Have you heard of the pancake/waffle conundrum on social media? I get on a social media platform and speak of how I like pancakes. The first comment comes from someone asking why it is that I hate waffles. The presumption of exclusion, one of the things that makes social media such an unstable platform for the exchange of meaningful information.
I start
there because I fear I am going to get a lot of the pancake/waffle conundrum
going with this blog post. In our nation
right now, there is a powerful movement about deconstructing ‘white privilege’
in order to create a better tomorrow.
This is an incredibly important discussion to be having. There is a huge corrective in the way things
are in America that will come from its deconstruction. But its only one piece of the puzzle.
I was
watching some Hollywood “high-lister” (I do not know who rates what in the
alphabet of Hollywood lists), self-identifying with white privilege, a brave
and personal decision to come out with, speaking with the conviction of
solidarity with all who are white, that all have this privilege, that all must
come to terms with it. That kind of
blanket conclusion, that all who are white must now surrender their privilege,
it only works in some kind of social experiment where one of the presuppositions
goes something like “all other things being equal.”
If we
can control for age and economic status and gender and what other factors that
I am not cognizant of, then we can justify someone making this kind of blanket
pronouncement, under ‘laboratory conditions’.
This is commentary on the old rich WHITE guy. But this isn’t the lab. Privilege is not one dimensional. And a rich person telling people who are poor
that they have to give up their privilege-no matter how they couch that word-smacks
of hypocrisy to me.
There
is a privilege to being rich that we rarely talk about in this country. Because that’s the American dream, isn’t
it? Build enough wealth and we are free
to do ‘whatever we want’. But how small
a minority of the people hold how much a majority of the wealth? And isn’t there an inherent conflict within
communities, however they self-identify, between the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have-not’s’?
With
the Old Rich White Guy, that is two of the four folds of privilege. Now if you think I have spoken inadequately
about white privilege and the evils of racism, addressing the privileges of age
in a culture with an ever-heightening awareness of age discrimination is really
going to start some fires. Being old
certainly does not mean being wealthy.
But wealth itself is often older than the current generation. What was the line, “I made my money the old-fashioned
way, I inherited it?” Being old is a double-edged
sword in this country. On the one edge,
you may be part of that group of wealth holders. On the other edge, you may be forgotten and warehoused
in a care facility.
We
also live in the age of the Internet zillionaires, ‘young ones’ with buckets
full of money, money not made over generations.
But for every ‘young’ zillionaire who makes the news, how many…chronologically
advanced individuals are there who hold disproportionate amounts of power and
influence?
And
let us not forget the privilege of gender.
Being male has all kinds of privilege wrapped up in it. But this privilege is also influenced by skin
color. I have read feminist essays
speaking of white male privilege and womanist essays speaking of black male
privilege. And I am wholly unqualified
to speak out on such a topic, except in the broadest summary.
Privilege
of life experience, privilege of economic status, privilege of race, and privilege
of gender, that is simply my ‘four-fold’ path of privilege. I have privilege in all four categories. What I am saying is that privilege is more
than a two-sided argument, that we need more clarity of the nuances of privilege
and inequality if we are going to meaningfully implement change.
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