Privy

For the most part, I think the social justice habit of lecturing people on their privilege is counterproductive.

It mostly makes enemies and hurts the cause. No, no, it doesn’t matter if you’re right. Even if absolutely every word is 100% true.

It’s better and more useful to appeal to empathy, to justice and to fairness. Your harangue on how privilege allowed someone to get somewhere they otherwise would not have might sound in the swim to you, but all your unlucky listener will ever hear is: “Your life is a sham, you don’t deserve what you have, and you are personally evil.”

Warning, again: even if it is true.

Because this is what happens. Your natural allies say, “Well those people are mental and I am having nothing to do with them.”

It probably seems like I am more conservative than I am from writing these things. But I only attack my own side because I care about it. I am quite radical in most ways,  more so than most people would believe. I’ll spell that out sometime.

Other than in an academic setting – where it is useful and valid – for actually changing the world, all the “privilege” talk should be left in the privy where it belongs.