Queering privilege :: Essays Papers

Queering privilege In any groups’ struggle against injustice, a glint of jealousy and bitterness seems to accompany thoughts of the oppressor and those positioned in places of privileged within structures of domination. Generally it is acknowledged that there are no simple scapegoats upon whom to unequivocally level blame for all the world’s maladies, tempting as finding and accosting such a character is. Despite the growing willingness to let go of old myths of directly responsible villains, there remains a not unrelated urge still to describe and intellectually master (exert power over by gaining knowledge of) those who inhabit structural locations of privilege. Taking the case of Patricia Hill Collins’ black feminism, a rather nuanced understanding of such characters is developed to better know their place. However, the accounts of this sort of simplistic anti-domination critique ultimately replicates, in its theorizing, the assimilationist incompleteness of the modes of tho ught it initially rejects. For people to be ‘structurally positioned’ in ‘relatively privileged ways’ means that they routinely receive benefits and escape discomforts as compared to trends in other people. Usually these trends about what is ‘routine’ and how ‘other people’ live rely on some creation of a category of â€Å"normal† from which others are understood as departures. A first issue is to determine what a benefit or discomfort would be. By discomfort, of course, I mean to sarcastically understate the range from daily and ‘accidental’ inconveniences to very intentional brutality that makes up a common experience of grinding oppression that structurally condemns folks as individuals and groups. Similarly, benefits span a sizeable range in their particularity, but compose an overarching preponderance of niceties. However, who gets to decide what is oppressive or beneficent might be the effected person, someone higher up, or impe rsonal criteria, but this is a question for ethics one is tempted to bracket. Some groups, it then seems, are in better places, but who are â€Å"they†? If black women can be defined as a group by first noticing the trends that particular people encounter, such as often being suspected of shoplifting, and then correlating these patterns with their constructed identity (the combination of categories â€Å"black† and â€Å"woman†) (Collins 25-26), then perhaps groups with structural privilege can be understood similarly. The categories of, say, â€Å"man† and â€Å"white† do seem to line up with systematic privileges. In Patricia Hill Collins’ black feminism, both the criticisms and alternative methodologies offer some insights into the nature of a position of privilege and what it means to inhabit it.