beth (defunct)

*pulling them out of the holster and twirling them around like pronoun ocelot*

lmao the new Patreon logo is so bad. patreon is definitely going out of business, there's no question, these are the flailings of execs who have convinced themselves that there's no future for the company. fucking love it, great

One of the best things I ever heard in a classroom setting is this gloss on Du Bois's concept of double consciousness: white people live in the white world, Black people live in the white world AND the real world.

Part of the way systems of oppression work is by insulating their beneficiaries from reality. They grow up their whole lives inside an insulating layer of protection which keeps them at a distance from the actual world. It's basically the "Handsome Bubble" from 30 Rock, except that the illusion only goes one way; those outside the bubble are required to sustain and protect it, or be punished.

One ramification of this is that, when it comes to understanding how oppression works, the beneficiaries of it (including highly educated ones, and including those with left ideologies) start at a sharp disadvantage, simply because they have not come into contact with the real world. They haven't done anything morally wrong, but their perceptions and deductions from those perceptions are often not quite correct.

This can be overcome, although it's easy for folks who get into "unpacking the white knapsack"¹ style self-critique to make the practice of confessing their privilege into a sort of cult which somehow still manages to center them and their experience.

For groups larger than one, the trick is not to establish the guilt or innocence of the privileged, but simply to make sure that theirs are not the only or the loudest voices in the room and that they are not the primary ones establishing intellectual frameworks.

1. McIntosh's essay has done a lot of good, probably, but it's also produced a whole new kind of insufferable white person