on "privilege"
A few friends posted this piece by Gina Crosley-Corcoranon, "Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person…".
This brings up a point I've been trying to make for a while: why "privilege" is the wrong word to describe the phenomenon of not being a victim of prejudice in a given situation.
There is no doubt that being a white guy means that there is some shit to which I am not subjected. My most recent vivid experience of the phenomenon: a cab will stop for me where it won't stop for an African-American man. That sucks. (And the African-American man in question was a much beloved local musician, a guy who can walk into any bar in the city and someone yell out his name and say how much they enjoyed one of his shows.)
But it's not a privilege to have a cab stop for me. It's the base level of treatment that every person should expect to be granted. Saying that "not having a cab ignore you is a privilege" is like saying "not getting shit thrown at you when you leave the house in the morning is a privilege".