The Positive Side of Privilege

In reading Okra’s recent post about the word "privilege" , I realized that we (feminists, humanists, anti-racists, people who believe in equality even if it hurts) often talk about the negative side of privilege, the blindness that many of us have to our own and what it means to take responsibility for it.

But I don’t remember ever seeing a post on the positive side of acknowledging our privilege.

I suppose, as those of us with privilege knock down our own protective self-awareness obstacles, it is easiest to see how hard it is.  Realizing privilege is a huge and difficult step.  Being able to recognize it in action and stop it if we can is even harder.  Knowing our privilege and acting in spite of it is, for me at least, the hardest of all.  But that difficulty is not all there is.

There is also finding our way through that maze and into a greater understanding of our fellow human beings, a greater acknowledgement of their unique self both as part of and separate from the categories we’ve been taught.

I read Macon D’s post about white privilege in vacationing when it first appeared on Racialicious.  It was really a tremendous tearing-down for me to begin to think about all of the "exotic" places I’ve always wanted to travel and the ways that my attitude towards them was more about expecting ownership than being respectful of the true owners. 

At first, I refused to believe that it was white privilege at all.  Shouldn’t everyone be able to go anywhere they like? the thoughts went.  Can’t everyone go wherever they like?   (You can still see my comment to that effect; I posted under the name waxghost.)

My friend Boris has traveled the world.  He’s lived in several different countries and been a citizen of two.  His parents are literally from different ends of the earth.  And he has brown skin, brown eyes, brown hair, a profile that I identify as almost Middle Eastern even though he isn’t.

I wrote to him, sending him a link to the thread and asking for his thoughts.  I thought he would back me up, tell me that of course everyone can just wander around everywhere they want to go!

I’m sure that you can guess that he didn’t.  He answered, with the humor that is the reason I adore him:

"Love the description of me. Dark-skinned*?!? Me?!? It really has been far too long since we last saw each other if you’re thinking I look totally in my element with goat-skin underpants, chicken bone through my nose and a spear. I’ll be sure to hide my "Kill Whitey" club card at the border when I visit.

I can kinda see what’s he’s thinking (Macon D fellow), especially when he clarified his encounter with the two boys for you. Even though he was told specifically not to go too far down the beach, he did it anyway. And then – and this is the usual reaction from the "ugly tourist" – he had the temerity to think he wasn’t hurting anybody just walking. "I’m an American! We’re the good guys" or "I’m on an adventure! Let’s go smoke pot with the natives!" Well he did. And if an Arab from Al-Qaeda walked down the same damn beach in the same way, he’d have the same kid staring back at him with a machete. He was impolite on a cultural social point he has no grasp or understanding of. That’s the clash right there. The unwritten rules that help people get along. Those rules are different for different cultures.

Hmm…see? That’s a jumbled mass of a response. Can’t be embarassing waxghost with Boris’ literary interpretation of Brownian motion."

This was, somehow, a part of him I had never seen, this person who was not only aware of the general rules of polite tourism in countries all over the world but also far more sensitive to them than me, a woman who has always thought of herself as taking the utmost care with other people’s cultures.  For the first time ever, I was able to see a vision of Boris gazing down Macon D’s beach, not assuming that he could walk there as I would but instead turning around and going back to the places where he wouldn’t be invading the space of the local people.  I had only ever seen him in environments where we both could claim our own place – in my hometown here in the States and in Sweden, where his father and my ancestors are from.

If I hadn’t had that privilege pointed out to me, I might never have seen that little part of him.  I would have continued on with my preconceived notions, assuming that my own habits were his as well. 

There is a saying that we shouldn’t expect cookies for recognizing our own privilege.  I certainly don’t expect any cookies for this, but it was a cookie in its own way.

(*In my defense, we spent a lot of memorable moments together in dark clubs and rooms when we lived in the same town so my memory of what he looks like is probably quite a bit darker than he actually is.  In his defense, I have a picture of him sitting on my desk that shows he isn’t really "dark" at all.)