Reply #41: Insight, consideration & "rtbackatcha tone" are in the eye of the beholder

[omega minimo]

omega minimo
36. So you didn't even try to find one, did you? INSIGHT I said insight
not "accept it as true, without consideration."

SHOUTING “insight”-- now THAT’S funny! B-) I reserve the right to use caps for EMPHASIS (because I lack your elegant html skills) without being accused of “bristling” “complete with shouty-CAPITALS and a generally right-back-atcha tone.” One wonders if you perceive “a generally right-back-atcha tone” in non-women’s rights areas of the discussion board; and whether you bristle at it in quite the same way.

I took a look at the White Privilege Checklist. The introduction may have created a different context (especially in the classroom) and been received differently with her suggestions:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
White Privilege Checklist

Peggy McIntosh, Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, describes white privilege as “an invisible package of unearned assets, which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks” (McIntosh, 1989).

The following are examples of ways white individuals have privilege because they are white.

:bounce: (Non Shout Emphasis) Please read the list and place a check next to the privileges that apply to you or that you have encountered.

At the end, try to list at least two more ways you have privilege based on your race.

http://www.unh.edu/residential-life/diversity/aw_article17.pdf.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:nBwgEbdwuwwJ:www.unh.edu/residential-life/diversity/aw_article17.pdf+male+privilege+checklist&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Racial privilege is only one forms of privilege. What are other examples of privilege? (e.g., privilege based on gender, sexual orientation, class, and religion).

Can you think of ways one might have privilege based on these factors? (e.g., that you do not have to worry about being verbally or physically harassed because of your sexual orientation; or you can be sure that your religious holiday will be acknowledged and represented in store displays, classroom discussions, etc.). Please list these forms of privilege.
__________________________________________

McIntosh observes that whites in the U.S. are "taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group." To illustrate these invisible systems, McIntosh wrote a list of 26 invisible privileges whites benefit from."

:thumbsup:

I suggested that you find that mythical insightful man because I thought the point of the list was to gain insight into how “these invisible systems” affect a group that the reader may not be part of.... that seems the intention of the White Privilege Checklist. In that case, it’s true, it was presented to “you” to “Please read the list and place a check next to the privileges that apply to you or that you have encountered.” It seems the point was to reflect on the ones that are relevant to “you”-- not to refute the ones that aren’t.

For this reason, it’s clear this was designed as a teaching tool promoting understanding, not divisiveness.

“My point is that the point--the invisible pervasiveness of male societal dominance--is poorly served by a dubiously accurate checklist of the benefits of being male. Such a list can ONLY (your emphasis) inspire a sort of fact-checking, especially when one or more entries on that list are only anecdotally true if at all.”

This “dubiously accurate checklist” ... "can ONLY inspire a sort of fact-checking..." Maybe so. Checking for the affirmative, rather than the negative?

“Why is it objectionable that a representative of a group should respond to a commentary upon that group?

Was it "a commentary upon that group" or was it an illustration of social realities, an invitation to enter and consider the experience of those-other-than-the-socially-dominant-group, an opportunity to gain and share some understanding.

Very nice talking to you. :hi: