement.
In fact, we quickly arrive at a curious fact: the only ‘privileges’ included in the modern formulation are traits which are not particularly meaningful for social science or identity formation and are often quite poor predictors of success. These are: race (‘whiteness’, another concept that is a neologism and is particularly toxic and which frankly demands its own essay), sex (maleness, even though being female has many discrete privileges of its own both in terms of social behavior and policy-making, these are discounted entirely), sexual identity and orientation. Immigrant status and physical disabilities and family income (leaving aside the number of parents in the home, which means it’s much less meaningful-two parents are twice as many as one, after all) are nodded at but privilege REALLY only relates to the first few factors: race, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity.
There is a narrative that our society is still organized in such a way as to oppress and ‘disenfranchise’ (ask someone to give you a meaning for this word as its currently used… and then sit back and enjoy) members of certain racial and sexual groups. The fact that women are excelling at every endeavor they collectively attempt and are only ‘under-represented’ (for the most part) in jobs and roles that they do not seek is irrelevant. The fact that black and brown immigrant groups arrive in the U.S. and generally excel according to every social and financial and educational metric within decades is suppressed. The fact that this idea of ‘privilege’ leaves out nearly every ACTUAL privilege and ‘marginalizing’ factor and instead focuses on a few identity characteristics which just so happen to be the friction points for Critical Theorists to erode our society and replace it with their ubiquitous and repressive bureaucracy is never acknowledged.
These logical objections have no purchase upon the true believer. They take it on faith that we live in a racist and heteronormative and patriarchal hellscape… and they take it on faith that a radical dismantling of our society will lead to paradise, despite the fact that such a thing has never been tried (and the few historical case studies are distinctly ominous). They take these items of faith as given and unquestionable and because their entire worldview is riddled with these kinds of inconsistencies and false meanings it is now barely possible to even communicate with them. Welcome to 2024.
"The fact that women are excelling at every endeavor they collectively attempt and are only ‘under-represented’ (for the most part) in jobs and roles that they do not seek is irrelevant. The fact that black and brown immigrant groups arrive in the U.S. and generally excel according to every social and financial and educational metric within decades is suppressed."
I think about this a lot, and I think the privilege confessional is due to their deep guilt and inability to direct that guilt and desire to help the vulnerable elsewhere, so it becomes firing squad. Henderson also influenced my thinking in this regard. You might also read that essay I linked mine by Liam Kofi Bright; you'd enjoy it.
"Privilege" is the absence of the penalties caused by having shitty parents, siblings, neighbors, and classmates.