You may have seen or heard the word privilege come up
frequently. Since this word has reached common usage it is worth taking a look
at what it really means and what its use entails.
A Google search of the word privilege brings up this
definition “A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only
to a particular person or group of people.”
This is the common usage that I think most everyone can
agree on and the one that will be used going forward.
Check Your Privilege
We rarely see or hear the word privilege on its own. Instead
it is often coupled with a descriptive word, such as male privilege or white
privilege.
This type of usage changes the meaning of the word in a very
dramatic way. Privilege in this context is a pejorative designed to make you
feel shame for enjoying a perceived advantage, special right, or immunity.
The subtext is that the only reason you have this privilege
is because of the descriptive characteristic attached to the word. So when you
are told that you have white privilege, what is truly being said is that you
are enjoying or have been granted a special right, advantage or immunity simply
because of the color of your skin. Of course this removes or diminishes
individual agency, or as former President Barak Obama would say “you didn’t
build that.”
This privilege is not granted to you through biology, though
it does depend on the biological element of your skin color. Instead society
has be built to produce these exclusive benefit to people who have this
biological element. Underneath this reasoning is a social constructionist view
of the world* which is embedded deeply within the philosophy of Marxism.
Socialist
Substructure
As we determined earlier privilege coupled with a descriptor
is used as a pejorative. It is not a positive to be privileged in this way because
your privilege was not earned. Rather it was given to you by a racistly
constructed society.
If you have a privilege based on a certain characteristic,
such as your gender, than those who lack that characteristic also lack that
privilege. The word privilege creates two groups, those with it and those
without. A group that has and a group that has not.
It is simply a rewording of bourgeois and proletariat that
replaces wealth (capital) with societal advantages. Professor Jordan Peterson
describes this change as a philosophical sleight of hand.
A sleight of hand that simultaneously removes the stigma of
socialism due to the human atrocities committed in places like the Soviet Union
and China while cloaking it in the language of empathy and classical
liberalism.
Your Tribe
Another effect of attaching privilege to a descriptive word
is that it creates a group based on that descriptor. If male privilege exist
than it applies to everyone who is male. This creates the category of male
identity while at the same time creating the family that category falls under.
Gender identity would be the family of identities and within that family you
have male, female, Trans and whatever gender flavor of the month that is useful
in placing people into categories.
The concept of privilege is used to divide people into
numerous categories and makes the claim that certain categories have more
advantages than others. For convenience sake I am going to refer to these
categories as tribes.
By splitting people into these tribes and assigning them
certain characteristics (both beneficial and disadvantageous) you diminish the
individual by placing the tribe in the place of primacy. The alienation of the
individual in this manner will cause people to gravitate toward these tribes.
Once broken into tribes it does not take much to point out
that one tribe has more privileges than another tribe. From there it is only a
small step to thinking that the only reason they have more privileges is
because they took them from you or are actively preventing you from gaining
them.
At that point you will see conflict between tribes. A real
world modern example of this is when a BLM group tried to shut
down a pride parade in DC in 2017 and before that in 2015 in Chicago when
they organized using #Blackoutpride.
The Poisoned Word
Privilege is used to attack and shame people in an attempt
to divide them and place them into tribes. These tribes have conflict with
other tribes built-in, ready to be exploited by anyone who is willing and capable.
The biggest tragedy is the assault on the concept of the
individual. An offensive that includes removing individual agency by
subscribing to the idea that any privilege you have is unearned and is only a
product of a society built to benefit you based on immutable characteristics.
It seeks to remove individual identity by placing you into a tribe with
preassigned characteristics.
On the surface the word privilege seems fairly harmless,
which makes it a perfect vessel for the poison of Marxism to slowly work its
way into the culture. The words we use matter.
