Confusion About the Term “Underprivileged”
Nov 18th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 9 Comments |
I was reading a blog post yesterday by a person who was feeling guilty for her “privileges” (I think it was a “she”). It seems that people given many privileges as children either come to see them as rights or come to feel guilty about them. Those of us who were given few privileges, on the other hand, come to see privileges as something to be grateful for.
That “zing!” out of the way, I wish to express my confusion about the entire issue. The same people who feel guilty about their privileges frequently speak of the government’s duty to improve the lives of the “underprivileged.”
This would imply that it’s possible to have either too many or too few. But since privileges – as opposed to rights — are by definition undeserved, I can’t see how both of those can be the case.
It seems to me that some people think they shouldn’t get what they don’t deserve. Which either means they have to be born deserving the things necessary for life, or they have to earn whatever they get.
If they have something they didn’t earn, and it’s something they don’t deserve just because they’re human, they believe they shouldn’t have it. And it’s hard to see how groing up rich is something a kid could earn (they’re too young to have had enough time to work to earn wealth).
So either they have to think that wealth is a human right, or think they shouldn’t have grown up rich themselves. The brats choose the former (but only apply it to themselves), and the sensitive the latter.
But imagine a world in which we only got what we deserved. That’s one way to eliminate the need for gratitude.
And what would happen to love?
hmmm. What would a world where we got what we deserved look like? Are we in fact owed anything? On one level our very existence is gratuitous. (Interesting. Is the word “gratuitous” related to gratitude? I’d never noticed the similarities) as Hamlet says to Horatio, if we got what we deserved none of us would escape a beating. (Maybe this is an unrelated point but I live by the rule that you should never pass up an oppurtunity to reference Hamlet. It makes you look smarter than you are.)
On a somewhat unrelated note, I wonder if the meaning of underpriviliged is predicated on the idea that blessings/priviliges should be distrubuted with something close to equality. It’s true that by definition we don’t deserve priviliges. But it doesn’t follow that if we do have priviliges there isn’t some morality to how they should be distrubuted. To say some one is underpriviliged is to say that they have not recieved their share.
Some element of democratic/capitalist theory seems rooted on the idea that priviliges are more-or-less evenly spread out… That we all have an equal chance at the pie which some priviliges convey.
Sometimes, I also think “underpriviliged” is too soft and wimpy a word. When we look at what is being lacked by the under “priviliged” we see that it’s not a privilige at all… It’s basic human rights.
I prefer the term “underresourced”. I never thought about why. But I think this is part of the reasons. It’s a more accurate description of what we’re often talking about. Priviliges are things like joining a country club. Resources are things like having enough blankets to keep you warm.
Actually, Jeff, my own opinion is that you have created a false dichotomy between rights and privileges. Is a 32″ television set a right or a privilege? I believe the answer is that it is neither. It’s something that you work for and buy if you’re so inclined. It is not arbitrarily restricted to a certain group as the word privilege conveys nor is it a right in any meaningful sense of the word. Man as a species doesn’t even have a right to food. He only acquires it through the sweat of his brow. I do, however, like your use of “underresourced” instead, primarily because it doesn’t imply that having X is a privilege, which it normally isn’t.
There is of course a whole theory of negative and positive rights (though I do not necessarily endorse this theory). A positive right is a right in which other people have a moral obligation to do something for you. If, for example, you have a right to food, what you’re saying is that farmers are required to work for you without any compensation. (I’m not here arguing that this is false. I’m just pointing out what is entailed. In fact, we tend to spread out the costs. Farmers are normally compensated for their labor by taking a percentage of the labor of everybody else instead.) A negative right, on the other hand, simply means that others are obliged to refrain from doing something to you or interfering with you. Your right to life is one of those. I am morally obliged not to kill you.
I should point out again that I am not necessarily endorsing any theory of rights here. There are sophisticated moral philosophers who deny that there are any such things as rights at all.
Micah: “The same people who feel guilty about their privileges frequently speak of the government’s duty to improve the lives of the ‘underprivileged.’”
Those people should define what they mean by government. In the United States, the government should be “we the people.” So either we should improve the lives of the needy voluntarily or we should be forced to do so through taxation and (usually) bloated welfare programs. I prefer the former method, especially since some citizens don’t believe that any such moral imperative exists.
Micah “But since privileges – as opposed to rights — are by definition undeserved. . .”
I don’t know. That may be, according to one or more definitions of privilege, but the word can also refer to benefits granted for a reason. For example, only those who purchased (or were given) backstage passes have the privilege of going to see the performers after the show. Only documented descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers have the privilege of being members of the SAR or the DAR.
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Anyone who feels guilty about being wealthy has a very simple solution staring them right in the face: give away their wealth to a worthwhile project that will help others.
Hmmm. Given the limations you set up I can understand your hesitation to endorse the very existence of rights.
I’d suggest that rights are a useful convention. They are a part of the social contract which makes possible societies and functioning governments: we give up certain “freedoms” (the freedom to kill whomever we want, for example) in exchange for certain rights (the right not to be killed)
The freedoms we give up and the rights we expect would vary from society to society. At first blush it seems like there might be an inverse relationship between the pair: The more freedoms we give up the more rights we can expect.
So I’d say we ought to have vigorous debates about just how much we are willing to give up in exchange for what we get. If we agree that having a roof over our head is a right, we give up the freedom to enjoy a certain percentage of our excess wealth.
I’m not sure if I could make a case that rights have an independent existence outside of this convention. I’d suggest that like lots of things, it’s a useful verbal short hand.
I’m much more skeptical of a contractarian theory of rights than I am of a merely deontological theory of rights. After all, if a contractarian theory is correct, people ought to be allowed to opt out. Moreover, it just seems wrong. If I’m in a state of nature, I no longer have a right not to be killed? I only get that right if I’m paying taxes to the government? Does this mean it’s perfectly okay for American citizens to kill people who don’t pay U.S. taxes?
In general, I do tend to favor a deontological theory of rights, but I’m not certain it’s right and I wouldn’t care to argue too strenuously for it against a committed opponent. The utilitarians and others deny that rights exist at all (since they can be overridden by the good of the majority) and I’m not sure they’re wrong.
Hmmm…
Let me try this line of reasoning and see how far it goes.
I think that humanity made an initial agreement with itself/each other. We could call this agreement a contract, though the comparison fails in some ways.
Our most basic agreement, I think, isn’t with a specific government. It’s a more basic and general agreement to participate in society. Society is like my decision to buy cable TV. Government is the specific independent contractor that the cable companies pays to install the cable.
On the basis, we don’t owe special ethical consideration to US citizens or tax payers. And I don’t think we have the right to opt out, unless we choose to drop out of society and live like a hermit.
Locke’s State of Nature is governed by the Law of Reason. He never says what the Law of Reason is, but does say that since all (adult) humans have Reason, they are all equal, and therefore cannot assert authority over each other without acting is if they weren’t equal and therefore denying Reason (and the Law of Reason).
The primary way he describes this improper assertion of authority is as trying to take another person’s life (into one’s hands). This makes the person making the attempt an outlaw, lowering him to the level of animals, and making him a threat to those still living in the State of Nature. He has, through his actions, renounced Reason and the protection living as a Reasonable being afforded him under the Law of Reason.
So opting out of the social contract is opting into the State of Nature. It takes another step to opt out of the State of Nature into a state in which you only have the rights of an animal (dictated by the Law of Nature, which Locke thinks is essentially “survival of the fittest.”).
Locke may be a social contract theorist, but for him the fundamental human rights are based on what it means to be human.
I’m not as familiar with Locke’s contractarian theory as I am with Hobbes’s or Rousseau’s. (Unforgivable, my being American and all, I know.) I wasn’t arguing against Locke’s view at all, though. Nor for that matter Hobbes’s or Rousseau’s. I was arguing against the view that rights are purely a matter of a social contract — that they are creations of that contract. However, I was probably not nearly as clear about that as I should have been. It is also quite possible that nobody was actually arguing for this position and I misinterpreted Jeff.
I believe all three of the above-named (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau) maintained in fact that we possessed natural rights (a deontological theory of rights). And, indeed, that the social contract was about what rights we voluntarily surrendered as well as what rights we gained in exchange. I am quite open to correction on this if that is not someone else’s understanding. As for the general validity of social contract theory, I am inclined to side with Hume. It is quite clearly a “just-so” story. There never was a State of Nature as imagined by Hobbes and Rousseau. Humans have lived in largish troops since before they were humans. (Am I right though that Locke understood this? It’s clear that Hobbes did not and it seems like Rousseau didn’t either.) If I were to side with any social contract theory, it would certainly be Locke’s since he saw the contract as revocable. Anything else implies that we have a duty to submit to a tyranny and I can’t accept that.
[...] I’ve wondered before whether gratefulness would be possible in a world where you only get what you deserve. In such a world you would, essentially, be the source of everything that happened to you. Your rights would determine what everyone else did to you. [...]