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Monday, July 29, 2019

Privilege, again

I do listen to voices that disagree with me.  And on the subject of privilege, they insist that it does not deny another's struggles or disadvantages, but rather it focuses on the disadvantages you didn't have, due to one's privileged status.

One example often given is a white person will be viewed less suspiciously in any encounter with the police.

Now, ask this question: "Do you support training and outreach to reduce bias and improve the relationship between police and minority communities?"  I suspect there would be strong support for that proposition.

Now, a group of people who wanted to effect change should address this issue, and countless others like it, in this manner.  We know it's worked in the past; civil rights activists made the moral case for equality and changed the racist attitudes of 1950's culture.

Instead, they call it white privilege.  In doing so, they move the focus away from the people doing wrong (biased police officers) and onto people who did nothing wrong (average people in the majority group).

This is a phenomenally bad idea.  It's simple psychology.  No one likes being blamed for something they didn't do.  And when the right thing is harder to do than the wrong thing, treating doing the right thing the same as doing the wrong thing is going to encourage people to not do the right thing.