[coliveira]

This is the kind of ideology that leads to trouble. If there is equality of opportunity, there will be equality of outcomes, at least on average. When you see inequality rising it is a serious clue that opportunities are not the same for everyone.

[macspoofing]

>If there is equality of opportunity, there will be equality of outcomes, at least on average.

No there won't. Paradoxically the opposite will happen and differences (even small differences) will be maximized. A simple example, two kids are in the same high-school, with similar marks and similar ability - fast-forward 10 years and they are in wildly different careers, possibly making wildly different incomes. Maybe one chooses to pursue their interest in a STEM field, while the other focuses on Humanities. In our world it just so happens there is an shortage of engineers and a glut of humanities majors. Plenty engineers make six figures, whereas humanities majors will struggle to hit that income milestone. So one of the kids could be in SV making $160k/year, while the other is in Minnesota working at Starbucks making $30k/year. Same opportunity, different outcomes.

>at least on average.

On average you would expect a gradient of outcomes across a possible spectrum. I suspect it would resemble a bell curve with most outcome concentrated in some standard deviation from the mean but with tails on either side.

[alacombe]

This is nonsense. If you give 100 people the same starting point, you'll very likely end up with 100 different outcome.

Also, even if you have an "average" equality of outcome, you'll still find a small fraction of those left out screaming about inequality and how unfair the system has been to them.

[quadrangle]

The best framing is the headwind/tailwind issue. We feel the headwinds (obstacles in our way) and take our tailwinds for granted (the privileges and luck we enjoy).

There's lots of evidence that the successful in our society are largely deluded in how much they downplay the significance of their privileges and luck.

The worse-off people aren't any smarter, but when everyone is mainly aware only of headwinds and not tailwinds, those who happen to have less tailwinds inherently are aware of a greater percentage of their context.

[macspoofing]

>The best framing is the headwind/tailwind issue. We feel the headwinds (obstacles in our way) and take our tailwinds for granted (the privileges and luck we enjoy).

Is that the best framing? Are you sure it isn't a seriously flawed analogy since it is based on one factor explaining a very simple outcome? In reality, a typical person will have hundreds of factors associated with them some of which give them a competitive advantage when compared to the average and some of which will be detrimental to them in some way. A tall handsome straight white male with a crippling social anxiety will struggle in life in ways that an outgoing, short, stocky, gay black man may not. A middle-class black woman from a two person household in NY will have advantages that a poor white male from a single-parent household in rural Alabama will not. Even some specific combination of particular skills (none of which the individual excels in) can infer privilege. Being an average developer with average technical ability, with average business development instinct, average personability and people skills, and average level of leadership skills and some particular career choices - may lend you a Director or C-level executive at a technical corporation.

Leftists and more specifically, leftists that subscribe to the ideology of intersectionality, tend to only identify one or two of factors (usually sexual orientation, skin color, and/or gender) as defining success or failure. It's lazy and wrong.

>There's lots of evidence that the successful in our society are largely deluded in how much they downplay the significance of their privileges and luck.

I'll spin this around. Even if you are a victim in some way, deluding yourself that you're not is much more preferable than accepting reality. Once you internalize that your lot in life is due to factors outside of your control it really does kill your incentive to try and change it.

[quadrangle]

We seem to be typing past one another. Nothing in your comment is directly about about I wrote. It's about generalities of what other people may say.

The analogy of headwind/tailwind is merely a visceral way to recognize that privileges are typically taken for granted and unnoticed while challenges and obstacles are very much noticed.

That works both to recognize why people constantly complain about their obstacles (i.e. members of minorities focusing on their minority status and the challenges they face) and privileged folks downplaying their privilege.

The socially-anxious otherwise privileged character will give more weight and awareness to their anxiety than to all their privileges, and the outgoing minority member may give excessive weight to their minority status and how they overcame their challenges and ignore their luck in being naturally outgoing.

So, yes, this is the most useful framing.

Your understanding of intersectionality amounts to asserting that most other people get it wrong. The concept is that people are actually an intersection of all the factors, including even whether they are naturally anxious or outgoing or whatever else. Indeed, far too many people these days treat it as a limited Venn diagram sort of way to label the most and least privileged, but that simplistic approach is in opposition to the nuanced concept that intersectionality is supposed to be about. That many people are lazy and get it wrong is both true and troubling.

As to your point about delusional optimism becoming self-fulfilling, that is totally valid. And yet, it's one thing to discuss the facts about inequities and injustices in our society and another thing to talk about the attitude people should have for success.

Yes, underprivileged people focusing on their lot in life can lead to self-fulfilling pessimism and lack of ambition. But there's a balance here. If everyone remains deluded in believing that we actually all have equal opportunities, then we won't be motivated to fix the injustices.

I know it's tragically awful how the "left" has now tended to overemphasize the victim issue. It's become a boy-cried-wolf situation. It lets people like you focus on the problems with that narrative. At the same time, there are real extreme injustices and inequities happening in our world.

The starting point for the whole issue is to realize how BAD we are at being objective. We DO experience headwinds and tailwinds with a totally different degree of awareness. Recognizing this fact does not lead us directly to answers, it leads us to productive conversation.

[macspoofing]

>Nothing in your comment is directly about about I wrote.

Yes it is. I disagree with your fundamental characterization of privilege. There is no privilege, that was my point.

Here I defined two individuals to serve as a counter-example to what you argued and you still went ahead and identified one as inherently privileged solely due to their skin color - even if they struggle through life due to a social disorder. To me, that's an illustration of how not only useless your concept of 'privilege' is, it's also dangerous because of how easy it is to misuse.

>The concept is that people are actually an intersection of all the factors

Not all factors. Very specific factors are emphasized and that's the problem. A person is nothing but a set of stereotypes of specific set of identities, based on nothing more than genetics. There is no room for ideas or 'content of character'. You are your skin color, gender, and a sexual orientation.

>At the same time, there are real extreme injustices and inequities happening in our world

Inequities are a result of a free world. People make different decision which end in different outcomes. Raising a family with a spouse will produce a different outcome for your children, then raising children without a spouse. Studying to be an engineer will yield a different (and unequal) outcome versus studying History.

As for injustices - no. In the West the vast vast majority of all people don't live in the a world of extreme injustices.

>It lets people like you focus on the problems with that narrative.

When you abuse the language as a shortcut to supporting an argument you shouldn't complain when you called out on it. When you call someone a loaded word like 'privileged' without knowing anything about them other than the color of their skin expect push-back. And then when they refuse to accept your ugly characterization of them, you simply close yourself off and label them as people who simply are too privileged to see it. Thanks.

>Recognizing this fact does not lead us directly to answers, it leads us to productive conversation.

Does it? I viscerally disagree with everything you argued. Do you accept that perspective as valid? Or am I just too privileged to see my privilege?

[quadrangle]

> There is no privilege, that was my point.

If you literally mean that the concept of privilege doesn't show up in reality (as in how supernatural miracles are pure fiction), then you'd be just flat-out wrong.

> identified one as inherently privileged

You clearly don't understand the concept of privilege. If I happen to get a job that includes vacation pay, that is a privilege compared to the reality for many people who don't have that. It's all relative. And acknowledging that something is a privilege doesn't mean it's inherently undeserved or something you shouldn't have.

I didn't say the white character in your case was privileged and the black character wasn't. It's not black and white or even a single dimension on a continuum. You don't just have quantifiable more or less privilege. It's far more complex.

White men in our society do, in general and vast majority of situations, have some privileges over the experience they would have with darker skin or being labeled female. There are also privileges to being female or having darker skin, although there's some valid comparing where male privileges generally outweigh female privileges.

In your example, the black character has the privileges that come with being naturally outgoing.

"Privilege" is nothing more than a general term for recognizing advantages you have over others in some regard. You can enjoy the privilege of loving stable parents and loyal friends without the privilege of wealth and vice versa or you could have both or neither. Framing these things as "privileges" simply means acknowledging that these are far from universal and many others do not have them.

> Very specific factors are emphasized and that's the problem

But that's not a problem with the concept of intersectionality, it's a problem with the people (mis)use the concept in practice.

> In the West the vast vast majority of all people don't live in the a world of extreme injustices.

If you define "the West" as those places without extreme injustice, it's just circular logic. But specifically, we can be thrilled that today there are lots of systems in place to promote real justice and rule of law. "Extreme" is all relative. Of course, the folks in Flint with kids suffering major lead poisoning because of incompetent political decisions that would never have been made for richer communities… they think extreme injustice exists here.

> When you abuse the language as a shortcut to supporting an argument you shouldn't complain when you called out on it

Well, I agree completely. There's a ton of such abuse going on right now, and it's fair to call it out.

> ugly characterization of them

Are you saying that merely mentioning a concept like "white privilege" is an ugly characterization of someone?

> I viscerally disagree with everything you argued

Well, I really had no idea in this plain text conversation that I was interacting with someone who was so emotional and defensive about this situation.

> am I just too privileged to see my privilege?

I have no idea, I wasn't judging you personally. I have no idea who you are at all. My best guess is that you have the typical headwind/tailwind issue where you are viscerally aware of the headwinds (challenges) that you've faced, you've worked hard to overcome them, and you're quite aware that there are others with far more advantages that you never enjoyed. You probably have seen the absurdly ridiculous identity-politics that the "left" has gotten obsessed with and are viscerally offended at the simplistic stereotyping and political-correctness and other bullshit those folks are doing.

Let's consider an analogy. Imagine a context in which you happen to be surrounded by Scientologists. You sometimes try to argue with them about scientific reasoning and point out how exploitive and absurd their "religion" is. But they keep using illogical bullshit that their dogma teaches them. When you get out of that milieu, you commiserate with your friends who talk with you about how absurd the Scientologists are. One day, you interact with someone who happens to be into Buddhist-style meditation even though they aren't really into any supernatural claims about reincarnation or anything, but they use the Buddhist language to talk about their quest for Nirvana. Instead of having an interesting conversation, you talk to them like they are obviously a ridiculous cult-follower comparable to the Scientologists. It's an understandable reaction, but quite unfortunate.

Yeah, I get that certain online mob-mentality identity-politics young folks are making words like "privilege" toxic to many because they have an aggressive and simplistic ideology around it. But your reaction is just assuming anyone who uses the term or talks about equity and injustice as real issues are automatically those people.

You're probably not "too privileged to see my privilege", you're probably just too pissed off at some things that are understandable to be pissed off about to be open minded to reasonable discussion.

[NumberCruncher]

>> If there is equality of opportunity, there will be equality of outcomes

No, outcome would be highly correlated to effort and persistence.

[coliveira]

Can you tell how much effort and persistence is necessary to be born in a rich family?

[rumcajz]

What about focusing on social mobility instead of equality?

[quadrangle]

How about equity instead of equality?

Anyway, "social mobility" generally just means there's no caste system or effective caste system. If the inequity in the system means that a small percent of people hold most of the wealth and power, what difference does it make if anyone has a chance to join that elite?

In a zero-sum game, social mobility is better to exist than not but it isn't going to actually change anything fundamental.