from Hacker News

Talking about white privilege causes reduction in support for politicians

by madpen on 5/14/20, 12:54 AM with 84 comments

• by supernova87a on 5/14/20, 1:39 AM

  I think it's because the accusation of "privilege" is conversation-stopping. There is no where to go once this is said, because it's a fundamental attack on who the person is, which is something that cannot be changed, discards any merit of a point being argued, and provides no solutions.

  It essentially asserts that the person saying something is to be disqualified and/or the opinion is inferior without any logical proof. And it suggests "my position is inherently more correct than yours" because I'm not privileged. It signals the end of rational discussion.

  Is it any wonder that many people (when their private opinions are polled, rather than asked to join shouting in a crowd) actually dislike the tactic?

• by esotericn on 5/14/20, 1:24 AM

  Sure, because it's a controversial framing.

  White privilege absolutely exists, as does 'male privilege', 'health privilege' (mental or physical), 'preference/motivation privilege' (e.g. do you enjoy, or can you at least tolerate, doing things that are financially viable) and a whole host of other inherent advantages that a person can possess from birth, or obtain later in life and hold on to.

  Quite literally, 'privilege' (less aggressively known as advantage) is obviously a thing. Even if you don't consider the 'white' variant, people win and lose the game of society based on pretty arbitrary attributes.

  We generally don't run around speaking about those issues in those terms, though, because it's just not a very tactful way of addressing them (attacking core components of a person's ego), it's much more politically manageable to discuss equality/empathy/representation for example.

  It would be equally unpopular to talk about e.g. the 'transgender plight', despite the struggles trans individuals face. Words are important.

• by seventytwo on 5/14/20, 1:17 AM

  Obviously.

  White privilege absolutely exists, and it should absolutely be discussed, but in the context of politics, it’s an implied message of, “your problems aren’t significant and you should get over it.” Whether or not what’s objectively true has no bearing on how it makes people feel and how, then, they will perceive the person speaking.

  A better approach is to focus on shared problems, but perhaps give a bit more attention to those with particular hardships or barriers.

• by jchw on 5/14/20, 1:26 AM

  Privilege has become a dirty word, and I suspect it is in no small part due to the fact that some people feel it is over-emphasized compared to other aspects of one’s status (especially on an individual level, of course,) and because it is sometimes used in a combative manner to cut others down, which perhaps unconsciously sends the message that instead of increasing the privilege of the underprivileged, we’d rather decrease the privilege of others instead, to even the playing field. And I can’t really attest to this, because I mostly stay out of political discussions, but it would fit with the American, and perhaps human, tradition of focusing on retribution instead of, but often under the guise of, improving the status quo, ignoring evidence that this is not the happening. I feel this kind of behavior is really evident any time human emotions run high, and it unfortunately describes how we handle a lot of problems in the U.S., especially crimes: we don’t really want to try to improve on the root causes, or to rehabilitate, often we want people to rot in prison.

  The word privilege on its own should not bring all of this baggage, but it feels like it’s too late. The word is now tainted for many. Does this mean serious discussion about it has been pushed off a couple generations?

• by duxup on 5/14/20, 1:48 AM

  White privilege and other topics are largely academic topics that are statistical and general in nature. Take that to an individual and tell them about their privilege based on some stats, they're going to feel like it doesn't fit... and really it doesn't on an individual level.

  Obama had a speech near the end of his presidency, he talked about situations talking to individuals who have real struggles, real problems in their lives and don't feel like anyone handed anything to them.

  Then someone comes to them who doesn't know them, and talks to them about their privilege? That's not going to help convince them of anything.

  Even to a further extent, talk to anyone you don't know .. and tell them what you know about them based on just their race? That's probabbly not going to go well.

  You're not getting far, and frankly on an individual / non academic level it seems off the mark for an individual or audience.

  I feel like concepts like white privilege and such sort of escaped academia and more general conversations, and are swung around a bit wildly and inaccurately by some folks.

• by wolco on 5/14/20, 1:24 AM

  Not a big surprise. In the simple world of white privilege white people have an advantage and black people are disadvantaged from birth. Policies must balance this out.

  In the real world life people don't fit into these simple boxes. Where do half white / half black people fit in. Are they slightly privileged?Should someone 100% black feel disadvantaged over someone with lighter skin? Are brown people more privileged? Does it matter if they are from Mexico vs Arab vs Southern Italian vs Indian? Who has more or less privilege?

  Where do the Obama daughters fit in? They have more privileges and a bigger leg up over anyone reading this site. Do they suffer from white privilege?

• by rayiner on 5/14/20, 1:54 AM

  > Political scientists have long known that major shifts in a nation’s racial makeup or in its racial policies can provoke a right-wing response among some portions of the electorate. Since the 1960s, the Democratic Party in the U.S.has staked out a position as the party of racial liberalism (Carmines and Stimson 1989). Democratic support for civil rights legislation helped the party secure the long-term loyalty of a majority of African American voters, but alienated many of the party’s white voters. This led to Republican gains in new areas of the country, especially the South (Black and Black 2002.)

  That's historical revisionism. Four Civil Rights Acts were passed in the 1950s and 1960s, plus the Voting Rights Act. Each passed by overwhelming majorities in the House Republican Caucus, and much narrower majorities in the House Democratic Caucus. In fact, the 1960s were a time of the Democratic Party toeing the line on civil rights to appease southern Democrats. Indeed, while people talk about Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," Nixon won the South only because George Wallace. Wallace, running on a segregationist platform, split the Democratic vote with Hubert Humphrey. Wallace outright won 5 deep southern states, and beat Humphrey in several others. Nixon--who had helped shepherd the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress--didn't carry a majority in any southern state.

  In 1976, Carter won the Presidency with the traditional coalition of conservative Southerners and liberal north easterners, while Ford won the west and most of the midwest. Reagan won both the south and most of the northeast, and so did George H.W. Bush in 1988. It wasn't until the 1990s, with Bill Clinton, that the now-familiar alignment of the south with republicans and the northeast with democrats took shape.

• by Barrin92 on 5/14/20, 1:34 AM

  The title of the submission seems (intentionally?) misleading. It causes loss of support among white voters, conservatives and moderates in particular, the actual title of the paper being

  "Losing Elections, Winning the Debate: Progressive Racial Rhetoric and White Backlash"

• by c3534l on 5/14/20, 2:00 AM

  Even if the word isn't that bad inherently, the racist and dismissive way that its used in practice makes it a very foolish word to use if you're trying to connect with people rather than alienate them.

• by trhway on 5/14/20, 1:49 AM

  Framing an issue in one way may immediately get you half-way to the effective solution while another way would get you far away from it. "White privilege" immediately suggests a solution - "deprivileging". Not many would feel like having such a solution applied to them, it feels like an attack and triggers instinctive self-defense. The same issue can be framed as various groups/classes/races being "underprivileged". That triggers empathic response and calls to the sense of justice and equality.

• by spacefearing on 5/14/20, 1:50 AM

  The the phrase white privilege is an ingenious attempt by malicious people and their useful-idiots to divert attention from issues of class to issues of race.

  These toxic propagandists have tricked millions of people into believing that the poorest white person is as responsible for the poverty of black people as the richest.

  Transforming the political fight from the 1% vs the 99% into a fight of the racial majority vs a racial minority. If the 99% are fighting among themselves, they can't unite against the 1%.

  Millions of powerless white people predictably take offense at the idea that they're responsible for an economic system rigged by the rich to oppress poor people of all races. Of course prejudice exists but the core issue holding people back is purely economic, not racial.

• by AstralStorm on 5/14/20, 1:33 PM

  Ultimately the problem with the phrasing is that privilege is something given which can be removed. It's false because no one in particular decrees or gives benefits for being white - which would also be illegal.

  Disparity and disadvantage are better words.

  It's a social bias, and those cannot be changed by a decree. So not only is it attacking people, alleging guilt, it's also an ineffective stance to repeatedly point it out. Affirmative action also has connotation of failure to solve the issues black people face.

• by aklemm on 5/14/20, 8:56 PM

  The framing around “privilege” is useful because it forces a reckoning that white people need to cede something in order for a more equitable society to emerge. Granted, I see the many problems with it, but a lot of that is just white people choking on the reality that they’ll need to give up some things.

• by _y5hn on 5/14/20, 6:12 AM

  Generalizations based on colour is ......?

• by lainga on 5/14/20, 1:15 AM

  "Some scholars suggest we can best understand these developments as a form of backlash against ongoing cultural, economic,and demographic trends (Kaufmann 2019; Norris and Inglehart 2019)"

  Is the paper paper based on the premise that the right-wing views, or the rising success thereof, are an anomaly or "backlash" from some normal state?

  ed: or not? Is there another interpretation of the first page?

• by the_grue on 5/14/20, 1:42 AM

  As far as I understand the term, white privilege means some kind of economical and political advantage of whites over other races. Meaning that the outcomes are different, depending on one's race. From a brief glimpse of the paper, it is quite clear that the authors push for equality of outcome and label their position as 'liberal'. However, many people disagree. The classical liberal position is granting every person equality of opportunity, saying nothing about equality of outcome. And for a good reason: you actually can't have both. Either everyone is equal at the start of the game and then the more successful achieve more, or everyone is equal at the end, and for that you have to make their opportunities unequal.

  When you think about it this way, equality of outcome is essentially a Marxist rhetoric. So it's quite understandable why many people don't like politicians who advocate this controversial position.

  If, the other hand, what politicians really want is a greater equality of opportunity, they really should make that clear. But I don't think they usually mean that, given that people who talk about white privilege are usually the ones who push for so-called 'affirmative action', which clearly reduces equality of opportunity in favor of equality of outcome.