The Glossary of Newspeak: "White Privilege"

The terminology of social justice serves as a shared framework of understanding between sociologists, activists and identity politicians. But for rest of us it is little more than a glossary of newspeak which serves to justify and disguise the hypocrisy of those who speak it.

Vacuous phrases proliferate throughout, and all of them deserve to be challenged before they become regnant. That these ideas are taught in schools makes our task all the more important.

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One such phrase is “White Privilege”. According to Google N-gram Viewer, which charts the frequency of phrases in Google's database of books, the author’s use of “white privilege” has grown exponentially since the 90’s. The phrase is seeping into our common discourse.

The philosophy of white privilege found acceptance in the late 80’s, when Peggy McIntosh revealed her own privilege in an essay titled White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

She admits that:

“As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.”

This represents a cynical retreat from the color-blindness of MLK, which not only pointed out racism, but also refuted it. For McIntosh, however, it’s not that racism is evil, unjust, or false on its face. It’s not that racism leads us to error or superstition or prejudice. On the contrary; according to McIntosh, racism has also its benefits, its advantages, its privileges. So long as you are of the same race as the racists you will be rewarded. Her skin color endowed her with an “invisible package of unearned assets that [she] can count on cashing in each day”. I can’t imagine a white supremacist would be horrified to hear this.

The theory is false for an obvious reason. No one is born with privilege because privilege is always granted by someone other than the one receiving it. And until one is granted privilege from someone else, one is not privileged. The logical conclusion of her theory leads to absurdities. For instance, a homeless white man is more privileged than Willow Smith, a black woman born to celebrity parents, because the former has a lighter skin and a certain type of genitalia the latter doesn’t. He was born privileged; she was born underprivileged.

Her notion of “privilege”, which she affords to both men (male privilege) and whites (white privilege) en masse, is always presumed in a series of question begging and never demonstrated. Sure, it seems irrefutable that a racist would afford certain privileges to members of her own racial group while denying them to others, but describing routine racism as advantageous seems to miss the point entirely.

Because what happens when, under the spell of this belief, someone previously denied an “invisible package of unearned assets” decides that she would like some of it for her own?

For the color-blind, race privilege is the same garden-variety essentialism found littered throughout our racist past. It is the same race superstition albeit cloaked in the finery of good intentions and virtue. But for the identity politician, it is a necessary precondition to their perverted notion of justice. For that reason we should be wary.

a reply to: Propagandalf

Vacuous phrases proliferate throughout, and all of them deserve to be challenged before they become regnant.

I agree, other examples include "safe space", "triggered", "snowflake", "sjw", "npc", "fake news", etc.

You seem to only be recognizing the "newspeak" proliferated on one side while ignoring the "newspeak" proliferated on the other. Why is that?

Les.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
a reply to: Propagandalf

Vacuous phrases proliferate throughout, and all of them deserve to be challenged before they become regnant.

I agree, other examples include "safe space", "triggered", "snowflake", "sjw", "npc", "fake news", etc.

You seem to only be recognizing the "newspeak" proliferated on one side while ignoring the "newspeak" proliferated on the other. Why is that?

Les.

You do realize that the terms "safe space", "triggered", "snowflake" and "social justice warrior" all came from the left?

As did "micro-aggressions".

The right uses the terms to mock the left now.

As they should... teaching our children that a therapy dog and crayons is an acceptable way to cope with you not getting your way isn't the best way to go about raising the next generation of people.

Sorry if that triggered you.

a reply to: Propagandalf

Unfortunately, you are not saying things that many of us have not already pointed out--things that will be ignored by those who embrace such terminology, phrases, and ideologies. The willful ignorance demonstrated in ignoring such valid and logical points makes discussion very difficult with these people.

And then we have people like the following, who think that it's your duty to opine on all phrases and terms, even though it was your prerogative to discuss one...

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1

I agree, other examples include "safe space", "triggered", "snowflake", "sjw", "npc", "fake news", etc.

You seem to only be recognizing the "newspeak" proliferated on one side while ignoring the "newspeak" proliferated on the other. Why is that?

Les.

I'm sorry, does the author of their own thread have to discuss everything that YOU find pertinent?

(no, that answer is no...if you want to discuss those, start your own thread. But Lumenari is correct)

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
a reply to: Propagandalf

Vacuous phrases proliferate throughout, and all of them deserve to be challenged before they become regnant.

I agree, other examples include "safe space", "triggered", "snowflake", "sjw", "npc", "fake news", etc.

You seem to only be recognizing the "newspeak" proliferated on one side while ignoring the "newspeak" proliferated on the other. Why is that?

Les.

I'm limiting this discussion to the phrases taught in academia, taught to children, and in many cases the official policies of universities, so-called "terms of social justice"—in this case, white privilege—not the phrases you find on internet boards. If you are unable or unwilling to refute what I've argued, instead preferring your red herrings, then your may your fallacies be revealed for what they are.

Shouldn't all the trolling and baiting threads be in the mud pit?

I actually do think white privilege exists, but not to the degree that social justice warriors and "woke" black folks like to claim. It isn't a factor in everyday life, but I do think it is there in some instances.

The only way I can sum it up is that even if you are wealthy and black, you still face some discrimination that a white person of lower socio-economic status would not necessarily face.

So yes, a black kid from a wealthy black family may actually have more opportunities than a poor white kid. However, in situations, where that black kid's social status is not known, it is entirely possible that the white kid would have some white priviledge that the rich black kid would not.

An example of this would be like in my community where you can have a black kid getting caught smoking weed and a white kid getting caught smoking weed. The general assumption would likely be the black kid is a thug, etc when in fact he could be from a very wealthy home and just doing dumb teen sh*t. On the other hand, the white kid could very well be a troublemaker, but he gets caught with a joint the default assumption would be he is a wealthy kid just doing teen sh*t. His whiteness is what leads to the favorable assumption.

There is a certain negativity that comes along with blackness that every black person is aware of in life. Now, we can argue about crime statistics, test scores, and other factors, but the reality is that negativity exists. White people, no matter their class, don't seem to carry that baggage hence their white privilege.

Flame away...

a reply to: Propagandalf

Buddy, its a whole lot way to late to be wary of this stuff. It has become all part of the new religion of identity politics and the social justice agenda. Equality is no longer enough! Now they are demanding nothing less than equality of outcome. White people are inherently evil and racist and their wealth is the product of theft. US SJW's intend nothing less than to level the playing field.

And......they will probably win!

originally posted by: Edumakated
I actually do think white privilege exists, but not to the degree that social justice warriors and "woke" black folks like to claim. It isn't a factor in everyday life, but I do think it is there in some instances.

The only way I can sum it up is that even if you are wealthy and black, you still face some discrimination that a white person of lower socio-economic status would not necessarily face.

So yes, a black kid from a wealthy black family may actually have more opportunities than a poor white kid. However, in situations, where that black kid's social status is not known, it is entirely possible that the white kid would have some white priviledge that the rich black kid would not.

An example of this would be like in my community where you can have a black kid getting caught smoking weed and a white kid getting caught smoking weed. The general assumption would likely be the black kid is a thug, etc when in fact he could be from a very wealthy home and just doing dumb teen sh*t. On the other hand, the white kid could very well be a troublemaker, but he gets caught with a joint the default assumption would be he is a wealthy kid just doing teen sh*t. His whiteness is what leads to the favorable assumption.

There is a certain negativity that comes along with blackness that every black person is aware of in life. Now, we can argue about crime statistics, test scores, and other factors, but the reality is that negativity exists. White people, no matter their class, don't seem to carry that baggage hence their white privilege.

Flame away...

No flaming required.

I do agree that people privilege others based on racial characteristics alone. But this is just your garden variety racism. Racism definitely exists.

However, privilege—and its opposite—is not inborn in anyone, nor is it a fact that one will be privileged by others. Racial privilege does not exist.

But my main contention with the concept is that it expresses an advantage, a benefit, to racism and to living in a racist society.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
You seem to only be recognizing the "newspeak" proliferated on one side while ignoring the "newspeak" proliferated on the other. Why is that?

Les.

Probably because Orwellian "Newspeak" stems from authoritarian power, be it from politics, institutions, or the media. What you're complaining about is actually a "grass roots" populist sequence of terms used to strike out against the liberal establishment's trespasses. What the OP is talking about is institutionalized via the media, state run education establishment, and active lawmakers' neverending drive to the Orwellian quagmire they long to see us stuck in.

This whole concept is born out of allowing someone else's ignorance to define your entire existence. It simply mind boggling that so many feverishly subscribe to it. But such will often be the case whenever there is a market value system created around victimology.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
a reply to: Propagandalf

Vacuous phrases proliferate throughout, and all of them deserve to be challenged before they become regnant.

I agree, other examples include "safe space", "triggered", "snowflake", "sjw", "npc", "fake news", etc.

You seem to only be recognizing the "newspeak" proliferated on one side while ignoring the "newspeak" proliferated on the other. Why is that?

Les.

Those would mostly more fall into terms stereotyping / smear type terms. Some are quite accurate / warranted as well as well.

Newspeak is more about redefining language to suit an 'official reality'. This is quite different than mere slogans and smear campaigns. It is a profound re-engineering of an entire language. Its not merely to smear or demogague, its more to twist a language (such as thru redefinition of common words) in the pursuit of dogmatic political agenda. Where propaganda is a potentially exotic stylization of the language to affect persuasion in a population, Newspeak is like coercion of the language itself with such specificity as to target not merely the people but the actual words themselves. Some word smithing sure, like arises from propaganda, but an outright bastardization of the language in such away that it would prefer less words total if anything because its aims are to constrict thought.

Imagine removing entire numbers from the entire field of mathematics, like if the number 18 was scrubbed from -everything- in counting & math, and the number 46 was somehow explained to be 'different' than what it 'is', and then taking that foundation and "teaching" people mathematics.

Spoken / written language, each different one, its not merely a method of communication between people that understand it, its a whole way of thought. It plays deep, exotic roles in our entire perception, in ways that can hardly even be described by hardly anybody.

So you go and methodically cut out certain words, and that alters peoples 'perception potential', it alters their entire cognition framework of its society (or whatever it applies to) like how inversely more words expands people perception potential.

Another angle would be 'they' start redefining words in -methodical- ideological ways, start splicing new branches of 'concept' onto existing words and all sorts of dynamics could play out such as increased bewilderment / cognitive dissonance / etc.

Where the way I look at the entire concept even "white privilege' while it does fall into this sort of realm it itself isnt the best example of 'newspeak', as it plays more into raw tribalistic jingoism type territory, where 'proper newspeak' leans more intot eh realm of censorship... But as all things to do with the brain / mind sciences over lap (and you need every category to 'give us what we have', at the same time to push a hardcore ideology to the fullest potential it'll be a wicked nexus of identity (tribalism) + censorship (coercion) + newspeak (EXOTIC censorship) + propaganda (mass persuasion AND divserion) + demagoguery + [and so on deliberate cognitive manipulation] = "political correctness" (thought control [mind control]), whereas every ideology ultimately plays at this stuff by its very nature, where the more one pushes at every one of those core metrics the higher 'score' of its total tyrannicism over the individual.

This part:
"So you go and methodically cut out certain words, and that alters peoples 'perception potential', it alters their entire cognition framework of its society (or whatever it applies to) like how inversely more words expands people perception potential. Another angle would be 'they' start redefining words in -methodical- ideological ways, start splicing new branches of 'concept' onto existing words and all sorts of dynamics could play out such as increased bewilderment / cognitive dissonance / etc."
You go and take a REAL good look at our own language (or any other one for that matter) 'as it was' and you'll surely start noticing some of the things I'm getting at with this, scattered all across it, that is if you're able to do it without being an ideologue. Which certainly SJW's are as hardcore ideologues as there ever were (like OG Nazi Germany grade that lot). Because you see, as I've shown in the opening episodes of The Darkest Patterns is, from Day 1 of written languages -the world over- they were crafted specifically for social control.

Of course our Elite Masters -across these thousands of years- could only craft that control that so much in the face of the mountains of people there have been, but they've had their hands in the language just as much as they did in the religions / religious texts / political parties / national scale propaganda and so on this stuff its all the way down into 'the words' (down in the bedrock of the language(s) 'itself')... but that game is old stuff generally speaking, for us English speaking folks anyways, our elite masters usually only seem to have spent their time playing their games of propaganda while censoring out key bits of information to keep everyone placated in their prescribed tunnelvision concept of reality.

That is until more recent times with this "liberal" PC Police BS (Newspeak) campaign they've set in motion they're back to the old old old ways of the manipulation of the masses by attacking the very language itself.

a reply to: Edumakated

I would say it depends on how they look to some degree too.

Dress like a poor person and go into a sales commission place as a person of any race and no one is going to bother you until they absolutely have no choice. You don't look like you're worth the effort. It's an effective strategy if you want to be left alone to look and make up your mind without "help" from the peanut gallery, but on the flip side, it can be a pain in the butt to get help when you do finally want it.

I've even been chased around by asset control doing that.

I've seen minorities helped before me because they were dressed better, but what am I going to do? Get outraged? I did it to myself on purpose and I know it.

It's not all race. There is a good deal of socio-economic status in there too. Look like whiskey tango and you get treated like it. Look and and act like it, and you are even more treated like it.

a reply to: Propagandalf

Should just be renamed to Polite Privilege.😉

And some people act like there is no privilege at all for other races, like it just absolutely Sucks being anything but white... 😪

We all have our advantages and disadvantages and thats not gonna change no matter who you are or where you go. 🤷‍♂️

Another fact- You can take anyone and drop them anywhere on the planet and no matter what race or color they are, they are gonna be better off in America than they would be anywhere else on the planet. But for some people, that's still not good enough.

Someone on welfare in America has a better life in many ways than 99% of the Kings, Pharoes, Khans, Sultans, Emperors, Popes, etc who ever lived... still not good enough. They want all that, and plus they never want to feel offended and everything in life has to be 100% fair and equal. But free men are not equal because they are free to excell to their greatest extent, and equal men are not free.

Nobody seems to realize how good we all have it right now. If one day it is all taken away from us (America, and Western Civilization, doesn't just happen all by itself.), people will wish they spent more time enjoying the conveniences of a modern, stable civilization. And less time complaining and working to tear society to pieces and re building nothing in their wake...

a reply to: Edumakated

Yeah I agree 100%.

I just don't agree that its a big problem, or rather, its not something that can be avoided, no matter what country you go to. I also don't agree that whites have All the "privilege".

I think it is something that will fix itself as perceptions correct themselves which is a gradual process, and one way to slow down that process is to stoke conflict and division by putting emphasis on the negative, and ignoring the positive. And there's a lot of positive.

I also think that people are ignoring the benefits of being black. I could use the same example you used. A white kid, in a certain situation, in a certain neighborhood, around certain people, would be at a disadvantage.

Same goes for every human who ever lived. Nothing I could ever do would change that. It SHOULDN'T change. We can't all be the exact same.

I guarantee there are plenty of black, hispanic, asian, native and other people who dont Want to be White. They Like the advantages their own skin color gives them. They Like their heritage, background, and stereotypes/reputations. They don't Want the disadvantages of being white. (who wants to be hated?)

And, from that perspective, doesnt it seem a little selfish and greedy to say "well, i just want the Advantages of being white... i didn't want any of the Disadvantages. I didn't want to actually BE white. I just wanted all the good and none of the bad." ?

Everytime someone lashes out and says "blah blah blah, white people this" or "blah blah blah, black people that", somewhere out there, a group of whites, and/or blacks, becomes a Little more reluctant to give things a chance, or becomes less trusting, or just less willing to reach out and reassess their perceptions.