Or we could notice that merit is still a useful concept, that good decisionmaking is a skill regardless of whether everyone is in a position to use it, and that the previous poster's parents made decisions that were highly beneficial to their child, above and beyond what other parents in comparable situations might have, and that the poster is quite right to be thankful for that. Which funnily enough is the only opinion they voiced, so it's rather a mystery what your needlessly nasty comment is replying to.
I think the point of privilege discourse is to undermine the notion of moral "desert," not to encourage guilt over something beyond your control.
I don't personally believe in reparations as commonly framed, but saying that reparations ought to be paid is also not the same thing as saying people should feel guilty for actions they didn't take.
> It’s important for progressives to acknowledge and counter the people who wave the progressive flag but espouse the opposite of progressive ideals.
I think this can be taken too far. Disavowal can be important at times, but I find there is often a trend among the Right to highlight random views held by an extremely small minority of people (ie. a single tweeting American among 315 million Americans) and demand a disavowal of that rhetoric. I think this is in bad faith.
This comment thread, in my view, is emblematic of this in that simply by using the word "privilege" we are now being asked to disavow something that some nebulous "lots of people" attach to that word, even though the word was clearly not being used in that context here.
> but I find there is often a trend among the Right to highlight random views held by an extremely small minority of people (ie. a single tweeting American among 315 million Americans) and demand a disavowal of that rhetoric. I think this is in bad faith.
Agreed. Where I disagree is that the left doesn’t do this exact same thing, or that these views are held by “a single tweet” and not, say, entire online communities.
For the record, I generally agree with you, but to the same extent that avowal can go too far, it is very easy to go too far in assuming all ridiculous positions on our side are strawmen. A lot of people do think that way. Nothing wrong with acknowledging privilege — but you don’t need to feel personally guilty over things out of your control like your inherited wealth or your skin color. I think we can all agree on that.
Except I don't see anyone in this comment thread actully expousing that belief. I _do_ however see a lot of people strawmanning it.