First I know that this topic is probably not one that everyone is going to be familiar with. It’s really more the kind of thing you hear about on college campuses than in everyday life. Lets start with a basic definition of privilege: “a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most.” In most cases where this term is used in current settings its referring to a political and sociological idea. White Privilege. Heterosexual Privilege. Male Privilege. The idea that being a part of a group (these groups mentioned in particular) automatically gives you a higher status in society, and by default pushing down people who are not in these groups.
This is not going where you think it is. Trust me. Hahaha, I’m not here to deny privilege. I’ll give you an honest disclosure. I’m in all three of those groups. I’m not going to be this guy:
Privilege Denying Dude, as he is called, satirizes a hypothetical WASPy dude who denies his privileged place in society. It makes some good points. Lets take a look at another one
Yeah totally. Sure. Those guys deserved it because the years of oppression they doled out… wait… what? No. No no no. Are we really saying that people deserve to be lynched because of past societal transgressions? This isn’t quite the same thing as a war crime trial. The difficulty with societal oppression is that it’s a passive thing, and it’s really hard to explicate people’s responsibility. So taking justice and anger into your own hands probably ends up hurting many innocent people, and even in the case of the guilty, can we really say the punishment fits the crime, that people don’t deserve a fair trial, and a chance to defend themselves? Are we really going to put our hopes of racial justice on this kind of sentiment?
The problems with our current concept of Privilege aren’t just here in online overreactions and the insipid meme-wars that get tossed back and forth. The problem goes deep than that. I’m going to use my life as an example.
Yeah. I’m white, hetero*, and male. This is all true but rather than sticking labels on me, let me tell you my story. (*technically I think the normal orientation system is too simplistic, but I'll speak on a functional level here)
I didn’t exactly grow up poor. I grew up “lower middle class”. I didn’t starve to death, but things weren’t easy growing up. My dad spent a year and a half unemployed. We racked up huge amounts of debt. I remember plenty of Christmases feeling guilty for asking for the Pokemon game or something else. I remember helping my dad cook an econo meal and feeling happy that he was home with me but scared that he would never get a job. John Cheese writes an excellent article, each point I can relate to, like talking to a friend I knew in gradeschool. I was lucky even so.
Further on top of all this, I grew up in The Sticks. There were no economic opportunities for anyone under 25, except for McD’s and moving away to work on an oil rig out in the middle of the ocean.
My town has a poverty rate 28.4% The per capita income is 12,000 a year. We weren’t that bad off compared to a lot of the kids I grew up with. I still have friends who live with their grandmothers. Their parents left them a long time ago, and last I heard they were stealing prescription pain killers and wasting away.
Most of these kids didn’t have internet. Still don’t. Barely an education. With laws like No Child Left Behind, my high school (the only high school) was graduating students who could barely read.
Look, I’m lucky. I grew up with all this shit and even so I was able to get out. I was given a scholarship to a pre-college program, that helped me to then go on to a real college up in Boston. That’s exposed me to something new though. People who have had things I never did.
I go to class with rich kids who think nothing of flying back home cross country for a three day break. I once spent a month sleeping in a closet with a Uhaul blanket so that I wouldn’t have to fly back home and cost my parents the extra $290 dollars which they couldn’t afford. This past summer I was homeless so that I could save up enough money to pay for a down payment on my apartment. These kids went to private schools and public schools so swank they made the private schools look plebian. They had the best of the best education. They learned psychology and advanced calculus while my school was struggling to get kids to attend class and not beat the shit out of each other in the hallways(or the police officers. I will never understood why that one guy thought that was a good idea). Almost everything I learned in highschool, I taught myself using the internet. These kids grew up right next to the World’s Biggest Museum, and the Center of World Culture. I grew up in a small town 1.5 hours away from the nearest movie theatre, coffee shop, mall, or bookstore. The kids have rich parents, with rich friends, and open internships, and connections that snake through the best in the business. My dad worked in a hardware store, and my mom taught English. Neither of them have many friends except each other, which they are fine with.
I AM SO PRIVILEGED. I’m not being sarcastic here. I am. I have two intelligent and caring parents. I had genes that predisposed me to creativity and intelligence. I had parents who read to me at night, and were willing to listen to me when I was scared or feeling sad.
Yeah, I was a fat asthmatic kid allergic to the air, with an undiagnosed brain disorder. I was different, and weird, with two weirdo anti-social parents. I had a lot of things other people didn’t have.
This is the problem with our labels of Privilege. Privilege isn’t just race, or gender, or other social constructs. Privilege is having opportunities that other people don’t have. A lot of people I grew up with had a lot less than me. A lot of kids I go to school with have a lot less than me. They may be a lot richer but I know their families and the shit they’re dealing with there. Some of them have clinical depression, or drinking problems, insecurities that go a mile long.
The people who are most well versed in these ideas, the people who went to high-end colleges, are often times people who themselves have forms of unrecognized Privilege. This post however isn’t about pointing the finger back at them.
See that’s the problem is about pointing fingers. It’s human nature to be envious, to be jealous, and coveting what other people have. The thing about human nature, is we don’t define ourselves by what we are, but by what we aren’t. People don’t want a hero. They just want a villain to hate. At the end of the day, its them that gets the headlines. We want someone to hate. We want something which is Other than us, that we can fight against.
It’s hardwired into our monkey brains, squirrelled away in the deep dark part at the base of your neck, the hindbrain, the primal self. That’s what speaking. The issues that Privilege bring up are legit, but far far too often this concept is used as a weapon. It’s a way of labeling people, of compartmentalizing them and making it easier to deal with them.
So there’s a guy who’s being an asshole, and saying a lot of dumb things about race. This hurts deep, not necessarily because he’s speaking about you, though he may be, but because as a human being you perceive a threat. It’s a threat you feel powerless to change. You can argue with him but he’s probably not going to listen. This is cognitive dissonance. A gap between the way you perceive the world, and the way that others perceive it.
So you slap a label on him. White. Racist. Misogynist, Feminist,, Misandrist Asshole, Bitch, Piece’O Shit.
That makes you feel safe right? If we can’t literally fight these people, rip out their throats in the middle of the street like our stone age brain wants us to, then at least we can label them, make them safe, don’t have to deal with them then. You don’t have to deal with that asshole on the internet because he’s just a privileged asshole right? Or she’s feminist cunt? Or they’re stupid niggers, or rednecks, or kooks, crazies, elitists, or just plain illogical idiots.
We’re all privileged in some way. We all have some advantage that others don’t and the American Myth that everyone is on the same level playing field is a farce. Luck has so much to do with people’s success. Luck of birth, luck of genetics, luck of country, time, and place. We all share in a responsibility to do good, and yet our abilities in those areas differ not just in a quantitative ability but in a qualitative ability. Not merely in how much good we can do, but also in how we can go about doing it.
It’s time we start all fessing up and recognizing our privileges. Then after that brief ceremony, let’s get on with life. Each of us have individual struggles, and drawing more lines in the sand, slapping on more labels, isn’t going to heal any wounds.
Note: After writing this nearly a year ago, I stumbled across a useful concept for dealing with this. Kyriarchy, a new term coined by feminist writer Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. You can read more about it [here]
