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RE: Understanding Today's “Privilege”

in #health7 years ago

When you write "there is no such thing as a social privilege," I interpret this as "there are no social groups that enjoy advantages merely because of their belonging to that social group." And as @hansikhouse wrote below, social privilege is a construct, which as you say is politically charged and differs between countries, but that does not mean it does not exist.

Race is a social construct (a way to categorize people neatly according to socio-political ideas invented by people) and also, racism exists. Racism is one example where social privilege manifests. These are historical advantages that are enabled after years of disenfranchisement (much of which was intentional) and still persist in our subconscious. We may not have the 3/5 compromise or apartheid, but racial/social/religious genocide is occurring around the world (currently the Rohingya in Myanmar), and in countries without genocide, we still have quantifiable systemic problems; if we assert that they are merely issues of political disagreement, then we risk perpetuating a status quo that is clearly inequitable, which is especially easy if we are the beneficiaries of the privileges/advantages. I'm from the USA, so here are some resources regarding racial inequality:

For a history of race-based police brutality in the USA: https://www.vox.com/michael-brown-shooting-ferguson-mo/2014/8/19/6031759/ferguson-history-riots-police-brutality-civil-rights

Data showing that privilege can be granted to minorities (Asians) as well as Whites in the USA: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/white-privilege-quantified/386102/

The Denial Effect - Why the privileged prefer to downplay privileges: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-whites-downplay-their-individual-racial-privileges

I apologize if I have misinterpreted your usage of "social privilege." What do you think the crux of your claim is? How do you reconcile an ongoing history of systemic privilege/disenfranchisement based on race, gender, class, etc. with the idea that these concepts are not "real problems"?

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I mean that there is not an institutionalized mechanism, through organisms and laws to please specific groups, or not in the way the issue is debated in the political arena. That is, the unfounded arguments that say that there is work privilege or any other type. If there are privileges, it is outside the law and the institutions, that is, it is not systematic and deliberately organized. By the way, I do not consider race to be a social construction, it is something that has always existed, it is intrinsic to human nature, there are different races and it is easily noticeable, yes you go to a third world country where political correctness is scarce , you will see that extremely racist people are in fact those where citizens have the darkest skin, I think that the problem of racism must be treated from the point of view of racial discrimination, and not from the questioning of the existence of the race, because it is evident that it is not only the skin color, but morphological characteristics. the true social construction is racial superiority, not race in itself.