clevermanka | Awareness of privilege

That was really helpful. I guess I've spent too much time around folks who use "privilege" as a blunt weapon, and part of communicating an expectation of self-flagellation. Excising one's own privilege doesn't necessarily improve anybody else's quality of life, yannow? It's how one behaves about it, I suppose, that's the key.

Gives me a lot to think on...thank you. :)

Thank you SO MUCH for everything you do to help make the Conference and other CSSF programs happen!

I really liked the parable of "No, the dog is not an asshole, he just really doesn't understand what it's like to live in a world that hasn't been normalized around him." Jonathan and I were discussing this the other night, and he said something about "Well, but I've never really had a problem with that," about something gender-related, and when I said, "That's because that particular system is set up to regard you as the default and me as the statistical outlier," he had kind of a lightbulb moment, about the fact that my issues with privilege stem not from 'I am kept from things I want' so much as from 'there is a default and a large chunk of people are just born outside it'. My exploration of my own privilege (which has been mostly based in race, sexuality and birth socioeconomic class, though there's a certain amount of privilege inherent in being a woman in a predominantly matriarchal faith structure, too) has usually been triggered by moments when I was taken out of my 'norm' and forced to confront a system optimized to making me comfortable, from outside it.

The first time I flew back into Kansas City, I went by way of Houston. When I got off to change planes, I thought, "There certainly are a lot of black people in Houston. How had I never noticed that before?" Then I got to Kansas City, and thought, "Wow, the population of Kansas City is a lot more black than I remember, too..." It took me three full days to realise that the difference was that Austin has almost no black people in it, percentage-wise. Lawrence was the same way. My tolerant liberal hippie towns, that embrace diversity and cross-culturalism, were predominantly white; in three jobs since moving here six years ago I've had three black co-workers and one black friend. When I think about living in Lawrence, I realise that I could go days at a time and see only faces the same color as mine.

It's not a matter of my selection; the faces I see around me are white or Hispanic. There are black people in Austin, but they don't live in my semi-affluent little hippie enclave. They live over northeast, mostly, and Austinites tend to keep in their own neighborhoods for the most part. I'd have to make a deliberate effort to interact regularly with more than one or two, and I haven't figured out where that effort becomes condescending.

It got me thinking about the comment I saw from a civil rights activist who pointed out that white people don't have to think about racism as much because if they choose, they can go all day every day without interacting with someone of a different race, can choose neighborhoods or towns where their face matches all the neighbors and teachers and judges, but a member of a minority can't. The privilege is not just in a matter of demonstrable advantages and overt racism, but in the subtle pressure reminding you, "you live in someone else's world."

Thanks for the link. It was interesting reading, though I made the mistake of reading the comments in which a large number of men just HAD to jump in and talk about how *their* experience meant that the label of privilege was unfair, and engineer intersecting layers of privilege to cantilever Oprah Winfrey's success into a comparison to the experience of a homeless white guy and thus 'debunk' that silly notion of privilege...*headdesk*

Much love,
Rowan

Thanks. Passed it on.

Thanks for posting this! It's a really interesting answer to the angry white-male-guilt thing I've run into every time I've tried to talk about privilege. Big feet? Watch where you put them. We don't hate you, we just don't like being stepped on...

Rowan, I made that same mistake of reading comments, and it just enforced the entire gist of the article, didn't it?

I get reminded by conversations like yours that growing up military was an entire different world.. we were all integrated early because it was a small community within each community we lived, so the racists stuck out more like sore thumbs than normal.
It frightened me when my folks went to New Orleans and thought that it was odd that everyone in a service position was black. Well, of course! they didn't actually interact in the local communities, just the semi-affluent tourist zones. My experience there was much different just by being a truck driver, but I still was very uncomfortable by older people of color calling me "ma'am" when I was so much younger than them. It still makes me uncomfortable when my elderly veterans are still careful to speak overly respectfully to me. I want the world to be different, dammit, I'm the one trying to give them the respect of being war veterans, but their own life experience has been so different.

I shut up now, CR, I talked too much.

Yes! Sooooo often people use privilege as some sort of weapon (one way or the other).

It's how one behaves about it, I suppose, that's the key.

Exactly!

Happy to give you something to chew on.

You're welcome. Let's go take a vacation after this one, okay?

I've worked at recognizing my own privilege a lot more. It's humbling.

And yeah... I never read comments anywhere except on LJ, and sometimes not even then.

You're not talking too much! This is an important topic.

Wish I had more time for chatting about it...

You're welcome!

Well, sometimes we hate them. At least I do.

And by checking my own privilege, I can understand when other people say they hate me (as white, cisgendered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender), etc.). =/

JEEBUS, but do I need a vacation.

Awareness of privilege

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