15 April 2019
If such an acclaimed linguist as John McWhorter can (not just tolerate, but) embrace “Ebonics” then I think the rest of you should have little trouble with my useful laziness, my joyous envy, my noble cowardice, or Ayn Rand’s selfish generosity. If ya’ll’ll bend a little on that, maybe I can start pretending that brown people are “black” and pink people are “white” and depressed homosexuals are “gay” and maybe even that happenstance is “privilege.”
Nah. It’s one thing to reduce reality to black and white distinctions, but to suggest that good luck or circumspect behavior or not matching suspect descriptions are “private laws” or “elite access” is to turn civil discourse on its head.
update 200602: correspondent CA acknowledges everyone’s right not to be assaulted, but points out that one group’s rights are regularly violated, whereas other groups seem not to be so harassed, thereby satisfying that part of the definition of “privilege” which states that it is “an immunity [that is] granted or available only to a particular person or group.”
CA wonders whether I would consider that to be “luck” rather than privilege. Yes, I call it luck. It happens from the outside and the recipient has no control over it. A privilege is defined and defended and exercised. Good luck happens to us.
And the right not to be attacked is violated for many races. Try being a skinny adolescent haole punk in Kalihi. Or Reginald Denny in Los Angeles.
Because right-handedness is the condition of the majority you could just as well invent “right privilege.” Because some are blind, you could invent “sight privilege.” I confess that I feel lucky to be able to readily digest lactose, peanuts, and gluten, but none of that makes me “privileged” either.