Privilege and why it matters: the case of the golliwogs
I see folks mocking the ‘check-your-privilege’ concept a lot - fundamentally as a way to negate the privilege concept. There’s a slightly crass and self-indulgent pride that goes with the vitctimhood here. ‘Yet another wokey piece of socialst mind control’ goes the (stupid, ignorant and bigoted) narrative.
With golliwogs firmly in the news this week the reaction to it has been exemplary of this issue. ‘How can a doll be racist?’
How we react to this story is the issue: I may know nothing about why golliwogs are racist - and are strong symbols of historic racist wrongs. Be that as it may. Whether I therefore say - OK, ‘I have something to learn here’, or ‘these woke idiots are out of control’, is deeply telling and is the point.
If a definition of privilege is saying that something isn’t a problem because it isn’t a problem to me, then this is a crystal clear examplar.
And the default to ‘I can’t see how this is racist’ is not a statement about whether something is racist or not: it’s a statement about whether I am interested in addressing my ignorance, and whether I give a small one about offending others.
And that’s the point: by ‘othering’ the woke crowd, it becomes OK to offend them. It even becomes important to do so. This is now pretty much UK Government policy: we should offend the woke because they deserve it (and it saves us from having to address our own racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, climate lies and apathy about other people’s poverty). This is also the basis of fascism: demonisation of a group so you can treat them badly is preciselyt where it starts.
I don’t see any cure though and certainly, engaging politely really does not change anyone’s mind when they are determined not to think. These are folks who as a matter of policy, will not think about or engage with new ideas about injustice. The choice is some painful self-examination or a course of mockery and simplistic group targetting. So that’s it then. It is tempting to say: they therefore negate themselves from legitimacy in the discussion and will just have to eat the consequences when they arrive, as inevitably they will.