Privileges versus incentives

I recently came across this seminal article by Peggy McIntosh on unacknowledged privilege. “Unacknowledged privilege” is today a not-uncommon term used to describe how people within a privileged group often fail to acknowledge that their success, or their being relatively well-off and not having to worry about various things, is a form of privilege. Two examples of unacknowledged privilege often found in the U.S. literature are “male privilege” and “white privilege” — men not acknowledging all the ways they benefit by being male, and whites not acknowledging all the benefits they enjoy by being white.

Privileges — the coarse end

When it comes to listing unacknowledged privileges, the privilege of being white or male seems to pale in comparison with the privilege of mere existence. How many of us acknowledge the privilege of simply existing, being alive — an event that in itself seems to be one of extremely low probability? Even if we take our (admittedly temporary) existence for granted, how many of us acknowledge the privilege of having enough food and water to be able to survive over a somewhat longer period of time?

Even if existence and survival are taken for granted, how many of us acknowledge the privilege of being born in an era where we have access to facilities such as electric lighting that didn’t exist two hundred years ago? For those of us who cherish the ability to read, how many of us acknowledge the privilege of being able to read?

The very word “privilege” is loaded, because it usually suggests a reference point, and it isn’t clear why we should pick one reference point instead of another. Why not pick the person who didn’t exist — the sperm that never met the egg, or the fetus that got aborted, to compare ourselves against? Why not pick the chicken that was slaughtered yesterday night as a reference point?

Privileges — the fine end

I don’t know how many people seriously believe that the playing field is level for everybody. I suspect that nobody seriously believes this. Everybody plays on a different field, and has a unique combination of circumstances that give that person some privileges and some liabilities. In addition to “white privilege” and “male privilege”, we may add the privilege of being born to a well-to-do family, not being beaten up or sexually harmed by abusive family members, not having had any disfiguring accidents in childhood, and many others. Or, we can talk about positive privileges such as having found good friends, having had inspiring teachers, having managed to get into college, having found a good job, and many others.

So why do people talk of a level playing field and equality of privileges? This is probably precisely to counter all those who argue that the playing field is not level — if somebody “accuses” me of having had unfair access to privileges, then I “defend” myself by arguing that no, actually, I had to struggle for them as well and didn’t have a cakewalk. But in more sanguine moments, I don’t feel any particular inclination to feel bad about the privileges I enjoy, or to particularly deny them. Yes, I’ve had some privileges, that were denied to people in my parents’ generation, that are denied to many among my peers, and these privileges have played a major role in shaping me. I feel lucky and grateful for it. What I refuse to feel is guilt, or the temptation to argue that no, this is all a level playing field.

Increasing privileges

The debate around unacknowledged privilege, as framed by McIntosh’s seminal article, seems largely to me to be a red herring. Since nobody seriously argues that whites are not privileged, McIntosh seems to be attacking a straw man here. A better explanation might be that McIntosh is simply trying to raise awareness of an issue that often slides under the radar, or trying to expose the hypocrisy of glib talkers who try to sweep the issue under the carpet.

Talk of privileges, however, can have unfortunate side-effects. When we talk of disadvantages, then the natural solution is to pull the disadvantaged up by providing more opportunities and privileges to them, reducing and removing prejudice, and other such things. Some of these tend to hurt the privileges of the privileged group, but many of them also benefit the privileged group. For instance, the end of apartheid laws in South Africa opened the doors for businesses to employ blacks, benefiting the businesses (a larger labor pool to choose from) and hurting some of the whites in the labor market.

But when we talk of privileges, it induces a squirmy guilt, leading to the question, “How can these privileges be abolished?” In some cases, the privileges in themselves are the problem — for instance, the privilege of a person the the advantaged group having the ability to be rude and dismissive of the person in the disadvantaged group. Here, the privilege itself is the problem. Rather than give people in the disadvantaged group an equivalent privilege, we want to abolish the privilege for both. But in most cases, the privilege is something that we would like to spread to the disadvantaged group rather than abolish, and often, spreading it to the disadvantaged group hurts only a very small fraction of people in the advantaged group (by driving up competition, for instance) rather than directly destroying their “privilege.”

Think incentives, not privileges

Privileges can be of two kinds: different headstarts and different incentives. People often confuse the two, or think only of headstarts when talking about privileges. My experience suggests that it is the differences in incentives that matter a lot more than the differences in headstarts.

To understand this, compare the middle-class family today with the middle-class family thirty years ago, in a country that has seen significant economic growth. It is possible that the living standards of the middle-class family today are substantially greater. however, it is also likely that the system of incentives that govern family members is largely similar. Which is why a middle-class family thirty years ago would still be closer to a middle-class family today than a poor family today that may be closer to it in terms of absolute wealth.

The real tragedy for disadvantaged groups isn’t merely that they start with a handicap, but that their incentives are screwed. Let me illustrate this with some stylized examples and experimental studies.

Consider, for instance, a boss (who, for the sake of illustration, we’ll assume to be male) who, when hiring male applicants for a clerical job, selects them on the basis of skill for the job, but when hiring female applicants, selects them on the basis of how “pretty” he considers them. (This is not beyond the scope of imagination). In fact, even if the boss doesn’t actually hire this way, all that matters is that potential employees get the impression he does. Then, males trying to get the job will work on honing their job-related skills, while women trying to get the job will either give up (if they think that beauty isn’t something that can be changed) or try to look more pretty, based on whatever criteria they figure the boss cares about. As a result, the women entering the job are unlikely to be as skilled, and moreover, even the women who do not get into that specific job end up being less skilled, and thus, less eligible to apply for other jobs (that may care more about skill than beauty) or use their skills in other ways.

Mining of social networking sites has revealed, for instance, that in many Western societies, richer men are more sought after and prettier women are more sought after. In fact, some studies have shown that intelligence for a woman correlates positively with dating success only up to a certain point, after which intelligence actually correlates negatively. Assuming that dating success is important both for men and women, this sets up an incentive for men to work hard to become rich, while it sets an incentive for women to be reasonably smart but not “overdo” it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this and many other incentive systems could explain why a large fraction of people, both in the high-money and high-intellect professions, are men.

A study by Mullainathan and Bertrand showed that white employees applying for the same job, and with equivalent qualifications, are a lot more likely than blacks to receive responses. This was bad enough. However, the more depressing side of the study, that often isn’t noted, was this: among white applicants, high-quality applicants were more likely to be called for interviews. But among black applicants, having extra skills and experience did not help their chances of being called for an interview. In other words, whites had the incentives to acquire extra skills and experience, because it made a difference to their call-back rates. Blacks, on the other hand, had substantially less incentive.

In his 2004 keynote speech, Barack Obama (at the time, a Senator from Illinois, now the president of the United States) highlighted the phrase “acting white”:

Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn — they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

Here, “acting white” refers to an incentive system whereby blacks in the United States who spend too much time studying are considered to be acting white — betraying the black community and mingling with the other community — the whites. At the time Obama had made his speech, there was little evidence of “acting white” as a phenomenon. In 2006, Roland Fryer published this research paper that showed that acting white was a real phenomenon. Now, that’s a genuine incentive problem!

(For a more detailed discussion of discrimination, from which I picked up many of these examples, refer Tim Harford’s book The Logic of Life, Chapter 6 (The dangers of rational racism).

Don’t headstarts matter too?

A clearer distinction between headstarts and incentives is important, because I think focusing on getting the incentives right is a lot more important. It also diverts attention from what I consider ultimately unproductive discussion of who has more “privileges” and what is more “fair”.

The problem of headstarts, or rather handicaps, isn’t as much of a problem if the incentives are working correctly. A severe handicap may, of course, itself alter incentives, and hence, steps like anti-discrimination legislation, affirmative action, and economic support and scholarship for poor students may be important. But if the incentives aren’t right, throwing money or laws at the problem will not solve it.

In his (by now bestselling) book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell highlighted recent research that indicates that the most essential ingredient to success is hardwork combined with a sense of connection between effort and reward. In other words, people work hard when they can see how the more they work, the more progress they make. Gladwell looks at occupations and cultures where such connections have been strong, particularly those involving a strong entrepreneurial element. He tells the story of Jews who worked in cloth factories in New York at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and whose children and grandchildren are now successful lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs. Gladwell points out that these Jews didn’t have a headstart and were often discriminated against, but what they had right were their incentives. I have little direct knowledge of the things Gladwell talks about, but it fits in well with the broad theme of incentives mattering a lot.

To sum it up, the language of privileges often reduces to a confused and guilt-ridden dialogue about fairness, equity, and morality, with different people claiming different moral high grounds. The language of incentives often tends to come closer to the root of the problem, and help us see clearly what is going on.