Monday, July 31, 2017

Privilege

Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

Methinks the "white privilege" crowd has jumped the shark with this one:
The University of Iowa’s student newspaper has announced the discovery of a special privilege which intelligent people acquire as an accident of birth. This new privilege — called “cognitive privilege” — functions in essentially the same way as white privilege...

As with skin color and much else, Daily Iowan author Dan Williams argues, people have no control over how smart they are. Life is a huge cosmic lottery full of winners and losers.
I teach in a public school and live in a 1240 sf house.  What has my cognitive privilege gotten for me? That I've avoided two of the faults in the Animal House quote above?  Yeah, hate me for that.

3 comments:

Jean said...

In that case, they need to address the biggest privilege of all: coming from a stable family environment. That one trumps every other advantage ever thought up.

Anonymous said...

With the other forms of "privilege" I can at the very least see where they're coming from in them seeing perceived societal discrimination for arbitrary traits (gender, race, sexual orientation) that have nothing to do with abilities to do jobs and contribute to society. This is just a whole new level of stupid.

Anonymous said...

Jean wrote:
In that case, they need to address the biggest privilege of all: coming from a stable family environment.
This headline came from Australia two years ago
Bedtime reading could disadvantage other children, academic says