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disarming, disrupting privilege, justice, oppression, privilege, solidarity, spirituality, tzedakah
Union Seal
These past few days it seems like everywhere I go (virtually speaking) folks are talking about privilege. Or fighting about privilege. A friend’s Facebook post inspired this meditation on the informal “rules” I picked up in my first two years at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, a place I often refer to, in my mind at least, as Disrupting Privilege Boot Camp. Please do not think that learning these was easy, or that I did it with good grace, or that I’ve mastered them. But I continue to try to incorporate them in my version of the Ignatian Examen, as I reflect on my day or an event.* (For full disclosure of my own social position, I am a white, rural-dwelling, educated, low-income, bisexual, mostly able-bodied, Christian woman who is married to a man. I know I’ve missed something, but the learning is part of the process.)
Finally, please don’t think that the following is a complete list; in fact, I hope you’ll add to it if so moved!
The first rule of learning about privilege: Shut up and listen. (Or if you prefer gentler language, be quiet and listen.) Even if you don’t understand, even if you feel uncomfortable and defensive, even if you feel angry. Even if you feel like someone’s yelling at you, accusing you, even hating you. Even if someone is hating you. First you need to listen.
Rule 2: Sit for awhile with what you hear from oppressed persons and groups and those advocating on their behalf. Don’t formulate a response. Just keep listening, and keep mulling.
Rule 3: Do a self-examination. On your own time. Read. Join a group. Seek out people in your demographic who analyze and work to disrupt privilege rather than expecting oppressed persons to keep educating you.
Rule 4: Try to move past guilt. We’ve all f*cked up. We’ve all acted out of some kind of privilege. We were ignorant, which is unfortunate but forgivable (and after all, everyone’s been there). As long as we keep on listening and learning. Your guilt helps nobody; it only adds burdens. (I was stuck here for such a long time. Leaving it felt like my own personal Exodus from Egypt. But I need to keep reminding myself that the Exodus isn’t just about personal freedom; it’s about freedom leading to service. In the Exodus, God doesn’t free us so we can do whatever we want; God frees us so we can live justly in service to God and each other. God frees us for solidarity.**)
Rule 5: Ask questions. My spouse had a great Lenten discipline one year of asking questions; at the end of the day he’d write down the questions he asked. This kind of practice is excellent for displacing yourself, at least for moments, from the center of your world, and making room for others’ experiences and perspectives. It also avoids a lot of simple but deadly misunderstandings.
Rule 6: Learn to love the exhilarating disruption of your privilege. Find joy in it. Laugh about it. Thank those who birthed it. And carry on with the work.
Rule 6a (optional): Watch Stephen Colbert. I’ve never heard him use the word “privilege,” but I’ve also never known another Straight White Male with such a thorough awareness of his own privilege, and such a brilliant and subtle way of lampooning it. If I were teaching a course on disrupting privilege, snippets of The Colbert Report would be required viewing.
*Can I add how much I love this Ecological Examen on the website I link to above?
**In certain contexts my advisor, David Carr, often translated the Hebrew word tzedakah (צדקה) not as “righteousness,” which is the common but misleading rendering (what do most people think of when they hear the word “righteous”? Probably “self-righteous.”). Instead, he used the word “solidarity.” Here’s the New Jerusalem Bible’s translation of Jeremiah 22.3, using solidarity to render tzedakah:
“Yhwh says this: Act uprightly and with solidarity; rescue from the hands of the oppressor anyone who has been wronged, do not exploit or ill-treat the stranger, the orphan, the widow; shed no innocent blood in this place.”
Solidarity ends in action, but it begins with understanding the nature of injustice, and that begins in hearing the stories of those who suffer it. Even though they’re not your stories.
A Dirty Mind 
Edit on social location and identity: I left out gender identity and expression, but that’s . . . complicated. Suffice it to say that, most of the time, I *appear* gender-normative. Also, my family is inter-religious, Jewish and Christian.
The Episcopal Diocese of Vermont’s Anti-Racism Training is excellent. At the beginning of the day-long session I attended, we did a “cross the circle” exercise. Everyone stands in a circle, with a leader or teacher inviting folks to cross the circle (if they so choose) when a statement applies to them. Then the teacher reads the statements: “I am African-American.” “I am Latino.” “I am lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.” “I am the first person in my family to graduate from college.” “I work more than one job.” “I work three or more jobs.” “My family of origin was poor.” “I consider myself a feminist.” (Only about 1/4 to 1/3 of the attendees crossed the circle for that one, I am sad to say.) At the training session I attended, the folks in the circle were invited to add statements they wished had been made. (I added, “I do not have children,” because so many people assume I must, and I wondered how many other childless/childfree folks were in the room.) The circle-crossing exercise is a way of getting at privilege and intersectionality (the ways different forms of identity, privilege, and oppression intersect) that doesn’t invite reactionary attitudes, partly because it allows participants to show others the complexities of their own identities and social locations. There’s no simple, “You’re privileged, I’m not” dichotomy.
I’ve done this exercise in a slightly different form–for each statement, if it applies to you, you step into the circle. I love this post, Kellyann, and appreciate the latter steps. I’m still working on them, on all of it, and believe I will be for the rest of my life. I also appreciate the concept of solidarity in a spiritual context. Thanks for more food for thought!
Oh me, too! It is a lifetime’s work!
I don’t think I’m fully understanding this post, and I believe that is because I don’t understand the way you are are using the word ‘privilege’. Could you define it?
I’m sorry; I should have included a working definition! At the most basic, privilege includes the rights and higher status accorded to certain people or groups in society. So to talk about “white privilege,” say, is to talk about the bonus white folks get in our society, which can be legal, cultural, and even the normative place of whiteness in our culture. I.e., white is “normal,” everything else is “ethnic,” and is generally seen as not normal and even as suspicious.
In a lot of groups discussing institutionalized oppression and privilege, the privileged members of the group get defensive. This post is written from a position of a pretty privileged person trying to come to grips with her own privilege and not be defensive about it.
This is the best discussion of privilege I’ve ever seen: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/ Hope it’s helpful!
Ah, I’ve always thought of that concept as inherent cultural bias.
It’s definitely easy to miss the toxic things in your home environment. Personally, I became much more aware of it when I started interacting more with other cultures. E.g. when we lived in Japan for that year and suddenly straight, white, male wasn’t the lowest difficulty setting anymore. To suddenly be the person shop keepers looked at with distrust was eye opening.
To jump in on this, Matthew, I’d say that your latter comment is a great example of how privilege works. That you never had to think about where you fell in the cultural hierarchy UNTIL you left your own area: that’s privilege, whether it be racial, class, sexual preference, or a host of other factors that determine how a person is treated, even in one’s home.
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