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by 0815test 2603 days ago
What's wrong with pointing out that someone is wealthy and beautiful, and that this might make them more likely to succeed? Halo-effect is a thing.
2 comments

Would you feel the same if 'white' was replaced with 'Jewish'? It correlates even more with success, e.g. they are over-represented at Harvard by a factor of ~5 [1].

[1] https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/harvard-uni...

I hear people say that being Christian gives you an advantage with American authorities, like with police or immigration. Is that true? Jews have a long history of being marginalized by majority powers, which is why this kind of discussion is viewed in a different light than saying that wealthy people have privilege.

Would you respond to a discussion about Christian privilege with a counter about the privileged Muslim people you’ve met in your life? Do you feel like that’s a fitting response?

I think it is appropriate to point out that we are only allowed to notice some forms of privilege and not others, yes.
That article doesn't try to force such constraints, and should be in line with your thinking then.

And what forms of privilege vs others are we talking about? The article mentioned (1) race (2) sexuality (3) beauty.

So are you bothered the article discusses white privilege without discussing latino, black, or asian privilege? Are you bothered the article didn't mention enough about bisexual or gay privilege? Or that the article didn't mention privilege of ugly people?

Or was it the Jews, since you brought them up, and it looks like you want to engage seriously on Jewish privilege. Did you really just want to talk about Jewish privilege?

If you think we shouldn't talk about ethnic privilege, why did you only take issue with my post, and not 0815test's, who first defended it?

Only allowing talk of it when it concerns white people is hypocritical - it's either all fair game, or none of it.

You asked what I wanted to talk about - that's pretty much it.

What’s wrong with it is that it’s seemingly mandatory to include a “privilege disclaimer” in some publications. It’s often irrelevant, always boring, and indicative of an identity politics perspective that colours much of modern discourse. It’s irritating boilerplate that writers include to signal their political allegiance and inoculate themselves from criticism when writing about groups that are disfavoured in their politics: in this case middle-class white women.
What's your evidence that it's mandatory? It seems discretionary to me.

Here's another article on Vox right now about white Jeopardy champion James Holzhauer, which doesn't mention his race or privilege: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/5/4/18529311/jeopardy-...

So, at least at Vox there's no such standard like the one you're describing.

You seem to have misunderstood what the word “seemingly” means.

To help you out, it means ”so as to give the impression of having a certain quality; apparently.”

That's not the issue here. It seemed true to you, and I pointed out you were wrong.