{"id":4063,"date":"2014-05-25T17:13:36","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T22:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=4063"},"modified":"2014-05-25T18:19:45","modified_gmt":"2014-05-25T23:19:45","slug":"privilege-and-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2014\/05\/25\/morality\/privilege-and-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Privilege and Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Princeton freshman named Tal Fortgang recently made quite a stir with an essay on privilege.\u00a0 Entitled Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege<\/em><\/a>, it described his encounters with racism and sexism rationalized by the assumption that one is privileged simply by virtue of being white and male.\u00a0 In his words,<\/p>\n

There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. \u201cCheck your privilege,\u201d the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year… \u00a0\u201cCheck your privilege,\u201d they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it happens, Fortgang is Jewish, and his ancestors were victims, not only of the Nazis, but of Stalin and several of the other horrific if lesser known manifestations of anti-Semitism in 20th century Europe.\u00a0 His grandfather and grandmother managed to survive the concentration camps of Stalin and Hitler, respectively, and emigrate to the U.S.\u00a0 Again quoting Fortgang,<\/p>\n

Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will\u2014to paraphrase the man I never met: \u201cI escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?\u201d Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I a word, there are some rather obvious objections to the practice of applying crude metrics of “privilege” based on race and gender to Fortgang or anyone else, for that matter.\u00a0 When pressed on these difficulties, those who favor the “check your privilege” meme typically throw out a smokescreen in the form of a complex calculus for determining “genuine privilege.”\u00a0 For example, in a piece at The Wire entitled What the Origin of ‘Check Your Privilege’ Tells Us About Today’s Privilege Debates<\/em><\/a>, author Arit John notes that it was,<\/p>\n

Peggy MacIntosh, a former women’s studies scholar whose 1988 paper on white privilege and male privilege took “privilege” mainstream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and that MacIntosh’s take was actually quite nuanced:<\/p>\n

What MacIntosh classifies as a privilege goes deeper and more specific than most online commentators. There’s older or younger sibling privilege, body type privilege, as well as privileges based on\u00a0“your athletic abilities, or your relationship to written and spoken words, or your parents\u2019 places of origin, or your parents\u2019 relationship to education and to English, or what is projected onto your religious or ethnic background,” she says. Men, even straight, white, cis gender men, \u00a0are disadvantaged by the pressure to be tougher than they might be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The key is acknowledging everyone’s advantages and disadvantages, which is why Fortgang is both very wrong and (kind of) right: those telling him to check his privilege have privileges too, and are likely competing in the privilege Olympics. At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt him to check his privilege.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which brings us to the point of this post.\u00a0 Our species isn’t good at\u00a0nuance.\u00a0 The “privilege” debate will and must take place in a morally charged context.\u00a0 It is not possible to sanitize the discussion by scrubbing it free of moral emotions.\u00a0 That is one of the many reasons why it is so important to understand what morality is and why it exists.\u00a0 It does not exist as a transcendental entity that happened to pop into existence with the big bang, nor does it exist because the Big Man upstairs wants it that way.\u00a0 It exists because it evolved.\u00a0 It evolved because at a certain time in a certain environment unlike the one we live in today, individuals with the innate behavioral traits that give rise to what we generalize as “morality” happened to be more likely to survive and procreate.\u00a0 That is the only reason for its existence.\u00a0 Furthermore, human moral behavior is dual.\u00a0 It is our nature to view others in terms of ingroups and outgroups.\u00a0 That dual nature is not optional.\u00a0 It is all-pervasive, and artifacts of its existence can easily be found be glancing at any of the myriads of Internet\u00a0comment threads\u00a0relevant to\u00a0privilege or any other\u00a0controversial topic.<\/p>\n

The above insights have certain implications concerning the matter of privilege.\u00a0 It is certainly not out of the question that, in general, it is to an individual’s advantage to be male and white.\u00a0 However, as pointed out by Ms. MacIntosh, there are countless other ways in which one individual may be privileged over another in modern society.\u00a0 As a result, it is hardly out of the question for a person of color or a female to be more privileged than a white or a male.\u00a0 Given the nature of human morality, however, that’s almost never how the question of privilege is actually perceived.\u00a0 As pointed out by Jonathan Haidt<\/a> in his\u00a0The Righteous Mind<\/em><\/a>, we are a highly self-righteous species.\u00a0 It is our nature to rationalize why we are”good” and those who oppose us are “bad,” and not vice versa<\/em>.\u00a0 Furthermore, we tend to lump the “good” and the “bad” together into ingroups and outgroups.\u00a0 That, in turn, is the genesis of sexism, racism, and all the other manifestations of “othering.”<\/p>\n

It would seem then, that we are faced with a dilemma.\u00a0 Privilege exists.\u00a0 It is probable that there are privileges associated with being white, and with being male, and certainly, as Thomas Picketty<\/a> just pointed out for the umpteenth time in his “Capital in the 21st Century<\/a>,” with being wealthy.\u00a0 However, insisting that the playing field be leveled can lead and often has led in the past\u00a0to racism, sexism, and class hatred.\u00a0\u00a0The examples of Nazism and Communism have recently provided us with experimental data on\u00a0the effectiveness of racism and class\u00a0hatred in eliminating privilege.\u00a0 Fortunately,\u00a0I know of no\u00a0manifestations of sexism that have been quite that extreme.<\/p>\n

What “should” we do under the circumstances?\u00a0 There is no objective answer to that question.\u00a0 At best I can acquaint you with my personal whims.\u00a0 In general, I am uncomfortable with what I refer to as “morality inversions.”\u00a0 A “morality inversion” occurs when our moral emotions prompt us to do things that are a negation of the reasons for the existence of moral emotions themselves.\u00a0 For example, they might be actions that reduce rather than enhance our chances of survival.\u00a0 Giving up a privilege without compensation is an instance of such an action.\u00a0 Furthermore, I object to the irrational assumption by the habitually\u00a0sanctimonious and the pathologically pious among us that their moral emotions apply to me.\u00a0 When the implication of those moral emotions is that I am evil because of my race or sex, then, like Tal Fortgang, my inclination is to fight back.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I take a broad view of “compensation.”\u00a0 For example, “compensation” can take the form of being able to live in a society that is\u00a0peaceful and harmonious because of the general perception that the playing field is level and the distribution of the necessities and luxuries of life is fair.\u00a0 Nazism and Communism aren’t the only ways of dealing with privilege.\u00a0 I now enjoy many\u00a0advantages my ancestors didn’t share acquired through processes that were a good deal less drastic, even though they required the sacrifice of privilege by, for example, hereditary nobilities.<\/p>\n

However, like Mr. Fortgang, I reject the notion that I owe anyone\u00a0special favors\u00a0or reparations based on my race.\u00a0 In that case, the probability of “compensation” in any form would be essentially zero.\u00a0 Other than whites, I know of no other race or ethnic group that has ever sacrificed its “privileges” in a similar fashion.\u00a0 Millions of whites have been enslaved by Mongols, Turks, and Arabs, not to mention other whites, over periods lasting many centuries.\u00a0 The last I heard, none of those whose ancestors inflicted slavery on my race has offered\u00a0to sacrifice any of its “privileges” by way of compensation.\u00a0 I would be embarrassed and ashamed to ask for such reparations.\u00a0 I am satisfied with equality before the law.<\/p>\n

Beyond that,\u00a0I don’t insist that the dismantling of certain privileges can never be to our collective advantage.\u00a0 I merely suggest that, if dismantle we must, it be done in the light of a thorough understanding of the origins and nature\u00a0of human morality, lest our moral emotions once again blow up in our faces.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Princeton freshman named Tal Fortgang recently made quite a stir with an essay on privilege.\u00a0 Entitled Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege, it described his encounters with racism and sexism rationalized by the assumption that one is privileged simply by virtue of being white and male.\u00a0 In his words, There is … Continue reading “Privilege and Morality”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46,24,110,105,229,6,28,65,135,5,97,88],"tags":[120,286],"class_list":["post-4063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amity-enmity-complex","category-demonization","category-ethics","category-evolutionary-psychology-2","category-feminism","category-good-and-evil","category-human-nature","category-human-rights","category-ingroups-and-outgroups","category-morality","category-racism","category-slavery","tag-morality-2","tag-privilege"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-13x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4063"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4074,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions\/4074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}