I've had many frustrating encounters with a huge variety of very privileged people: males, females, whites, people of color, gender-queers, americans, europeans. A majority of these people simply do not acknowledge their status, and even those who do say things like this:
"I know we [white people] have done a lot of bad shit to black people, but its time for them to take responsibility for their actions"
-W&M student
Let's ignore for a second the treatment of a cultural group as a "them," thus dissociating the speaker from any interaction with the problem and think instead about what else is wrong:
1. explicit privilege, while acknowledged here, is limited to "a lot of bad shit," most probably indicating an inability on the part of the speaker to identify with any of the actions included in this statement.
2. the privilege acknowledged is 100% negated by the "take responsibility" vibe of the 2nd half. So we blow up your house and you pick up the pieces? I know its now becoming common practice to take risks and then expect no repercussions for them, but this is ridiculous. Just because you weren't a part of the explicit racism and discrimination of the last 300 years of American history doesn't mean you're not perpetuating its legacy.
3. There is NO mention of implicit privilege, invisible privilege, or the sort of things that keep white convicted criminals off the air and black males getting the most, or the privilege of being able to assume you will make as much money as your colleagues, not be followed by security in retail stores, or asked to speak for your entire race.
Privilege is seeing isolated acts of racism rather than a system that supports it. Privilege is being white, male, and heterosexual and thinking that the nation is doing pretty well. Privilege is having to work to imagine living in a neighborhood where the police don't come when you call. Privilege is assuming that when you walk in to rent a house you will be approved right away.
Privilege is the invisible set of unearned advantages you have as a person that are usually described as "the way things are." There are race privileges, gender privileges, education privileges, nationalistic privileges, sexuality privileges, and economic privileges, to name a few.
Privilege is something that you have and you can be sure someone else does not, simply because of who they are and what they look like.
Not recognizing your privilege infurates the hell out of me. How in the world can you blame another group for existing in a society that constantly reminds them that they are inferior to you?
It's simple, really. Not recognizing your privilege means that you are not accountable as a part of this society for the inequality of power that we perpetuate every day as individuals.
I'll admit it. I'm privileged. I'm white, I'm male, I'm heterosexual, and I come from an affluent, middle-class, educated family. And don't worry, I have a LOT of guilt about it. Its a guilt that drives me to acknowledge that I don't deserve any of it, that I can own it and use it to do good things and to bring some of it to those who do not have nearly as much.
I am reminded of Kanye West's furious speech with Mike Myers in which he exclaims that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Hmm. I'll take it one step further, Kanye, and say that for the most part, very few Americans care about anyone besides themselves. This is possibly the most dissapointing and depressing concept that I could postulate, but I do believe its true. We are so easily socialized, so easily roped into situations in which we see the actions of one racial group as legitimate but the very same actions by another as being criminal.
How can we overcome this? How can we see a situation in which we can treat a cause instead of a symptom? Listen carefully, I'm only going to say this once:
ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR FUCKING PRIVILEGE, AND STAND ACCOUNTABLE FOR IT.
phew.
More to come later.
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1 comment:
Cheers, cheers.
It has been the historical precedent for whites, even (especially?) sympathetic white liberals to verbally support the struggle of blacks in American society without being pushed to act. I think this is why so many people find it easy to vaguely state their wishy-washy PC support, rather than step back and give mad props to the African Americans who have had to fight tooth and nail, with their bodies, minds and souls to get even to this unsatisfactory state of the Union. It's always taken extreme conditions of violence, war, international pressure or domestic military necessity to actually stimulate real racial-order change in the US. Many people just have no idea where to go after "acknowledging" their privilege, which is an important step, as you point out, but one that must be understood as a lifelong process of pain and insight, not a sudden, permanent relief from a mountain of historical prejudice.
Thanks for the post.
-Margaret S.
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