It occurred to me that I have been relating to people who preach the idea of “privilege” as one monolithic religion, but then I realized every religion has denominations within it. Taking it a step further, even if I am not a subscriber to a particular religion, even if I don’t believe it, I get that others might get value from that particular religion, and that I might even get some value from that religion, without believing every doctrine that every denomination preaches.
One can get value from the words attributed to Jesus Christ even if one is not Christian.
The religion that is “privilege”, like any other religion, contains fundamentalists, moderates, and folks who only go to church because its a great place to gossip. There are followers of “privilege” who use the teachings of privilege to try and better themselves while allowing others to find their own, possibly completely different (i.e. nonbeliever), path. There are those who preach “privilege” as the one true god and that everyone must forsake all other gods and worship at the alter of “privilege”.
There are those who use the religion that is “privilege” as a way to go on a witchunt to find sinners and burn them at the stake. There are the “fire and brimstone” (pillar of salt) preachers of privilege. And there are also the “New Testament” (love thy neighbor) advocates of understanding “privilege”.
I am not a follower of the religion that is “privilege”. I can see potential value in the discussion, but in the end, the language, the tone, the etymological baggage, the approach, and everything that is wrapped up in the term “privilege” seems to me to create more problems that it solves.
I support equality. And I think that equality can be achieved through looking at one group being at a disadvantage relative to another group, or through looking at one group being at an advantage over another group. But I think the term “privilege” is loaded with emotional baggage of wrong doing.
More importantly, I think anyone who is a follower of the church of privilege is a fool to ignore the denominations within their church who use the term “privilege” as a guilt bat and as a gag. I think witchunting, guilt batting, gagging, and burning at the stake, are far more common than many members would admit.
The thing of it is this: Does the term “privilege” create more problems than it solves?
No doubt, the moderates and the folks who use “privilege” to improve themselves likely assume that all followers of privilege are just like them. It was a mistake I was making myself, thinking that all members of the church of “privilege” were the same, that if one person used privilege as a bat, they all did.
As far as I can see, the notion of “Privilege” points to an idea that might be useful in the fight for equality, but the word is packed with such baggage of guilt and wrong doing that it seems nearly impossible to have even a single conversatino about privilege without someone usign it as a guiltbat. And it seems that privilege is a young enough religion that followers don’t distinguish themselves as different denominations even though they are completely different.
There are other ways to discuss the issue that “privilege” tries to highlight without the baggage that the word “privilege” evokes. A simple example woudl be the word “advantage”. Advantage refers to a difference between two people or groups, without assigning guilt or blame or implying which one is “right” and which is “wrong”. THe word “privilege” assigns guilt and blame and implies that privilege is “wrong” and unprivilege is “right”.
That creates issues when you have privilege just by virtue of beign straight, white, and male. It carries along with it the baggage that you are wrong and guilty for being straight, white, and male.
And more than one member of the church of privilege uses the term exactly that way. The more moderate members seem to be unable to correct their more fundamentalist, fire and brimstone, members.
I could just as easily say that I am at an *advantage* over others by virtue of being straight, white, and male, instead of saying I have *privilege* as a result of the same.
Both point to a difference in power between straights and gays, whites and blacks, men and women. But “advantage” doesn’t carry with it the association of guilt and wrong doing. Nor does it carry with it the implication of how to correct privilege. There are rights and there are privileges. Rights are things that everyone deserves. Privileges are advantages extended to a small group, and that privilege can be taken away if the group misbehaves.
As a white person in a country that has racial profiling by the police, I am at an *advantage* over people of color when it comes to how I relate to the police. But the way the police treat me is not a PRIVILEGE, it is a RIGHT. It is a right that has been taken away from people of color. No one should fear the police will treat them poorly just because of their skin color. If you call that a PRIVILEGE, then that word carries with it the implication that you want to TAKE AWAY the way the police relate to me and make me worry that maybe the cops will treat me badly because I am WHITE.
Being treated fairly by the cops is a RIGHT. It is not a PRIVILEGE.
Calling it a privilege carries along with it a whole bunch of baggage that doesn’t fit the facts of that scenario.
But followers of the religion of “privilege”, especially the witchunters, the fire and brimstone preachers, and the folks looking for a religion to hide their guilt-battery behaviour behind, those people don’t care that the word doesn’t fit the facts. They aren’t using the term for its accuracy of description. They’re using it for its accuracy as a weapon. They can swing “privilege” in a room and hit someone nearly everytime.
The fire and brimstone preachers aren’t going to change the term “privilege” because it is inaccurate or because it makes the fight for Equality and Equal RIGHTS harder. They aren’t focused on equality. THey are focused on the witchhunt.
The thing is that the moderates of the religion, they actually ARE motivated for equal rights. The question I’m wondering at the moment is whether they can see that the way many of the members of their church are actually on a witchunt and that the use of the term “privilege” is making it harder to attain equal rights than some more accurate, less baggaged, terminology.
At the moment, I don’t think they do.
