The idea of "White Privilege" is everywhere...and it's NOT what you think.
So, let's talk about it:
A THREAD🧵
2/ The idea of white privilege has spread through society like wild fire since about 2013.
A lot of people think that the basic concept of white privilege is "white people face less racism then black people."
This is NOT what the term means
3/ The woke play a game with "white privilege" where they alternate between two positions: an extreme position they really believe and talk about openly when they won't be attacked, and a far more modest position they fall back on and defend when anyone questions them.
4/ This tactic is called a Motte and Bailey fallacy. It is named after a castle that has a motte (a small but easily defended fortress you can hide in when attacked), and a bailey (a large valley with lots of resources and treasure where all the fun takes place)
5/ In the case of white privilege, the motte is the idea that Black people face racism white people don't face, and the bailey is the idea that all white are racist and perpetuate an unjust system of racial hierarchy without knowing it:
6/ It's easy to see how this idea gains traction and how useful it is to the woke. They take a simple idea which seems right, and when everyone accepts that idea, they switch to an extreme position while using the same name.
7/ So, Lets take a look at the 'bailey' of white privilege, and show you what is actually going on.
First, you need to know that the woke carve up society according to the doctrines of "dominance" and "oppression." You could think if those as the yin and yang of wokeness.
8/ Dominance is when a group uses power to get to the top of the social pyramid, and then use that position to gain even more power to maintain their position at the top of the hierarchy. "Dominance" in woke-speak is always about taking, wielding and hoarding of social power.
9/ The social power that the dominant group has taken is then used by the dominant group rig society in their favor and oppress other groups in society. In other words, the powerful impose their ideas and interests on everyone. They do this by making sure that everything...
10/ in society is built so that in every situation the dominant group gets the maximum benefit at the expense of everyone else. This is done by making sure everything that exists in society is constructed so the ideology of the dominant group is embedded in literally everything.
11/ This means the woke think the way we think about and discuss art, law, science, math, sports, religion, architecture, and anything else in society you can think of, have had the ideology of the dominant group embedded in them. The result is that the "discourses" in society...
12/ or the way in which we talk about things and communicate, all take for granted and assume the ideology of the dominant group, and therefore preach, teach, and perpetuate the ideology of the dominant group even when the people discussing the ideas don't know it.
13/ The woke think the dominant group subtly control how everyone talks, thinks, and communicate. This "socializes" people into behaviors and ideas that benefit the dominant group. In other words, people are trained to think and act in way that benefit the people at the top...
14/ The woke think the dominant group (which the woke think is white males) use their control of how society communicates and thinks to tie the hands of other groups, and the result is anyone who isn't a white male is *oppressed* by the systems of power created by white men.
15/ Oppression is only experienced by non-dominant groups in society, not white men. White men may experience hardship or difficulty, but not oppression. Because oppression is to be disadvantaged by the systemic power of white men BECAUSE ONE IS NOT A WHITE MALE.
Read that again.
16/ According to wokeness, white men are never held down by society FOR BEING WHITE MEN. They might face prejudice, but that prejudice is never SYSTEMIC. That is, white men can only ever be victims of isolated instances of discrimination, never victims of oppression...
17/ because even when a white man is discriminated against by, for example, a woman of color, he is still discriminated against in the context of an entire society built for his benefit. So even when a white man faces prejudice, in the larger context he still has the upper hand.
18/ A good example of how the woke view privilege and oppression is a video game where white men play the game on easy mode, women play it on medium difficulty, and black disabled trans people play the game on the hardest difficulty there is.
This is how they view the world.
19/ The woke think 'white privilege' is the societal equivalent of white people are playing the game on an easier level then Black people, indigenous people, and brown people.
THAT is what the woke mean when they talk about 'white privilege.'
20/ I want you to notice how much intellectual machinery I had to first unpack just so I could then do a proper job of explaining 'white privilege.'
The reason I had to do that is that wokeness isn't just a set of ideas, it's a complete *worldview* that functions as a religion.
21/ White privilege, which we now can see is that being white grants one and unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits, and freedoms solely because they are white. In other words, white people are playing the game on easy mode. This means that...
22/ the woke think every situation a white person is in, no matter how difficult, hard, or painful, would be even more difficult, hard, and painful for Black, Indigenous, or Brown people. It doesn't even matter what the situation is, the woke think it's easier for white people.
23/ So, the next time a woke person begins to push on you the idea that you have "white privilege" your goal should be to show people the *worldview* behind wokeness. Don't let them get away with saying "white privilege is just that white people don't face the racism others do."
24/ Force them to defend their entire worldview so that people can have the opportunity to see the postmodern intellectual yeast the woke use to bake their worldview.
Don't let them play their Motte and Bailey game: force them to be clear about EXACTLY what they are arguing.
25/ You empower people to forcefully reject wokeness when you help them understand how wrong it is, and exactly why it is dangerous.
Do that, it's how we win.
/fin
PS/
This is an excellent essay about the Motte and Bailey of Social Justice/Wokeness:
People who celebrate the murder of their political opponents are not participating in the marketplace of ideas, they are encouraging deadly political violence by building a permission structure to legitimize and justify the murder of those they disagree with.
My freedom of speech means I get to clearly and succintly explain to the whole world that if you call for the assassination of your rivals this is not free speech, it is a direct incitement to political violence.
John Stewart Mill gave a famous example where he said that if someone claims corn dealers are starvering the poor this can be allowed if circulated through the press, but is not allowed when shouted in front of an excited mob assembled outside the house of a corn dealer....
1/ The Radical Left has used political violence to advance their cause for decades. What's new is the progressive left's professional class building a permission structure to justify the use of political violence
It's called Assassination Culture, and we need to talk about it
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2/ To understand what's happening, you need to understand that the line between progressive-left professional class and radical left has been blurred. The extremist radical left and the socially progressive "bluesky left" are increasingly intertwined both socially and politically
3/ This is because many of the extremist radical from the 60's and 70' who advocated for, and participated in, the use of political violence have been welcomed into the mainstream institutions that are run by the progressive left professional class.
Look at the number of pro-athletes posting condolences about Charlie Kirk, and you'll see what a huge cultural figure he was.
He wasn't just famous in conservative circles, his clips debating college students were a loadbearing pillar of online political pop-culture
His willingness to calmly and politely debate all comers on any issue (at the very moment when cancel culture was strongest and people were afraid to say what they think) made him a sort of lovable internet folkhero.
He was an indelible piece of the online landscape.
Charlie was not quarantined to the "conservative ghetto" of online content; he broke contain and became a mainstream cultural figure.
Charlie became the cultural symbol of free debate, free speech, and settling differences in public with words
What he is describing here is the deconstruction of America as an ideal. The goal is to destroy America by subverting the conception of America as a force for good which sustains American confidence, and attacking the founding narrative from which America derives it's legitimacy.
They will try to redefine America in a way which subverts the legitimacy of America as a national project. They want to erase the current American narrative, and replace it with a new one which grants them the right to inherit America's wealth, power, prestige, and influence.
They will attack America the same way they attacked Universities: by undermining legitimacy, authority, and self-confidence by asserting that the whole project is just racism, colonialism, and oppression in disguise.
2/ on racist resentment against white people and racialist identity politics, complete with the racist stereotyping.
This shows a continuity of thinking over a period of a decade, and there has been no take back, or explanation for the disgustingly racist tweets she made.
3/ Chris said he didn't care if she was fired, the point was to use her posts to force the New Yorker to choose between equal enforcement of bans on hiring racists who make racist content, or to be explicit that racism against Jews and whites is allowed...