Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

It is International Blog Against Racism Week. I don't have a lot relevant to add right now, so I'm reposting (with slight revision) a comment I left in truepenny's journal:

As far as I can tell, there are at least two things going on here and called privilege. One is the things that in a better world, everyone would have: it should not be a privilege to decide whether, or who, to marry, or to say no to sexual advances, or to be able to choose your religious practices or lack thereof. And one person having those rights doesn't take them away from someone else.

The other is the things that really are part of oppression, because they involve some people getting stuff at the expense of another. If group A has the socially accepted right to interrupt group B, and not vice versa, A has something taken from B. If women, or black people, or members of some other group are only considered for a class of powerful, well-paid, or otherwise desirable jobs after all the white men have had a chance to apply, the privileged group is getting those jobs at the expense of the less-privileged.

There are important places where the two kinds of privilege overlap. It should not be a privilege to walk down the street without being harassed, or to have the law enforcement system treat you as innocent until proven guilty. Nor should it be a privilege to have the police help you if you're the victim of a crime. However, if law and/or custom say that whenever there's a dispute between an X and a Y, the X's testimony will be taken as true, that both hurts Y's and helps X's.

I hadn't planned to post as part of the International Blog Against Racism Week, because I didn't think I had anything insightful to say. Then I was reading comments to elisem's IBARW post about jokes, and the ways she tensed up at some kinds of introductions, and the occasional joke that turns the assumptions on their head. And shadowhwk's comment led me to say this:

Doing the right thing from inferior motives is still doing the right thing.

Someone who doesn't steal because she believes it is inherently wrong, or thinks about the potential victim, may be a better person than someone who doesn't steal because she's worried about being sent to jail. But either is better than someone who figures what the hell, he'll steal because it's what he wants to do and there's no point suppressing his impulses.

The point of challenging racism isn't that it makes me a better person. It's that racism is evil and destructive and should be challenged, whether I do it from compassion, abstract belief in justice, or even guilt. It's not as though feeling guilty and not challenging racism helps anything.