When I was young, my parents took our family to Haiti during the summers. For them, it was a homecoming. For my brothers and I it was an adventure, sometimes, a chore, and always a necessary education on privilege and the grace of an American passport. Until visiting Haiti, I had no idea what poverty really was or the difference between relative and absolute poverty. To see poverty so plainly and pervasively left a mark on me.
To this day, I remember my first visit, and how at every intersection, men and women, shiny with sweat, would mob our car, their skinny arms stretched out, hoping for a few gourdes or American dollars. I saw the sprawling slums, the shanties housing entire families, the trash piled in the streets, and then, the gorgeous beach, and the young men in uniforms who brought us Coca Cola in glass bottles and made us hats and boats out of palm fronds. It was hard for a child who grew up on cul-de-sacs, to begin to grasp the contrast between such inescapable poverty alongside almost repulsive luxury and then, the United States, a mere eight hundred miles away, with it’s gleaming cities rising out of the landscape, and the well-maintained interstates stretching across the country, the running water and the electricity. It wasn’t until many, many years later that I realized my education on privilege began long before I could appreciate it in any meaningful way.
Privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor. There is racial privilege, gender (and identity) privilege, heterosexual privilege, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, educational privilege, religious privilege and the list goes on and on. At some point, you have to surrender to the kinds of privilege you hold because everyone has something someone else doesn’t.
The problem is, we talk about privilege with such alarming frequency and in such empty ways, we have diluted the word’s meaning.When people wield the word privilege it tends to fall on deaf ears because we hear that word so damn much the word it has become white noise.
One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do is accept and acknowledge my privilege. This is something I am still working on. I’m a woman, a person of color, and the child of immigrants but I also grew up middle class and then upper middle class. My parents raised my siblings and I in a strict but loving environment. They were and are happily married so I didn’t have to deal with divorce or crappy intramarital dynamics. I attended elite schools. My master’s and doctoral degrees were funded. I got a tenure track position my first time out. My bills are paid. I have the time and resources for frivolity. I am reasonably well published. I have an agent so I have every reason to believe my novel will find a home. My life has been far from perfect but I have a whole lot of privilege. It’s somewhat embarrassing for me to accept just how much privilege I have.
It’s also really difficult for me to accept my privilege when I consider the ways in which I lack privilege or the ways in which my privilege hasn’t magically rescued me from a world of hurt. On my more difficult days, I’m not sure what’s more of a pain in my ass—being black or being a woman. I’m happy to be both of these things, but the world keeps intervening. There are all kinds of infuriating reminders of my place in the world—random people questioning me in the parking lot at work as if it is unfathomable that I’m a faculty member, whispers of Affirmative Action when I achieve a career milestone I’ve busted my ass for, the persistence of lawmakers trying to legislate the female body, street harassment, strangers wanting to touch my hair, you know how it is.
The ways in which I do not have privilege are significant, but I am lucky and successful. Any number of factors related to privilege have contributed to these circumstances. What I remind myself, regularly, is this: the acknowledgment of my privilege is not a denial of the ways I have been and am marginalized, the ways I have suffered.
We tend to believe that accusations of privilege imply we have it easy and because life is hard for nearly everyone, we resent hearing that. Of course we do. Look at white men when they are accused of having privilege. They tend to be immediately defensive (and, at times, understandably so). They say, “It’s not my fault I am a white man.” They say, “I’m working class,” or “I’m [insert other condition that discounts their privilege],” instead of simply accepting that, in this regard, yes, they benefit from certain privileges others do not. To have privilege in one or more areas does not mean you are wholly privileged. To acknowledge privilege is not a denial of the ways you are marginalized, the ways you have suffered. Surrendering to the acceptance of privilege is difficult but it is really all that is expected.
At times we forget that accepting privilege is not a game. John Scalzi recently wrote about privilege without invoking the word privilege by using the difficulty levels of video games as a metaphor. His framework works well but his metaphor is only a starting point in understanding privilege and its effects. More than one commenter said something like, “I own my privilege, now what?” as if there is some unknown territory beyond the acknowledgment of privilege.
You don’t necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don’t have to apologize for it. You don’t need to diminish your privilege or your accomplishments because of that privilege. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about. They might endure situations you can never know anything about. You could, however, use that privilege for the greater good–to try to level the playing field for everyone, to work for social justice, to bring attention to how those without certain privileges are disenfranchised. While you don’t have to do anything with your privilege, perhaps it should be an imperative of privilege to share the benefits of that privilege rather than hoard your good fortune. We’ve seen what the hoarding of privilege has done and the results are shameful.
When we talk about privilege, some people start to play a very pointless and dangerous game where they try to mix and match various demographic characteristics to determine who wins at the Game of Privilege. Who would win in a privilege battle between a wealthy black woman and a wealthy white man? Who would win a privilege battle between a queer white man and a queer Asian woman? Who would win in a privilege battle between a working class white man and a wealthy, differently abled, Mexican woman? We can play this game all day. We will never find a winner. Playing the Game of Privilege is mental masturbation—it only feels good to the players.
Privilege is relative and contextual. Few people in this world, and particularly in the United States, have no privilege at all. Among those of us who participate in intellectual communities, privilege runs rampant. We have disposable time and the ability to access the Internet regularly. We have the freedom to express our opinions without the threat of retaliation. We have smart phones and iProducts and desktops and laptops. If you are reading this essay, you have some kind of privilege. It may be hard to hear that, I know, but if you cannot recognize your privilege, you have a lot of work to do; get started.
President Barack Obama enjoys a great deal of privilege. He is wealthy, educated, young, and extraordinarily successful. He is in what appears to be a loving marriage. He has two healthy children. He is the president of the United States and, arguably, the most powerful man in the world. Even as he enjoys such immense privilege, Obama knows what all successful people of color know. All the wealth and power in the world won’t shield you from racial epithets, assumptions about how you’ve achieved your success, and resentment from people who feel that the trappings of privilege are their rightful due.
Given that even very privileged people can be marginalized, how do we measure privilege? What is the correct hierarchy? We can’t measure privilege. We shouldn’t even try. Our energies would be better directed to what truly matters.
Too many people have become self-appointed privilege police, patrolling the halls of discourse, ready to remind people of their privilege, whether those people have denied that privilege or not. In online discourse, in particular, the specter of privilege is always looming darkly. When someone writes from their experience, there is often someone else, at the ready, pointing a trembling finger, accusing that writer of having various kinds of privilege. How dare someone speak to a personal experience without accounting for every possible configuration of privilege or the lack thereof? We lose sight of this but we would live in a world of silence if the only people who were allowed to write or speak from experience or about difference were those absolutely without privilege.
When people wield accusations of privilege, more often than not, they want to he heard and seen. Their need is acute, if not desperate and that need rises out of the many historical and ongoing attempts to silence and render invisible marginalized groups. Must we satisfy our need to be heard and seen at the expense of not allowing anyone else to be heard and seen? Does privilege automatically negate any merits of what a privilege holder has to say?
We need to get to a place where we discuss privilege by way of observation and acknowledgment rather than accusation. We need to be able to argue beyond the threat of privilege. We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say this is my truth and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist. At some point, doesn’t privilege become beside the point?
25 responses
I’ll be back as soon as I post this all over the internet, as it’s the first logical thing I’ve read about privilege in a good long while.
Nice essay, Roxane!
I think, however, when issues flare up it’s useful to talk about why. Why are we talking about privilege, class, etc. so much more now than we did five, ten, and fifteen years ago?
Roxane, I think the term “differently abled” masks a disadvantage the same way the term “working class” can mask a privilege, but I’ll bet you gave it a lot of thought before you used it, so I’d like to know how you got there. Thanks for a great essay!
I very much agree with this. Another thing, I acknowledge my privilege but I’m also very grateful for it. I’m very grateful to my mother for working as hard as she did to make this privilege possible. And even the things that “I can’t control,” I’m still very grateful for those as well.
Sabra, that’s a really good question. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the economy and a lot of people graduating from college and finding that their expectations about the job market, etc., are going drastically unmet. The erosion of the middle class is also prompting a lot of these conversations. For so long, the “American Dream,” has been that if you study hard and work hard you’ll enjoy a comfortable middle class existence. That narrative has been completely rewritten and now people are being forced to think about class and privilege whether they want to or not.
Sabra, I think it’s because the rules have changed so much. For example, regarding my comment above, most “working class” electricians with 18 months of technical school make more money than most “middle class” professors with PhDs. Access to education has enabled an entire generation of Americans to learns things only available to the idle rich before WWII. So education is no longer necessarily a benchmark of class, but it remains so valued precisely because of that old and now outdated association.
I think the word Deprived is essential in understanding Privileged, esp. when privilege is seen as not being subject to the usual rules or penalties, however they manifest themselves.
Sonja and Roxane,
Oh, I totally agree. My AWP panel was on socio-economic class. I just think it’s useful to talk about the causes so that solutions can be considered. Our whole education system- Pre-K to Ph.D. and postdoctoral needs a very critical eye. I’m betting a majority of socio-economic issues can be solved there.
This is a great post, both about the privilege we have and the way the accusation of privilege is used to silence people. But I wish the Scalzi post you linked to was saying this! Scalzi wasn’t saying that one has privilege in some areas and not in others; he was asserting that “straight, white, male is the lowest difficulty setting”, which ignores vast realms of human life. I felt like it was exactly the kind of thing that makes privilege so hard to talk about—a blanket statement about lives he doesn’t want to understand.
Really, I’m not sure if the very word is useful. Any churchgoer has a language to encompass being grateful for the advantages you’ve been given, and that language might be a lot more useful for getting through to people from conservative backgrounds than a vocabulary that can’t help but condescend.
Within our society, privilege is often brought up when an experience differential blocks precise communication. In Scalzi’s analogy, I play this game of life at the “white male” difficulty level, and comprehending another setting has always seemed immensely difficult. What we must understand is that we do not understand, and that only by discussing these sensitive areas (race, gender, class) will we narrow the misunderstanding so that communication is somewhat possible. While I generally agree with your conclusion, I think the problem is better described as having different realities rather than “truths”. Our lives or realities naturally coexist; the hurdle is that we each experience only one.
Roxane,
Thanks for your articulation of privilege and the complex intersections we find ourselves, we who are also othered and privileged. I just want to add that the phenomena we see playing out in the proliferation of poverty porn and other ways of making sense of our guilt is probably the cheapest we way know how to pay for the standard our lives. Easier than explaining to a whole country that we were bombed because they were jealous of the way we live… You’re my favorite contemporary essayist. More power to your pen.
AMEN. This is the best piece of writing on privilege I have ever read.
I don’t think we are silencing people when we point out, for example, the way they have MISUSED their privilege. In a conscious world–the world of journalists and writers, for example–people who are more privileged in a certain kind of situation should be aware of another person’s lack of privilege (social, economic, even emotional) and should make a conscious effort to introduce some balance into the situation whenever they can. That too is another kind of activism. On another side of this: Alice Walker, for example, cited privilege when she introduced the term “womanism” in reaction to the fact that she felt that the feminism practiced by upper middle class white women did not apply to certain realities in the lives of poor women of all races or women of color of all socio-economic backgrounds. (And recently in her New York Magazine interview, Toni Morrison chose to call herself a womanist rather than a feminist) Also, people who see passionate response to their work online (and not just kudos and cheers) as silencing them are missing critical opportunities to expand and learn. They might indeed be silencing others.
“You could, however, use that privilege for the greater good–to try to level the playing field for everyone, to work for social justice, to bring attention to how those without certain privileges are disenfranchised.” = Nobless oblige. Stripped of its medieval connotations, all this means is that if you’re privileged, you have an obligation to help those that are less so.
What this means to any given privileged individual will vary vastly, but if such an individual does not do this, he/she is an asshole. Or worse. Merely acknowledged your privilege is not enough. You have to do something.
Rosemarie, absolutely. There’s a difference between creating awareness when it is desperately needed and accusing someone of privilege just because they’re writing about circumstances of privilege. A personal essay about marriage, for example, doesn’t necessarily need to account for the gross marriage inequality in this country. Context really is a guide and I feel like I make this clear. There is a difference between journalism and a personal essay. I am not even remotely suggesting that we should not be activists or that we should not point out issues regarding privilege when they arise.
What a beautiful piece. I tend to shoot my mouth off at times, and there’s nothing so humiliating, silencing and crushing than to be told to shut the hell up just because I’m white. Being white is a privilege, and I do my best to own that – but being female, fat, Jewish and autistic, all of which I am as well – are arguably some massive disprivileges. Does one cancel the other? When? How? Where? Nobody wants to educate anyone anymore, especially not on the internet – you’re just supposed to Know. I don’t. It’s pieces like yours that make me feel like it’s okay to ask questions.
Some thoughts – Roxane, the first half of this essay well done. But then you write:
“On my more difficult days, I’m not sure what’s more of a pain in my ass—being black or being a woman.â€
The essay proceeds to make decent points, yet fatal damage has been done. Without context of your experience, of course, I cannot know why you find yourself a specific “pain†magnet as a woman or black person. The women and blacks I know usually don’t think their gender or ethnicity a “pain in the ass.†However, I do not know the “ways you have suffered.†But it seems odd to cry victim without revealing specifics.
Rudeness is universal, assholes are common, and prejudice damages many. This is a human problem. I am aware of privilege, and thus never get it when a white person in S. Korea (I taught ESL there), for example, receives prejudice and then says, “Now I know what it feels like to be black.†They don’t know. I don’t, too, that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of empathy or imagination, but it doesn’t mean that I can own the pain of black history. My sister and my sister-in-law married Somjait (Thai) & Sanjay (Indian). Somjait sees daily rudeness as aimed at his ethnicity. Sanjay sees rudeness as something assholes do, or something he deserves, or part of a misunderstanding. When I lived in The UAE I meant Herbert Nsanze, and went with him to Uganda to the border of Rwanda, where he grew up. This world in the middle of Africa, tribal, is made up of people who look so familiar to one another, and yet speak different languages, and cannot get along. It’s way complex. I just can’t reconcile these complexities with your “I’m a professor and hurt as a woman and a black person†lingo. I can’t really mesh with the “pain” of having to listen to whispers of “affirmative action” or those who “legislate” your female body.
In this sensitive world we have Elizabeth Collins (1/32 Cherokee) Barack Obama (“black†but also half-white) & George Zimmerman (“white†but also half Latino and 1/8 black). I’m 1/4 Persian and 1/4 Jewish, and I have a cousin who is 1/2 Jewish. He feels all the pain of the world as a Jew, even though he grew up in a mansion in Northridge, his parents paid for college, and he now works in his father’s law firm. I don’t get this. I’m not a victim, nor do I try to force my ethnicity, my being white is a triviality. I’m human first. Elie Wiesel can claim victimhood. My cousin can’t.
I guess my problem with this essay is that you write from the point of view of heaven and the angels. You are saving “us†from “them.†The “pain†you feel comes from the existence of misogyny and racial execration. I think you ended the essay on a higher note, but a platitude. Of course you are right. But I still don’t know how you identify or interpret the world. Maybe the next “racist†you meet, say, in the school parking lot, is just some awkward white person, unable to say “hiâ€, who is actually proud that you are a professor.
Caleb I am not sure how to respond to your comment but it is a hallmark of privilege to say, “I’m a human first.” This isn’t about sensitivity. This isn’t about victimhood nor is it lingo. Don’t demean my words as such. Crying victim? Honestly. Perhaps the “pain in the ass” isn’t something you can relate to but many people can. And note, I also said some days. That your “friends” don’t feel this way doesn’t negate my experience. I could give a long explanation of the pains in my ass with far more detail and note incidents far more troubling than the casual racisms I referenced here but that’s not really what this is about. Finally, I know the difference between an awkward person and people who consistently demand to see my faculty ID because oh my god, a black person is parking in the faculty lot. Come on.
C’mon, let’s take this:
“There are all kinds of infuriating reminders of my place in the world—random people questioning me in the parking lot at work as if it is unfathomable that I’m a faculty member, whispers of Affirmative Action when I achieve a career milestone I’ve busted my ass for, the persistence of lawmakers trying to legislate the female body, street harassment, strangers wanting to touch my hair, you know how it is.”
This is difficult to misread. I don’t “know how it is.†Every day everyone deals with rudeness. Maybe these people checking your IDs are racist, maybe they are assholes on a power trip, but let’s say they are assholes & racists. Even so, move on, little by little these racist wankers are becoming the exception.
I hoop. I’ve done it for years, been in men’s leagues and 3-on-3 tournaments as the only non-black dude. I hang with my brothers, play poker, have a beer, a round of golf, and have heard stories of racism. But I’m no kiss-ass white dude, and can talk shit and question experiences and hang and be real.
I went to S. Africa to visit a journalist friend, and met a gal on the plane who invited me to visit her family in Soweto. When I told my journalist friend she told me don’t go as whites are in danger, but I still went, got to see Mandela’s house, the Hector Peterson Memorial, and had one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I’ve read my Biko & Toni Morrison & Alice Walker & Charles Johnson & Ralph Ellison, etc. I get angry and moved by the dynamics of racial politics, and I’m no stranger to them. If I’m hard on my ethnic friends, I’m much harder on white pals who bitch about Affirmative Action and so on. Racism is real, believe me, I know it, but there are degrees of privileges and pain.
My intent wasn’t so much to question your experience, no doubt the specter of racism is something you have to deal with, my aim was more to question your tone. You’re successful, talented & intelligent and will go far, I have the copy of the Mid-American Review, and read your piece in Barrelhouse, and you hit two for two, especially the Barrelhouse piece. I’d just like to see a lot more complexity coming from you end, more self-questioning. I just think this piece was too easy and added nothing new to the dialogue.
Wow Caleb, no matter how many Special Dark Friends you pull out of your background, the height of your unwitting condescension remains astounding. As is your deafness.
1) Rudeness =/= sexism and racism.
2) Forms of privilege don’t magically cancel out other forms of oppression.
3) If someone points out oppression and you can find worse forms of it, that doesn’t mean the former isn’t worth pointing out and working against.
4) When privileged people demand evidence of personal oppression from the oppressed, they’re acting like naive, ironically arrogant assholes. Especially when evidence is then graciously provided, and they continue to ignore it.
5) And so, who the hell are you as a white person to be hard on your “ethnic” friends?
Paarker, let me illuminate your wrongness. First, my condescension was not unwitting, it was intentional. Second, Roxane is a tough nut to crack. I respect her, but had to call out the “I am on the side of the angels†tone.
As for your points, here we go.
1) Your =/= symbol is cryptic. If you’re saying that rudeness is the same as sexism and racism, it’s not clear. All racism & sexism is a form of rudeness or worse. Not all rudeness is racist or sexist.
2) Right. But so?
3) Right. But so? Non sequitur #2.
4) True, see point 3. This I implied, so your doubling of it is redundant. You misread.
5) How do you define “hardâ€? Are you soft? Do you pussy foot around your friends, the people you supposedly respect, because you’re afraid of offending them? I don’t. Example: After hoops we started talking about the Amanda Knox trial, everyone but me thought she was guilty and got away with it because she was “white†and that the Congolese guy was in prison because he was “black.” Respect all around, but I called bullshit. The ensuing talk/argument was good shit.
It’s just polemic and rhetoric and semantics. Debate provokes the mind. I commented partly because I’d like to see Roxane write universally; not just for the academic and artistic left.
Ugh, what a mess of incomprehension that comment is.
I don’t think it’s worthwhile to engage with a purposely condescending concern troll who engages in the Tone Argument and tells people of color to write about their experience in “universal” ways, and worse. You’re way behind on these things, Caleb, and I can’t help you catch up in the limited space of a comment section. It’s also clear that you’re a really bad listener. Maybe you do have serious non-white friends you can talk “good shit” with, at least as you see it; it seems likely to me, though, that they laugh behind your back at your uninformed condescension.
Simple fact: most white people can never know as much about racism as most non-white people do. Which makes it really galling when naive white people tell non-white people that what they’re saying about racism is wrong. Get it? (I’m sure you don’t, and/or won’t; you’re just another ordinary white guy, more anxious to argue than to listen. Sigh.)
Paarker, you live in a world of ethnicities and guilt and shame and blame. Where ethnicity is more important than being human. Where your gods are political correctness.
I’m part Persian, Sephardic, my father was born in Lebanon, and according to the Nuremburg Rules I’d have qualified for the ovens, and if I wanted to I could apply and get an Israeli passport. I look Middle Eastern. Every human belongs to an “ethnic” group, I use white to simplify, but we’re humans first, and we’re all “ethnic.” Any person interested in debate has a “right” to tell anyone else their views. It’s an exchange of ideas.
So let’s try and digest this clunker of yours: “…white people can never know as much about racism as most non-white people do. Which makes it really galling when naive white people tell non-white people that what they’re saying about racism is wrong.”
Do you really think white people, or anyone, can’t tell non-whites like Rev. Jeremiah Wright or Louis Farakkhan that they’re wrong? Do you really think the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is right because he’s black? Do you think NBA-baller Rasheed Wallace (who makes $10 million+ and thinks the NBA treats him like a slave) really knows more about racism because he’s black, and that JM Coetzee, a white S. African Nobel Prize-winning author, knows less because he’s white? That’s what you imply.
I could say I’m a Jew, but that won’t strengthen my arguments on Israeli-Palestine relations. I could say I’m Iranian, but I know so little of Farsi culture I’d come across as foolish (According to you I’d be right by default). I could say I’m white, and the PC-police would say I can’t criticize any ethnic group because I don’t “get it.” Or I could just write as one human to another.
Also – I’ve only attacked your views based on the little you’ve written, not ad hominem. You somehow know that my friends talk behind my back. I’m solid and transparent, you can go online and see who I am quite easily, I don’t hide behind anonymity. I think this willingness to be transparent is another difference between you and I.
Paarker, you live in a world of ethnicities and guilt and shame and blame. Where ethnicity is more important than being human. Where your gods are political correctness.
Your use of the terms “political correctness” and “PC-police” without quotation marks is a big indicator of where you’re coming from. It’s as if you think there’s something wrong with using terminology that better reflects and respects the lives and situations of the oppressed. Whatever, dude. And yes, I do live in a “world of ethnicities,” specifically, the U.S., where race still does matter, as Roxane’s column (and some of her other writings) demonstrates for those willing to listen, and where calls for writing that expresses supposed “universals” come from people in privileged majorities who don’t want to hear about oppression, much less the parts they unwittingly play in it.
Your next two paragraphs in response to my comment are invalid because they’re not in response to my comment, because you ignored a word I used, “naive.” Instead, you set up a straw man and flailed away at him instead. The battle is sort of entertaining, but it has nothing to do with what I wrote.
As for the sudden issue of anonymity versus transparency, that too has nothing to do with the matters at hand. Besides, different people have different reasons for being anonymous or not online, and transparency or the lack thereof have nothing to do with the truth of what someone writes. Understanding that reality neuters the implicit (and irrelevant) claim of superiority that you make by pointing to your real name.
Hi Roxane!
I just got back from Haiti last night. My husband and I, along with a team of students, worked with PID, an NGO that runs a free clinic, offers child sponsorships, small micro-loans, and helps build people homes in Blanchard. Blanchard is about absolute poverty, and I am convinced that unless we have experienced this, even if we have seen it, we cannot theorize about it. We have no conception of it. This last week my husband and I worked on PID’s small business loan program and tried to come up with ideas for small businesses for the absolute poor in Blanchard. One of the American women working with us had a suggestion about giving people seeds to plant. Gale, PID’s founder, asked where they were to get the pot or even the bottom of an old plastic container in which to plant the seed. Where do they get the good soil from, or the water to make it grow? The absolute poor have absolutely nothing….not even a tin can to cook a few grains of rice in. Of course, this person would have no coal or means to even have a fire. This is all incomprehensible to me.
Coming into the clinic on Saturday, I passed an elderly man (65) on one crutch leaving the clinic. I found out that he came in for medical care, and the caregivers weren’t sure when he had eaten or had anything to drink. He lives in the tent city of Damien, which is next to a pig farm. The Haitian gov’t sent many of the homeless there after the earthquake. There is no clean water there or sanitation. Tents are stacked one on top of the other, and during rainy season, there is no place for the inhabitants to sit or lay down as the tents have no bottom–they are simply hut structures with plastic on the sides. Anyway, the clinic workers gave Fritz a peanut butter sandwich and something to drink. He came back Monday, and he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since his previous visit on Saturday.
I cannot comprehend this. He has no family to help him, no gov’t help, no nothing. Because of PID, I can sponsor him for $30 a month….the cost of a decent dinner that I don’t really need. It will feed him, give him medical care, and PID found him a room in Blanchard in a 2 room PID house with someone else who feels extremely lucky to no longer live in a tent. So lucky that to them, sharing half of their house is a privilege. To him, this is luxury beyond imagination. To me, his new luxurious condition is horrible poverty.
So…because of where I was born and all my privilege (which may be less than yours or the next guy, but so much more than many others), I live on the flourishing end of the survival vs. flourishing continuum. Because of my location on that continuum, it is up to me to do what I can to bring those from the survival end more toward the flourishing end, even if it just means helping provide a constant one meal a day and a dry floor. It doesn’t seem like a lot, and it may seem ridiculous in the face of the thousands who are starving there, but to this old man, it is everything.
The conversations taking place on this page are great conversations to have, but only if they lead to actually doing something about what we are talking about. I picture Fritz, this 65 year old man who, before a sponsor, got something to eat and drink every few days when he was lucky, listening to this conversation. We are speaking of things we can’t ever know, and things that no one on this planet should ever know. The trips to Haiti remind me of something every academic should remember–theorizing means absolutely nothing to the people and situations we theorize about. We need to actually do something concrete with our knowledge. The doing should always be the result of privilege.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.