Privilege and Complicity

Dear Friends,

As we watch with horror what has happened in Ferguson and what continues to happen there, I was struck by a Facebook post of an article entitled "12 things white people can do now because Ferguson" (here).  I shared it on Facebook with the comment, "We must not be complicit. We must act."  A good friend then commented, "We must act ... But we are definitely complicit, whether we want to be or not, because we willingly benefit from racial and class privilege. Hard to acknowledge, but that's the way it is."  It took me awhile to figure out how I felt about that comment.  Here is a summary of my thoughts about it now.

I was born with privilege.  I was born (1) white and (2) male, and into (3) an upper-middle class family with parents who (4) understood the importance of education and (5) provided incredible educational opportunities for me and (6) encouraged my siblings and me to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded us and (7) created a loving and supportive home for us.  How could I have been born with more privilege?  But I did not ask for, demand or deserve this privilege, nor could I bestow it on somebody else.  There is no way that I could donate my privilege to a black female born into a poor family.  It was my privilege whether I wanted it or not.  What I did not think about was that I could use my privilege to destroy it.

All my life, I have tried to take advantage of this privilege and the opportunities it afforded me and have been pretty successful at doing so.  If we could create a world where everybody had equal opportunity, we could then say that those that took advantage of those opportunities deserve what they have achieved.  Of course, we do not have a world with equal opportunity, so none of us can claim that we deserve what we have achieved.

Another person identical to me with all of the attributes of privilege that I listed above except say he was black or a woman or born into a family that did not value education, could not have achieved what I have been able to achieve.  So I benefited mightily from my privilege and "from the racial and class privilege" that exists in this country.

But my complicity does not stem from taking advantage of the privileges and opportunities afforded me.  My complicity comes from my failure and others like me to use our privilege to eliminate our privilege for future generations.  Some of us have worked for social, racial and economic justice, but we could certainly have done more.  Collectively, my generation has not only failed to make progress towards equal opportunity, but we have enabled the greatest inequality in my lifetime.

So what can I and others who were born into privilege do to eliminate our privilege and truly provide equal opportunity for all?  I do not have the answer, but I am quite certain that the first step is for us to realize and admit that our privilege helped us to be successful both by providing us with opportunities and by denying similar opportunities to others.  Just that step alone might bring us all into community with everybody else which would be a wonderful start to eliminating our privilege and injustice.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal