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I can think of several things, from cultural long term changes, rhetoric and acknowledge of human struggle, to smaller changes on the local level.

We could start by not calling them privileged, demeaning them in their struggle. Acknowledging peoples struggle in life is often the first step in helping a demographic, be that women, black, white, immigrant, American born, or what have you.

As cultural changes, one would be to lower the harm from being unemployed. For men, too much of social value and social opportunity is tied to being employed and having a high earning potential.



I don't know about this one. I'm able-bodied and have 0 problems with being called privileged for being able bodied. I can hear well, I can see fine, I don't need any machines or devices to help me move around. In this respect I'm very privileged. I don't feel like I'm being demeaned by acknowledging this. It is actually to me acknowledging that other people struggle in ways that I do not.

Similarly, I struggle to see why accusations of white privilege are terrible. I don't believe that because someone is white they can't suffer. I believe the statement is because someone is white they don't have to go through or experience certain things.

Like I don't have to experience the struggle of taking public transport as a person in a wheelchair, because I don't need a wheelchair, does not mean I don't have my own problems. I just don't have the specific problems of someone who has a mobility impairment.

I don't see how acknowledging this is demeaning. It's just looking at reality. White people can struggle, just not with race. Able bodied people can struggle, just not with being disabled. Is that demeaning to white or able bodied people to recognize this? I genuinely don't know.


The message focus and the message it sends to people is wrong. The signal is that there are systemic problems that can't be changed because people in power are guilty of having power. "White privilege" falls into a mentality that I call victimization, where instead of people looking at things through the lens of "how can I change myself and be better", they look at it through the lens of "how can others change themselves to help me be better". This is a hopeless signal that doesn't help anyone.

What we should be saying to people is that they should strive to be better because that's the only sure way they can hope to improve their situations. Waiting for other people to help you isn't going to do anything. The only thing you have control over is your own life. If the public discourse around these issues focuses solely on how other people have control and how you have no control, then the situation only becomes worse because then people have an excuse to not try, and they don't.


The problem isn't with the concept of privilege itself. The problem is that the concept and the word have been weaponized into an insult instead of the admonishment to recognize one's advantages that it should be. That, and too much emphasis has been put on racial privilege and not enough on class privilege, or at least social class privilege.


>I'm able-bodied and have 0 problems with being called privileged for being able bodied.

It is not being called privileged that's the problem. It's being shamed or put in some hierarchy of oppression that is the problem.

>I don't see how acknowledging this is demeaning.

I'm sorry if this comes across as rude, but, obviously this conversation isn't about you. Many Americans they have seen this as demeaning. And for what it's worth, I know many people who do demean white, able-bodied, cis-gendered people for their "lack of" oppression.


"White privilege" as a phrase vastly oversimplifies the cultural hierarchy.

It is probably rather insulting to a unemployed rust belt white man with no degree, who is getting by on social assistance, to be tagged by some well-off person on the coasts with a professional degree, that they are suffering from "white male privilege".

For a start, such "privilege" is not terribly applicable in this case. Regardless of whether the professional is not white and/or not male, the professional with the degree is in the "higher caste" in American society compared to the unemployed white man with no degree.

Many articles that use such phrases as "white privilege" tend to be accusatory and overly moralizing. If that's not insulting, at the very least you are not going to change any minds. (As an example from the "other side", my brother works at Citigroup. Guess what I start thinking of a person's argument when they start descending into an "evil Wall Street elite" meme?)

I agree that "white privilege" exists but there are better ways to phrase this -- at the very least, acknowledge and understand the other side.


Because words are supposed to have their specific, well-understood meaning. By your logic, a guy with one arm and one leg is privileged too; there are certainly people out there that have it much worse than him.

My (laymen's) understanding of the word 'privilege' was always more along the line of "Mozart was his piano teacher". But it looks like at some point the word was redefined to some incredibly technical meaning whereby a broke--but white, and male--coal miner is also privileged.


If you want to start a war, you need to tell people they are under attack: "Naturally, the common people don't want war ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

This works the same for culture wars, or "war on christmas" etc. People are fundamentally nice, they don't want to stop gay people from marrying, so you need to frame it as "an attack on traditional marriage" to get people riled up with righteous fury.

Pointing out the obvious fact that white people have advantages needs to be twisted too. By for example pointing out that a poor white man has problems that a rich non-white man doesn't. Totally ignoring the obvious comparison point being two poor men, or two poor women, or two rich men/women with different skin colors. Not getting the point becomes imperative, to maintain the illusion of it being an attack.


When you call people "privileged", what they hear is "you have it too good".

If your life happens to actually truly suck, it's hard to not resent those who want to make it even worse.


> We could start by not calling them privileged, demeaning them in their struggle.

We don't call them privileged. Rather, they hear the insults and put-downs they want to hear by tuning in to customized news and propaganda that confirm their deepest insecurities.

> As cultural changes, one would be to lower the harm from being unemployed. For men, too much of social value and social opportunity is tied to being employed and having a high earning potential.

Re-engineering the social brain so that status doesn't matter? Wow. I doubt you'd have anything like homo sapiens after that.


>Re-engineering the social brain so that status doesn't matter?

Status will always matter, but you can change the signifiers of status. There are plenty of places in, for example, rural China where women do most of the work while the men mostly stay home, and yet the men do not lack for status because of that.


Women doing backbreaking work in the (rural) fields while the men stay at home with the children? Citation needed!


The Mosuo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo) are the most well known, but many ethnic groups in the southwest operate in similar ways. I grew up in a family belonging to one of them, so it always seemed strange to me when people claim women can't do physically demanding tasks.


I remain skeptical that anyone can be content contributing nothing. The Mosuo Cultural Development Association, which works directly with the Mosuo, has this to say:

"It is true that, traditionally, Mosuo women tend to take on most of the labour duties at home. They take care of the animals, tend the fields, etc. However, this is due to a historic division of responsibilities where Mosuo men were mostly traders, traveling long distances by caravan to trade with other groups. Since the men were frequently gone from home, the women were left to take care of the work. However, when the men were at home, they would also share in the duties there.

In modern times, the practice of having trading caravans has effectively ceased; with the result that one of the primary male roles has been rendered irrelevant. It is true, therefore, that you may often find men lounging around while women work hard; however, this is not universal (I've visited many homes where the men share in these duties equally with the women); and does not necessarily mean that Mosuo men are lazy…it indicates, rather, the need to define a viable new “male” role within the modern realities of Mosuo culture."

http://www.mosuoproject.org/myths.htm

The idea that any person can be content to contribute nothing meaningful to a family/group/village/society completely misunderstands human nature.


What it shows is that signifiers of status can and do change with culture. In some places, the only status that matter for women is children. Most people do not view women like that any more, and culturally we have moved on while remaining part of the human race.

If culture can change so female status is not solely based on their ability to raise chilren, culture can change so male status is not solely based on their ability to support children.


True, but now I realize we're getting far afield of the original point of contention.

The issue is that US rural men are unemployed. But the US rural economy will continue to decline until it reaches a balance with global commerce; protectionism, at best, is only a temporary measure. The US rural economy has even more to fall over the next decade.

Can we really think a solution is to teach rural men to find value in contributing nothing? A sinking economy gives nothing to do; even family-raising is a dismal prospect with poor schools and declining healthcare. The best and only plausible scenario is that rural men pack up their familes and move to the cities where jobs are plentiful. Indeed, this is the worldwide trend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization




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