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I am sincerely convinced that there is so much information about criticism of white privilege that it justifies a separate article. This daughter article must include suitably-weighted positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the split article. Views? (may I make a request for brevity where possible) Keith Johnston ( talk) 18:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Keith Johnston, JzG, Doug Weller: Please note that just last month I proposed adding a criticism section to this article, see Talk:White privilege#Response to NPOV/N discussion. There was much objection to that, in part because some editors view separate articles or sections titled criticism as essentially a POV fork (a view I respect but don't agree with). So instead I added a new section White privilege#White privilege pedagogy dealing with an aspect of academic theorizing that's important in its practical implications and has been widely criticized. The section includes ample citations to criticism. I felt that adding this section, but not a criticism section, was a good compromise. After I added that section containing much criticism, no one objected or reverted, and this shows that the claims that some editors want to keep criticism of CRT out of Wikipedia are unjustified. Finally, it's amazing how many times the same issue has been discussed, in different forums and different sections of the talk page, sometimes with several equivalent discussions under different headings going on at the same time. It makes it hard to follow and to know when to participate. Eventually that gets to be unproductive and unhelpful. NightHeron ( talk) 11:36, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
The criticism needs to be in the main article, it doesn't exist separately. Understanding White Privilege is also understanding the criticisms of it/its usage or application and is fair to include in the main article. Sorry, but it sounds like this is simply a pragmatic workaround to the heavy-handed control over this popular page. Hesperian Nguyen ( talk) 13:39, 16 January 2020 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Hesperian Nguyen ( talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
the two of you aren't showing good faith towards other editors. Could you please be specific and indicate to me exactly where the violation was? NightHeron ( talk) 19:56, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Please can I stop being pinged in these discussions. I am no longer interested in these discussions and I now regret beginning this whole voluminous exercise. I also feel I am being deputised into arguments of which I am not interested in participating and having positions ascribed to me which I do not actually hold. Sparkle1 ( talk) 21:34, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
First, I apologize to
Keith Johnston,
Thucydides411, and any other editor who I said was unjustifiably claiming there was a problem with certain editors keeping criticism out of this article. Two hours after I wrote that their claim is not justified, and that other editors had allowed the coverage of criticism in
White privilege#White privilege pedagogy to remain in the article,
User:JzG went and reverted almost all of that section, reducing it to a tiny stub. The reasons given in the edit summaries of the 4 reverts make little sense. For example, one of the critical articles is by members of a certain group, and the supposed reason for reverting it is that the group is not a significant group
. But the article is from the Harvard Educational Review, which is certainly a significant academic journal. Who cares what group the authors do or do not belong to? Another revert summary objects to two sources, claiming that they're not real articles, that they're not by "significant scholars" and that they're "early-career stuff". They in fact are real articles. One is a publication of the Philosophy of Education Society (The Philosophy of Education Society is pleased to sponsor this annual collection of some of the best work in our field. Here, we explain the review and selection procedures for the essays included in the Philosophy of Education Yearbook. Each year the Philosophy of Education Society invites its members to submit work for possible inclusion in this collection, and these papers are carefully reviewed by an Editor and Editorial Committee. The refereeing process is anonymous and rigorous; the committee rejects more than half of the papers submitted. Accepted essays are commented upon and returned to their authors for revision. They should be counted as refereed publications.
) The other appeared in the journal
Educational Philosophy and Theory. What's the evidence that the authors are "not significant"? Who says? What relevance does the stage of career of the authors have? Are articles by young authors not RS?
Another objection in the revert summaries is that the articles are "primary" sources rather than "overview" sources. But the articles cited are not primary sources, as the term primary is defined in WP:Primary. If we want to broaden the meaning of primary to include any article that's not an overview, then almost all of the references cited in this page are primary, including Peggy McIntosh's article.
The 4th revert summary says "again no article." But the reverted material cited an article published in the journal Race Ethnicity and Education. In short, the grounds for the 4 reverts that removed almost all criticism of white privilege pedagogy are a hodgepodge of specious reasons. What's particularly troubling is that the removal of criticism was done by an admin. I am now coming around to thinking that Keith Johnston, Thucydides411, and others might have a valid point about criticism of CRT being blocked from this article, in violation of WP:NPOV. Criticism of CRT is not fringe (although denial of the existence of white privilege as a phenomenon is fringe). NightHeron ( talk) 16:24, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Both papers rely on personal examples of unearned advantage that McIntosh says she experienced in her lifetime, especially from 1970 to 1988.Wouldn't you call those primary sources? I'm not objecting to using those sources, or any of the other sources in the article. But there shouldn't be a double standard: MEDRS for critical articles, and relaxed standards for other sources.
White privilege analysis has been influential in philosophy of education. I offer some mild criticisms of this largely salutary direction -- its inadequate exploration of its own normative foundations, and failure to distinguish between `spared injustice', `unjust enrichment' and `non-injustice-related' privileges; its inadequate exploration of the actual structures of racial disparity in different domains (health, education, wealth); its tendency to deny or downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the major racial groups; its failure to recognize important ethnic differences within racial groups; and its overly narrow implied political project that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to the cause of racial justice.)
field of sociological study that dates back well over half a centuryis a bit of a stretch -- it's a relatively recent fashion in some circles whose origin is usually credited to Peggy McIntosh's 1988 paper. NightHeron ( talk) 02:43, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
JzG, the term white privilege PEDAGOGY does not mean "the sociological study of white privilege". From dictionary.com: Pedagogy: (1) the function or work of a teacher; teaching. (2) the art or science of teaching; education; instructional methods.
.
McIntosh's knapsack article is not holy text that's immune to criticism, and is not even scholarly text. Have you read it? It's a personal opinion piece (as pointed out in the lead to her Wikipedia page). It's very sincere and well-intentioned, and has been included in several books of readings for introductory women's studies courses. But some scholars in the field of education -- such as the authors of the four sources that you removed -- have criticized the approach to teaching about racism that grew out of that article. Clearly some editors don't like those authors or their arguments. That's fine. But claiming that an article in Harvard Educational Review is not RS either because an editor doesn't like it or because its six authors are young has no support in Wikipedia policies.
You state that you require that the author's work is considered an accurate summary of the field
. By whom? White privilege pedagogy is controversial, as are many ideas about teaching. Different authors have different viewpoints. Since when does an article of criticism have to be a "summary of the field"?
Regarding Logue, the Philosophy of Education Society editors (not Wikipedia editors) made a decision to include her article in their annual collection of best work. I gather if you'd been there, you wouldn't have chosen it. That's not relevant. Neither is whether she was an aging scholar, an early career scholar, a graduate or even undergraduate student (which I very much doubt she was). Gayle Rubin wrote an extremely influential article on trafficking of women before she'd even earned her doctorate. NightHeron ( talk) 11:40, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
papers attributed to students.And it's not true that
anyone can publishin the Harvard Educational Review.
The content I reverted did not seem like a good summary of the cited source, but it also didn't seem like a proportionate one. The Harvard Education Review source authors are clear in their admiration for McIntosh and Knapsack and they go out of their way to emphasize that this is specifically about how to teach white privilege in classrooms, workshops, etc. It is primarily about McIntosh's Knapsack as a teaching tool, not so much about all of white privilege as a sociological concept. In other words, it says nothing about whether or not the concept itself is valid. The summary I removed seemed to be implying that they were saying that because it might make some white people upset, it shouldn't be mentioned... but that would be a nonsensical (and incredibly privileged) thing for antiracist activists to claim.
My very simplistic summary of the source is that it says that relying on Knapsack's approach to white privilege alone is too shallow and too narrow to be very effective, and that the intersectionality of whiteness and class is often undervalued. The source discusses "ritual confessions", but this is their interpretation of specific activities derived from Knapsack. I don't think it was their intent to claim that this is a defining trait of white privilege as a whole (and to be honest, I think the connection being made by the source is pretty flimsy, but that's not entirely relevant). Based on this source, I don't think this needs to be emphasized in this way, in this article. Grayfell ( talk) 04:50, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
saying that because it might make some white people upset, it shouldn't be mentioned. That is a caricature that completely misses the point. What they are saying is that the white privilege pedagogy approach tends to write off white students who push back against it as being hopelessly racist. They believe that many white students, especially those of working-class background, resent being told that they are "privileged," but if approached in a more constructive way will sometimes become involved in anti-racist activity. NightHeron ( talk) 01:04, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
teacher education courses [and] professional development programs, then yes, the authors of this source are saying that activists should knock it off. This seems far too niche a critique for an article on the entire topic. Grayfell ( talk) 03:14, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
too niche a critiqueunless you just mean that you disagree with it. NightHeron ( talk) 01:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
re: the paragraph on "McIntosh as Synecdoche: How Teacher Education's Focus on White Privilege Undermines Antiracism" [2].
I think the following is fair to ask: How is the inclusion here not WP:UNDUE - Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority is as significant as the majority view. Are the opinions in the article significantly supported anywhere? Is there any follow-up research published by any of the authors or was this a one-off article? If it is included, what studies from the opposite viewpoint can be included to maintain WP:NPOV. Again I didn't spend endless hours researching this, so the questions above are honest questions. I'm open to changing my mind as long as the content placed in context with opposing views. But I think its a very steep climb to overcome WP:UNDUE, WP:RSUW // Timothy:: talk 05:27, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Bizarre that this article doesn't mention any of this. Correctus2kX ( talk) 23:03, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
How do we deal with popular criticism of white privilege outside of academia? Today there is a vibrant debate going on in the UK about white privilege and whether or not white privilege is a racist concept. This is in the pages of the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.
See: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/17/lawrence-fox-says-accusing-white-male-privilege-racism-gets/ https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/watch-laurence-foxs-question-time-clash-over-meghan/ https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/word-of-the-week-white-privilege/ Here the concept is being mocked, not in a fringe paper like the Daily Sturmer but in the Spectator a mainstream conservative magazine.
This debate is not being conducted by academics versed in CRT. Do we:
a) Ignore it and the argumentation because its not by academics or b) include and contextualise it?
If this debate falls outside this article then does it belongs somewhere else?
Genuine question. Keith Johnston ( talk) 17:07, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
I have been thinking about this stalemate for the last two days, and I think I know why we are still in dispute. This page is being used for two separate, but overlapping purposes.
1) There is the theory of “White Privilege”, which I will capitalise for distinction, invented in the 1970s by certain academics - Peggy McIntosh, the CRT school and so on.
2) Secondly, there is the historical phenomena of white people oppressing black people through colonialism, slavery, jim crow and so on. This can be described as “white privilege” (lower case) but is also covered by “racism”, “white supremacism” and so on. This INCLUDES White Privilege as described by Peggy etc but is also broader and encompasses older forms of more direct racism that would not ordinarily be described as privilege per se.
These are two separate subjects that overlap. The theory of Peggy does not simply mean anti-black, pro-white racism. It is more specific, a particular framework used to analyse racism. While (virtually) everyone agrees that white people have historically oppressed black people (generalising for the sake of argument), there is no consensus on whether the “White Privilege” framework is accurate, given all of its additional stipulations as specified in the academic literature.
This page currently reads as a hodge-podge of both of these - it is a history and description of the “White Privilege” concept defined in the 70s, with all its additional (and more controversial) provisions of unconscious bias and so on, and also of a history of how white “forces” have oppressed black people throughout history.
The fact of black people being historically oppressed by white people is a universally accepted fact that does not need to be referred to as a theory. In a colloquial sense, we could describe this as lower case “white privilege”. The academic theory of “White Privilege”, however, is something more than this. It is a more specific theory, not simply an open term used to describe widely accepted phenomenon.
We need to determine whether this page is about the specific theory of White Privilege, or the phenomena of “white privilege”/white supremacy/white exceptionalism throughout history. We do need a page that deals specifically with Peggy’s concept, its adherents and its critics, and so to exclude the history of racism from such an article is not to deny the historical reality but to maintain the encyclopaedic nature of wikipedia - this article is about a Theory, not racism more broadly. This can change, but we need to specify. The theory itself needs its own page, independent of the history of the phenomena of which the school seeks of claims to describe/uncover/analyse. Right now we don’t have this, we have a confused page of dual-meaning - White Privilege as in Peggy McIntosh’s concept (which has greater implications than simply the name suggests, hence why she is credited as discovering/creating something new) and “white privilege” as a loose term describing ALL pro-white racism. In denying that Peggy’s theory is universally accepted (which it certainly is not), people are being buffed as though they are denying historical white-on-black racism full stop. It is becoming less about accuracy and more about political culture war, which Wikipedia should be and is above. Proponents are being accused of evangelism, detractors as racists in denial, neither of which are accurate at all. It really doesn’t need to be this controversial. Librairetal ( talk) 19:06, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
It really doesn’t need to be this controversial.
Then is the answer not two pages? On on the social phenomenon, one of the CRT theory of the same?
And do we not need evidence that “white privilege” is a universally or even widely accepted term? And also a reason why “white privilege” even needs its own page if there is already pages on white supremacism etc?
All of the sources we have, or at least 80-90%, relate to Critical Race Theory.
It at least sounds like we agree that White Privilege (CRT theory) and white privilege (synonym for white-on-black racism) should not be conflated. That seems to be a contention on both sides. Librairetal ( talk) 20:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
I need to go through these sources when I get some time, but it looks to me as though almost all of the references describe the CRT theory, and not this broader “white privilege” or “white skin privilege” as being widely accepted/observed. I am not convinced that the theory of white privilege, independent of the CRT theory, is widely accepted enough to be stated matter-of-factly. My hypothesis, which I have yet to confirm, is that the vast majority of uses of the term “white privilege” are CRT based, while the broader phenomena is more commonly called white supremacism, racism etc. I’m willing to do the legwork to demonstrate it, but I’m not convinced that the wider use of the expression “white privilege” is really independent of CRT. I think that it is ALMOST exclusively used in this sense, and not just to describe white-on-black racism more broadly. Librairetal ( talk) 20:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Librairetal: I basically agree with your summary of the nature of the dispute. There are two things being discussed here: the Critical Race Theory concept called "white privilege", and the cluster of phenomena that various people of a certain political persuasion colloquially call "white privilege", but which have other names (racism, discrimination, colonialism, etc.). This latter use of the phrase "white privilege" has become more and more common as CRT has entered the political mainstream (at least among liberal Americans), and "laypeople" have started using the term in everyday life. If you follow Eric Arnesen's critique of Whiteness Studies, this may be partly to blame on people in the field, for using unclear or shifting definitions in the first place. In any case, this article isn't about flippant uses of the term "white privilege" in everyday conversation. It's about the academic concept. That's what almost all the sources we cite are about.
The problem is that the article sounds as if it were written by someone who strongly believes in the claims of Critical Race Theory. Various previous versions of the article have briefly mentioned some of the critics of the concept (coming from a number of different directions, from conservatives to Marxists), but as written, the article now implicitly says that these critics are mistaken. I don't see why we can't have a neutral description of this academic concept. I guess some editors personally feel strongly that the concept is correct, and that's fine in itself. The problem is when editors try to force Wikipedia to take a side on a heavily disputed sociological theory. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 18:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
It isn't really complicated at all. The article is about the phenomenon of white privilege and also about the way the term has been used in recent years to frame discussions of racism. The latter is controversial, and criticism is included in the article. For example, the section on white privilege pedagogy describes and cites criticism of the approach to teaching students about racism that centers around trying to get white students to acknowledge (or confess) their "white privilege".
The reason why the issue might seem headache-inducing is that opponents of the notion that white privilege exists as a phenomenon have been repeating the same arguments again and again in several places on the talk-page. I think there's a consensus to keep the article as it is except for minor edits (possibly including additional citations to criticism of certain theoretical tendencies). Perhaps an admin can close the RfC and we can all agree to stop talking about it. NightHeron ( talk) 10:50, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Binksternet: Those sorts of accusations are unwarranted and unhelpful. I haven't seen Keith Johnston (nor anyone else here) deny the existence of racism. If you think that criticism of white privilege theory is equivalent to denying the existence of racism, then that would explain your position here, but then you'd also be sorely mistaken.
We can go back to the example that NightHeron gave a while back: it is entirely possible that cabs often don't stop for black people in parts of New York City (as NightHeron claimed). I think it would be uncontroversial to call that "racism". It would, however, be controversial to call that "white privilege", for a reason that Lewis Gordon points out: the ability to walk into a public business and be served or to hail a cab is widely considered a right, not a privilege. The people who make use of this right are not "privileged", according to the common meaning of the term. The people who are being discriminated against are certainly being unjustly deprived of a right, but that does not mean that the large majority of people who are not discriminated against are "privileged". That's if you go by the pre-existing definition of the word "privileged". The novelty of Critical Race Theory is to call non-discrimination against the majority a "privilege", in effect redefining the word. That redefinition is itself controversial.
A second reason why the concept of white privilege is controversial is because it uses certain anecdotes or data points to argue that white skin confers privileges, while ignoring (according to critics) countervailing evidence that points to white skin not being the actual cause. For example, many non-white ethnic minorities in the United States do much better, on average, on a whole host of measures (income, health and education, to name a few) than people considered white. See the entire discussion about "model minorities". - Thucydides411 ( talk) 18:15, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@ NightHeron: I understood your example about taxis perfectly well. I don't think you understood my response, however. Please reread it, because it explains one prominent criticism of the white privilege concept (privileges vs. rights). This criticism used to be discussed in the article, but has since been cleansed, like most other criticism. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 07:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
There really should be at least a heading entitled 'criticism' or 'responses to the concept'. The current article is very, very biased in favour of one (largely American) perspective. Correctus2kX ( talk) 16:56, 18 January 2020 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Correctus2kX ( talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 |
![]() | There have been attempts to
recruit editors of specific viewpoints to this article, in a manner that does not comply with Wikipedia's policies. Editors are encouraged to use neutral mechanisms for requesting outside input (e.g. a "
request for comment", a
third opinion or other noticeboard post, or neutral criteria: "pinging all editors who have edited this page in the last 48 hours"). If someone has asked you to provide your opinion here, examine the arguments, not the editors who have made them. Reminder: disputes are resolved by consensus, not by majority vote. |
I am sincerely convinced that there is so much information about criticism of white privilege that it justifies a separate article. This daughter article must include suitably-weighted positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the split article. Views? (may I make a request for brevity where possible) Keith Johnston ( talk) 18:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Keith Johnston, JzG, Doug Weller: Please note that just last month I proposed adding a criticism section to this article, see Talk:White privilege#Response to NPOV/N discussion. There was much objection to that, in part because some editors view separate articles or sections titled criticism as essentially a POV fork (a view I respect but don't agree with). So instead I added a new section White privilege#White privilege pedagogy dealing with an aspect of academic theorizing that's important in its practical implications and has been widely criticized. The section includes ample citations to criticism. I felt that adding this section, but not a criticism section, was a good compromise. After I added that section containing much criticism, no one objected or reverted, and this shows that the claims that some editors want to keep criticism of CRT out of Wikipedia are unjustified. Finally, it's amazing how many times the same issue has been discussed, in different forums and different sections of the talk page, sometimes with several equivalent discussions under different headings going on at the same time. It makes it hard to follow and to know when to participate. Eventually that gets to be unproductive and unhelpful. NightHeron ( talk) 11:36, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
The criticism needs to be in the main article, it doesn't exist separately. Understanding White Privilege is also understanding the criticisms of it/its usage or application and is fair to include in the main article. Sorry, but it sounds like this is simply a pragmatic workaround to the heavy-handed control over this popular page. Hesperian Nguyen ( talk) 13:39, 16 January 2020 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Hesperian Nguyen ( talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
the two of you aren't showing good faith towards other editors. Could you please be specific and indicate to me exactly where the violation was? NightHeron ( talk) 19:56, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Please can I stop being pinged in these discussions. I am no longer interested in these discussions and I now regret beginning this whole voluminous exercise. I also feel I am being deputised into arguments of which I am not interested in participating and having positions ascribed to me which I do not actually hold. Sparkle1 ( talk) 21:34, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
First, I apologize to
Keith Johnston,
Thucydides411, and any other editor who I said was unjustifiably claiming there was a problem with certain editors keeping criticism out of this article. Two hours after I wrote that their claim is not justified, and that other editors had allowed the coverage of criticism in
White privilege#White privilege pedagogy to remain in the article,
User:JzG went and reverted almost all of that section, reducing it to a tiny stub. The reasons given in the edit summaries of the 4 reverts make little sense. For example, one of the critical articles is by members of a certain group, and the supposed reason for reverting it is that the group is not a significant group
. But the article is from the Harvard Educational Review, which is certainly a significant academic journal. Who cares what group the authors do or do not belong to? Another revert summary objects to two sources, claiming that they're not real articles, that they're not by "significant scholars" and that they're "early-career stuff". They in fact are real articles. One is a publication of the Philosophy of Education Society (The Philosophy of Education Society is pleased to sponsor this annual collection of some of the best work in our field. Here, we explain the review and selection procedures for the essays included in the Philosophy of Education Yearbook. Each year the Philosophy of Education Society invites its members to submit work for possible inclusion in this collection, and these papers are carefully reviewed by an Editor and Editorial Committee. The refereeing process is anonymous and rigorous; the committee rejects more than half of the papers submitted. Accepted essays are commented upon and returned to their authors for revision. They should be counted as refereed publications.
) The other appeared in the journal
Educational Philosophy and Theory. What's the evidence that the authors are "not significant"? Who says? What relevance does the stage of career of the authors have? Are articles by young authors not RS?
Another objection in the revert summaries is that the articles are "primary" sources rather than "overview" sources. But the articles cited are not primary sources, as the term primary is defined in WP:Primary. If we want to broaden the meaning of primary to include any article that's not an overview, then almost all of the references cited in this page are primary, including Peggy McIntosh's article.
The 4th revert summary says "again no article." But the reverted material cited an article published in the journal Race Ethnicity and Education. In short, the grounds for the 4 reverts that removed almost all criticism of white privilege pedagogy are a hodgepodge of specious reasons. What's particularly troubling is that the removal of criticism was done by an admin. I am now coming around to thinking that Keith Johnston, Thucydides411, and others might have a valid point about criticism of CRT being blocked from this article, in violation of WP:NPOV. Criticism of CRT is not fringe (although denial of the existence of white privilege as a phenomenon is fringe). NightHeron ( talk) 16:24, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Both papers rely on personal examples of unearned advantage that McIntosh says she experienced in her lifetime, especially from 1970 to 1988.Wouldn't you call those primary sources? I'm not objecting to using those sources, or any of the other sources in the article. But there shouldn't be a double standard: MEDRS for critical articles, and relaxed standards for other sources.
White privilege analysis has been influential in philosophy of education. I offer some mild criticisms of this largely salutary direction -- its inadequate exploration of its own normative foundations, and failure to distinguish between `spared injustice', `unjust enrichment' and `non-injustice-related' privileges; its inadequate exploration of the actual structures of racial disparity in different domains (health, education, wealth); its tendency to deny or downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the major racial groups; its failure to recognize important ethnic differences within racial groups; and its overly narrow implied political project that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to the cause of racial justice.)
field of sociological study that dates back well over half a centuryis a bit of a stretch -- it's a relatively recent fashion in some circles whose origin is usually credited to Peggy McIntosh's 1988 paper. NightHeron ( talk) 02:43, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
JzG, the term white privilege PEDAGOGY does not mean "the sociological study of white privilege". From dictionary.com: Pedagogy: (1) the function or work of a teacher; teaching. (2) the art or science of teaching; education; instructional methods.
.
McIntosh's knapsack article is not holy text that's immune to criticism, and is not even scholarly text. Have you read it? It's a personal opinion piece (as pointed out in the lead to her Wikipedia page). It's very sincere and well-intentioned, and has been included in several books of readings for introductory women's studies courses. But some scholars in the field of education -- such as the authors of the four sources that you removed -- have criticized the approach to teaching about racism that grew out of that article. Clearly some editors don't like those authors or their arguments. That's fine. But claiming that an article in Harvard Educational Review is not RS either because an editor doesn't like it or because its six authors are young has no support in Wikipedia policies.
You state that you require that the author's work is considered an accurate summary of the field
. By whom? White privilege pedagogy is controversial, as are many ideas about teaching. Different authors have different viewpoints. Since when does an article of criticism have to be a "summary of the field"?
Regarding Logue, the Philosophy of Education Society editors (not Wikipedia editors) made a decision to include her article in their annual collection of best work. I gather if you'd been there, you wouldn't have chosen it. That's not relevant. Neither is whether she was an aging scholar, an early career scholar, a graduate or even undergraduate student (which I very much doubt she was). Gayle Rubin wrote an extremely influential article on trafficking of women before she'd even earned her doctorate. NightHeron ( talk) 11:40, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
papers attributed to students.And it's not true that
anyone can publishin the Harvard Educational Review.
The content I reverted did not seem like a good summary of the cited source, but it also didn't seem like a proportionate one. The Harvard Education Review source authors are clear in their admiration for McIntosh and Knapsack and they go out of their way to emphasize that this is specifically about how to teach white privilege in classrooms, workshops, etc. It is primarily about McIntosh's Knapsack as a teaching tool, not so much about all of white privilege as a sociological concept. In other words, it says nothing about whether or not the concept itself is valid. The summary I removed seemed to be implying that they were saying that because it might make some white people upset, it shouldn't be mentioned... but that would be a nonsensical (and incredibly privileged) thing for antiracist activists to claim.
My very simplistic summary of the source is that it says that relying on Knapsack's approach to white privilege alone is too shallow and too narrow to be very effective, and that the intersectionality of whiteness and class is often undervalued. The source discusses "ritual confessions", but this is their interpretation of specific activities derived from Knapsack. I don't think it was their intent to claim that this is a defining trait of white privilege as a whole (and to be honest, I think the connection being made by the source is pretty flimsy, but that's not entirely relevant). Based on this source, I don't think this needs to be emphasized in this way, in this article. Grayfell ( talk) 04:50, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
saying that because it might make some white people upset, it shouldn't be mentioned. That is a caricature that completely misses the point. What they are saying is that the white privilege pedagogy approach tends to write off white students who push back against it as being hopelessly racist. They believe that many white students, especially those of working-class background, resent being told that they are "privileged," but if approached in a more constructive way will sometimes become involved in anti-racist activity. NightHeron ( talk) 01:04, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
teacher education courses [and] professional development programs, then yes, the authors of this source are saying that activists should knock it off. This seems far too niche a critique for an article on the entire topic. Grayfell ( talk) 03:14, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
too niche a critiqueunless you just mean that you disagree with it. NightHeron ( talk) 01:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
re: the paragraph on "McIntosh as Synecdoche: How Teacher Education's Focus on White Privilege Undermines Antiracism" [2].
I think the following is fair to ask: How is the inclusion here not WP:UNDUE - Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority is as significant as the majority view. Are the opinions in the article significantly supported anywhere? Is there any follow-up research published by any of the authors or was this a one-off article? If it is included, what studies from the opposite viewpoint can be included to maintain WP:NPOV. Again I didn't spend endless hours researching this, so the questions above are honest questions. I'm open to changing my mind as long as the content placed in context with opposing views. But I think its a very steep climb to overcome WP:UNDUE, WP:RSUW // Timothy:: talk 05:27, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Bizarre that this article doesn't mention any of this. Correctus2kX ( talk) 23:03, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
How do we deal with popular criticism of white privilege outside of academia? Today there is a vibrant debate going on in the UK about white privilege and whether or not white privilege is a racist concept. This is in the pages of the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.
See: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/17/lawrence-fox-says-accusing-white-male-privilege-racism-gets/ https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/watch-laurence-foxs-question-time-clash-over-meghan/ https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/word-of-the-week-white-privilege/ Here the concept is being mocked, not in a fringe paper like the Daily Sturmer but in the Spectator a mainstream conservative magazine.
This debate is not being conducted by academics versed in CRT. Do we:
a) Ignore it and the argumentation because its not by academics or b) include and contextualise it?
If this debate falls outside this article then does it belongs somewhere else?
Genuine question. Keith Johnston ( talk) 17:07, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
I have been thinking about this stalemate for the last two days, and I think I know why we are still in dispute. This page is being used for two separate, but overlapping purposes.
1) There is the theory of “White Privilege”, which I will capitalise for distinction, invented in the 1970s by certain academics - Peggy McIntosh, the CRT school and so on.
2) Secondly, there is the historical phenomena of white people oppressing black people through colonialism, slavery, jim crow and so on. This can be described as “white privilege” (lower case) but is also covered by “racism”, “white supremacism” and so on. This INCLUDES White Privilege as described by Peggy etc but is also broader and encompasses older forms of more direct racism that would not ordinarily be described as privilege per se.
These are two separate subjects that overlap. The theory of Peggy does not simply mean anti-black, pro-white racism. It is more specific, a particular framework used to analyse racism. While (virtually) everyone agrees that white people have historically oppressed black people (generalising for the sake of argument), there is no consensus on whether the “White Privilege” framework is accurate, given all of its additional stipulations as specified in the academic literature.
This page currently reads as a hodge-podge of both of these - it is a history and description of the “White Privilege” concept defined in the 70s, with all its additional (and more controversial) provisions of unconscious bias and so on, and also of a history of how white “forces” have oppressed black people throughout history.
The fact of black people being historically oppressed by white people is a universally accepted fact that does not need to be referred to as a theory. In a colloquial sense, we could describe this as lower case “white privilege”. The academic theory of “White Privilege”, however, is something more than this. It is a more specific theory, not simply an open term used to describe widely accepted phenomenon.
We need to determine whether this page is about the specific theory of White Privilege, or the phenomena of “white privilege”/white supremacy/white exceptionalism throughout history. We do need a page that deals specifically with Peggy’s concept, its adherents and its critics, and so to exclude the history of racism from such an article is not to deny the historical reality but to maintain the encyclopaedic nature of wikipedia - this article is about a Theory, not racism more broadly. This can change, but we need to specify. The theory itself needs its own page, independent of the history of the phenomena of which the school seeks of claims to describe/uncover/analyse. Right now we don’t have this, we have a confused page of dual-meaning - White Privilege as in Peggy McIntosh’s concept (which has greater implications than simply the name suggests, hence why she is credited as discovering/creating something new) and “white privilege” as a loose term describing ALL pro-white racism. In denying that Peggy’s theory is universally accepted (which it certainly is not), people are being buffed as though they are denying historical white-on-black racism full stop. It is becoming less about accuracy and more about political culture war, which Wikipedia should be and is above. Proponents are being accused of evangelism, detractors as racists in denial, neither of which are accurate at all. It really doesn’t need to be this controversial. Librairetal ( talk) 19:06, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
It really doesn’t need to be this controversial.
Then is the answer not two pages? On on the social phenomenon, one of the CRT theory of the same?
And do we not need evidence that “white privilege” is a universally or even widely accepted term? And also a reason why “white privilege” even needs its own page if there is already pages on white supremacism etc?
All of the sources we have, or at least 80-90%, relate to Critical Race Theory.
It at least sounds like we agree that White Privilege (CRT theory) and white privilege (synonym for white-on-black racism) should not be conflated. That seems to be a contention on both sides. Librairetal ( talk) 20:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
I need to go through these sources when I get some time, but it looks to me as though almost all of the references describe the CRT theory, and not this broader “white privilege” or “white skin privilege” as being widely accepted/observed. I am not convinced that the theory of white privilege, independent of the CRT theory, is widely accepted enough to be stated matter-of-factly. My hypothesis, which I have yet to confirm, is that the vast majority of uses of the term “white privilege” are CRT based, while the broader phenomena is more commonly called white supremacism, racism etc. I’m willing to do the legwork to demonstrate it, but I’m not convinced that the wider use of the expression “white privilege” is really independent of CRT. I think that it is ALMOST exclusively used in this sense, and not just to describe white-on-black racism more broadly. Librairetal ( talk) 20:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Librairetal: I basically agree with your summary of the nature of the dispute. There are two things being discussed here: the Critical Race Theory concept called "white privilege", and the cluster of phenomena that various people of a certain political persuasion colloquially call "white privilege", but which have other names (racism, discrimination, colonialism, etc.). This latter use of the phrase "white privilege" has become more and more common as CRT has entered the political mainstream (at least among liberal Americans), and "laypeople" have started using the term in everyday life. If you follow Eric Arnesen's critique of Whiteness Studies, this may be partly to blame on people in the field, for using unclear or shifting definitions in the first place. In any case, this article isn't about flippant uses of the term "white privilege" in everyday conversation. It's about the academic concept. That's what almost all the sources we cite are about.
The problem is that the article sounds as if it were written by someone who strongly believes in the claims of Critical Race Theory. Various previous versions of the article have briefly mentioned some of the critics of the concept (coming from a number of different directions, from conservatives to Marxists), but as written, the article now implicitly says that these critics are mistaken. I don't see why we can't have a neutral description of this academic concept. I guess some editors personally feel strongly that the concept is correct, and that's fine in itself. The problem is when editors try to force Wikipedia to take a side on a heavily disputed sociological theory. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 18:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
It isn't really complicated at all. The article is about the phenomenon of white privilege and also about the way the term has been used in recent years to frame discussions of racism. The latter is controversial, and criticism is included in the article. For example, the section on white privilege pedagogy describes and cites criticism of the approach to teaching students about racism that centers around trying to get white students to acknowledge (or confess) their "white privilege".
The reason why the issue might seem headache-inducing is that opponents of the notion that white privilege exists as a phenomenon have been repeating the same arguments again and again in several places on the talk-page. I think there's a consensus to keep the article as it is except for minor edits (possibly including additional citations to criticism of certain theoretical tendencies). Perhaps an admin can close the RfC and we can all agree to stop talking about it. NightHeron ( talk) 10:50, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Binksternet: Those sorts of accusations are unwarranted and unhelpful. I haven't seen Keith Johnston (nor anyone else here) deny the existence of racism. If you think that criticism of white privilege theory is equivalent to denying the existence of racism, then that would explain your position here, but then you'd also be sorely mistaken.
We can go back to the example that NightHeron gave a while back: it is entirely possible that cabs often don't stop for black people in parts of New York City (as NightHeron claimed). I think it would be uncontroversial to call that "racism". It would, however, be controversial to call that "white privilege", for a reason that Lewis Gordon points out: the ability to walk into a public business and be served or to hail a cab is widely considered a right, not a privilege. The people who make use of this right are not "privileged", according to the common meaning of the term. The people who are being discriminated against are certainly being unjustly deprived of a right, but that does not mean that the large majority of people who are not discriminated against are "privileged". That's if you go by the pre-existing definition of the word "privileged". The novelty of Critical Race Theory is to call non-discrimination against the majority a "privilege", in effect redefining the word. That redefinition is itself controversial.
A second reason why the concept of white privilege is controversial is because it uses certain anecdotes or data points to argue that white skin confers privileges, while ignoring (according to critics) countervailing evidence that points to white skin not being the actual cause. For example, many non-white ethnic minorities in the United States do much better, on average, on a whole host of measures (income, health and education, to name a few) than people considered white. See the entire discussion about "model minorities". - Thucydides411 ( talk) 18:15, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@ NightHeron: I understood your example about taxis perfectly well. I don't think you understood my response, however. Please reread it, because it explains one prominent criticism of the white privilege concept (privileges vs. rights). This criticism used to be discussed in the article, but has since been cleansed, like most other criticism. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 07:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
There really should be at least a heading entitled 'criticism' or 'responses to the concept'. The current article is very, very biased in favour of one (largely American) perspective. Correctus2kX ( talk) 16:56, 18 January 2020 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Correctus2kX ( talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.