I spent the better part of my Sunday writing an article about privilege in response to that pesky article re-published in Time called "Why I’ll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege." If you don't know about it, or don't care to read it, here's the gist of it: the author, a freshman at Princeton, had been called out (presumably by classmates and professors) and told to "check his privilege," specifically his white male privilege. These remarks made him go on the defense and write an essay for the Princeton Tory in which he literally "checks his privilege." While he admits there are many things about his circumstances that he is privileged to have, he won't apologize for it because his grandparents escaped the Nazis, came to America, and built a life from nothing. It appears as though he's a smart enough guy (he is at Princeton after all), but his piece completely misses the point.
So, I wrote a nice flowery essay of my own, full of big words and run on sentences, about what privilege really means. I quoted the dictionary and gave my take on how to deal with the issue. Are your eyes rolling in your head yet? I'm not a professor or a sociologist, and I have no personal experience with an imbalance of societal privilege. I have no authority to give advice on this subject because, outside of some minor fallout from being female, I haven't really been negatively affected by it.
I woke up this morning, grateful that I hadn't published the essay last night. Rather than deleting it, I cut and pasted it into a text document (what can I say, I'm a pack rat, I save everything). I wanted to write the essay again from my perspective, plus I already made the pretty graphic up top for this. I won't be going into the detailed nuances of privilege as other, more adept people have done it already. Read this piece if you want a clear definition of privilege.
Heres the lowdown on me: I'm half Iranian, which means I'm white. I'm a woman, which means I'm a white female. I've never really felt negatively judged due to my ethnicity/gender combo. My family is not rich, but when compared to the rest of the world, they do appear that way. I've never gone hungry or run out of gas in my car. I have a car. I was raised in a safe, sunny neighborhood and I had a kick-ass childhood. I am privileged, and that's okay. I'm grateful for everything I was lucky enough to be born into.
I think that a little gratitude goes a long way. No on has ever called me out that I can remember, heck this is the first time I've ever had a good think on the subject. Privilege is an abstract, but relatively simple concept that gets muddled somehow. "Check your privilege" can sound accusatory or confrontational, but I understand it as "remember your good fortune." I'm a lucky girl, but these things do not define me as a human being. They don't guarantee my success either.
Of course gratitude is not married to this idea of privilege. Anyone can benefit from gratitude. It's been scientifically proven to improve happiness, reduce anxiety, and strengthen relationships. Plus, I'd wager if Tal Fortgang had written his piece from a perspective of gratitude, he wouldn't have had to delete his Twitter account. Fine, maybe he would have still had to delete is Twitter account, it was pretty awful, but he almost certainly wouldn't have had his 15 minutes. We love train-wrecks, don't we.
This guy is also young and lacks the foresight that is earned from life experience. He had access to a platform where he could tootle his little horn to his heart's content. It's not too dissimilar from what I do on this blog, but I'm a decade older than this kid. I can't imagine the dumb things I would have written about at 18. I'm grateful that social media and blogging weren't a big thing when I was younger because I would have made a fool out of myself. I'm a far more loving and accepting person now because I've had some life experience to help me grow. I understand that the world is not a fair place.
My biggest issue as a teenager was that I never thought about what it would be like to be another person - another race, another sexuality, another nationality. Without empathy, it was easy for me to pass judgement. This is where I struggle because some of those thoughts are still there. They never went away, not fully.
I've cut and pasted this last part from my original article. It's a little preachy, a little self-helpy, and it's totally out of place with everything else I've written here, but I still really like it and I don't want to bury it in text edit. Deal with it:
We all have prejudiced thoughts. They exist in us because of what exists around us: who we are surrounded by, what they teach us, and what our experiences teach us. Our education, formal and informal, teaches us what is moral and right. We speak these truths in spite of ourselves in the hopes our hearts will catch up to our mouths. In doing so, not only do we condition ourselves towards a greater morality, we condition those around us as well. We prime a younger generation to be better than we are.
We do not have control over our privilege, but we do have control over our actions. Our attitudes shape our own realities and our words shape the world.
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