People want answers when institutions screw up. When the government is caught stealing public information from phone records, we raise our fists and yell angrily "how could this happen!" When a southern fraternity gleefully uses the N word in what seems to be a long standing tradition, we stand aghast as if this society is not riddled with these issues. And even when we accept that perhaps more work needs to be done, there is always someone who likes to come along and trivialize these issues to the point where no meaningful action can be taken against institutions that are clearly culpable. This process of obscuring issues to the point where responsibility becomes a shared burden rather than a weight tied to a perpetrator is what I call "the privilege overstep." It is when someone looks to an overarching societal problem as the root cause of what ever negative behavior a typically privileged institution commits. It's not their fault that they used the N-word, race relations are tense and we don't have discussions around race. It's not the financial sectors fault that the housing bubble set off a domino effect in the economy, we were all caught up in the hysteria of fake profit. When one uses a privilege overstep, they move responsibility from a privileged institution onto at best all of society and at worst (covertly) onto an oppressed group. It's unfortunate that women are often victims of sexual assault in college. We need to have more conversations surrounding these issues, perhaps starting with special nail polish and self defense techniques (cue the victim blaming).
To be fair it's not like when ever someone engages in the "privileged overstep speech" they have malicious intent. Often the polarized nature of these issues make it so that both sides prevent any culpability to begin with. But the effects of such obfuscation paints those who pursue justice as hot-blooded and narrow minded. It is from this paternalistic explanation of "how the world is riddled with root evils" where the minority is not justifiably disgruntled, but instead an irrational and angry person. When one engages in the overstep speech, they often make a false equivalency between genuine concerns (e.g. sexual assault, racism, food stamps) and their fictionalized counterparts (fake accusations, reverse racism, deficit spending). The "privileged overstep speech" is yet another way people refuse to acknowledge confront their own privilege. In its most repugnant form, it maintains the systems of oppression by preventing any meaningful institution change. We must not be fooled when someone claims that issues are inherent in society and meaningful and targeted steps cannot be taken to keep institutions from perpetrating further injustices.
To be fair it's not like when ever someone engages in the "privileged overstep speech" they have malicious intent. Often the polarized nature of these issues make it so that both sides prevent any culpability to begin with. But the effects of such obfuscation paints those who pursue justice as hot-blooded and narrow minded. It is from this paternalistic explanation of "how the world is riddled with root evils" where the minority is not justifiably disgruntled, but instead an irrational and angry person. When one engages in the overstep speech, they often make a false equivalency between genuine concerns (e.g. sexual assault, racism, food stamps) and their fictionalized counterparts (fake accusations, reverse racism, deficit spending). The "privileged overstep speech" is yet another way people refuse to acknowledge confront their own privilege. In its most repugnant form, it maintains the systems of oppression by preventing any meaningful institution change. We must not be fooled when someone claims that issues are inherent in society and meaningful and targeted steps cannot be taken to keep institutions from perpetrating further injustices.
No comments:
Post a Comment