Wonderful! What I want you to notice, now, is how abstract every item on that checklist is.
As compared to really concrete, obvious privileges like: 450 free points on your SAT. Could that be the first entry on our 'Black Privilege Checklist?' What would be the second?
Now, let's imagine you design a sociological experiment in which randomly selected individuals of each race can exchange their privileges (and/or handicaps) - along with a payment to equalize the exchange.
Once again: who would pay whom? Or if we look at just one side of the comparison - what would be the market value of being legally black? What would parents pay, for instance, to purchase this privilege for their children?
Let's say we could restrict it only to college admissions. What would American parents pay to change their sons' and daughters' acceptance letters from Chico State, to Harvard? Then you'll have a fairly good price floor on the value of "black privilege" - this is obviously not the only benefit.
I welcome any thoughts on how one might perform the opposite experiment - that is, assessing the market value of "white privilege." Do tell, critical race theorists.
What I want you to notice, now, is how abstract every item on that checklist is.
Abstract?! They aren't abstract, some are very very concrete. If you're straight, you can get married in just about every country in the world, and, in nearly every country. If you're a straight married man, you don't have to worry about saying "my wife" in a new place.
People don't sit men down in secondary school and tell them how to avoid being raped, men don't worry about their drink being spiked.
It's true that the mechanism and value of "(succesful group) privilege" are difficult to quantify in a way that explicitly engineered (counter-)measures aren't. Further, it would be impossible to reassign them via contract unless you're a most imaginative thought-experimenter.
It's true that the mechanism and value of "(succesful group) privilege" are difficult to quantify in a way that explicitly engineered (counter-)measures aren't.
That's exactly right! Moreover, there's a very important reason your N-rays are so hard to detect...
Look at it another way. You step into a time machine and emerge in 1938 Berlin - speaking German. Your task: to explain and convince, by pure reason alone, that there is actually no such thing as the international Jewish conspiracy. Expect some downvotes!
Or we could go all science-fiction. The Federation selects you as the first Federation Ambassador to the ice planet of Goth. The people of Goth come in two categories - Ostrogoth and Visigoth. Conventional wisdom among the Ostrogoths is that they are generally oppressed by the Visigoths - and vice versa.
They can't be right. It's your first task, as Federation Ambassador, to construct objective tests that accurately measure whether the Visigoths are sticking it to the Ostrogoths or vice versa.
For instance, you might ask: how many Visigoths are killed extralegally by Ostrogoths? And vice versa? Are young Visigoths, or young Ostrogoths, subjected to the numerus clausus? Etc, etc, etc.
You could build up a spreadsheet of these types of human-rights violations - which would greatly assist you in deciding, as a mere neutral observer, which faction of Goths is holding the whip and which taking it in the tail.
Of course, you're not the Federation Ambassador and neither am I. But even if you're a Goth yourself, why not think this way? Isn't it, at the very least, refreshingly different?
As compared to really concrete, obvious privileges like: 450 free points on your SAT. Could that be the first entry on our 'Black Privilege Checklist?' What would be the second?
Now, let's imagine you design a sociological experiment in which randomly selected individuals of each race can exchange their privileges (and/or handicaps) - along with a payment to equalize the exchange.
Once again: who would pay whom? Or if we look at just one side of the comparison - what would be the market value of being legally black? What would parents pay, for instance, to purchase this privilege for their children?
Let's say we could restrict it only to college admissions. What would American parents pay to change their sons' and daughters' acceptance letters from Chico State, to Harvard? Then you'll have a fairly good price floor on the value of "black privilege" - this is obviously not the only benefit.
I welcome any thoughts on how one might perform the opposite experiment - that is, assessing the market value of "white privilege." Do tell, critical race theorists.