> I'm sorry if I don't put much trust in third hand stories like this, it's easy for them to be blown out of proportion.
Fair enough, but consider the new SAT "Adversity" score[1]. Is that not essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale? It's still reducing the "vector" that oppression is supposed to be (from an intersectionality perspective) to a "scalar" value that is useful for sorting people into a hierarchy.
With regard to my first point, consider the NYT opinion piece arguing against the Adversity score[2]. The author spends the first two paragraphs establishing his own adversity/lack of privilege before he begins to actually make an argument. I don't think there's anything wrong with him doing so, and I think it's rhetorically effective, but do you think his opinion would be given a platform if he did not have that adversity score?
> My experiences, as a cis-het-white-affluent person would disagree. ;)
Perhaps because you benefit from (in Paul Graham's words) "orthodox privilege"? That is, your ideas are not questioned on the basis of your identity because they are the "right" opinions[3]. For someone to question the orthodoxy, they must first establish their own adversity or risk being discounted (or worse).
> Fair enough, but consider the new SAT "Adversity" score[1]. Is that not essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale? It's still reducing the "vector" that oppression is supposed to be (from an intersectionality perspective) to a "scalar" value that is useful for sorting people into a hierarchy.
I don't know that the SAT adversity score claims to be an explicit demarcation of privilege. It wouldn't, for example, encode racial privilege since none of the signifiers are the test takers race. Some may be racially correlated, but I think we've already established that those are different. As far as I can tell it really only applies at the granularity of a high school and not a particular student (although I may very well be mistaken here, it's hard to tell).
But this is mostly moot since the Adversity Score plan was withdrawn[1].
> but do you think his opinion would be given a platform if he did not have that adversity score?
Broadly, yes[1]. Worth noting that Williams is and has been a staff writer at the NYT for quite some time, he was also the author (like the actual author, not just a signatory) of the Harper's letter that's been in the news. He's got quite the platform, even when it comes to non-race related things.
> Perhaps because you benefit from (in Paul Graham's words) "orthodox privilege"? That is, your ideas are not questioned on the basis of your identity because they are the "right" opinions[3]. For someone to question the orthodoxy, they must first establish their own adversity or risk being discounted (or worse).
That's a bit of a catch-22 now isn't it. My opinions will be discounted due to my privilege, but if they aren't, that's also due to my privilege. But I also don't think this is true: there's all kinds of things that I do question with my more progressive friends. But they're usually around economic policy, or procedures (I'm pragmatic, many people I know are not, so there's ongoing debate I see about reformist vs. revolutionary action with regard to the issue du jour).
Being a reformist as opposed to a revolutionary is absolutely impacted by my privileges, and I recognize that. I'm much more comfortable with the world the way things are than some of my "colleagues" in this context, so reformism is safer to me. But some people aren't treated as well by the system today, so they are much more willing to throw the whole thing out, deal with the chaos for a while, and build something new from the ashes.
That's clearly worse for me, but probably gets them to where they're more equal faster. Interestingly, I'm not even sure which of those two opinions would be considered orthodoxy among progressive circles. But I don't think people discount my opinions on the subject because I have some privileges. In some cases I think they're actually valued more.
Fair enough, but consider the new SAT "Adversity" score[1]. Is that not essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale? It's still reducing the "vector" that oppression is supposed to be (from an intersectionality perspective) to a "scalar" value that is useful for sorting people into a hierarchy.
With regard to my first point, consider the NYT opinion piece arguing against the Adversity score[2]. The author spends the first two paragraphs establishing his own adversity/lack of privilege before he begins to actually make an argument. I don't think there's anything wrong with him doing so, and I think it's rhetorically effective, but do you think his opinion would be given a platform if he did not have that adversity score?
> My experiences, as a cis-het-white-affluent person would disagree. ;)
Perhaps because you benefit from (in Paul Graham's words) "orthodox privilege"? That is, your ideas are not questioned on the basis of your identity because they are the "right" opinions[3]. For someone to question the orthodoxy, they must first establish their own adversity or risk being discounted (or worse).
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[1]https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-adversity-score Curiously, a '0' means "most hardship" and a "100" means "least hardship", which is the inverse of what you would expect.
[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opinion/sat-adversity-sco...
[3]which is not to say that you do not hold these opinions sincerely and rationally. I'm sure you do.