Open Thread, April 27-May 4, 2014

NancyLebovitz

You know the drill - If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

And, while this is an accidental exception, future open threads should start on Mondays until further notice.

You know the drill - If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

And, while this is an accidental exception, future open threads should start on Mondays until further notice.

It is reasonable that people with certain life experiences may have difficulties understanding the issues of people with different life experiences

Notice that this steelmanning of 'privilege' is completely symmetrical, i.e., an "unprivileged" person would have the same problems with respect to the "privileged" person as conversely. Given that this "steelman" has no connection to the common use of the word "privilege" the question arises, of why that word is being used at all? The answer, I suspect, is in order to sneak in the connotations from the regular meaning of the word "privilege".

The more power you have, the more damage you can do through ignorance.

0pragmatist12y

The argument against symmetry is that the privileged perspective is massively over-represented in prominent cultural productions (movies, books, op-eds, etc.), so underprivileged people have many more resources available that allow them some access to the experiences of the privileged. See this, for instance.