<i>The Perils of Privilege</i> is a deep study into the current culture's obsession with privilege, and more than that, the obsession over everyone deciding that when any argument arises, we must acknowledge our own privilege or out someone else's privileged stance to support or refute an argument.

This book does a good job as covering all aspects of what society now claims as being privileged, beyond economics and including privileges of race, gender, education, cultural status and more. But with any of these types of books, what happens is one problem is split into dozens of different angles, with no real proposed solution to tackling any of it. Most readers may not even know what side the author stands on until the very end, when she lists a number of possible ways to back off of the privilege pointing towards others and squash this new cultural norm, but I'm not sure a lot of readers will make it to this point in the book. The main reason? There are three major sources where the author quotes from to make points throughout the book: anonymous comments on online articles, random Twitter feeds and essays that, while coming from reputable publications, don't seem like anything that would be read by those without somewhat elevated levels of privilege in their lives. I think many readers will have a similar reaction to what I did—getting angry every few pages, while nodding in agreement while reading the next few.

The other aspect of this book is that it's existence is a privilege within itself, which may turn off some people from reading it. The author does a decent job of acknowledging the areas of her life which may be deemed 'privileged' and led her to the place she is now with a book all about privilege, but the idea that she had to acknowledge this is the first place negates some of her points in the book, especially the argument that so many face when writing memoirs or essays of immediately acknowledging how privileged they are (or had been during childhood) to explain to readers how well they understand or fail to understand the subject they chose to write about.

After reading this book, I'm still not sure what I think about the whole idea that this privilege shaming we all seem to give as good as we get is ever going to fade away. In fact, it's probably only going to get stronger because now the idea that you have privilege for others to shame is quickly becoming a status symbol in itself, whether you truly embody any type of privilege or not. It's a complicated topic and needs continued discussion.

I received this book as a free ARC from NetGalley. This will not prevent me from writing an honest review.

For several years now, it has been common for comments to online articles and blog posts to call out the author and/or subject to "check your privilege" or to be notified that "your privilege is showing." In response, many writers include a list of privilege-acknowledging disclaimers to preempt such reactions. The privilege framework plays out in higher education and politics as well. Phoebe Maltz Bovy contends that the call-outs and self-policing are counter-productive. Far from improving inequities, they help distract from addressing valid issues. While writers and thinkers are busy acknowledging that there exist people with fewer advantages than they have, the most advantaged people are continuing to enjoy all of the benefits that come with that status.

As Bovy suggests, when something that should be a basic right for everyone is framed as a privilege that not everyone can have, it's not productive to call out people who have that "privilege," as if it's something no one should have. Instead, the question would be how to ensure everyone's rights are defended.

Bovy is careful to point out that the book isn't a crank piece designed to ridicule people examining questions of privilege. Instead she suggests there have been over reaches; take a step back without a return to earlier obliviousness.

I think this book could serve as a useful tool for moving beyond what can be a stalemate, to start moving the conversations along when considering social inequities.

Normally when reviewing I include some excerpts but I made 49 notes/highlights in this book and they all feel significant. So instead I will just say this book should be read by people from all political parties, anyone with an interest in creating a fair and prosperous society, anyone who would love the national conversations in America, about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING, to have nuance once more. This book helped me find the words to explain why the privilege framework has seemingly led to scoffing on the right, self-flaggelation on the left, and, in my personal experience, not enough of an uptick in civic engagement. Talking about the inequities of society is important, but THE PERILS OF "PRIVILEGE" does a great job reminding us that it isn't enough and sometimes can even delay progress (if the focus is self-flagellation about your advantages instead of advocating and working for those who are being deprived of their rights and opportunities for success).

I'm not very familiar with the idea of "privilege", so I decided it would be a good idea read up on it, especially since I see notions of it creeping into Singapore culture (the word "Chinese privilege" has been appearing a few times). I am normally wary of importing American social justice methods wholesale, because it seems to have led to a more divided America which makes me question its efficacy and more importantly, because Singapore is not America and we need to adjust for that.

But I am digressing. I spent one day just reading the book and writing out my thoughts on it. Normally, I'd copy the review over, but it's much, much longer than anything I've ever done, so I'll just link to it.

The Perils of Privilege is an introduction and critique of the privilege framework and the phenomenon of calling out the privilege of others (abbreviated as YPIS - Your Privilege is Showing). If I were to pick one quote to summarise the whole book, it would be:
"On this much, the privilege framework is accurate: Society has hierarchies, and some categories of people are - all things equal - luckier than others. Those who deny that "privilege" exists in those broad, sweeping areas where you need your head rather deep in the sand not to have noticed [...] need not so much a privilege check as an introduction to reality.
The trouble is that those hierarchies don't explain all injustice, and that they don't always correspond to the hierarchies that "count" according to the privilege framework."
The book uses YPIS to discuss a wide range of things issues from the 2016 American election to cultural appropriation (like the Kimono exhibit from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts). I really liked these quotes from the discussion on the kimono controversy (if you didn't know, a few Asian-Americans were upset when a replica of a kimono worn in a painting by Monet was made for visitors to try on):
"According to news reports, Japanese observers were partly baffled, but also annoyed at having their plight, not so much appropriated, as invented by other East Asians. Can Chinese Americans by offended on behalf of Japanese people who, when consulted, are not actually offended?
Yet a further, ignored, angle is the question of whether it's offensive (or even inaccurate) to suggest that Japanese people are somehow underdogs with respect to white Americans in the twenty-first century.
The appropriation discussion is thus a microcosm of the privilege critique more generally. Despite being ostensibly about social justice, it ends up reinforcing and maybe even inventing hierarchies."
To continue summarising the book would make this review far too long (the link above will lead to the full summary), but in short, I think this is something that everyone should read because the concept of "privilege" is something that has left American shores and traveled around the world. The book uses many examples to explain what the privilege framework is and how it can be problematic.

As for me, I think that the privilege framework should stay in academia. It is a valid way of seeing things, but I think this victim hierarchy has a way of diverting attention from the real problem.

Let's call a spade a spade, and not by a different name. I sincerely hope that the fledgling privilege movement in Singapore (which seems to be a wholesale importation of the American framework, but with the names of the privileged change) is discarded for a method that is more accurate and less divisive than the privilege call outs.

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGally in exchange for a free and honest review.

I was attracted to this book because of the publisher’s description which says in part: "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?" Bovy does indeed examine each of those questions and goes on at some length to support her argument, providing numerous examples from the online shaming culture. She also included, for example, some interesting comments by David Brooks regarding how meritocracy leads to a less privilege-aware elite. Our students do read and discuss articles such as one on class mobility from The New York Times and may appreciate excerpts from Bovy's text.

Link to article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility-shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html?_r=0

The Perils of "Privilege": Why Injustice Can't Be Solved by Accusing Others of Advantage by Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a very highly recommended, blunt and well-documented discussion of the current social justice phenomena of accusing people of "Privilege" and the ever present insult to people "Your privilege is showing" or YPIS.

Author Maltz Bovy states that The Perils of "Privilege" is an argument against using the concept of privilege to understand and fight against injustice. "It is an attempt at taking a step back and asking whether the privilege-awareness project is a valuable one. And it’s my sense - with some caveats - that it’s been a disaster." "This is the biggest theoretical challenge to the privilege turn: An approach that’s ostensibly about achieving social justice winds up suggesting, or seeming to suggest, that everyone should be miserable. A further flaw: "Privilege" is based on an analogy, namely that other forms of unearned advantage are similar to, and as important as, wealth." It is all about sensitivities and tends to make far too much of minor problems and far too little of big ones.

Chapter 1 covers the online privilege conversation, a tangled accusatory atmosphere where it is easy to call out someone for YPIS, as I'm sure many people have observed. Chapter 2 looks at American high schools and universities who now regularly host privilege-awareness workshops and now Privilege Studies is an academic field." I know from personal experience that these workshops are presented in a wide variety of careers, including all public school employees and expanding to health care fields. Chapter 3 shows the "impact privilege theory has had on the arts and on cultural criticism. Books, movies, and TV shows are now evaluated in terms of privilege, to the exclusion of all other observations or reactions." Chapter 4 examines the effect and the presence of privilege on politics. Chapter 5 examines the use of privilege by the far right and the plight of the straight, white, middle-class male, among others.

This is an excellent, thought-provoking well-written look at privilege. Phoebe Maltz Bovy makes a plethora of thoughtful comments and provides well-documented examples. In many ways this book is over whelming because there is so much information and so many examples. It is information-dense. According to her calling out someone for YPIS harms more than it helps. It has become a way to bully people online, which has caused irreparable damage to its original use. As she succinctly states: "There is, of course, the even stronger case for checking the privilege of privilege checkers, namely that the people making these accusations tend to be fairly privileged themselves." I really agree with her that all of these accusations of YPIS terrify people that they’re losing the basic right to express themselves, their freedom of speech.

The first time I saw the accusation or thinly veiled insult of "your privilege is showing" was in a comment on a book review. I was rather taken aback that in order to disagree with what I assumed was a white male book reviewer based on his picture, the female commenting had to tell him YPIS. This was for a review on a novel, fiction. So, rather than saying you disagree and envisioned the characters another way, it made more sense to attack the reviewer's privileged status, which is really just a kind of trolling. Goodness.

Then there are the encounters with privilege-awareness-raising exercises. The questions require participants to disclose information, private information, that, perhaps, you don't really want made public to co-workers. However, if you chose to hide certain information then you are higher on the privileged scale. It becomes a dilemma. You certainly don't want to be near the front of the room with the well-educated, cis, white male, but how much do you really want to reveal about yourself or your background?

A couple of quotes - and I had pages of them saved - that I'm including without comment:
"[P]olitical commentator Andrew Sullivan.... spelled out the Trump-and-privilege connection in a New York magazine piece that, while highly critical of Trump, sought to understand where his supporters were coming from: A struggling white man in the heartland is now told to 'check his privilege' by students at Ivy League colleges. Even if you agree that the privilege exists, it’s hard not to empathize with the object of this disdain."

"Thanks to the privilege framework, it’s possible - no matter who you are, or why you’re doing so - to bash women and be given the benefit of the doubt. Well done, privilege framework. Well played."

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of St. Martin's Press.
on 3/17/17: http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1942822762

This just wasn't the book for me - closely studied arguments about privilege and use of the word but not much I could find that was practical and useful day-to-day. I'm sure though that this is a useful addition to the work on equality and inequalities, it's just not a good fit with me.