Privilege (pt 1 of 3): P is for ‘VIP’
In February, I (along with an awesome friend, Brooke) hosted a film/documentary series for Black History Month. Following each showing, we had a discussion for the 10 or so people who were in attendance. This was the 2nd time I hosted this event, and it was even better than the 1st time. In total, we hosted over 45 different people, for 3 films and 1 documentary. This year, our very first film of the series was Hidden Figures, which is an EXCEPTIONAL film if you haven’t seen it. Not so surprisingly, privilege was a term that came up quite frequently in our discussion following the film. I was particularly intrigued by a comment made by a [white] gentleman who was in attendance.
“Privilege means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Define what you mean when you say privilege.”
I loved his comment. He was absolutely right. He challenged all of us, myself included, to pause, think, and unpack some of our comments. I think his comment was particularly important, because as a white man, he’s frequently painted as the antagonist to those who are underprivileged, myself included. He’s 100% correct. I don’t think we can talk about privilege without defining it, appropriately, first.
Whether he knows it or not, he actually inspired this 3 part, 10,000+ word series, where I’ll be discussing privilege quite a bit. I think you all deserve nothing less. I’m not ignorant to the fact that this is a topic where people come with many, many preconceived notions, so before getting into some definitions of privilege (later in part 1), and types of privilege (I reserve that for part 2), let me dispel some pitfalls I think people usually fall victim to in discussing privilege.
Privilege does NOT mean you’re a bad person.
I totally get it. I think it’s normal to not want to feel under attack. I think it’s normal to not want to feel bad about yourself. I think it’s normal to not want to believe that someone else’s plight, difficulty, or hardship is somehow your fault. All of that is fine. But privilege has absolutely nothing to do with you being a good or bad person. Now, some (emphasis on some) people may make the argument that you’re a bad person if you have privilege and choose not to acknowledge it. But privilege does not make you a bad person. Not having privilege certainly doesn’t make you a good person. You could certainly be a “bad” person for lots of other reasons, but it’s not, exclusively, because of your privilege.
You should never leave a conversation on privilege feeling like, “Woe is me, my privilege makes me such a retched soul.” If you do, you missed the entire point.
Privilege does NOT mean you didn’t work for what you have.
We’ll come back to this one quite a few times, too. You can be extremely hard working and still be privileged. They’re not mutually exclusive. That is, both can be true at the same time. In fact, privileged people, who are also hard working, are probably going to experience the best outcomes, professionally, financially, socially, etc. You may or may not work hard… you may or may not have privilege. But one doesn’t tell us ANYTHING about the other. Being privileged has nothing to do with work ethic. Being privileged has to do with… well… being privileged. I know this is still pretty ambiguous, but we’ll get to some definitions soon.
Privilege does not mean you aren’t disadvantaged in certain domains of your life.
This is really important, guys. We’re about to have an intersectional discussion, particularly in part 2. It’s really key to understand there are different types of privilege, and acknowledging privilege in one area of your life does not undermine the fact that you may be disadvantaged in other areas of your life. Similarly, being disadvantaged in one area of your life shouldn’t take away from the fact that you may have privilege in other areas of your life. Life is multifaceted, so we need to be okay with this. Using different definitions for privilege, as well as highlighting different types of privilege, will only aid us in our undertaking, here. For the remainder of part 1, I offer different definitions of privilege. In part 2, I’ll get to different types of privilege.
The former, the definitions, give us different lens for identifying privilege and seeing its consequence(s).
For part 1, you may find the following question useful:
”What can I identify in this situation that may suggest something about privilege?”
The latter, types of privilege, help us understand different patterns of social interaction. Patterns, meaning anticipatable and reasonably consistent over time.
For part 2, you may find the following question useful:
“What about this situation, or the people in it, may lead to predictable behavior, on their part or for others?”
For now, let’s focus on part 1, definitions of privilege.
Privilege as Access
One simple way of thinking of privilege is sustained access to scarce, valuable resources. If I wanted to be more technical, I’d probably include something about “social structures”, like government institutions, educational institutions, social networks, etc., but lets just leave all that out for now. Sustained access to scarce, valuable resources can easily create situations where individuals are privileged. To illustrate, I’ll actually use myself as an example.
My dad immigrated from Nigeria, completed his residency at Columbia University, and began practicing medicine thereafter. With a few circumstantial exceptions, I would say practicing as a physician in America probably puts you in the top 5% of household income, and that’s probably true for most, if not all, specialties (basically a base salary of $200K or more, and that doesn’t include the income of your spouse).
In case you’re wondering what percentile you fell in growing up, you can use this nifty tool: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/.
I would venture to say having a parent (father or mother) who’s a physician will make any given person disproportionately more likely to be in America’s middle or upper class. You’ll likely live in a nicer neighborhood, attend better schools (schools are funded with real estate taxes, so nicer neighborhoods have better funded schools), and it’s quite likely you’ll interact regularly with other physicians and/or high-income professionals that your parents connect with from work, after-school programs, church, etc.
Not so surprisingly, my sister attended medical school, my brother attended medical school, my other brother, an engineer, is an entrepreneur with a successful business in solar energy, and I’m in my 2nd year in a PhD program, at a phenomenal university. Even though we’re all black, I think every single one of us would acknowledge we grew up privileged, especially relative to other black households… even some white households. In fact, we all earned our first degree without incurring a penny of debt. Our parents paid for everything. While our family didn’t have an extravagant lifestyle, we still had access to scarce, valuable resources. We attended decent schools growing up. We regularly interacted with my dad’s friends, many of whom were also physicians. Some of them even let my brother and sister shadow them while they were in college. Having 3 physicians in my family (my dad, brother, and sister), by default, I probably know a lot more about medicine than most Americans, even some who are premed in college right now and probably have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.
I’m not saying my brothers and sister didn’t work hard. I’m not saying we’re spoiled brats. I’m not saying we’re bad people. I’m just acknowledging we grew up privileged. No more. No less.
Privilege as the Benefit of the Doubt
Okay, I’m sure I’ll get more push back with this one, but I still think it’s important. Privilege can be defined as getting the benefit of the doubt. I’ll use two examples, here. As I’ve mentioned before, I attend school in a mostly white neighborhood. That’s perfectly fine; it’s an amazing community. But I also think it’s a space where people may not regularly interact with black people as often, students or otherwise. I try and be environmentally conscious. When I go grocery shopping, I try and avoid plastic bags, when possible. Even so, I don’t really feel comfortable walking out the doors to a grocery store with the items (the items I paid for) in my hands. While I think any shopper who walks out the door without bagging their groceries may be subject to scrutiny, I feel that’s particularly likely for me as a black shopper (perhaps especially in a mostly white neighborhood).
Why? I don’t expect to get the benefit of the doubt. If I do, that’s wonderful. I just don’t know if I expect to. This is certainly a situation where I feel less privileged than… some other shoppers… particularly white shoppers, since it’s a white neighborhood. That and why else would a black shopper be in a mostly white neighborhood if he didn’t have questionable motives for being there?
It stinks… but I didn’t make the rules… I just need to know how to play the game. My dad, at a very young age, instilled a very similar principle in me: “Always remember, you’re an African in a foreign country. Always do the right thing, so you won’t find yourself in any situations with law enforcement.” My dad got it, too. He understood that we don’t always get the benefit of the doubt. In essence, he was saying, always be above reproach, because if the situation arises, people may be less inclined to trust you because you’re black. You may not get the benefit of the doubt.
Quite frankly, if I have kids, I’ll tell them the same. It’s great advice. It sucks. But I didn’t make the rules… I just need to know how to play the game.
I’ll give another example, a bit extreme, but hopefully you can follow the logic. Donald Trump said a lot of off the wall stuff during his campaign. His supporters regularly dismissed criticism of his rhetoric with comments like, “He didn’t mean it.” Donald Trump got the benefit of the doubt. When he says, “I can go to the middle of Time Square and shoot someone, and I’ll still win the election,” people simply assume he doesn’t mean it. But imagine if Donald Trump were Middle Eastern. What if instead of being called Donald Trump, his name was Muhammad Shadid. Would it be different? Would he still get the benefit of the doubt? My opinion: very, very unlikely.
Here’s another thought. What if Donald Trump were Muslim. Muslim dude, running for President, in America, and he’s talking about shooting people in the middle of Time Square. Would we all be so convinced that he doesn’t mean it? My opinion: very, very unlikely. I’m not here to argue whether or not Donald Trump meant what he said. I’m simply highlighting how privilege affords people the benefit of the doubt. Being white helped. Fact. I’ll talk more about that in part 2.
We can extend this discussion though. What if instead of his name being Donald Trump, his name was Rashad Harris. A big, 6’1 black dude. Maybe I’ll add to that, what if he was a young, black social activist from Compton, California. Or Bankhead, in Atlanta. Or Bedstuy, in Brooklyn. Or the South side of Chicago. Now, in addition to being from a notoriously dangerous neighborhood, probably having a degree in thuganomics awarded from the School of Hard Knocks, and being black, this gentleman running for president is talking about wielding a gun and committing murder, right there in the middle of Time Square.
You tell me. Does America still give him the benefit of the doubt? Very, very unlikely. To quote Charles Barkely, “I may be wrong, but I doubt it.” Shucks, we’d probably say these are borderline threats of terrorism. There would probably be an FBI investigation in the next few days following the incident. These are just examples. Hopefully I’ve made my point. In case my point isn’t clear though, let me be explicit: in situations where actions or intentions can be questionable or ambiguous, privilege means you get the benefit of the doubt.
Privilege as License
Privilege can also be defined as license to engage in behavior that would otherwise be impermissible. In other words, this is similar but distinct to getting the benefit of the doubt. Getting the benefit of the doubt doesn’t explicitly mean you did anything wrong. Here, privilege as license recognizes that something wrong has been done, but it’s excused, for any number of reasons.
Perhaps another example will help. I’ll only touch on this briefly, because there’s a lot to read on it, and I can’t do the topic full justice here. In January 2015, Brock Turner, a student athlete on the swimming team at Stanford University, committed sexual assault against an intoxicated woman. He received a sentence in June of 2016, but the general public was outraged because they felt the verdict, a 6-month sentence, was too lenient. The judge himself stated his opinion when he rendered the sentence: “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”
Let’s pause here.
I don’t know about you, but I thought we sentenced people to prison because it will have a severe impact on them. When we give someone 5 years for a DUI, isn’t it because we think it’s going to have a severe impact on them? When we give someone 5 years in prison for possession of marijuana, crack, cocaine, or heroin, isn’t it because we think it’s going to have a severe impact on them? When people download child pornography, do we say, “I’m afraid prison will change their life forever; certainly there has to be something else we can do!”. Prison is supposed to be a pain in the neck. It’s supposed to be an inconvenience. It’s supposed to change your life forever. We designed it that way. On purpose. Somehow, though, most of the people in there are black and brown. I digress.
** It’s probably important that I point out Turner had no criminal record, so, that probably had something to do with the sentencing, too, in the judge’s defense.
There are 2 things in particular worth noting here about the Turner case.
The first is that of classism. If you didn’t know, Stanford is an absolutely astounding university. In addition to boasting an admission rate below 5%, the university has had 31 Nobel prize winning faculty, in addition to 19 Nobel laureates that are currently at the school. Beyond that, the school has a $25 billion endowment. Stanford attracts a certain demographic of students, and people graduate from Stanford and do exceptionally well, hence the judge’s comment, “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.” Probably. No job offers from wall street. No invitations to interview at Harvard, or Yale, or Cornell for law school. It’ll probably be harder to get a loan and start a business. Basically, it’ll be a huge life setback, even though he’s getting a degree from one of the most prestigious institutions for higher education in the world.
Dang, that stinks.
The second thing worth noting about the Turner case is social hierarchy. In general, wealthy people and/or celebrities tend to occupy a higher position in the social hierarchy than their non-wealthy, non-celebrity counterparts. This pertains to college athletes, too. I mean, if you’re a starter on the football/basketball team at Ohio State, or Texas, or UCLA, etc., my gosh, you can almost do whatever you want. That’s perhaps even truer when you’re in a college town, like Florida, LSU, Georgia, Louisville, etc. You’re basically a demigod. In addition to Turner being at a phenomenal university, he was also an ATHLETE. Who knows, this guy could go to the Olympics. Punish him, but don’t stop him from competing! Don’t stop him from swimming! Don’t throw him off the Olympic track! This isn’t specific to Turner. He wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last. We’ve been doing this, for decades, with athletes of all colors, black athletes included. It’s a vicious cycle.
I could make some comments here on how his race played into this, but I’ll save that for Part 2. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew for one post.
Privilege as Unawareness
Privilege can also be thought of as a deliberate (intentional) or naïve (unintentional) unawareness to the plight of others, especially those in marginalized groups. Simply put, it’s the luxury of not having to care about someone else’s problem(s) or be directly affected by it. Maybe an example will help.
As far as I know, I’m not handicapped, and I never have been. If I should experience some type of traumatic incident and I broke both of my legs, I’m sure I’d need to use a wheelchair for some period of time. Undoubtedly, this would change my perspective. I don’t particularly care if there’s a ramp that allows me access to a building, but I’m sure that would become of greater importance. I know of several apartments that are not handicap accessible, particularly older ones, but maybe that would bother me a lot more if I were in a wheelchair. Think about older cities, like Philadelphia. In West Philly, almost all of the apartments are upwards of fifty years old. Most of them are NOT handicap accessible. I’m sure looking for an apartment in West Philly would be a pain in the neck. In fact, I might go as far as to say the only way to have a handicap accessible apartment in Philadelphia is to live downtown, in the most expensive part of the city. Those apartments tend to have elevators. Otherwise, not so much.
But I’m not in a wheelchair. I’m blessed to say both of my legs are fully functional. Truthfully, until now, I never really thought about any of this. It’s somebody’s problem… just not mine. I don’t have to think about it, because it doesn’t really affect my life in any way, shape, or form.
PAUSE. Does that make me a bad person? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense it’s pretty selfish of me to focus primarily on things that affect my own life. I think, in some ways, that’s the definition of selfishness. No, in the sense, I think EVERYONE’S natural tendency is to focus on primarily things that affect their own life. We just need to do better undoing that thinking. I think part of the challenge with having discussions on privilege is we want to think highly of ourselves. If we had regular occurrences where we realized that we’re not as great as we think we are, I think conversation on privilege would be easier, too, because we’d be a lot more open to the possibility of overlooking things that don’t directly affect us (privilege as unawareness).
Maybe one other example would help. I’m not LGBT. I’m a heterosexual man, and I’ve identified as a heterosexual man for the duration of my life. I don’t know what it’s like to keep it a secret from friends and family who I’m attracted to. I don’t know what it’s like to make clever excuses why I don’t want to be set up with an, otherwise, extremely attractive woman (although, periodically, I have to disappoint a very attractive woman that’s trying to dance with me inappropriately). I don’t know what it’s like for who I’m attracted to, and who I want to marry, to spark a bitter, contentious political debate. Honestly, it’s not my problem. Because I’m not gay. I can be indifferent. I can be apathetic. I can be completely unaware, really. It has nothing to do with me.
IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM.
Does this make me a bad person? The logic here is identical to the one on being handicapped. I think EVERYONE’S natural human tendency is to focus primarily, or exclusively, on things that only affect their own life. But I think that’s bad. We have to get BEYOND that. Here, we see another situation where something I take for granted, something as basic as my sexual orientation, can otherwise be considered as privilege in certain situations.
Guys, this is just an introduction. All we did here was talk about misconceptions and introduce a few definitions. We’ll get into different types of privilege for Part 2. Otherwise, if you have different definitions for privilege, feel free to weigh in. Also, I’d love feedback!
Nnamdi