Neighbor, A Handbook: Part 2(f), The Terms-Privilege

“Being privileged doesn’t mean that you are always wrong and people without privilege are always right. It means that there is a good chance you are missing a few very important pieces of the puzzle.” — Ijeoma Oluo

Traditional Definition

When I was young, the word privilege often meant a reward we earned or something extra we were given due to our status.

Privilege ala Ms. Webster (in italics):

1: a right or liberty granted as a favor or benefit especially to some and not others.

For example, if a person was in the military and an officer could bounce a quarter off their well-made bed day after day, they earned weekend privileges. If I ate everything on my plate at dinner, including the serving of mushy yet strangely grainy lima beans, I earned dessert privileges.

2: an opportunity that is special and pleasant.

For example, my senior high school class was given the privilege of permission to leave campus during lunch on Fridays if we chose to do so, in honor of having reached our final year of high school. (This privilege may have gone away.)

The modern meaning

Today’s privilege still holds the above meaning plus adds a fairness and a social component. To be privileged means that a person has an advantage in the world because of their personal situation in life. To say a person is privileged is a recognition of privilege(s) they have that some others don’t. When we have any form of privilege, we are granted (more, easier) access to things that others aren’t, are given special treatment others aren’t, and/or we don’t have to deal with certain things others must. We are often given more power, trust, and respect.

Types of privilege

These are major potential forms of privilege: our social class, economic situation, race, religion, sexuality, physical/mental/emotional ability/formation, gender, and education.

Of course death and misfortune happen to us all, but for a person with privilege, life rolls more smoothly, and this is true whether they realize it or not.

An example of privilege

Here’s a tiny example. When I was in my twenties, I was an attractive woman. Because of a baseline I had no role in creating, the benefits of my appearance played out in all sorts of ways — ways I recognized and ways I didn’t. There were times people responded more positively to me, smoothed the way for me, opened doors for me, let me off the hook for things, in ways they didn’t for other women/people. I could take credit for the way my life’s unfolded based only on my hard work, talent, and brain power, but I know there were times I was given an advantage simply because of a biological composition resulting from the merger of one particular egg and sperm. My physical presence was a form of privilege. Did I still have to build a life and work on who I was? Of course. But at times did I have an advantage or opportunities people who were not born with this same privilege did not? Yep, that, too.

Why this term

There’s a lot of noise around privilege, but the simple fact is that, if we wish to be the best Neighbors possible, it’s critical to understand our own. This is because privilege makes life easier, smoother, in ways that can cause us to think we have all the answers. If people would only just do it like us, or this way or that, their life would be better, too. Seeing our privilege is a reminder that we do not have all the answers and that the world has much to teach us. And though there have been moments I’ve had to work my way through discomfort, and even shame, when I first recognized a form of my privilege, knowing ourselves and our situation is not intended to shame us. Its purpose is to help us grow.

A personal check in

To consider our own areas of privilege, here’s an exercise. Put a check by any lines that apply in the list below. Sometimes it might be necessary to make multiple checks on one line. Each and every item in the list is a way of being privileged.

I am:

_____ White (or the race of strength/dominance in my country)

_____ Male

_____ Heterosexual

_____ Christian (or the religion of strength/dominance in my country)

_____ I come from money (one check for each level up: middle class, high middle class, wealthy, 1%, etc)

_____ I come from parents or family members who were/are socially/professionally connected

_____ I’m economically solid now (one check for each level: middle class, with means, wealthy, 1%. Be honest, look at what you have, not what you don’t.)

_____ I have socially normed Health/Ability (I fit in and have the ability to navigate the mainstream world with relative ease — physically or cognitively or emotionally — one check for each)

_____ I can pay all my bills

_____ Own my home

_____ Have a car

_____ My parents were able to pay the bills when I was young, so I didn’t have to work to contribute to my family (this is different from choosing to, and is also different than being required to as a way of learning to work)

_____ One of my parents was a stay-at-home parent

_____ Education — (a check for each) I finished high school, college, grad school. I went to a school that connects me to other people of privilege. People view my former school as elite.

_____Am not considered too young or old.

Even if it’s not yet clear why these areas create privilege, rest assured that any line checked is a way you have privilege. If you think of other ways, just write them in the margins.

Privilege is an invitation to see

The word privilege is one of those invitations to see the world more clearly, all in the interest of being a better Neighbor. First, it asks us to begin with our own world and acknowledge our advantages where we have (or have had) them. Then it asks us to consider others situations in the same light, including where someone else may not have had similar privilege. Finally, it asks us to begin to understand how our own privilege, or that of our group(s), has impacted other people or impacts them still.

The Present and the Past

Privilege exists right now in each of our lives. It looks different for different people and makes life easier or harder in different ways, but for anyone alive it’s going on this very minute, even as I write.

Privilege of the past has helped create the world we live in today. It’s made some people’s lives easier for generations, in ways they can’t see, ways that make possible the life they live right now. Despite this, people don’t always see the historical underpinnings that helped create their personal world.

For example, my great grandfather was allowed to own land 150 years ago because he was male (and White and Christian) and could legally acquire property and get a loan. From this he built a home and a small farm, and his investments (his business, property, how owning allowed him to save money over time, social connections, and encouragement of his children’s education) have played forward generation to generation in ways both visible and invisible.

Another person’s great grandfather had his home and land taken away because he was Native American, and then his family was forced to move to a totally different geographic location to live on an under-resourced reservation (far from everything, poor land quality, few medical options, limited job availability, schools with few dedicated teachers or supplies, the inability to own a home and so build equity and savings, a reputation among the world outside the reservation as being less than, and a government continually taking more away — including his children, to send them to ‘schools’ that were both dangerous for them and intended to strip away their culture, and, of course, so much loss and trauma never addressed). This beginning has played forward, generation to generation, in ways visible and invisible.

One person’s grandfather got land because he was male, White, and Christian, and another person’s grandfather lost his land to (essentially) that first man because, while male, he lacked the other two of the first man’s privileges.

How the past has built the present is all around us. It’s everywhere.

To begin to see is humbling

On a personal level, it can poke the bear to re-examine the story we believe about ourselves and our world and how it came to be. It can feel scary to acknowledge the ways in which we’ve moved through the world with ease simply because of what we’ve been given or who we are.

On a larger scale, when we have group loyalty, especially blind loyalty, it can be a challenge to examine the privilege of our group, including the history of our group. Groups have as many pride stories and beliefs about their history as we do about ourselves, and sometimes these stories are so interwoven with our own, it’s impossible to see where one begins and one ends.

Finally, to recognize the ways in which, sometimes for generations and generations, the opposite of the benefits of privilege have happened for other people and other groups can be the hardest thing to face of all. Especially when we or our groups, consciously or unconsciously, have in some way played a role in this and/or taken advantage of it.

A quick resistance check in

Before we move further, I want to ask each of us to do a quick internal check-in. I’ve noticed with my friends that often, as the discussion of privilege becomes personal, an invisible wall goes up.

While it’s easy to point fingers outward, mirror work is a different experience altogether. Honestly looking in the mirror is an examination many people I know do not want to do, though I’m not even sure they realize. Resistance can look like this: I don’t need to read this, I already know I’m privileged or Yah yah or Not this again or Oh God, more Woke culture.

So, in the interest of the Neighbor work we’re doing here, ask, What am I feeling inside right now?

It’s important to recognize resistance and manage it, so we can get out of our own way and grow.

Because, when examined with real intent, to see the privilege in our world (and its impact) (and then what it may ask of us) is work that never ends and work that changes the story. Ok, let’s take it on.

A made-up example

If seeing how privilege smooths life is still a bit unclear, here’s an example I invented. Before we begin, remember, one area of privilege comes from having a body without a physical disability.

For this situation, pretend we both live in the same neighborhood. We’re proud grandparents. There’s one difference. My grandchild was born with a physical disability and yours wasn’t. As a result, your grandchild goes to first grade in the local neighborhood school and mine can’t. It’s an old building, you see, and the first grade classes are on the second floor, so your grandchild can walk to her classroom, but my grandchild’s in a wheelchair and there’s no elevator. As a result, my grandchild must take a bus to a school ten miles away.

For the sake of this example, let’s say that both schools are of equal educational quality. Knowing this, it might be easy to say, What’s the big deal? Let me lay it out. This is not an example of your grandchild’s privilege hurting my grandchild, instead it’s mainly an illustration of how privilege invisibly helps the privileged and a lack of it is hard on the person who doesn’t have it.

The big picture is that your granddaughter benefits socially and academically and her parents benefit socially and economically/professionally. She doesn’t do this selfishly, it simply happens for her because of the body she was born in. Here are some of the ways your grandaughter’s privilege plays out. Notice how some are obvious and some invisible:

• She’s more rested. She can sleep later because her school is closer.
• The beginning of your granddaughter’s day is more peaceful. There’s no tension around a to-the-minute departure time, and bad weather simply calls for different outerwear.
• Your granddaughter grows her sense of independence because she walks to school herself.
• Your granddaughter has a safety net as you or her parents can more easily drop something off that she forgets at home (like homework, lunch, a jacket or instrument).
• If both of your granddaughter’s parents work, she can walk home from school when school is done.
• Your granddaughter has a community that’s built-in because the kids who live in our neighborhood go to school with her. She’s known, and when she walks out the door, especially in summer, her social world is waiting. She doesn’t have to be driven to playdates. Her parents deepen their own community connections for the same reason.
• Your grandchild invisibly belongs. She can attend and participate in everything. All rooms and homes are accessible to her, a thing she does not have to consider before saying yes, a thing they don’t have to consider before inviting her.

The results of my granddaughter’s not having this privilege:

• She’s less rested as she must get up an hour earlier to catch the bus and has longer days.
• There’s often a low level of tension in my granddaughter’s morning. If she misses her bus, someone must drive her ten miles and get her into school. Her parents work so this is a big cost.
• Bad weather and navigating deep puddles or snow banks is a true challenge.
• She must rely on people to make getting to and from school possible. And, as someone has to be there to meet her when she gets off the bus, she stays in an after-school program, if there is one, until one of her parents gets off work and can pick her up.
• She is forced to understand that because of the way her body is made, the neighborhood school isn’t open for her.
• For every extracurricular, she and her parents must first examine if she can even physically access the place where the opportunity exists. This is often a sad no.
• She becomes a stranger in her own neighborhood. She also becomes, because no one gets to know her as a girl versus the girl in the wheelchair, other/different. This makes an invisible social wall for her, and when home, she watches social action from the window.
• If there’s no bus to take my grandchild to her school ten miles away, her parents have the built-in hardship of getting her there and home. Working in the opposite direction (or with an earlier start time or having to travel overnight for work) adds the stress and economic cost of a 20 mile drive and school hours that may not match their work hours. Her playdates also require transportation. The issue of transportation has economic and professional repercussions for my granddaughter’s family.
• At some point my granddaughter’s family lobbies for an elevator to be installed in the local school but it means a school resource choice between extracurricular enrichment opportunities for everyone or the elevator. This creates interpersonal tension in our community, plus the lobbying effort is a physical and emotional toll on her already busy parents. At times, they, too, feel they don’t belong in their neighborhood.
• People with children with physical disabilities don’t move into the neighborhood because they know their child can’t attend the local school. This creates an added otherness to my granddaughter’s situation.
• Over the years, the social, educational, and physical effects of longer and more complicated days, the possible economic/professional impact on her family due to transportation (let alone the expenses that are part of being in a wheelchair), as well as her lessened social connectedness due to not being a part of her community, affect her opportunities for belonging, development, social/emotional wellness, and achievement.

Of course there’s so much more. But it’s critical to note that a final, and enormous, privilege of having a body without disability is that most of the things my grandchild and her parents grapple with are issues you or your granddaughter may never see or realize. And when your grandchild grows up, she will probably not understand all the invisible advantages she received because of the privilege that came from having a body like hers. She has no idea how her privilege put her at advantage over my grandchild, how she profited from her advantages, or the ways in which my granddaughter was hurt by a lack of the same advantages. I’m not writing this to shame her. But the way she sees the world may be skewed, as she likely feels she earned her way to whatever her achievements were without realizing the parts of her world that made it so much easier (or even possible) for her to achieve them.

Why the word is essential for the privileged

Without seeing our privilege, we can’t recognize our own unearned advantages or understand other people’s situations and the unequal opportunity they experience. At the very least, being aware allows us to respond to the people around us with sensitivity and understanding. At the most, it allows us to see and respond to places where the footprint of the privileged, conscious or unconscious, has caused true harm.

Some explanation of the main areas of privilege in the U.S.

Each type of privilege is like a club the members can’t see.

• Race– I cover White privilege in a later chapter. For now, I’ll just say that for centuries being White has been the social norm for power and fitting in, and doors are still not open for other races in the way they’re open for White people. This has been both legally enforced and socially enforced. If anyone’s thinking: well, there’s affirmative action — that’s a recent creation intended to begin to address centuries of inequity, and it only still touches the tip of centuries of closed doors despite loud complaints from a primarily White group.
• Gender–I also cover White male privilege in a later chapter, but for males of any race, that chapter will be relevant in many ways. Historically, men in this country have had many privileges that women, non-binary, and trans people have not. Access to education, loans, jobs, promotions, respect, safety, health care (which has been based on the study of men’s bodies and health issues), etc, have all created centuries of inequality in building resources, contacts, safety, and power that have felt natural to us because they’ve been the norm.
• Sexual orientation–being heterosexual is the cultural norm in the U.S. While many states and towns are evolving, there remain many places and people that close the door to those who are not straight. Regardless, the language from a community to a non-heterosexual person is accepted, open, affirming, while such language isn’t necessary for someone who’s straight and accepted as ‘normal.’ Not identifying as heterosexual can cause physical danger, loss of job or promotion, loss of health care (including for a spouse or children), the threat of expulsion or hell from a religious institution, loss of service from business establishments, stares, teasing, etc. Books with characters who aren’t straight are forbidden in some states.
• Religion–the religion in the U.S. that’s been recognized as the cultural norm is Christianity, and more specifically Protestant Christianity. When JFK ran for president, he had to break through a wall of prejudice against Catholics, despite Catholicism being a form of Christianity. Though religiously things have eased some in certain areas, being mainstream Christian remains a form of privilege and those who practice other religions can find themselves at a social/professional disadvantage simply because of their faith.
• Wealth (economic security/status) Having money opens doors. It’s a platform of security people are unaware privileges them — and from which they step less burdened into the world. It creates more and better opportunities for health, education, housing, professions, relationships (love and friendship), play, etc, plus supports risk-taking in ways that people with much less financial security cannot afford. The higher a person is on the wealth ladder, the more connections come with their privilege — connections that open doors both personally and for their family whether they realize it or not.
• Class — being from a higher class creates connections and social credibility that opens doors, smooths paths, and also protects. It’s an invisible club, often with different rules and barriers.
• Health/Ability — Our ability to navigate the world with a body that is socially normed as ‘normal,’ as well as emotional and mental health that passes as the same, smooths our path in ways we cannot see without pausing.
• Education — the higher one goes educationally, the more doors open. Education is a status symbol in parts of this country and there are certain careers that are only open to a certain level of degree. There are professions and social circles where the eliteness of the place one attended, or where ones children go to school, grants both credibility and access. In some places, like Silicon Valley, the place of education is regarded as the signal of a person’s intelligence, and there is a street cred attached to intelligence that’s equal to class and wealth. Wealth and college admissions/the road to being ready to apply (in that order) often go hand in hand.

Acknowledging privilege goes against our nation’s pride story

A major cornerstone (perhaps the whole floor) of the classic American success story is our tale of the personal work that went into our success. Our country is steeped in sayings that support the individual hard work part of this of this equation:

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Self-made man.

I (or my father/family) built all this from nothing.

Living the American dream.

We also have a lot of cultural words like lucky and blessed and fortunate. These are wonderful words in general, as is the gratitude that can accompany them. But these words can take us off the hook from considering what we have and the many factors that contributed to how we got it, as these words imply what we have has been bestowed on us — through luck or grace or God’s blessings combined with our own hard work.

To notice our privilege is to recognize and admit that it hasn’t only been these words, we’ve had help with our success in ways we didn’t realize and had absolutely nothing to do with. We really didn’t do it all ourselves.

Why we fight it

Privilege is a word people tend to want to push back against or dismiss with a sigh and an eye roll because, at first, no one wants to admit they’re privileged. It feels sort of like saying, I’m not as naturally successful as I thought. It can also include the feeling, I’m selfish or Whoa, I’m a jerk. Who wants to say or feel that? And yet the fact is, if I am born into privilege, I am born into privilege. That’s just the way it is. Rolling my eyes or getting mad or saying everyone is talking about this too much won’t change a thing. It’ll just make me the double whammy: privileged and unconscious.

If any of us get angry or irritated at the mention of privilege, notice it. (Maybe visit the Anger and Bear sections again.) Look underneath the anger. Ask what’s there. Think, Bear. Ask what personal beliefs are being attacked. I bet that irritation or anger is actually discomfort or fear.

Please don’t let your anger-shield win.

Weaponizing someone’s lack of privilege

Just as weaponizing terms lets us off the hook from listening to what they’re asking us to consider, weaponizing a person’s lack of privilege does the same.

When a person has privilege and doesn’t realize it and also doesn’t personally know the people who don’t share that privilege, it can happen that jokes are made at the expense of the people without privilege. Those jokes can seem funny when we aren’t close to anyone they’d hurt. But of course they aren’t funny. They dehumanize the people they’re about and they harden a protective shell around the people who make them. They excuse a lack of compassion and human concern.

Does anyone else remember the little yellow bus that took the kids with disabilities to their school?

Does anyone else remember people making jokes about it?

Can you imagine?

An even worse form of weaponization is when people with privilege use blanket statements to blame the people without that privilege for their differentness, or their hardship. Often they expect them to just work harder (like they have!) or to suck it up because that’s how things are.

The darkest slot canyon is when the privileged view themselves as victims because they’re asked to consider another person’s hardship or grapple with the question of how to make the world a more equitable place for all.

An example

When I was in my twenties, living in NYC (a dining out city), we sat in a restaurant sharing a fun meal, and a friend looked around the tightly packed tables and said, “You know, all of the restaurants we eat in would be impossible to access if you were in a wheelchair.”

It was one of those moments when one person’s willingness to look and then greater willingness to step into discomfort offered a doorway to a whole new way of seeing the world.

When we brought it up with a larger group later, another guy got really defensive. He shrugged his shoulders and said, essentially, “It shouldn’t hurt restaurants economically because some people are in wheelchairs. It will kill the restaurant business in NY if it has to change for them.” He got indignant with facts and figures that eventually made the people asking for more basic access the bad people, about to ruin the world. Of course, I learned later that he either had a restaurant share or wanted to open one, I can’t remember now.

The days passed, and that guy’s self-righteous voice echoed in my ear as I looked around at the sidewalks, the subways and buses, the grocery stores and shops, the length of the traffic lights at the intersections, and understood that a restaurant was just one tiny piece of living in the City. It hurt. It hurt to realize how challenged a person in a wheelchair was in NYC. How, even when they could do something — date, work, shop, interview — how much longer it would take or harder it would be. It hurt to hear how dismissive someone with privilege could be, refusing even to imagine the challenge of another’s experience. It hurt to see how complex, sometimes impossible, the problems were; it hurt to see that sometimes people with bodies like mine would have the advantage no matter how we work to make things equitable. But it was then I realized that without entering this conversation, things would always remain the same. Good for the privileged. Not so good, or bad, for those without.

Thankfully, the world is changing

“Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is (laboring) seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.” ― Noam Chomsky

Our choice of action and reaction all rests on what kind of Neighborhood we want.

Today, because of activists and people like your granddaughter (who later in this fictional story noticed my granddaughter, came home and told you about the situation, expressed empathy and indignation. When the two of you went to do errands, she now noticed all the things my granddaughter could not do because of the physical construction of the shops and restaurants and sidewalks, etc., and she helped you see it, too), we are offered the opportunity to see our privilege because of the way our bodies are made. We’re offered the opportunity to see what this brings us. Unless we pause, we have no idea at all.

These people and their teaching also give us the opportunity to look back in time, consider our childhoods, and wonder, What happened to people who weren’t like me? What’s happening to them now?

To see privilege, ours and others, is to begin to see the whole world with honesty.

And once we see, the next thing that happens is we can name when something needs to change.

So take it on

Once we begin to look and listen, we’ll first see our privilege, and then we’ll see the effects of our privilege, and the privilege of our group(s), everywhere. Each time we see it, it will likely feel bad. It has and does for me. But as Glennon Doyle says, “We can do hard things.”

Think about it, if you and I realized that the kid down the street had to take a 30 minute bus to school every morning because he had Cerebral Palsy, and as a result we didn’t know him, or people like him, so we didn’t play with him after school, we just walked by his house and didn’t really look at him, we will feel badly. We might realize other things, like we didn’t think about leaving our bikes in the middle of the sidewalk, and when his parents asked our parents for play dates, we said no way and made fun of him behind his back and then ignored him more because we were uncomfortable. You get this tiny picture.

Then we might realize, as we dig around, that though he was as human as we were, he had to watch us out the window playing, having sleepovers, kissing, while not even looking in his direction, or worse, while looking away. We may then remember that we told jokes about people who were made differently, or laughed at those jokes or were quiet when we heard them, and this humor crept from us out into the world and affected how people without disabilities saw people with disabilities for the rest of their lives.

Then we may do a little homework and realize that almost 13 percent of the U.S. population has some form of disability: over 42 million people. From there, it’s not a big leap to learn that half of that 13% is in the age group of employment (18–65): Over 21 million people. Yet only roughly 36% of that half are employed. 64% of that group is unemployed. All I had to do was go to the 2017 Disability Statistics Annual Report and my calculator to get these numbers.

At the same time this study was done, roughly 77% of people without disabilities were employed.

36 and 77 are very different percentages. Consider.

A seeing challenge

Seeing our privilege can invite us to imagine into someone else’s experience. Challenge: spend just one typical day (or hours) watching our activities and then imagine what that day would be like if any of us were, for example, in a wheelchair. To be clear: this is not a pity exercise, it’s a privilege exercise. Pity is a dark side of privilege. Empathy and compassion are not. Anyway.

The morning I first wrote this draft, we were out of oat milk, which I always have in my coffee. So, I put on my baseball hat, leapt in the car, and was back home with oat milk and a few other things in 30 minutes. And this was in the time of Covid.

How long would this have taken if I were in a wheelchair? Before answering that, how much more does a car built for a driver in a wheelchair cost compare to my car?

We can watch ourselves on any random day. Or we all can think of a key time, like a day we had an interview for a job. Think of the physicality of getting there. Or a blind date. Or a group of friends met and we got there and the place was packed. Or…

It doesn’t take much to begin to see how little and big things can add up and change the ease with which we live our lives and make things happen. My friend, who had polio when she was young and so wears a leg brace and walks with a pronounced limp, was on-line dating. She said she just watched each man’s face when he first saw her and that told her what she needed to know. Because the other thing that is impacted by an unconscious privileged person is how we are seen, or not seen, when we don’t have one of the privileges that make life easier.

If we don’t fit the social or cultural norms, life gets that much more challenging before we even cross the start line.

Sources to trust

If not surrounded by friends who can participate openly in this conversation of looking and growing, there are great books and podcasts, etc. But remember, it’s critical we DON’T choose things that only tell us what we want to hear, especially at the expense of other people or opinions. Notice if a voice makes fun of other people. Hates. Tells us to be afraid because these other people want to take everything from us. Asks us not to think about others but only of ourselves and people like us.

Turn those off.

A little personal exploration

For any of us who want to begin exploring to understand our own privilege more deeply, pick just one line from the list of privileges I included earlier. Ask:

What privileges do I think I might have received because I am a member of this category?

First, sit and do that imagine one day in your life exercise while examining that particular area of privilege. Then get a blank piece of paper and draw a circle in the middle and draw arrows to different results of that privilege. For example, if one of my parents didn’t have to work, from the stay at home category alone I could draw a number of quick implications: I probably had someone make my lunch every day (fed) or at least someone who could run to the store to refill the fridge, who made my breakfast so I didn’t have to get up until the last minute (food and sleep), poked me out of bed in time for school, volunteered at my school and knew my teacher, stayed home with me when I was sick, helped me with homework and even gave me milk and a cookie while I did it, picked me up after school in those busy times so I had maximal time at home rather than taking public transport or waiting until they got off work, drove me to activities that maybe I couldn’t have done otherwise, expected my return from school so I couldn’t just go fritter away my afternoons unnoticed, or have friends over for a choice that wouldn’t have helped my future, showed up to my games/concerts/performances to cheer me on. Etc.

Then, if I also checked that we had enough money, I’d return to the chart and add. Were we able to afford a neighborhood that had good schools? Did I have a tutor, a music lesson, a team that wasn’t in walking distance, the ability to buy the uniform or school project supplies or travel on the school or team trip? Did they have relationships with the other stay-at-home parents which meant more play dates, including activities that cost money, so if I was a bit of a jerk at times the other parents cut me slack? When I was older, did my parents know how to apply for college? Did I feel I could apply anywhere, and to many places? Did I not have to work while in college except to earn beer money? Did they know how to look for jobs, have people I could meet as I was searching for internships, jobs, etc? Fund me while I was looking so I could take my time to find what I really wanted?

These are just a few possible examples. But think about it, they add up to create childhood opportunities and ease the I in this example wouldn’t realize I had without doing my work to see what came from my parents having time and money.

Now, look without

When done, ask, What was it like for people who didn’t have this privilege? The same imagining followed by circle exercise works. Finally ask, how did I have advantages over them that I didn’t understand or see? (For example, with their ability to be involved, my parent developed a relationship with my teacher and my coaches, so I was cut more slack than other kids who got in trouble for the same choices.)

If we don’t do the work to recognize our own privilege, we essentially walk through the world blind to everything but our own experience. So, we have a choice here. Unconscious or Conscious? I guess, at the end of the day, that’s the choice it always comes down to.

Don’t opine

A final potential side effect of privilege is a loud voice. My loud voice. His loud voice. Her loud voice. Their loud voices. When people are privileged, they seem to talk a lot, and when they’re unaware of their privilege, they seem to feel free to talk even more. There’s a word that cracks me up: to opine. It essentially means to feel free to dispense (at length) our opinion. Not to ask. To tell. To tell how it is, to instruct, to proclaim, to defend, to offer advice.

This freedom to opine is a true danger of privilege. Because, though each person’s voice is critical to the health of the neighborhood, when a few are speaking much more than the rest, there is a problem.

First of all, no learning goes on when one person is always saying how it is. The only things that are accurately recognized in that situation are the challenges and joys and feelings and experiences of the privileged speaker.

So, the final exercise is to listen for the moments when we proclaim how things are, or should be.

Then (after getting quiet) ask, Am I saying things that keep me safe and comfortable, support my world as it stands now?

Then wonder aloud or internally, What would happen if I asked instead of told? What would happen if I listened to the whole answer and asked more, rather than argued with it?

Our nation has a history of not listening to the less privileged voices. That’s because people don’t want to see the world outside their comfort zone, see their hand (or their ancestor’s hand in things), and especially be asked to change for legitimate reasons. Most of all they don’t want to see that what they have is not all their own doing, and that it wasn’t only luck or skill because there are a lot of systems that created that first stroke of ‘luck’ (if that’s what one calls it) or supported that first attempt at skill and then kept it rolling.

To wrap it up

Privilege has become such an important part of the national conversation because it can create an expectation for how the world responds to me or a belief that the rules don’t apply to me. When I have privilege, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to not have it, including that there are many people who don’t. Finally, when something grants one person or group special abilities, access, rights, benefits, freedoms, etc., it very very very often means other people are not getting those same abilities, access, rights, benefits, freedoms, etc. It means that there are people in our country who have less — not because it is constitutionally right, not because they are less deserving, not because they are less hardworking or bright, not because it is fair — but simply because they do not have, or their ancestors did not have, those specific areas of privilege that built into today.

Privilege allows a person to ignore this, whether on purpose or not. And as people of privilege are also the people who hold the social power because they fit the ‘norm’ of what is best or good (or fill in the blank), a privileged person ignoring inequity in our country is actually the very thing that allows it to continue and even grow.

Privilege can be one of two things: a power that helps build a Neighborhood or one that does the very opposite.

I’ll close with two wealth privilege examples and a beautiful quote from Tommy Orange’s Never Never. Read them if you wish.

When the tragedy of 9–11 happened, people found many important ways to help and reach out. One of these was to give money to the firefighters and police in honor of their sacrifice and in support of their brave selflessness.

Although special license plate bracket sales have gone on for 32 years, during this time there was a special plate created in California with the label: 11–911 Foundation. If you gave $2,500 for a ‘Classic’ level donation ( to get two holders, you had to contribute $5k, $10k, or $25k), you not only supported the California Highway Patrol, you joined the foundation that supported it and received this license plate holder.

It’s common knowledge that with this bracket on your car, you will not get pulled over for speeding. If you do, you’re highly likely to only get a warning. Fact. Driving around California, you’ll see expensive cars with these brackets, especially in its wealthiest areas.

One driver posted on a website for sports cars: “I have been stopped with the frame on my car only once, and I was let go. The officer specifically referenced the license plate frame as the reason he let me go.” Because of their money, rich people get fewer tickets. Tickets cost money. Tickets raise insurance. So, ironically, the people with resources are the ones not having to pay what for others can be financially devastating, even though they’re committing the same crime.

Different versions of this happen everywhere. Police officers have special call numbers or logos printed on their personal license plates. They can share these with family. In Colorado, politicians have been given special plates that don’t link to the DMV registry if they’re captured as speeding by a camera. So the fine and responsibility for their breaking the law literally goes nowhere. In many states, politicians/diplomats/etc have special plates, and while this helps them find special parking (important in doing their job), it also silently often lets them off the hook for behaviors the rest of us would pay for.

Another wealth example is bail. People with money can pay it and people without cannot. Bail allows a person to check out of local jail and be home, go to work, and parent their children while they wait for their court date. So, let’s say two people get arrested for possession of marijuana. Both have children. One can afford to post bail and therefore goes home. The other cannot. The one at home can care for their children, go to work, continue to earn money, etc. The other must sit in jail until their court date. It can take months to years for a court date to arrive.

What happens to that person’s job? Their children? Their partner? Their rent?

If a person can’t post bail, they might lose everything (home, children, livelihood). The other person, who committed the exact same crime but has money, does not.

In addition, one can afford their own lawyer, one must rely on a court appointed lawyer — good but so overloaded with cases, tired, and much less available. Add in the ability to hire someone that is proficient at translating legal language and the legal system versus having no help in that arena, see how this builds? See where it ends and what it does to our country’s neighborhood as a whole?

“This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered.”

― Tommy Orange

Neighbor: a Handbook is written with the hope of de-weaponizing both contemporary ‘hot’ language and our current divisive human practices in order to bring us together as Neighbors, working with one another for the whole. I’m releasing it one chapter at a time, and the first chapter is “Part One: Introduction.” If you’re enjoying Neighbor and haven’t yet followed me on Medium, please feel free to click the ‘follow’ option. If you’d like to receive an email when a new chapter is released, there’s an email icon next to the follow button that will make this happen. And of course, please feel free to share this book with anyone you feel would enjoy or benefit from it. Our Neighbor work extends beyond each of us, so if you share it, please do so with Love. Most of all, thanks for traveling with me. I wish you well.

Sources:

Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

Tommy Orange, There There