The Perils of "Privilege"

The Perils of
Author: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1250091209

"Privilege--the word, the idea, the j'accuse that cannot be answered with equanimity--is the new rhetorical power play. From social media to academia, public speech to casual conversation, "Check your privilege" or "Your privilege is showing" are utilized to brand people of all kinds with a term once reserved for wealthy, old-money denizens of exclusive communities. Today, "privileged" applies to anyone who enjoys an unearned advantage in life, about which they are likely oblivious. White privilege, male privilege, straight privilege--those conditions make everyday life easier, less stressful, more lucrative, and generally better for those who hold one, two, or all three designations. But what about white female privilege in the context of feminism? Or fixed gender privilege in the context of transgender? Or weight and height privilege in the context of hiring practices and salary levels? Or food privilege in the context of public health? Or two parent, working class privilege in the context of widening inequality for single parent families? In The Perils of Privilege, Phoebe Maltz Bovy examines the rise of this word into extraordinary potency. Does calling out privilege help to change or soften it? Or simply reinforce it by dividing people against themselves? And is privilege a concept that, in fact, only privileged people are debating?"--

The Perils of "Privilege"

The Perils of
Author: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1250091225

Top 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017–The Washington Post “Privilege”—the word, the idea, the accusation that is nearly impossible to disprove—is the new rhetorical power play. From social media to academia, public speech to casual conversation, the word is utilized to brand people of all kinds with a term once reserved exclusively for those who came from wealth and old money—inherited advantage. Today “privileged” applies to anyone who enjoys an unearned advantage in life, inherited or not. White privilege, male privilege, straight privilege—those conditions make everyday life easier, less stressful, more lucrative, and generally better for those who hold one, two, or all three designations. But what about white female privilege in the context of feminism? Or fixed gender privilege in the context of transgender? Or weight and height privilege in the context of hiring practices and salary levels? Or food privilege in the context of widening inequality for single-parent families? In The Perils of “Privilege,” Phoebe Maltz Bovy examines the rise of this word into extraordinary potency. Does calling out privilege help to change or soften it? Or simply reinforce it by dividing people against themselves? And is privilege a concept that, in fact, only privileged people are debating? The Perils of “Privilege” explores how this word is deployed, and offers ways to begin anew so many of the conversations it has silenced.

The Fortunate Ones

The Fortunate Ones
Author: Ed Tarkington
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616206802

“The Fortunate Ones feels like a fresh and remarkably sure-footed take on The Great Gatsby, examining the complex costs of attempting to transcend or exchange your given class for a more gilded one. Tarkington’s understanding of the human heart and mind is deep, wise, and uncommonly empathetic. As a novelist, he is the real deal. I can’t wait to see this story reach a wide audience, and to see what he does next.” —Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife When Charlie Boykin was young, he thought his life with his single mother on the working-class side of Nashville was perfectly fine. But when his mother arranges for him to be admitted as a scholarship student to an elite private school, he is suddenly introduced to what the world can feel like to someone cushioned by money. That world, he discovers, is an almost irresistible place where one can bend—and break—rules and still end up untarnished. As he gets drawn into a friendship with a charismatic upperclassman, Archer Creigh, and an affluent family that treats him like an adopted son, Charlie quickly adapts to life in the upper echelons of Nashville society. Under their charming and alcohol-soaked spell, how can he not relax and enjoy it all—the lack of anxiety over money, the easy summers spent poolside at perfectly appointed mansions, the lavish parties, the freedom to make mistakes knowing that everything can be glossed over or fixed? But over time, Charlie is increasingly pulled into covering for Archer’s constant deceits and his casual bigotry. At what point will the attraction of wealth and prestige wear off enough for Charlie to take a stand—and will he? The Fortunate Ones is an immersive, elegantly written story that conveys both the seductiveness of this world and the corruption of the people who see their ascent to the top as their birthright.

White Privilege

White Privilege
Author: Neil Altman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2020-09-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000199851

White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives looks at race and the significant role it plays in society and in clinical practice. Much of the effort going into racial consciousness-raising rests on the concept of unearned "white privilege". In this book, Neil Altman looks deeply into this notion, suggesting that there are hidden assumptions in the idea of white privilege that perpetuate the very same racially prejudicial notions that are purportedly being dismantled. The book examines in depth the structure of racial categories, polarized between white and black, that are socially constructed, resting on fallacious ideas of physical or psychological differences among peoples. Altman also critically examines such related concepts as privilege, guilt, and power. It is suggested that political positions are also artificially polarized into categories of "liberal", "left" and "conservative", "right", in ways that contribute to stereotyping between people with different political leanings, foreclosing mutual respect, dialogue, and understanding. Finally, White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives explores the implications for the theory and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, discussing these ideas in detail and depth with clinical illustrations. Drawing on Altman’s rich clinical experience and many years of engaging with racial and societal problems, this book offers a new agenda for understanding and offering analytic practice in contemporary society. It will appeal to clinicians, psychoanalytic therapists, and anyone with an interest in social problems and how they manifest in society and in therapy today.

The Privilege of Youth

The Privilege of Youth
Author: Dave Pelzer
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2004-12-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780452286290

The #1 New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author who is a shining example of what overcoming adversity really means now shares the lost chapter of his uplifting journey, which has touched the lives of millions. From A Child Called “It” to The Lost Boy, from A Man Named Dave to Help Yourself, Dave Pelzer’s inspirational books have helped countless others triumph over hardship and misfortune. In The Privilege of Youth, he shares the missing chapter of his life: as a boy on the threshold of adulthood. With sensitivity and insight, he recounts the relentless taunting he endured from bullies; but he also describes the thrill of making his first real friends—some of whom he still shares close relationships with today. He writes about the simple pleasures of exploring his neighborhood, while trying to forget the hell waiting for him at home. From high school to a world beyond the four walls that were his prison for so many years, The Privilege of Youth bravely and compassionately charts this crucial turning point in Dave Pelzer’s life and will inspire a whole new generation of readers.

Claim of Privilege

Claim of Privilege
Author: Barry Siegel
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2008-06-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0060777028

In 1948, three civilian engineers were killed in an Air Force plane crash while testing secret navigational equipment. The widows filed suit, but the Air Force, at the dawn of the Cold War, refused to hand over accident reports and witness statements, claiming the documents contained classified information that would threaten national security. In 1953 the Supreme Court sided with the Air Force in United States v. Reynolds, formally recognizing the "state secrets" privilege, a legal precedent since used to conceal conduct, withhold documents, block troublesome litigation, and, most recently, detain terror suspects without due process. A half century later, the government revealed the "top-secret" information--there were no national security secrets, but rather a shocking chronicle of negligence. This book tells the story of this shameful incident, and the dangerous consequences of this historic cover-up: the violation of civil liberties and the abuse of constitutional protections.--From publisher description.

Burying White Privilege

Burying White Privilege
Author: Miguel A. De La Torre
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467453250

Short. Timely. Poignant. Pointed. Burying White Privilege is all of these and more. This is the book that everybody who cares about contemporary American Christianity will want to read. Many people wonder how white Christians could not only support Donald Trump for president but also rush to defend an accused child molester running for the US Senate. In a 2017 essay that went viral, Miguel A. De La Torre boldly proclaimed the death of Christianity at the hands of white evangelical nationalists. He continues sounding the death knell in this book. De La Torre argues that centuries of oppression and greed have effectively ruined evangelical Christianity in the United States. Believers and clerical leaders have killed it, choosing profits over prophets. The silence concerning—if not the doctrinal justification of—racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia has made white Christianity satanic. Prophetically calling Christian nationalists to repentance, De La Torre rescues the biblical Christ from the distorted Christ of white Christian imagination.

The Perils of the One

The Perils of the One
Author: Stathis Gourgouris
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231550022

From the earliest times, societies have been seduced by the temptation of unitary thinking. Recognizing the vulnerability of existence, people and cultures privilege regimes that confer authority on a single entity, a sovereign ruler, a transcendental deity, or an Event, which they embrace with unquestioned devotion. Such obsessions precipitate contempt for the worldliness of real bodies in real time and refusal of responsibility and agency. In The Perils of the One, Stathis Gourgouris offers a philosophical anthropology that confronts the legacy of “monarchical thinking”: the desire to subjugate oneself to unitary principles and structures, whether political, moral, theological, or secular. In wide-ranging essays that are at once poetic and polemical, intellectual and passionate, Gourgouris reads across politics and theology, literary and art criticism, psychoanalysis and feminism in a critique of both political theology and the metaphysics of secularism. He engages with a range of figures from the Apostle Paul and Trinitarian theologians, to La Boétie, Schmitt, and Freud, to contemporary thinkers such as Clastres, Said, Castoriadis, Žižek, Butler, and Irigaray. At once a broad perspective on human history and a detailed examination of our present moment, The Perils of the One offers glimpses of what a counterpolitics of autonomy would look like from anarchic subjectivities that refuse external ideals, resist the allure of command and obedience, and embrace otherness.

Unbearable Splendor

Unbearable Splendor
Author: Sun Yung Shin
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2016-09-19
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1566894522

Praise for Sun Yung Shin: Finalist for the Believer Poetry Award "[her] work reads like redactions, offering fragments to be explored, investigated and interrogated, making her reader equal partner in the creation of meaning."—Star Tribune Sun Yung Shin moves ideas—of identity (Korean, American, adoptee, mother, Catholic, Buddhist) and interest (mythology, science fiction, Sophocles)— around like building blocks, forming and reforming new constructions of what it means to be at home. What is a cyborg but a hybrid creature of excess? A thing that exceeds the sum of its parts. A thing that has extended its powers, enhanced, even superpowered.

But I Don’t See Color

But I Don’t See Color
Author: Terry Husband
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2016-07-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9463005854

Racism is still very prevalent and pervasive in all aspects of the P-12 educational experience in the United States. Far too many teachers and administrators continue to respond to this challenge by applying colorblind perspectives and approaches. This edited volume provides a broad and comprehensive critique of colorblindness in various educational contexts. In an attempt to advocate for a more color-conscious approach to education, this book deals with a wide range of issues related to teaching, learning, curriculum, creativity, assessment, discipline, implicit bias, and teacher education. There are three distinct features that make this book so important and relevant given the current social and racial climate in U.S. schools today. First, each chapter in this book draws from a plethora of different theoretical perspectives related to race and racism. In this sense, readers are equipped with variety of robust theoretical perspectives to better understand this complicated issue of racism in schools. Second, this book communicates issues of race and racism through multiple voices. Unlike other books on race and racism where the central voice is that of a researcher or scholar, this book centralizes the voices and perspectives of researchers, teachers, and teacher educators alike. As a result, readers are better able to understand issues of race and racism in schools from a more nuanced perspective. Finally, unlike other books related to race and racism in schools, this book provides readers with practical strategies for combating racism in their respective educational contexts.