On black privilege

Discussions of ‘privilege’ have become one of the themes of this age. In a short space of time, the obsession with the subject has forced its way from the margins of the social sciences right into the centre of all cultural and political debate. Politics and office politics is increasingly consumed by it. One day it is Rory Stewart being asked to account for his privilege by that ghetto-denizen Cathy Newman. Another it is Don Lemon being talked over by a black trans woman at the mass asylum breakout that constituted last week’s Democrats LBGT Town Hall.

Everywhere the privilege discussion is the same. Who has privilege? Who should give it up? Who should have more?

The debate is hampered by the fact that until now it has been assumed in countries like Britain and America that only one form of privilege exists. That it is white, male, elderly, ‘cis’, heteronormative power. Anybody believed to be in possession of one, let alone all, of these ailments is assumed to be a person of power who must therefore acknowledge their privilege and in some way move aside.

Of course as I go to some lengths to expose in my recent book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, the problem with this theory is not just that it is divisive and false but that it is inherently contradictory. For instance, some studies show that gay men and women are likely to out-earn their heterosexual counterparts during the course of their careers. There are a number of possible reasons for this. But whatever the cause, this must constitute some form of ‘gay advantage’ or ‘gay privilege’? If so, how are we to rectify it? Must some form of taxation be brought in to take some money from the gays and hand it over to those poor benighted straights?

If we are to interpret the whole world and our actions in it primarily through the lens of ‘power’ then surely there are other forms of power and privilege that exist in the world? Forms that almost everybody knows exist but that we pretend do not.