Reply to Serious question: Why are people afraid to admit privilege?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]6 pages and only maybe two or three people answered the WHY in OP's initial post.[/quote]

Because it is a meaningless, bait-and-switch term that smuggles in all sort of contested (and IMO false) assumptions.  For example, take the kids at Whitman,  a “privileged” bunch by any measure.  People pretend they do better than other, less privileged groups, because they are given more than their fair share of a limited “lump of opportunity.”  We all know, of course, that this is false.  Suppose we bussed them en masse to an EOTP high school, replacing the existing population of students there entirely, and we force them to make due with the limited resources available in this “unprivileged” environment.  Is there anyone who would be surprised when that EOTP school stopped looking so underprivileged anymore?  Even those people concerned about “privilege” know this would be the result—that is why they don’t propose such solutions,

[Yes I hear the objection—it’s due to their privilege in middle school, or elementary school, or being in just the right playgroup, or because their privileged parents played them Mozart in the womb or whatever.  No need to get into that endless debate here, no one is convincing anyone.]

The point, for purposes of this thread, is that implicit in the whole “privilege” discussion is the tacit assumption that such “privilege” is a material driver of outcomes.  IMO there is little evidence for this, and it is at best debatable.  So refusing to discuss the issue in those terms is a way of challenging the premise of the “privilege” framework.  It is no surprise that people who don’t buy into this concept make that argumentative move.  [/quote]

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