The end of YPIS?

As mentioned below, the trend of calling out others' "privilege" as a way of asserting one's own commitment to social justice, or of implying one's own relative hard-scrabble-ness, reached something of a low point yesterday, when a bunch of Jezebel commenters decided that a 22-year-old's privilege was showing. No matter that this 22-year-old had been written up for having just been killed in a car crash. Clichés such as "you can't take it with you" and "death is the great equalizer" convey why it's illogical to discuss the privilege of the no longer living; common sense indicates why hurling a your-privilege-is-showing in the general direction of those mourning Marina Keegan is in poor taste, if not outright cruel.

But this goes deeper into the heart of YPIS. The ostensible point of these YPIS-hurlers is that pretty, wealthy white girls' lives are valued more than others', and that it's wrong to call someone "promising" just because she went to Yale and were about to start her first post-college job at the New Yorker. But Keegan had actually made something of herself. Her myriad accomplishments were not exactly things handed to you as a reward for being the child of privilege (if indeed she was one! everyone is taking it for granted). That she almost without a doubt had more opportunities than a young person in war-torn Africa would (barring Kristofian intervention) doesn't diminish how much she would need to have done to thus distinguish herself from many, many other pretty white girls of equivalent privilege. Insofar as we as a society highlight the obituaries of the accomplished, Keegan's was an obvious one to highlight, and not really of the "missing white girl" mold.

One might speculate that in this case, the YPIS was in fact less about missing-white-girl or social justice and more about jealousy. This thread is basically a morbid version of the Tavi Gevinson one a while back. Gevinson, the tween-now-teen fashion prodigy, does not, by the usual fashion-world definition, come from privilege. Her father's a teacher, her mother an artist and not, from what we know, a rich and famous one. She grew up (technically is growing up) in a suburb of Chicago, not exactly a hotbed of glamor and connections. Which didn't stop the "Jezzies" from holding forth about how privileged Tavi must be, and how if we take this privilege into account, we see how slight her accomplishments are, considering.

Successful fashion-blogging, admission to Yale, a job at the New Yorker, these accomplishments are easy to envy, because it can feel as though they're all about luck, not talent or hard work. (There are not too many random Jezebel readers convinced that amorphous "privilege" is what keeps them from being Nobel-winning physicists, Williams-level tennis players, etc.) Anyone can write a sentence! Anyone can take a picture of an outfit! A natural, if less-than-admirable, response to achievements along these lines is, "Why not meeee?" But because it's petty if not socially-unacceptable to express that, those wishing to do so instead turn to how dreadfully unfair it is that a theoretical inner-city teen is not reaching these heights. With Gevinson, this was ridiculous. With Keegan, grotesque.

The coldness of this response gave the impression that many readers' commitment to calling out cluelessness had, paradoxically, rendered them out-of-touch with reality. Did they really think the unfairnesses of life that make some better-situated to become Yale grads or New Yorker editors are effectively addressed by claiming that it's not sad when a young person dies immediately after graduating from college?

What was remarkable in this thread - and what led me to this post title - was that other Jezebel commenters decided that enough was enough, that YPIS had gone too far, that the term "privilege" has been so mis- and overused as to have lost its power. It feels, if you read the thread, like the tide might be turning. YPIS just felt over.

And - to anticipate the counterargument - the answer isn't to chuck the concept of privilege. It's to chuck YPIS. It's to remember that privilege as a topic up for discussion is one that relates to populations, not individuals. All things equal, whiteness and wealth are privilege. The answer isn't to embrace some kind of arch-conservative, boot-straps, victim-blaming ideology that pretends we all begin life with equal opportunities, or to shrug our shoulders about systematic injustices in the name of life-isn't-fair. Instead, it's to acknowledge that when it comes to others as individuals, especially others you don't know personally, you can't say that they haven't had to overcome massive obstacles, albeit invisible or unannounced ones. It's to remember that certain individuals are unlucky as well as, by certain objective standards, "privileged." I believe this came up regarding Ann Romney, and I've seen it in even more absurd cases as well: if someone's seriously ill, the proper response isn't 'and think of how much worse that princess would have it if she didn't have health insurance.' It's best to save privilege-checking on the individual level for yourself, to count your own blessings, and to try your best not to be clueless, entitled, and so forth.