[baddox]

I still don't understand what to do with the concept. Anyone would be a fool to think that you can group people by some attribute (like ethnicity) and show correlations with other attributes (like income). (Granted, we might want to do a bit of work to see if the correlations are stronger than would be expected in a purely random distribution of attributes, but we can assume this is the case.) And, given those correlations, anyone can recognize that they are statistically likely to follow those same correlations based on their own group memberships. If that's what privilege means, then so be it, but it's not much more meaningful than saying "I'm thankful that I'm statistically more likely to be successful than people who die as children. John Scalzi could just as easily write an article about how not being born with a terrible disease or deformity is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

[jfarmer]

I have a hard time believing you're genuinely interested in understanding the concept since you're putting up resistance at every step. I'm not here to make you want to learn — I was presuming you already did.

If not, my mistake for engaging.

[baddox]

I'm putting up resistance because there is still very little I have heard that makes sense. I do consider myself a skeptic, and I think skepticism is a requirement for critical thinking rather than an obstacle to it.

[jfarmer]

A person willing to learn says, "That's interesting and it doesn't make sense to me for X, Y, and Z reasons. I'm obviously not getting something and am probably confused about something important." That is not what you're saying.

Being a skeptic is orthogonal to having that attitude.

Anyhow, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, ...

I'll just end it here and you can reply however you'd like or not at all. :)

[pwang]

> That is not what you're saying.

That's very much what baddox is saying, but with less self-deprecation. He/she is continuing to ask questions and indicating that the concept does not make sense to him/her. Asking critical questions about the utility of the concept, etc. are all very well in line with skeptical approaches towards anything.

[baddox]

I said:

> My questions are actually genuine and not rhetorical. I would appreciate responses, or perhaps corrections of my impression of the concept of privilege.

Whether or not I was lying then, I am unable to express any more clearly or convincingly that I am willing to learn.

And I believe I have explained what doesn't make sense to me.

[redbad]

    > And I believe I have explained what doesn't make sense 
    > to me.

You haven't explained those things, but rather attacked them.