A few people I know, say they have no particular privilege because they are ‘white’, so they don’t know what black people are complaining about. But I seem to have a huge number of Priviliges, that come from the social category I’ve been assigned and its historical fortunes….
Being white does seem to give privilege in some parts of the world, just as being Han Chinese gives privilege in other parts of the world. Obviously, living in Australia, I live in a part of the world, ruled and owned by ‘white’ men, with a history of violent dispossession, and action against the indigenous inhabitants. Power and fortune may be getting a bit more distributed, but it still seems primarily aimed at white males.
If you think that is entirely accidental, or a matter of talent, you are probably being naive. Power groups always claim that their power is natural, and comes from God or their essential abilities.
This ruling subsection of the population is built around established businesses, so its a bit more restricted still. However, it probably governs in the interests of white male business people, or at least governs with their perspectives. So that may well benefit me, in ways that is not overtly apparent to me, but is present.
However, far more overtly, I am privileged in many other ways, many of which people don’t seem to recognised.
I am privileged to be born, and live, in countries which overseas forces have not tried to invade or conquer through violence in the last seventy years. Even while we have tried to invade other other countries, for no apparent reason.
I’m privileged that I, and my recent ancestors, were not part of a violently conquered, enslaved or displaced group of people.
I was privileged not to be taken from my parents as a child, or have other members of my family living with trauma, because of the history of the social category to which we we were assigned.
I was privileged my parents were not crushed, violent, alcoholic or drug addled, which is relatively common especially in people in suppressed social categories, and that they supported me as best they could through my dependent years.
My parents had a sense of possibility and caution, which they passed on to me.
I was privileged because I was the right age group to avoid the Vietnam war and the war my parents lived through; in their case, in the navy and through bombing raids.
I have never lived surrounded by weapons.
I’ve never had to kill people to stay alive, and an armed person has only threatened to kill me once, and that is a privilege.
I was fortunate to be born without accidental or genetic impairment, or signs that would separate me from other people and allow me to be defined as inferior or difficult. I have not gained any such markings in my life so far.
I was privileged to be born with good mental functioning, that was recognised as such, and not hidden, or rendered ‘socially inappropriate’ or unbelievable, by my assigned social category.
I was born a race and gender which made many things easier for me because of the expectations around those categories, and I never faced much overt suppression because of my class, sexuality, or appearance.
I was not marked by my accent as inferior.
I never grew up to fear the police, the establishment, or being raped by friends, family and strangers.
The police have never attacked or chased me, or picked me up because they were looking for a suspected ‘white criminal’. The police have never knelt on my neck, or beaten me for ‘looking at the them the wrong way’.
I never had to live in a crime plagued slum, or even an ordinary, largely cooperative slum. I was never marked as a slum dweller with the scars assigned to that.
I was never that poor.
I was privileged in that the STDs I picked up in careless youth, did not kill or warp me.
I was privileged to live in a society in which men and women could apparently be friends on occasions.
I was privileged to have a good, largely free, education; in primary, high school and university. I was privileged not to be ostracised, or patronised, or beaten, in high school for my sexuality, race or ways in which I felt or thought – sure I sometimes had to be careful, but it was controllable. I was much more fortunate than some other people I knew at school.
My parents were both forced to leave school early, by social conditions and events. I was not.
I never had to live under a totalitarian religion or party who tried to restrict my reading, or knowledge through violence and removal of books, although I don’t know how long that will last. I guess you never do. [I do remember the unbanning of the Decameron, Fanny Hill , Portnoy’s Complaint, the Kama Sutra, Story of O, and so on in the early 70s.]
I was privileged to live in a society which generations of working and middle class people had fought to make one in which opportunities, reasonable wealth for most people and social mobility was possible.
I was privileged to live in a healthy economy. I never faced the poverty my parents had to live with, and everyone I knew could afford food and shelter. Most of the world’s population has never been that privileged. I don’t know how long this can continue.
Neither I, nor members of my family, or friend group, was ever indentured, enslaved, or forced into labour.
I did not have to fear the State taking me away, persecuting me, or campaigning against my existence, or blaming me for something going wrong – although the right has been trying to do this for some time (you know: alarmist, libtard, cultural marxist, socialist, cultural elite, university professor [I’m not] etc.).
My work did not endanger or kill me.
There were opportunites for business and employment which did not depend on assigned class. The economy was generally expanding and stable.
Social mobility was high during the entire first half of my life. This benefited my parents and hence me.
When I was ill for over 10 years I was privileged to have employers at Abbey’s Bookshop who designed work for me which kept me functional.
I was privileged that we had a working socialised health system which persisted in trying to find what the problem was, and did not make minor health issues major because I could not afford treatment.
On the occasions when I was unemployed, we had a working employment and relief system, with staff who were not over-regulated. They never pursued me, over occasional work, with robodebt.
I was priviliged in that I could work part time and still rent a unit in Glebe.
I was privileged that I and others could work, in the rest of our time away from part time work in a professional standard theatre company without pay.
I was privileged when I turned up again in the Sydney University Anthropology Department, and Professor Michael Allen did not flinch too much when I said I wanted to write about alchemy and Jungian theory.
I was privileged that after the alchemy thesis was finished Prof Allen fought for me to get a PhD scholarship and succeeded. This was particularly fortunate as I was then getting too bound by pain for an employer directed job. Without Michael my life might have been much more fraught.
I was privileged in that when my parents died I was left with some money rather than debt.
While it will be difficult to face old age with the ecological turmoil and social disintegration we can expect, so far I’ve been privileged and that will probably help.
Sure it is true that I worked for what I have. I could have given up, or suicided on many occasions. But other people have worked a lot harder than me for far less success.
And the fact that I worked for what I have does not prove that there is no class, racial, sexual, gender or other discrimination in our society. It proves I was lucky, and some of that luck involves who I was fortunate to be born to, where I was born, the time in which I was born, where I grew up, the social category I was assigned to, and who I had the fortune to know. This is privilege. Privilege is partly the ability to make social connections.
My success, such as it is, comes from society and me, not either one separately. But if society had been against me, then everything would have been much harder, and it probably would have been much easier for me to be really self-destructive, or to give up.
That I’ve worked enough to have had enough success to lead a decent life, and this was sometimes hard, does not mean that other people have not had it more difficult than me because of their assigned social categories and their experience of society.
It would be nice if everyone was privileged enough to make their own way, without the experience that they have been hindered in a systematic way because of who others thought they were because of their social category and the way it is treated.
Tags: politics, social category theory
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