My Thoughts on "Privilege"

Let me start out by saying that I have read close to 1,000 pages on racial and feminist theory in a number of disciplines from sociology of the family to law to education. This information has come almost exclusively from people on the left end of the political spectrum. I mention this to make clear that I am aware of the opposing arguments out there and I have spent a good amount of time thinking through where they breakdown.

The argument for privilege is not explicitly made because the assumptions underlying it are never acknowledged and fleshed out. If I had to reduce the general argument for privilege to syllogistic form, it would go something like this:

Premise 1: When there is no external oppression, people flourish.

Premise 2: People are not flourishing.

Conclusion: Because large a number of people are not flourishing, there must be significant external oppression.

Generally when you have large numbers of people suffering from oppression, the cause and functioning of the injustice is pretty obvious. The suffering of Muslims under the Islamic State, African-Americans under Jim Crow, Helots under the Spartans—in each of these cases there was (or is) severe oppression and the source of that oppression is clear. However, the oppression that is claimed is not so clear today. Even people who believe in privilege will tell you that it’s very subtle, often unconscious, and that one needs to work to discover it (why else would there be reminders to “check your privilege”?). When one assumes that inequality is prima facie evidence for oppression, given that there is inequality there must be some form of oppression to explain it. Because we cannot point to a specific policy or group of people oppressing and thereby driving inequality, we have constructed notions like privilege and institutional oppression to explain inequality. 

Regarding the argument for privilege as laid out above, I do not deny that there is inequality. I think the place where the argument for privilege falls apart is in the first premise; that is, in the assumption that people will flourish when there is a lack of external oppression. To state the converse, it is wrong to assume that if there are unequal outcomes there is some form oppression occurring. Culture, not a vague, faceless “system” is the best explanation for a number of the phenomena that critics ascribe to privilege or institutional oppression. Important note: by culture I do not mean race, ethnicity, or even religion, but rather something along the lines of worldview as it is actually lived out by a given group of people. Indeed, this makes sense. We should expect that different beliefs will lead to different decisions and that those different decisions will yield different results. This is true on the individual level as well as the level of family and community.

Before I go on let me make one thing clear. I think it is impossible to disprove the idea of privilege. In the same way, it is impossible to disprove God or even Santa Claus. This is because in order to be able to disprove something, you have to show that you know everything and that in all of reality there is no data that proves what you are trying to disprove. No one can do that. All we can do is look at the evidence and see in what direction it points and there is a lot of data to support the thesis that culture is the main determiner of an individual’s or group’s success or failure. To give just a few examples:

(1)   In 1960, before President Johnson’s “Great Society” program, 8 out of every 10 children in America’s big cities were born into a 2 parent family. Today only 3 out of 10 of the children in our big cities are born into a 2 parent family. Single-parent households are the number one source of poverty. The reason for this is obvious: a single household with two incomes will be far better off than two people each trying to support a separate household. Moreover, it is not race or even income, but rather family structure that is the number one predictor of crime. Numbers of single-parent family households have been increasing all communities throughout the country and this is leading to an increase of poverty and crime. As far as I can tell, no one is forcing men to sleep with women and abandon them and their children. This is an instance of culture, not oppression or privilege, causing problems.

(2)   Like family structure, geography often is a better predictor of income and success than things like race or gender. For example, an African-American in New York State is on average financially better off than a white man in Alabama. As with single-parent households, the cause of inequality is not some shadowy privilege or institutional oppression, but rather “geographic culture.”

(3)   A few years ago I read a study of second-generation Caribbean immigrants. This was published, if my memory serves me, in the Harvard Law Review. That is to say, it was well done and it was published in the most respected legal journal in the country. The author wanted to study implicit racial bias. To do this he needed to find people that looked like African-Americans, but had a different culture. He knew he couldn’t take recent immigrants, as their accents would give them away, so he decided to study their children, second generation immigrants. What he expected to find was that these immigrants would suffer from the same levels of poverty, incarceration, educational achievement, and so on. This is not what he found at all. Instead, their rates of incarceration were much lower and their levels of income and education much higher. Though he wasn’t expecting to find this, the results of his study weighed heavily against the idea of implicit bias and heavily towards the idea of culture as that best indicator and driver of success or failure.

(4)   Likewise, sociologists have done interesting studies on Japanese immigrants in the Dominican Republic. These immigrants came to the Dominican Republic absolutely broken and penniless following the end of World War II. They couldn’t speak the native language, they had no resources, and they were often discriminated against. And yet within two generations, their descendants became among the most wealthy and prominent figures in their region. The author determined that the decisive factor was the immigrant’s lack of fatalism. The native Dominicans that he talked to, in response to the success the Japanese, would simply say qué sera, sera—what will be, will be. As a result of their broken worldview, their culture lacked the initiative and grit to help individuals change and better their situation.

(5)   Or compare the infant mortality rate, standard of living, and IQ (!) scores of North and South Koreans. The Koreans are a people with a common tradition, religion, history, and language that began to develop separate cultures about a half century ago. This diversion of culture has caused great poverty and suffering in the north, which embraced statism and a planned economy, and unprecedented growth and prosperity in the south, which embraced democracy and capitalism. The same results were observed when Germany was divided between east and west. Obviously state oppression explains some of this divergence, but we must remember that it is of course one’s lived out worldview, or culture, that causes people to choose one economic and political system over another.

(6)   The best example of the power of culture, however, I believe comes from the Jewish nation. During the Holocaust one out of every three Jews worldwide was murdered by Hitler and his collaborators. As a people, over 50% of their collective and inherited wealth was confiscated. Before this the Jews had suffered centuries of discrimination, open oppression, and murderous persecution (even today more hate crimes are committed against Jews than any other group). And yet, in spite of all this, Jews today have income and education levels higher than virtually any other group on earth. They excel in received PhD’s, Noble prizes, and are elected to office in numbers far disproportionate to their share of the population.

There is far more that could be said about this, to wit, the fact that Sikhs are the most prosperous group in England, Asians out earn whites in the United States, and Chinese culture is flourishing both within China and in every region that the Chinese emigrate to, but the point is clear: it is culture that predicts success, even in the face of hardships. The problem is nobody wants to say this. In fact, it is often the case that when people do, they are accused of “blaming the victim.”

But the fact remains that if we look around American society we see people of both genders, all races, a variety of religions, and various sexual orientations all reaching the highest levels in our society, from academia, to sports and entertainment, to law, and politics—all types of people succeed, which is a good indicator, though not an absolute proof, that there isn’t some shadowy form of oppression holding people down. Now, might it be true that certain groups outside of the mainstream face more difficulties in attaining success? I’m sure that may be. Just as I am sure that it is more difficult for an ugly person, an obese person, or a person that is very short to attain success in various and sundry fields. But evidence of the relative difficulty that people face is very difficult to collect and even more difficult to quantify. In the lack of solid evidence, when all we have are conflicting anecdotes, it is very difficult to form clear opinions and impossible to make prudent public policy.

I’m going to end by discussing what I think are the negative impacts that a “privileged” paradigm creates.

(1)   First, it distracts from real oppression. Throughout the world countless female babies have their genitals mutilated, children are forced into marriages, women and children are trafficked and sold into sexual slavery, and in our own country women are exploited and oppressed by the photography industry. Recognizing and confessing my “privilege” doesn’t fix any of these problems. In fact it takes the attention off of both the victims and the real oppressors. Show me an instance of real racism or sexism or a policy that creates a disparate impact and I will be there to speak out against it and do what I can to shut it down. But I’m not at all concerned about micro-aggressions or cultural appropriation or some institutional oppression that is so opaque that it is impossible to name a single responsible institution or policy. These things distract from real issues.

(2)   As hinted at above, not only does a focus on privilege obscure the issue, it doesn’t lead to any real change or action. Let me explain. Let’s say I come to believe in white privilege. What am I supposed to do in response? I can’t change the color of my skin. Should I try to act colorblind? According to a number of authors, “colorblindness is a construct created to perpetuate white supremacy.” Should I just feel bad? Feeling bad, without repentance, is both unbiblical and unhealthy.  Should I just sort of be enlightened and kind? I think I can be kind and enlightened without believing in white privilege. Confessing my privilege won’t raise graduation rates or lower incarceration rates, it won’t help lift people out of poverty nor will it ensure that more children are raised in two parent homes. However, it will make me feel better about myself! What is more, it will require very little of me! I can confess my privilege on Facebook with the click of a mouse—that is far easier than tutoring a grade school child or giving significant portions of my income to effective charities… The fact is, there are many proven ways to bring about real change, acknowledging one’s privilege isn’t one of them. I think that a lot of the talk surrounding privilege simply devolves into virtue signaling. I think virtue signaling is one of the worst ethical developments in the modern world. It used to be that people defined themselves as good or bad based on what they did: for example, I am honest, hard-working, and I help others out, therefore I’m a good person. Whereas today many people consider themselves to be good people based on what they believe: I’m against patriarchy, I’m against institutional racism, and I’m against global warming therefore I’m a good person. Confessing one’s privilege seems to be just this—namely, in so doing one signals that they are certain type of person. This in turn absolves them from taking any further action and from actually being a virtuous person! Now I know this is not true in all cases, there are many people for whom the discovery of their privilege leads to positive changes; I am speaking generally in what I see in the majority, especially young people. Nonetheless, it misses the point. It is not my privilege holding people down, but a false worldview lived out in a culture. Given that, if we actually want to improve the lives of the disposed, we need to stop patting ourselves on the back for confessing our privilege and help them form a worldview based on God’s revealed word and aid them in living out this worldview in a culture that seeks to approximate the Kingdom of God. (And what is true for others is true for us—if we want our families, schools, churches, communities, etc. to flourish we had better have our worldview formed by God and be seeking to live out that worldview in a culture that approximates the values of His Kingdom.)

(3)   The paradigm of privilege leads to a societal pressure to self-censor. If “society” deems you to be privileged, you’re not supposed to openly hold certain positions on certain topics. For example, as a straight man, I am free to, generally at least, support positions held by the LGBTQ community, but if I question or undermine that community, I am liable to be called bigoted, arrogant, hateful, dangerous, etc. Notice, one is allowed to speak up on a topic if they are privileged, but only if they agree with the position of the “oppressed” group (because the assumption is that the most authentic form of knowledge is experiential, those that disagree with the experiences of others are deemed ignorant). If one, from a privileged position, dares to disagree with the oppressed, they are anathematized. But think about this for a second. People are saying you are hateful or arrogant because you “think like that.” What is “that”? “That”, is an opinion different from the one that they hold, one outside the dominant narrative of the mainstream. In other words, you are anathematized unless you hold the “right” opinion. (The fact that people who disagree with the narratives of the oppressed are called arrogant or ignorant, and not refuted with facts and arguments, validates my interpretation.) This attack on dissenting views leads to a type of self-censorship as people generally don’t like being called bigoted or hateful. Only those that are incredibly clear thinking and confident or those that are, well, bigoted loudmouths, continue to speak up. A huge moderate section is cut out of the dialogue and this hurts the pursuit of truth. It is incredibly ironic that treating a person differently on the basis of their group identity used to be the very definition of racism or sexism. As such, it was rightly universally condemned. Now, disregarding or minimizing an opinion based on the speaker’s group identity is seen as a sign of enlightened progress. But really, this is just an ad hominem fallacy. Instead of doing the difficult work of engaging with difficult ideas, we dismiss them because of some characteristic of the speaker. This requires far less effort than rationally refuting an opposing position and it destroys thought. While this is an age-old technique, Marxists have been the most effective contemporary advocates of this sophistry. Marxists reject the idea of transcendental, objective truth and instead say that our notions of truth are simple reflections of the economic sub-structure. If there is no truth, the only basis of rule is power and refuting opponents without engaging with their ideas is a formidable strategy.  

(4)   Lastly, a privilege paradigm creates a perverse incentive for co-dependent relationships between segments of the electorate and their electors. If you’re a politician and convince people that they are being oppressed and you care about their oppression, then you can get elected to liberate them from their oppression. You might get elected for that, but you have an incentive not to actually liberate them, or at least to let them think their oppression is continuing, so that you can continue to hold office. It is impossible to prove how often (or even if) this happens, and I don’t think this regularly happens intentionally, but the incentive is surely there. I think this partially explains how some of the worst communities in this country have had local governments controlled by a single party, uninterrupted, over the last century, only to see things continue to regress.

Working against inequality and towards greater inclusivity is noble. However, a noble goal is not sufficient to bring real help and change. Seeing a starving man emerging from a desert, my first impulse would be to help him by feeding him a big meal. Wanting to help him is noble, but in feeding him a big meal I would undoubtedly kill him. If oppression is creating inequality or poverty, then ending oppression is necessary to help people. If, however, the problem of inequality lies in culture, seeking to fight non-existent oppression, no matter how noble the intent of the crusaders, will ignore the real problem and thereby only make the problem worse. A privilege paradigm may be noble, but it misses the point. At best it will do no good; at worst it will exacerbate the problem.

What we need is people with the wisdom to see through falsehoods and the courage to speak truth. If we want to see real change, if we want to empower the disposed, we need to convince them to tenaciously seek truth and help them develop the character to habitually live according to it. Confessing privilege is a child’s parody of the man’s work that needs to be done.