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When is it oppression (plus a few thoughts on privilege checklists)?

youarenotyou:

eshusplayground:

Some weeks ago, I was chatting with moononwaters about what oppression looks like, when it dawned on me …

Look at who’s dying.

It was shocking to discover how simple and pervasive that is. Because when you come down to it, oppression is meant to maintain power by annihilating the Other. Whether by violence or neglect, the oppressed are the ones who are dying because the system is set up to kill them.

Of course, you wouldn’t know it from all the privilege checklists floating around online. At first I brushed it off as well-intentioned but misguided because they often mistake inconvenience or awkwardness for oppression, but now I’m starting to wonder if it’s actually harmful.

Part of it may have to do with the history of the privilege checklist, starting with Peggy McIntosh’s Invisible Knapsack. But it seems that something got missed in the translation to other systems of oppression. See, the Invisible Knapsack was a tool of self-examination on the part of someone who benefited from White privilege. Now it seems that privilege checklists are used as a way of assuming oppressed status - regardless of the creator’s understanding of what oppression is and how it works.

That’s not to say that all privileged checklists suck or that people should stop using them. But people need to keep in mind that privilege is not just a collection of perks and advantages you get for being “normal.” They are boons given to the beneficiaries of systemic oppression. Privilege is but one symptom of a larger problem.

Privilege checklists become harmful when they are used as a substitute for a broader systemic and institutional analysis. When people equate minor disadvantages with the exploitation, exclusion, and violence people encounter as members of an oppressed class, it erodes clarity, which hampers the ability to mobilize for direct action that can transform society.

i hate privilege checklists for so many reasons