The Progressive Stack

During Occupy Wall Street, and one of the reasons it eventually fizzled out, to determine who would get priority to speak a technique known as the Progressive Stack was used. This was to give "underprivileged" voices a greater voice. In order, the progressive stack is:

1. Race
2. Heteronormativity
3. Gender
4. Sexuality
5. Ability
6. Class

Missing from this list is religion, and there is no listing of which races are prioritized over others. Unofficially different races are ranked differently based on how dark the race is, so an African American ranks higher on the stack than a Hispanic - George Zimmerman was considered to be white because the person he shot was Trayvon Martin. Heternormativity refers to gender expression, as opposed to gender or sexual orientation.

This is highly correlated to the Social Justice Warrior belief in privilege, a modern political equivalent of original sin. A person is born with privilege and never able to expunge it, the only way to account for it is to admit and apologize for it, and spend the rest of one life atoning for it. There is no proof that the person did anything wrong, other than being born, but still the person is considered to be saddled with a lifetime of guilt.

Assuming a black man and a black woman both wish to speak, they both get first place due to race. Then going down the stack eventually the third determinant is reached where the black woman speaks first. There is no indication if any stack rankings are cumulative - would a transgender female rank higher or lower than a straight black male? Or could it be considered a point system where one might have several lower categories that place a final higher rank?

The problem is, as much as this was done for progressive purposes it is ultimately divisive. Every person is judged not on individual merit but on innate characteristics of the person. People are not judged as people, but are judged entirely by their demographic. This is what ultimately drove many white men away from Occupy, to the detriment of the safety of those remaining at the Occupy locations.

This also contributes to why Hillary Clinton eventually lost the 2016 election. Her campaign was focused on appealing to demographics, various groups based on innate characteristics. She forgot to campaign to everyone, believing wrongly that she could hold the Obama coalition together by focusing on many of its component parts. In a way, the election of Donald Trump could be considered a revolt against identity politics.

Given the concept of privilege, the progressive original sin, rejection of identity politics IS racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. That is why, even though Donald Trump was the first person elected president to be in favor of Gay Marriage while entering office, there is a lot of rhetoric about how he is against the very ideas he is in favor of. Not being a bigot is the new form of bigotry because that is a denial of privilege.

Social Justice

The person in the video is YouTube vlogger Milo Stewart. She is not particularly remarkable for her views or presentation, but this video of hers is. It is not because she is expressing any new ideas, but instead her video is a summary and encapsulation of modern Social Justice views. She expresses the position that all white people are racists, men are misogynists, all straight people are homophobes, all cis people are transphobes, and all members of a majority are prejudiced against the minority.

The Social Justice movement is an extension of, and goes farther than its original parent, Political Correctness. There are those who defend both with the simple proposition that it is simply about common decency, and that any objection is based out of a desire to say or do things that would be at best impolite. The Modus Tollens argument is a good way of refuting this. If Political Correctness was simply about common decency, there would be no controversy. There is controversy. Therefore Political Correctness isn't simply about common decency.

If P then Q
Not Q
Therefore Not P

The stated intention of combatting racism is a good intention. That does not excuse any of the rest of political correctness, which extended to speech codes. Then, as the Social Justice movement grew out of it, more disturbing ideas grew out of it. First was the idea that members of minorities cannot be racist, based on the false idea that institutional power is required for one to be racist. This newer idea, that all members of a majority are automatically bigoted, is even worse. It is an automatic condemnation of groups of people based solely on the very secondary characteristics that one has no control over, the very same definition of bigotry.

It gets worse. It is considered acceptable to behave badly towards racists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, etc., which means that under Social Justice it is acceptable to behave badly towards anyone who is in any majority group. These people are considered guilty by definition, so treating them as guilty is now allowed.

This is then followed by a belief in privilege, as in "white privilege" or "male privilege" or "straight privilege". It is assumed that no matter a persons standing otherwise, a person with these characteristics is assumed to have privilege. It is an original sin that cannot be atoned for, and the only way to commit even the allowable partial atonement is by admitting to the existence of the privilege in the first place. Denying such privilege is considered to be a symptom of said privilege. This form of circular logic is particularly nasty, because all evidence against it is therefore considered to be evidence for it.

The definition of racism that combines racial prejudice with institutional power is found within certain schools of sociology, but not all of them. Those who prefer that definition try to argue that their definition therefore has scientific backing as they assert it is the definition with sociology. Instead, in their effort to be correct, they are doing far more harm than the original wrongs the movement started out to rectify.