Exploring Universal Human Experiences of Victimhood, Guilt, and Otherness
I was disappointed by that Timearticle by a Jewish college Freshman who didn’t like being told to “check his privilege,” but I was just as disappointed by the black professor’s response on Medium.
I wanted both authors to be more open minded, to be more willing to consider the relative truths and falsehoods of different points of view. I wanted the discussion to be deeper. I wanted them to acknowledge that they were projecting their feelings of being attacked onto others. Most of all, I was disappointed because I think they both have valid points that are being missed by each other. I wanted these points to stand on more solid ground.
My own disappointment no doubt stems from uncertainty about my own privilege. I can sit at a computer, read, write, drink coffee with clean water, eat enough calories, take medicine for a cold (instead of being killed by it), and stop to take a break at a toilet with running water. For the vast majority of human history, like ninety nine percent of it, these luxuries did not exist. Even now they are enjoyed only by a fraction of humans on the planet.
When I contemplate the incredibly opportunities I have inherited—as an educated white male, but even more so as an American of the 21st century—I wonder how best to live my life. I want to help all people experience the same comfort, opportunity and pursuit of peace I have been gifted. Yet I do not know how best to effect change, how to leverage what I have for maximum benefit to humankind.[1]
And at the same time I think it is important that I enjoy my circumstances. I want to live with integrity; I want the process to model the result. If I do not actually enjoy the abundance I have, what is the point of giving that to others? For them to feel guilty about it; to feel pressure to leverage what they have for more benefit? There is something about that sounds a lot like a Ponzi Scheme to me, but no one actually ends up rich in peace.
Back to white privilege: I feel a responsibility to try and elevate the conversation, and an uncertainty as to whether or not my response will be eloquent, readable, or popular enough to be heard in the crowd.
I sincerely doubt that it will, but I try anyway for two reasons. I trust the nervous tickle I feel in my belly, and I believe that the greatest advancements of evolution come from discomfort. Creativity emerges where the old advances into the unknown.
When someone says “Check your privilege,” I imagine there are two general camps they come from. [2]
1) They see that certain cultural and psychological biases have created real, physical, measurable systems that help certain people more than others, even when all other factors are equal. And they feel that a person is falsely attributing their success to personal merits and not giving enough credit for the unique benefits they received as a result of these systemic factors outside of their control.
2) They are annoyed at a person’s success and/or bragging, and they use this saying to diminish their own feelings of insecurity for not having achieved similar or greater success.
So for example, let us say a light skin color Jew and a dark skin color Jew both escaped horrors of the Holocaust and came to the United States of America. They work equally hard, equally long, and are equally intelligent and friendly. Yet the light skinned Jew will be branded as “white” and treated differently, even if only by a few people, than the “black,” one. Their skin color and the corresponding cultural and systemic biases will make success and upward mobility easier for the white Jew. (The same would be true for male and female.)
This is the point the author of the Time article was missing. It is also the point I wish the Medium author explained in a less condescending way. Instead he mostly put the author’s character, style, and intelligence down (which I, of course, know nothing about). Turns out he regrets that technique too, and I admire him for both acknowledging the effect of that and still encouraging people to think for themselves.
Please note that agreeing to this idea that racial privilege exists does not tell us what to do with it.
If “check your privilege” is intended to induce guilt, I decry it. I do not think that guilt is very useful in affecting change. I believe our energy is much better directed at building justice and equality than making people feel bad about themselves, especially when they inherited the inequalities without any choice of their own.
Which brings us to an important point in which I think the Time author was dead on, and brings us to the second “Check your privilege” camp.
The Time author is justifiably annoyed at being stereotyped. He is frustrated at being told that he did not earn his achievements, and he feels unfairly judged. It is a bit unfair, ironically the same thing the “check your privilege” people are trying to get him to see happening to the unprivileged.
He rightly this points out—that assuming all white people are one way or another is the same problematic heuristic used to oppress colored people and assume they are all the same. [3] Yet he does not recognize that the very thing he rebels against is what creates the systems of oppression he fails to recognize.
If this is all getting a bit confusing and complex, I am accomplishing my goal. These are complex topics and they deserve contemplation and thoughtful discussion. These are paradoxical truths to hold, and deep human psychological patterns at play.
We see the authors, including this one, feeling like victims. Deep beneath this feeling is the perennial question of theodicy: why is there evil in the world? Why is there unfairness? And what can we do about it?
We see the dynamics of projection—when it seems easier to outsource the intensity of feelings and responsibilities than to deal with them ourselves. Perhaps I would get more page views, shares and retweets if I simply attacked both authors instead of exploring my own insecurities, fears, and guilt; instead of wondering what my reactions to these writings say about me, as if both authors were simply dream characters in my own dream, reflecting my own unconscious battles.
When I do check my reactions, I see that I have work to do—until I can respond to each of these points of view with the legendary Love of God, like the Dalai Llama or Nelson Mandela or a historical Saint, I can continue to grow and peel away layers of my ego, undoing attachment and habituation.
Yet I also see cause to celebrate. I could have gotten caught up in either point of view and responded to other with righteous indignation, asserting the absolute truth of one position and the absolute idiocy of the other. Yet I choose to see that they’re both somewhat right and somewhat partial, and I think this is a marker of progress. Furthermore, I decided to write this article when I could have stayed silent, or kept my thoughts just to a few close friends. I may receive a lot of flak, or I may receive silence, but I can celebrate my own willingness to speak out in a way which I value.
And I imagine that this idea of having work to do and celebrating what is could be extended to the world at large. These articles show us all that we certainly have work to do, in our actions, our mindsets, the way we converse and especially the systems which unconsciously reward certain types of people more than others in ways that do not serve the whole. Yet they also give us a reason to celebrate. We are having these discussions, and while I want them to go deeper, they are a hell of a lot deeper than the discussions we were having fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. We have a long way to go, and we have to keep moving, yet we deserve to work with a smile and a sense of pride at how far we have come.
[1]I also question the origin of this desire to “make a better world,” as I think it secretly has more to do with a personal desire for value and a hedge against mortality.
[2] In Integral terminology, the first is the green / pluralist thinker who astutely recognizes the collective quadrants (LL and LR), which the orange / achiever Time author seems to ignore. The second utilizes the phrase “check your privilege” in an amber / conformist way to shame the braggart, place them in a particular group which they may or may not belong to in reality, and generally fails to acknowledge the true merits of their individual character.
[3] In Integral philosophy you can see this as reducing the individual interior (UL) to the collective (LL) instead of honoring their mutual arising.