I have privilege, privilege exists, and it's okay to say privilege

I have privilege, privilege exists, and it’s okay to say privilege

Some advice I was given by a young woman in regards to how a white, straight male such as myself can talk about diversity in America today is to first admit and talk about my own privilege. Don’t try to prove myself, don’t get defensive, just admit that I have advantages. It’s okay to say privilege.

It’s advice I’m going to use.

About a year ago I took a short test on privilege, saying whether I belonged to 22 categories of privilege in America or not. It had the usual suspects from race, sexual orientation, and gender, but also things like introvert or extrovert, whether your parents were still together or separated, whether you grew up with financial stability or not. Of the 22 (which I unfortunately no longer have that list handy to share), I fell under 18 of them. Of the remaining four, three of them are statuses that are only a matter of time. I’m not 35 (yet), I’m not married (yet), and I don’t have children (yet). The last one is also within my control. I’m not a Christian, I consider myself Agnostic. However, I’m in a serious relationship with a Christian, and I’m open to learning more about her faith. It’s something I didn’t grow up with, and though I doubt I’ll ever be a firebrand or a proselytizer, I could very well identify as Christian later in life, giving me a perfect 22/22 down the road.

When considering what that actually means though, how it actually plays into my life, one of the better examples that comes to mind is a story about the Denver Light Rail. At one time I used the Light Rail they were doing construction. They were only using one rail, and had someone telling people to hop aboard on what was the side of the tracks that generally people stepped off of. So the next time I went, unsure of whether the construction was still happening, I hopped on board early. It was the end of the line, and I was on the train when everyone’s supposed to get off and wait for it to swing around and come back. One of the light rail workers was checking the train and doing his job when he startled a bit at seeing me. Sheepishly I admitted I made a mistake, and he was cool with it. He said no worries, we’d be on our way soon enough. I got to my destination without incident, and even got a good story out of it.

What if I was black? Would he have called security? What if I was a woman? Would he have sexually harassed me, alone on a train with no one else around? Maybe he would’ve been cool with anyone and everyone. I don’t know, and you don’t know. What matters though is that I didn’t have to worry about it. I didn’t have to wonder if I was going to be treated unfairly or not, whether things would be blown out of proportion. Sure, I made a mistake, and if I’d gotten a stern warning or some sort of fine, I would’ve felt like that probably would’ve happened to most people in my shoes. This confidence that I can walk out of my door and into the world without feeling like I might be preyed upon paints the way I see the world, enables me to take more risks, speak my mind more freely, and in this case to make mistakes, and on top of that know it’ll be fine. It’s something a lot of people don’t have though, and that’s a problem.

Now that I’ve offered a least a bit about my own privilege, I want to use the rest of this time to make the case that we can all agree that privilege exists to an extent even if we may disagree in what forms and how influential it is, as well as saying that it’s okay to talk about privilege.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, and did a third year where I spent a lot of time at our headquarters in Manila assisting our staff. Every day I went back to the apartment I was staying at, and would pass a homeless family who slept and dined on a cardboard box. It was particularly surreal the days I went back to the apartment frustrated, stressed, or unhappy, and here was a family in utter poverty laughing and smiling. It was humbling. It didn’t automatically make me smile and get over myself, but it did make me appreciate what I had. I may have had a cold/made a mistake at work/had unrequited feelings for someone, things that are all right to feel bad about, but there were simple luxuries in my life from a shower to a bed that I should be grateful for, and that more people should have.

It’s okay to say that I have privilege compared to a homeless family in Manila. It’s not unreasonable to see the stark difference in opportunities and challenges between them and me. I mean come on, we’re Americans, aren’t we always bragging about how amazing we are, how we’re the land of the free, how we have the biggest economy, and the most amount of food on our plates? If we take a global perspective, can we at least admit we are privileged to live in a democracy as opposed to North Korea or Syria? We’re better off than countries in the middle of war, famine, or disease such as Somalia… or Syria? I make the case that if that’s okay, it’s also okay to admit I have privileges over women and minorities in my country. It’s the same concept, except perhaps not as painfully obvious at first glance. On second glance though, it’s there for us to see. How we’re portrayed in popular culture, how we’re paid for similar jobs with similar experience, how we’re punished for similar crimes with similar circumstances, they show us that things aren’t fair in America, and aren’t fair based on demographics.

I ran Track and Field really well in high school, and really poorly in college, so I’m going to use a Track metaphor when it comes to what privilege means, or at least how I’ve interpreted it. This is mainly for my fellow white men who fall under most of the demographic categories of privilege, on why it’s okay for others to say we’re privileged.

It’s okay to say privilege.

The 400m race is once around a track. Let’s say you’re good, not necessarily amazing, but pretty decent. You can run it in 50 seconds. Not everyone runs the 400m though. Some have to run the 800m, two laps around. Some run the 400m hurdles, same distance, but with obstacles in the way. To be sure, some also run the 100m race too, shorter, faster, and doesn’t leave you heaving and sore at the end of it. Now imagine the finish line is the “American dream”, whatever you define as being successful.

When someone says we’re privileged, they’re not saying we didn’t run 400m. We did run, we ran well, and it was hard. They’re not saying we ran 0m, and our heavy breathing and sweat at the end of the run is faked. They’re not saying we’re bad runners, 50 second is pretty good. What they’re saying is that some people had to run longer to get to the finish line. What they’re saying is that though someone can trip in any race, it’s more likely to trip when there are objects placed in our lane. They’re not saying it’s us vs. them, and that either we’re privileged or we’re not as if they’re only two categories of people. After all, some people are only running 100m.

When we talk about privilege, it is not telling us we should have run longer, or that we need to hop over hurdles. It is about how to shorten the distance for others, how to remove the hurdles in their lane. It is about how we can get as many people to have the best chance they have to reach the finish line that is the America dream.

It’s a fair request. It’s a moral request.

It doesn’t make a lie out of our life, out of our accomplishments to admit we have advantages unless we choose that it makes a lie out of our life. It does however challenge how we see the world, that we may look at a Track and see it only as once around, but realize that others see the Track as two laps around or more. It means that what we believe for ourselves is not the capital “T” Truth that is real for everyone, but it’s a lower case “t” truth that while still applicable to us, isn’t so for all. This is the reality we live in, and it’s important to accept to better understand and engage others.

I offer the same advice that was given to me. It’s okay to say privilege. Don’t treat it as a personal attack against who you are, don’t feel like you’re suddenly being called a terrible bigot, and for heaven’s sake don’t try to make it about you, and how you’re the true victim. Chill. Listen. Stay confident that you ran 400m, and instead focus on how you can help other people shorten the distance in their own race, not make excuses to why you didn’t have to run further.

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ACTION!

Practice makes perfect. Talk to someone (who is interested and willing) about struggles they’ve had that you didn’t. It doesn’t even have to be about gender or race, it can be a friend whose parents got divorced when they were young, someone who had to work through high school to help support their family. The challenge is don’t try to prove yourself in any way. You’re one and only goal is to get a better understanding of their perspective, to make the conversation about their life. Don’t challenge them, don’t try to prove them wrong, just listen. Afterwards, consider how their path to the American Dream is different than yours. And then consider if there are ways to help them, or someone like them, reach that dream going forward.

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What’s Next?

            

The next things I plan to cover, once I see how this post works out or not, is to offer some fundamentals of negotiation and conflict resolution. Unfortunately how to proactively and effectively engage with people we disagree with is not common sense, nor is what we do naturally. The pseudo-anonymity and lack of non-verbal cues on the internet also make it trickier, so hopefully the next post can help people mitigate some of that, and set up a foundation for this blog and how I go about these controversial topics.

The post after that will be on how in many ways I come from the same place as people who say “All Lives Matter”, and underplay social tensions when it comes to race, gender, and other demographics. It will also explain why I’ve come to different conclusions though, and am more willing to agree that there are serious issues that should be addressed.