Who has the privilege?

Do you ever think about being, looking, or identifying as someone other than the race, age, sexual orientation, or member of your socioeconomic status? See how many of these questions you can answer in the affirmative:

I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty sure that I won’t be followed or harassed.

I can turn on the TV or open to the front page of the paper and see people like me widely represented.

I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race, religion, sexual orientation

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

I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.

I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people like me.

I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat connected, rather than isolated, out-of-place, out-numbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my sexual orientation will not be a matter of comment

I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin
(Peggy McIntosh in M. McGoldrick’s book, ReVisioning Family Therapy.)

This weekend I shared this list with an audience of about 80 people at one of my workshops. There were a number of people for whom all these answers were "yes." There were five or six people whose Yes answers were less than three. All of them were born in the U.S. and were highly educated, working as therapists in large urban areas. One man shared, "I could only answer yes to two of these questions. I realized that as I was going through the list, that I purposely try not to think about these things or else I couldn't function." This, from the director of a marriage and family therapy-pastoral counseling program.
He went on to share that he finished his PhD in marriage and family therapy and then decided that he would like to be sure that he was qualified for any job opportunity that may present itself to him. So he went to a famous family therapy institute for a postdoctoral fellowship and spent one year studying with renowned family therapists. Just as the year was ending, he was sent a job announcement for the director of an inpatient family therapy program for kids with behavioral problems. It was perfect for him so he applied and waited to be called for an interview. He knew the other applicants and of all of them, he was most educated, experienced, and then there was his postdoc. Weeks went by. When he finally called to find out the status of his application he was told that he wasn't qualified enough. They had hired someone who had experience in another field but who had read a book about family therapy. That man would be heading up the family therapy program.
As I listened to this man share his experience with the group, heads nodded in agreement across the room. One woman explained that she is aware every single day of her brothers and sisters across the nation who cannot respond positively to any question that I had read. These are all American citizens.

I have the privilege. I am a White woman--one of the most protected segment of the population. It was out of fear for "our women" that Whites lynched Blacks in the South, alleging that Black men had threatened either the reputation or purity of White women. It is little wonder that there is such resentment at times from people of color. To be assaulted with fire hoses if you sit in a "White" coffee shop, expected to stand in the back of the bus rather than in the front, to be told by supervisees who are still wet behind the ears, "I refuse to have you supervise me," or that you don't know what you're talking about (and the assumption is that they do), would call forth more than exasperation.

To pretend that I don't have privilege is arrogant on my part. I can walk into any shop, school, church, and be expect some sort of deference. Whether or not I should have it is quite another story. But in this society, I can expect it. Awareness of these things should humble me. I did nothing to be born White and have the characteristics, parentage, that I have. I had nothing to do with slavery. My great-grandfather fought against it in the Civil War. We lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. It was horrid--even for me at the age of four. My sister drank out of a "Colored" water fountain at Sears and the White clerk rushed over to my father. "Don't let her drink out of that! Use the White fountain." My Northern father reflected a moment, studying the water pipes that supplied both the Colored fountain and the White fountain. "Look here," he said. "The water for both comes from the same pipe. They are absolutely the same." The clerk became enraged, insisting that my sister only drink from the White fountain. My father told him essentially that he was nuts. And we were told to leave the store. "We don't need your kind around here."

Or the time my mother went to the bank one morning. A very pregnant Black woman stood at the front of the line, waiting for the doors to open. When they did open, she went over to a bench and sat down with her children. They had to wait until all the Whites had been served before she could approach the teller. Mother invited her to go ahead of her and she politely declined. The teller became angry with Mother for disupting the law of keeping "niggers in their place." Even writing this makes me cringe.

As an adult, I had naively assumed that the Civil Rights Movement made things pretty good for people of color. And yet, that is simply not as true as one would think. It is little wonder that there were tears, downcast expressions, and halting expressions of experience at my workshop. The term, "cultural sensitivity" doesn't always fall the same way on everyone's ears. People of color can't escape dealing with cultural issues in almost every venue they approach. Being White means that I don't have to.

I didn't bring the slaves here from Africa and the Islands. I didn't abuse them, kill them, discriminate against them. But many in this country did and now we are faced with the difficulty of feeling a collective sense of guilt, shame, and wishing it would all go away. I can't pay for what others have done. I shouldn't be punished for what they did and the dynamics that exist. But neither should people of color have to deal with the impact and legacy of coming from slaves and being despised then and now. We have formulated all sorts of simplistic responses about how people of color should conduct themselves, think about life in the United States, or interact with Whites. But few of us really understand what it is like to be non-White and (often) non-privileged.

We are each accountable for what we do with our lives, regardless of our origins or the difficulty we have encountered along the way. I just think that we ignorantly assume that because Abraham Lincoln stated that "all men are created equal" that this is true. It isn't. We all have the same value in the eyes of God, but we are not all equal, do not all start out from the same place, or have the same innate capabilities and emotional/social tools as others have. We all do the best we can. Awareness and understanding of others who are not as privileged as we are is critical if we are to sensitively interact with others who by no choice of their own, are born to races that are not honored in this country and that have painful legacies.

Have you ever thought about the privilege that you hold?