[Music]
okay what time is it 8:15 I started win
sorry it's me 6:30
I should stop them
I'm gonna go for five more minutes and
then I'll wrap this up I want to talk
about intersectionality and and white
privilege a bit so so I first said well
we analyzed Marxism we have analyzed
post-modernism I suggested that
post-modernism was a way for the Marxist
to keep going under a new guys I
suggested that Marxism was fundamentally
based on hatred rather than sympathy and
an empathy I suggested that the corpses
were the evidence for that I told you
why I think post-modernism is
fundamentally wrong but now I want to
talk to you a little bit about white
privilege so the first thing that I can
and I haven't got this quite figured out
yeah I can't quite figure out why the
post modernists have made the canonical
distinctions they've made race ethnicity
sexual proclivity sexual gender identity
let's say those are four dimensions
along which people vary but there's a
very large number of dimensions along
which people vary right in fact given
that there's an infinite number of ways
of interpreting the world you could
immediately point out that there's an
infinite number of dimensions along
which people vary and so then the
postmodern question is why would you
privilege some of those dimensions over
the other and I would say well because
it sustains your bloody Marxist
interpretation that's why but you're not
gonna say that because it marginalizes
right
you've marginalized that so you can
ignore it so that's one of the fun
things about post-modernism you can you
can I have a very vulgar image in my
mind but I won't share that with you but
you can infer it here's some ways people
differ intelligence temperament
geography historical time you live now
and not a hundred years ago
attractiveness that's a big that's a big
one that's a big one
but you imagine you you could you won't
go there either you
he it's it's advantageous to be young
you've got potential it's advantageous
to be old you've got wealth health
that's a good one
sex women have advantages men have
advantages maybe one has more than the
other it's not self-evident women live
about eight years longer they're
multi-orgasmic athleticism well family
structure friendship education well then
there's the classic you know postmodern
once race ethnicity etc why not those
other very dimensions of variation
there's no evidence that they're less
important in fact there's quite a bit of
evidence that they're more important so
like why not consider them then you get
intersectionality this is one of the
things that's really comical I think
because the post modernists identity
politics types actually realized this
they thought well okay race and gender
fair enough what if your what if you're
a black woman that's a problem because
well now you've got two dimensions of
differentiation what the hell are we
gonna do about that and what if you're
what if you're gay and black and female
well then what if you're not very bright
and gay and black and female and then
what if you're ugly and not very bright
and gay and black and female and like
you can keep playing that game you can
keep playing that game an infinite
number of ways because there's an
infinite number of ways to categorize
things as the post modernist already
pointed out and so the intersectionality
theorist came along to plug the hole but
they don't know where they're going they
don't understand that the logical
conclusion of intersectionality is
individuality because there's so many
different ways of categorizing people's
advantages and disadvantages that if you
take that all the way out to the end you
say well the individual is the ultimate
minority and that's exactly right and
that's exactly what the West discovered
and you know the intersection list so
get there if they don't kill everyone
first so on to white privilege so it's
really interesting to find out where
these ideas come from because it's
usually the scholarship is so awful you
just cannot possibly believe it it's
just absolutely it wouldn't in
at the University of Toronto in the
psychology department the original paper
on white privilege wouldn't have
received a passing grade for the
hypothesis part of a undergraduate
honors thesis we're not even close
there's no methodology at all the person
who wrote it it was called white
privilege and male privilege a personal
account of coming to see correspondences
through work in women's studies well
first of all personal account is like
sorry no so she she listed a bunch of
ways that she thought she says these are
personal personal examples of her
unearned privilege or unearned privilege
that she saw as she experienced in 1970s
1980s so this by the way that so this
idea is the opinion of one person who
wrote one paper that has absolutely no
empirical backing whatsoever which is a
set of hypotheses which have never been
subject to any statistical analysis like
if I ask you a bunch of questions it's
not obvious how many questions I'm
asking you because I could say how tall
are you
or I could say if you're laying on the
ground how extended would you be it's
like that two questions it's like no
it's one question
it's just asked two ways and the way you
figure out if you ask someone a bunch of
questions how many questions you're
asking them is by doing something called
a factor analysis which is kind of an
elementary form now of social science
investigation if you make a
questionnaire you have to subject it to
a factor analysis because you got to
find out how many questions you're
asking because you might think it's 60
but it's probably not it's probably five
that's the big five by the way anyways
who cares about that there's no such
thing as methodology anyways that's all
part of the oppressive white male
European patriarchy so we can just not
bother with that and we can pen a few
notes about how we think the world is
constructed and then we can screw up the
entire political system two decades
later okay so here's your white
privilege list some of it there's like
50 things I can if I wish arrange to be
in the company of people of my race most
of the time if I should need to move I
can be pretty sure of renting or
purchasing housing in an area which I
can afford and in which I would want to
live
that's actually a well thing by the way
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors
in such a location will be neutral or
pleasant to me I can go shopping alone
most of the time pretty well assured
that I will not be followed or harassed
I can turn on my television or open to
the front page of the paper and see
people of my waist race widely
represented when I'm told about our
national heritage or about civilization
I am shown that people of my color made
it what it is there's 50 of those I
think something like that okay is that
white privilege is that like majority
privilege is the same true you go to
China you're Chinese it's the same true
if you're Chinese does the majority
privilege and if its majority privileges
like isn't that just part of living
within your culture so let's say you
live in your culture you're privileged
as a member of that culture well
obviously that's what the culture is for
that's what it's for why would you
bother building the damn thing if it
didn't accrue benefits to you now you
might say well one of the consequences
that it accrues fewer benefits to those
who aren't in the culture yeah but you
can't immediately associate that with
race you can't just do that say it's
white privilege
there's many things that could be
certainly could be well and the
intersectional people have already
figured out that there's many things it
could be so like what the hell
seriously well what's going on well we
let these pseudo disciplines into the
university because we're stupid and
guilty seriously
and they have no methodological
requirements and plenty of power and
plenty of time to produce nonsensical
research and produce like resentful
activists and now we're bearing the
fruits of that it's not pretty so white
privilege well the other thing you might
notice is that to attribute to the
individuals of a community the
attributes of that community on the
basis of their racial identity is called
racism that's what racism is there's no
other way of defining it it's
attributing to the individual the
characteristics of the group as if the
group was homogeneous
now the intersectional people have
already decided that's not a fair game
there's so many differences between
people but the postmodernist don't care
about logical coherence because they
regard logical coherence here it comes
again
as a creation of the white European male
patriarchal structure that's designed to
oppress the oppressed and that's
technically the case so logical
incoherent it doesn't matter and you
could say well if you act out your
logically incoherent ideas in the world
you're gonna run face first into a brick
wall and the postmodern answer to that
is there's actually no real world it's
all interpretation so there's no there's
no having that discussion but the post
modernists don't care because they don't
believe that discussion between people
of different power groups is possible
anyways