Some Thoughts on Privilege and Oppression

These are some thoughts I had following a fantastic anti-oppression workshop on Sunday. They are my own, do not represent the opinions of the organizers or other paricipants, and are the product of my individual, highly subjective experiences.

 Privilege and Oppression

I want to make the world a better place. To me, this means endeavoring to make the world a more equal and less oppressive place. This means working to dismantle systems that offer unfair advantages to some at the expense of others. This means recognizing how I am the recipient of such advantages.

As an able-bodied, straight, white, college-educated, American male raised in a middle-class family, I am practically the perfect storm of unearned privilege. Our entire society is designed to benefit me and people like me. Dismantling unjust structures means dismantling the structures that give me these advantages. They are all around us. Oppression is more than blatant issues like "whites only" drinking fountains that obviously disadvantage one group of people, it's also the semi-invisible institutions that benefit another. We are all benefiting from the oppression of others, whether or not we are personally "racist" or "sexist" or whatever.

There is a great essay I read recently called "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Here's a link to it - http://www.antiracistalliance.com/Unpacking.html. It's written specifically with race in mind, but applies to any sort of unearned privilege. My favorite part is the section which lists examples of unconscious advantages certain groups can count on. Here are a few of them that really made me think.

"If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live."

"I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."

"I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race."

"My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races."

As I said, these can apply to gender, sexuality, or any other "mainstream/margin" group dynamic.

If we are serious about changing the world for the better, this is where we have to start. Any movement or revolution that doesn't make a priority of addressing issues of privilege and oppression will end up repeating the mistakes of the past and reproducing the same unjust behaviors it criticized.

This is a hard concept to talk about. Our entire lives we have been taught that America is a classless society and that everyone starts from an equal point, advancing or not based on their merits alone. We are told that success is just a matter of who works the hardest. We are taught not to see the invisible advantages some of us enjoy. When these advantages or our own unconscious oppressive behavior is pointed out to us, we become defensive and angry. Admitting you are part of the problem is a hard pill to swallow. But what can we do? Do we paralyze ourselves with guilt-ridden hand wringing? Do we attempt to purge all the superficial trappings of our privilege, shedding material possessions in an effort to "cleanse" ourselves? I don't think so. I think the answer is to take responsibility for our actions and behavior: to strive to deal openly and honestly with each other as human beings, confront oppressive behavior in ourselves and others, and work to build alliances that are stronger than the barriers that separate us. We need to dismantle the exterior systems that enforce oppression, of course, but confronting our own internal programming is just as important. More than anything we need to recognize that this is a shared struggle for liberation. This isn't an issue for other people to deal with. This affects us all equally. We have all been marginalized for one reason or another, just like we have all been in the mainstream.

None of us will be truly free until everyone is free.