Here’s a good piece by Tim Wise on white privilege the way it’s expressing itself in this election cycle. I like this bit especially:
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
When we Gender Studies types teach intersectionality, this is what we’re talking about – that all women are not seen as equals, that women of color are held to different standards than white women, especially when it comes to issues around sexuality and parenting.
A great piece and a-fuckin’-men.
In the L.A. tranny subculture, “working girl” is code for Latina/Philipina/Pacific Islander “undesirables” that should stay out of the “nice” tranny bars where white working girls are usually unquestioned and included as well the dozens of other white crossdressers who pray for a chance to give it away for free to the crowd of silent predatory males who come and go from our world with relative impunity.
Intersectionality, huh? Noted.
(Thanks)
Darya
Well, I don’t agree that Palin’s daughter’s out of wedlock child is a personal matter. Not when her mother has staked out contra factual positions on sex education, family values and abortion. Not when conservative pundits can call the Spear’s parents ‘pinheads’ on national TV. From a feminist perspective, the personal is political. It’s not only white privilege but conservative privilege (the same kind that got Rush Limbaugh a pass for drug addiction, McCain for his horrid divorce, his wife for her changing story on adoption). The Daily Shows take on conservative pundits speaking out of both sides of their mouths on this and other issues should be a rallying cry: Who puts the “CON” in conservative!
Diane
Darya
You can call it racism, of course, too. Or anti-immigrant. Or classist. &c.
Intersectionality specifically explains why one prostitute might be welcomed in a space (and viewed sympathetically) while another is seen as dangerous & is unwelcome.
& Yes, Diane – conservative privilege too.
Thanks Helen, that’s even clearer, and I know those girls, too.
D
my brother sent me this this morning.
good piece.