Today, a third post on Matthew Crawford’s recent, much-shared essay attacking contemporary privilege discourse. That’s three posts more than necessary, but I’m committed to following through on all my mistakes.
The first half of Crawford’s article, which I’ve discussed already, argues that phrases like “white privilege” are for various reasons intellectually illegitimate. The second half offers an alternative explanation for the prevalence of that phraseology, especially (and, as Crawford seems to think, exclusively) on politically liberal college campuses. In outline, he alleges that “white privilege” is only the latest in a long line of balms for the survivor’s guilt that afflicts anyone who succeeds in a bourgeois-capitalist society with egalitarian norms. The winners in such a society, Crawford claims, feel a kind of obligation to search out all forms of inequality except the ones that have led to their own success and to which they remain blind.
This isn’t wrong, exactly, especially if it’s read from a Marxist perspective: identitarian privilege language does tend to ignore class divisions and might even act as a cover for them, blocking forms of agitation that might find broader audiences and achieve more revolutionary results. Is this what Crawford means? Of course I can’t see into his secret heart of hearts, but I suspect not. In his breakthrough book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, he quotes Marx favorably about the mechanics of alienation to which Crawford (a little naively) proposes DIY handiwork as a balm. That was in 2009, though; nine years later, Crawford seems to have abandoned any Marxist sympathies in pursuit of a place as a “centrist” intellectual under the Trump regime. The only intellectual authority Crawford quotes by name in “Privilege” is François Furet, a writer who made his name by red-baiting during an earlier global right-wing turn in the 1980’s. Furet’s attacks on university Marxism provide Crawford with a template for the argument I summarized earlier. In Craword’s view, privilege language has replaced that Marxism as a kind of intellectual shibboleth by which members of the upper class at once assuage their guilt and assert their belonging. Both political stances are illegitimate, and for the same reason.
This puts Crawford in a difficult position. He identifies “X privilege” phraseology as a cover for class tension, but seems unable to offer a reason why that class tension shouldn’t exist. Following Furet, the Crawford of this essay seems like a defender of the current order of things for its own sake. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the extent to which Crawford has benefitted, materially and otherwise, from the way we live now. Like most white men, Crawford hasn’t even been harmed by the election of Trump. On that subject, here’s a particularly obtuse (I wanted to say “fucking dumb,” but “obtuse” was what the thesaurus gave me) sentence from near the end of the essay:
Whether one regards that event as a catastrophe or as a rupture that promises the possibility of glasnost, its immediate effect has been panic in every precinct where the new class accommodations have been functioning smoothly, and a doubling down on the moralizing that previously secured them against popular anger.
I don’t know what country Crawford lives in – maybe the same one as the people who write for the New York Times opinion section. Regardless, I think it would be safe to characterize him as one of those people who feel safe enough to regard Trump’s election as “a rupture that promises the possibility of Glasnost.” If that isn’t white (combined with upper-class) privilege, I don’t know what is.
I’m losing the thread. Crawford identifies privilege discourse as a substitute for something, which should be Marxism but which, since Crawford leans so heavily on Furet, can’t be. If that’s the case, it’s unclear what’s wrong exactly with the contemporary language of privilege.
“White privilege” salves class guilt. So what? Is it worse than cocaine, in that sense the while privilege of the 80’s? Yes, says Crawford, because it makes people angry – in particular, the sort of people against whom “white privilege” language is targeted and whom Crawford, like much of the media, tends to think of as “real Americans.” Well, that’s typically what happens when a polemic hits home: people get angry. Polemical language forces confrontation over a point of substantial disagreement that would otherwise have gotten swept under the rug. That’s what polemics are for.
If talking about privilege forces us to confront the corrosive effect that enduring (and developing) privileges have had on our national life, then I’m all for college campuses amplifying that discussion. Of course, I’d rather the students having that discussion were also socialists or Marxists, but a lot of them are: they prefer both/and over Crawford’s neither/nor.
I know this because I teach on a college campus. Crawford doesn’t, as far as I can tell; he’s “a research fellow,” which is academic code for “insulated from undergraduates.” I assume, then, that he gets his news about who’s using privilege language and how from some other source: colleagues, Fox News, whatever. Maybe I should just have said this at the outset, because it’s enough to discredit the empirical characterization of privilege discourse (it’s all ivy-league students, the winners of capitalism) on which his argument depends. Actually, Crawford has no idea who’s talking in terms of white privilege.
Some ivy league students, certainly – I know that because I’ve taught at an ivy league school, something that Crawford has also to my knowledge never done. But also a lot of non-ivy league students, students whom it would be obtuse (that thesaurus again) to characterize as winners in the game of capitalism. A lot of them are first-generation college students, people who find themselves stuck on a qualifications treadmill that demands they have a BA to get a job that pays less than one they could have held with a college diploma thirty years ago. A lot of them are minorities, which means that, even with a degree in hand, they’ll have a harder time finding a job and whatever job they do find will probably pay them less than their white classmates would’ve made. Those people aren’t using “white privilege” language to soothe a guilty conscience; they’re using it to attack what the word designates in the hope of eliminating it, so that they can get a fair shake.
But those people aren’t the target demographic for the Hedgehog Review. Tomorrow I’ll write about whom Crawford’s article is for and (relatedly) the role of the dishonest magazine intellectual in modern public life.