As a white male should I feel guilty because I enjoy white privilege?
So, do you?
1] enjoy white male privileges?
2] and, if so, do you feel guilty about it?
And you know me in regard to questions like this:
“I” here is rooted existentially in dasein rooted in a particular historical and cultural context, intertwined in a unique set of circumstances that you may or may not be able to communicate to others.
Also, it still seems to me that neither philosophers nor scientists have at their disposal tools that would allow them to answer questions like this. Answers that, in my view, are the embodiment of political prejudices ever subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas.
I asked first.
How on earth could I possibly know if you should feel guilty? What do I know about your own set of circumstances?
Why don’t you start by noting how [in being a white male] you have acquired certain privileges. What are they? And given what you think they are, how exactly would one calculate the extent to which others might advise you to feel guilty.
Then [perhaps] they can take on the task of advising you further as to what you ought to do about it.
Only if you personally did anything immoral to acquire it… just like with anything else you enjoy.
Guilt doesn’t help anything or anyone. With your guilt and $2.95 a black person can still buy the same Starbucks’ caffe latte and nothing more.
He’s talking about the bowing down stuff. Not the kneeling with, being beside on one knee stuff, but the bowing down in shame stuff that is happening in some places. Oh, and he’s black.
And I agree, though jeez, how does one live and not be immoral? I am not just talking about whites. Hard to purchase without paying some crimial or someone who pays criminals. Morality is not purely clean, it is…hm. I am not sure what it is. Of course I don’t really believe in morality. But I would like to not contribute to people who have agendas I do not like. Then again I don’t want to live under a rock in the woods.
In many ways, blacks and women are protected classes.
Right. So the answer to my question is ‘no’ I shouldn’t feel guilty just because I am a white male.
Here’s a tough one:
You conclude you have done nothing immoral to acquire guilt. Not personally. But you still believe that white skin privilege exists in any number of social, political and economic contexts. Should you then feel guilty for not actively participating in the political struggle to end it?
And, if so, what argument would you use here such that, philosophically, all rational men and women are obligated to agree with you.
Obligated to join the political struggle for racial equality…or not?
What makes you think it is tough?
If your response is ‘Show me it isn’t?’ you don’t understand onus.
He gets the onus for demonstrating his position.
Now you’ve gotten the onus to demonstrate that all rational people should think it is ‘a tough one’.
The “tiff”! It’s back!! 
Seriously though my point is not on whether someone finds it tough or not but on why some find it tough and others don’t. Indeed, why do some believe that not only does white skin privilege exist but that it ought to exist. Why? Because, say folks like Satyr and the Nazis, it’s only “natural”.
“Onus” here is no less an existential contraption to some. Rooted by and large in dasein.
I personally think it’s a tough question because in regard to questions of this sort, “I” am still “fractured and fragmented”. “I” have my liberal/left wing political prejudices which predispose me to one frame of mind and the conservative/right wing folks have their own.
So, which are the serious philosophers and the scientists able to pin down as encompassing the objective truth about racial interactions?
Again, all we can do here is to accumulate variables/empirical facts that appear to be true objectively for all men and men. And then to react to the reactions of others who assemble those facts into their own particular political agenda.
Precipitating an “I” that feels more or less drawn and quartered. And then sustaining that “I” into a future in which new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas might reconfigure it.
How is it not like that for all of us?
Even the objectivists.
Sure, I agree, but it’s one of your contraptions also. In this case it wasn’t tough for you to call it tough. You just said it was. And while I appreciate your explanation below, I think we both agree that it doesn’t show that all rational people should believe it is tough.
So, there you are. You found a value based position rather easily, that it’s tough. Maybe you can find others, even though you are fragmented and fractured.
In a sense that’s what I do. I don’t universalize them, but I notice them. I don’t feel an urge to get an argument to convince all rational people. And for a moment at least, you didn’t either.
And you consider onus a mere contraption (and I agree), so you no longer need to act like others bear an onus, objectivists or anyone.
There is a little doorway there to less self-torture.
Not that you should walk through it. But perhaps you’d want to. Perhaps a tiny bit less torture before oblivion.
Or not. Up to you.
The white man walking around feeling guilty might find that if he stopped feeling that guilt blacks will not now suffer more, but he will suffer less. Perhaps even, on some level, resent blacks less. Or he might not.
My suggestion here parallels that, though tailored around the burden of finding that argument for ones values that make them objective. As far as I can tell that must be a burden.
Maybe it feels pleasant for you. What do I know.
Maybe some guilty whites find some Lacanian jouissance in their guilt. A kind of reverse pride. I think most of them are confused about how to feel good. But what do I know.
Maybe some masochists, for example, actually have found the best way to get pleasure for them. I think most are settling for a compromise based on something from their childhood. IOW it seems like their nature, but really its a weird habit and was the best they could manage but could learn something better.
Most, not all.
But it’s speculative either way.
It can seem like guilt and finding perfect rational arguments and ‘earning’ pleasure via pain are necessary burdens.
But what if they are contigent. I suppose they help the sadists, but perhaps that’s not a great goal in life. According to one’s own likes and/or values.
Might be worth exploring.
Biggus raised some valid questions.
What is white privilege?
Ought one try to eliminate white privilege?
Should one feel guilty if one does not act to eliminate white privilege?
Privilege is indefinable in the present state, nation or even the world because anybody and everyone is prone now, to catch up and re-evaluate who they are.
The great transforming plow, as Neil Young aptly sang it, is making anyone and everyone, relatively saying( excuse the pun) , relatives to each other, at an accelerating rate.
The world IS becoming a smaller community, and we have to heal the fractured souls of our immediate and distant families.
We simply have todo so , like it or not, we are running out of resources.
Its not a matter of - if, but of - when!
Otherwise, yes, we should all , and every one , begin to acknowledge responsibility towards our fellow man.
Sure, I think that there is responsibility towards other members of society. But how much responsibility?
That is not a question that can be relegated to any one individual, because that is not something that social agencies can determine.
Each according to his need and ability therefore is not , as yet, that can be deemed as applicable or determinate.
This is the catch 22 in today’s society, and the answer to that question will become more clear with the choice taken in November’s election.
This is why the amount of guilt suffered, mirrors the current conflation about what is yet to come.
No one seems to know.
Most don’t want to feel totally obligated to fulfill their responsibility , and some will connect it to kind of an atonement to other petty guilts they may compensate for.
Meaning the bible thumpers.
We all do what we must to keep ourselves and the people we love safe and provided for… we didn’t engineer the world we were born into, we’re all just trying to survive and thrive in it.
The only question that morality attempts to answer is: Is there a way to do that such that it benefits everyone or at least without it being at each other’s expense?
Moral people try very hard to answer that question in their own lives… others could care less.
No… guilt in this context would imply I have a duty in which I am negligent.
That would be an absurd way for me to view my role in this world… as I have no desire to be anyone’s slave.
Gratitude and reciprocation is the price for my care and compassion… I seek solidarity, not servitude.
Why should I as an individual be judged based on my “white maleness” at all? When African-Americans started fighting against unfair discrimination in the USA, they started a movement to end the tendency of people to be categorized according to their group identity rather than who they were as individuals. Systemic racism instantiates that problem. But there’s another way of looking at the situation which is a problem in itself. According to this way of thinking a member of an identity group can be judged as a guilty of or responsible for something a member of that group has done simply on the basis of group membership.This is the problem of collective guilt which has a horrendous history including in Nazism and the Soviet Union.
I have a few responses. I think it is good to understand that as a white person and as a man (and as other categories) we will get treated is certain ways by certain people that differs from how a black man or woman will get treated. That’s knowledge, not guilt or being immoral because one is in a category. This is important knowledge because we often judge others based on what we experience often without realizing that their experience might be radically different. I can remember talking to a friend who was n attractive women who had been abused when she was a kid. Most people would not see her as vulnerable. She looked like any adult woman out there. Maybe a little bit shy, but not remotely cowered or frightened looking. But predators and many men seemed to pick up her past, probably often unconsciously.
In a fairly small city with a low crime rate men would regularly walk up to her and make very threatening sexual comments. Now women deal with this more than men, obviously and in general. But when I heard how much this happened to her, I realized that women in general, and some women in particular
are living in
a different world.
A world where regularly men walk up menacingly and say stuff that would likely start fights if they said them to men. That she was regularly approached by predatory energies, even in broad daylight. Some merely flirtatious, but sometimes things like ‘I’m going to fuck you in the ass.’
That’s not my world. I have had the equivalent experience once in my life. Someone called the motel pay phone where I was staying in a city that was new to me and said something like that to me with real malice in his voice. It actually shook me. perhaps he knows where the phone is. Perhaps he is watching me right now. But I went back to my room, I was a fairly big athletic guy and I also had a kind of ‘give it your best shot asshole’ attitude. But it was disturbing.
As a women this would have been a single, rather different experience. If it is regular it would shift how I viewed men. It simply would. She had a boyfriend she loved and male friends. She certainly didn’t decide all men were bad, but it affected her attitudes about men.
To me realizing priviledge is not about feeling like a kind of defacto asshole, it is realizing that my experience is likely different from people in other categories (and, fo course this can be true about other white men too, certainly poor ones, people less educated then me - just the way I talk will get me different treatment instantly from all sorts of professionals. I know I get more respect from doctors, lawyers, courts, bureaucrats, my kid’s teachers, whatever. Generally better.
So just knowing this should add a dash of humility when looking at other groups and thinking what amounts to Oh, I would handle that better, or Why are you so pissed off, a lot of smug judgments that amount to ‘I could live your life better than you are so you are fucked up’.
I notice how I react with rage to border guards and bureaucrats and police and professionals of all kinds when I feel mistreated, often minor things. And I can, using my knowledge, understand that while assholes will treat anyone poorly, I don’t get shit as a rule and if I did, I would
HATE.
Now, this does not mean I think any reactions is OK. But I instantly get the emotions.
And note again: none of this means I should walk around essentially feeling I am defacto bad or evil. In fact it is more like if I let this information sink in I am more likely to understand and feel compassion for others who like live in partly or radically different worlds than I do.
Since I grew up in a very diverse environment - not just diverse through race and religion and class, but also diverse in terms of mental health history, various kinds of PTSD survival and close to a lot of people who were really rather alternative in a variety of ways, I got a big education in how what one is or who one SEEMS to be or how being different can give you regular shit to eat, that generally I don’t have to eat. Though I have had PTSD and I am alternative or different in a few ways, these are less immediately obvious to others. So I can pass, in the sense that some light-skinned blacks can pass. And usually any short interaction with a professional or bureaucrat or police they notice nothing ‘different’.
Given that I have been close to a very diverse bunch of people, this different treatment is something that just sits in my bones. But I think even a more head based knowledge of this kind of thing is useful.
I don’t think guilt is useful. It just puts an unpleasant lid on things and adds more resentment no understanding and helps no one.
I mean if the guilt stops you from going up on a rooftop and shooting black people, well, ok, that’s a worthwhile temporary stopgap.
But otherwise it’s just going to add a mucky creepy vibe to interactions with people different from yourself. More noise and disease and somewhere in there a seething anger.