Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

[Not Bob]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

(snipped by NB)

Privilege is mostly Vanilla Ice.

Rather than define disadvantage as the baseline, which allows one to view people like me as "privileged," isn't the actual reality one in which my situation is (or should be) the norm, and the circumstances of those discriminated against an abnormality? Isn't it really a situation in which white, cis males are treated in an "average" manner, and people discriminated against for color, sex, or sexuality "unfairly disadvantaged"?

I'm not privileged so much as treated the way everyone ought to be treated. Instead of focusing on guys like me (possibly the least relevant humans in these debates) who are being treated in utterly average ways, isn't the proper focus placed on people who are being treated unfairly? People who are treated in a fashion below the baseline standard at which we should all be treated?

I'm going to tell you you're being frivolous if you tell me to check my privilege. But if you tell me other people are being unjustly treated below the standard at which we all ought to be treated, you've got my ear. You can appeal to a person's sense of disgust at others being treated horribly.

I think you mostly get the concept; you just don't like the terminology that the kids are using these days. We straight white guys in the soft alcoholism of middle age are used to thinking about "privilege" as some special and unique gift for certain individuals. So we bristle at the idea that the grandson of an Irish stone cutter who came to the US via Ellis Island, and the son of a blue collar Union guy, is "privileged" in the same way that a Princeton legacy admitted WASP whose name has Roman numerals is "privileged."

But we are. In all sorts of ways, big and small. Senior government officials getting pulled over for driving while black. White lawyers assuming black female lawyers at a deposition are the court reporters. A black female cop came onto my crowded subway (shhh!) the other day, and bumped two or three of us as she walked by. I got an "excuse me, sir" but she didn't say anything to the black guy in a suit standing next to me. Silly example, but there you go.