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Most rhetoric around 'checking your privilege' or self flagellation about being white are more of a signaling mechanism that you are a better human being than an actual attempt at doing anything meaningful to improve the lives of oppressed people. Basically: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/11/19/its-pretty-simple-really/ quote:“Social justice” is an awkward term for an immensely important project, perhaps the most important project, which is to make the world a more equitable, fair, and compassionate place. But the project for social justice has been captured by an elite strata of post-collegiate, digitally-enabled children of privilege, who do not pursue that project as an end, but rather use it as a means with which to compete, socially and professionally, with each other. In that use, they value not speech or actions that actually result in a better world, but rather those that result in greater social reward, which in the digital world is obvious and explicit. That means that they prefer engagement that creates a) outrage and b) jokes, rather than engagement that leads to positive change. In this disregard for actual political success, they reveal their own privilege, as it’s only the privileged who could ever have so little regard for actual, material progress. As long as they are allowed to co-opt the movement for social justice for their own personal aggrandizement, the world will not improve, not for women, people of color, gay and transgender people, or the poor. If you want to do something good for oppressed people, go do it. If you are a wealthy (by global standards) person, the best way for you to do so is to donate a meaningful fraction of your income to a good charity, silently, every month. If instead, your goal is to feel good about how much better you are than the hoi polloi, post on twitter/message boards about privilege. Keep in mind, every single tweet and post you've ever made about privilege, every brilliant super burn which received 50 likes on twitter has done less to improve the life of a marginalized person than a 100 dollar donation to Doctors without Borders, and this is an empirical fact you cannot escape from. If you value the lives of poor people, work towards improving them. iFederico fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 11:49
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Eh, that actually was kinda funny, I'll admit.
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Dec 10, 2014 10:08
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The Snark posted:Would've been funnier if I wasn't fairly sure at this point Sedan Chair actually believes it boiled down to this. Wouldn't be the first to seriously compare their tactics favorably to MLK's. They wouldn't, in fact, even be the fifth. Sedan Chair is an insufferable douchebag but that was still funny.
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Dec 10, 2014 14:42
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