At Guernica, Randa Jarrar writes about this one time when she tried to visit her sister in Palestine and she was deported by Israel.
I was so afraid of facing the guards at the airport that I had a difficult time imagining the rest of my trip. I would picture myself walking around Ramallah with my sister, or attending a concert, or visiting my aunts, or seeing the separation wall, or staying at the American Colony Hotel for an evening, and I would draw a blank. There was a wall there, too, between my thoughts and Palestine.
John Scalzi tries to explain privilege to straight white men without invoking the word privilege.
Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
5 responses
Anytime Scalzi wants to give up his straight white privilege he is free to do so. Very easy to talk about it, very hard to step aside and not take the spot in college, job offer, book contract, all of which Scalzi has done with glee. When I see people like him giving up something for their so-called beliefs, denying themselves and their own children educations and advantages, then maybe I will consider looking at some poor white boy from the ghetto and telling him he has to give up his dreams of being an astronaut in the name of equality.
In this world, no matter what your setting is, it’s a tough slog. Is it tougher for some than others? No doubt. But can it be done? You, Roxane, are living proof it can.
Why people advocate this self-defeating victimhood philosophy is beyond me. But I think if it benefits anyone, it benefits wealthy, successful, straight, white men like Scalzi.
Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why.
Prion, I hear what you’re saying but I disagree. I don’t know the guy but from what I’ve read, Scalzi grew up poor and talks about that openly. Yes, he had white privilege but he’s worked hard for his success and didn’t have everything just handed to him. Inequality won’t be solved by someone stepping aside to let a marginalized person move forward. That doesn’t even make sense. These problems need to be solved at the institutional level. I also don’t see his explanation of privilege as ascribing to a victimhood philosophy. I simply see Scalzi using his privilege for good. You’re also making a lot of assumptions about me. I’m no inspiration story.
Scalzi’s explanation of privilege is all kinds of awesome. Thanks for sharing.
It’s either one or the other, Roxane. Either Scalzi had privilege or he worked hard. Everyone works hard. Isn’t that the idea? Isn’t the idea of privilege that we all do the same amount of work and talent and some of us are just born whiter and maler than others? Or is it just rich people who have privilege now? Can’t black people and women and gays be rich?
Fix it at the institutional level? How? What more do you want to do to even the playing field– chop off the legs of white boys? We already have Affirmitive Action, quotas, discrimination laws, the Rooney Rule, Title 9, etc., etc. etc., and the problem of inequality gets no better. Why?
I’ll tell you why– because the victim mentality never produces a winner. That’s why. Tell a black kid he’s screwed from the start and guess what happens? Another 40-to-life prison term. Tell him he can lift himself up and what happens? Why, he may even go to Harvard and become President.
Did you know that women now make up over 2/3rds of all college graduates? Apparently the easiest setting on the game is not working out well for boys, who are falling behind in every area and in every way.
Roxane, you hold a PhD, don’t you? You publish almost as widely as Joyce Carol Oates. You’re getting into major award anthologies for your writing. What exactly do you consider an inspirational story?
As for Scalzi, I believe he went straight from his suburban high school to an elite journalism college near Chicago, right from that to a job at AOL, right from that to a book contract with Tor, right from that to a Hugo winner. Maybe the reason he thinks people like him have it easy is because he did, but that doesn’t mean that every white boy does. I work with disadvantaged children. I know many white boys (as well as all other kinds of kids) who swam through a river of sh*t (abuse, rape, molestation, poverty, learning disabilites, etc.) to get to a decent place, counting myself in with them, and I don’t appreciate anyone saying we did it merely because of “privilege”. It’s demeaning to everyone, and empowers nobody.
Prion, no one is suggesting anyone does anything merely because of privilege. I’m actually writing about this very topic so I’m going to save my comments. We’ll just have to agree that we have different perspectives on this.
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