My Earliest Moments of Privilege
It was in middle school, probably fourth grade, when I realized that I had some sort of privilege as a white person.
It happened at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago at a demonstration of freezing and shattering a rubber ball, using dry ice. I was sitting on the edge of my school group next to a black boy from a predominantly black school group next to me.
I waited for him to pass me a fragment of the blue ball, and eventually I asked: “Aren’t you going to hand me it?”
“We only share with our kind,” he replied.
I blinked. “That’s dumb.” Inwardly, I was confused. I had no hatred of black people. I liked Lauren, the only black girl in my class, just fine. Maya Angelou’s poetry and that of Langston Hughes were among my favorite reading in Black History Month. I even knew about the Underground Railroad, and being from the North, I was certain I’d’ve been an abolitionist, given the opportunity.
But, the nagging realization that I’d never really thought of myself as having a “kind,” bothered me.
Given the stories of people I’ve met who have never *not* thought of having a “kind,” I realize how unusual my position is.
Privilege and the Roots of Anger
I’m not proud to say I was angry. I was angry because I personally never did anything to the boy, and he was defensive.
If you want to understand the anger of privilege, that’s the place to start. As a white boy, I casually benefited from a social system that I didn’t have to put in place for it to help me.
I expected that everyone would share with me, because I had never been refused anything for the sole reason of the color of my skin, origin of my family, or the language I spoke.
When confronted with the possibility that not only does the social system of privilege not treat everyone equally, but that I might be complicit in the eyes of others for unduly benefiting from it–I lashed out in defense of my status.
If I benefit and you do not, that’s hardly my fault!
But it is my problem. It’s our problem, not necessarily because white people (or our ancestors) did anything–although my grandfather profited from black scare tactics, and it was on this dollar that I went to college–but because privilege has accrued to us: “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48b).
Before I talk about what to do with privilege, I want to talk about what it looks like for me.
What Privilege Looks Like
Cultural Privilege
My immigrant family is old enough, and we are assimilated enough that any odd quirks of our country of origin are perceived as charming little holiday celebrations, rather than an assault on the American Way. Heck, we had the privilege of ancestors who willingly came from a known point of origin, so we could continue their traditions.
While celebrating, we even laughed it off that a horror movie, Midsommar, took the festival and turned it into an appalling spectacle. To my knowledge, it was the first negative depiction of my cultural heritage I’d ever heard of.
That is almost certainly privilege speaking.
Gender Privilege
Privilege also extends to my gender. I know there are statistics about gender in terms of pay inequality, but that’s not personal experience, for me. The “Me Too” movement has brought to light the flagrancy with which men (on either side of the political spectrum, if we look to Hollywood or Washington D.C.’s recent scandals) in positions of power express sexual desires:
“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
It’s easy to cheer when someone across the political aisle is caught, but I felt anger and defensiveness again, when Neil DeGrasse Tyson (a science popularizer whose work I enjoy) was accused of improper sexual advances. It derailed my entertainment: a podcast and a TV show!
And that doesn’t even touch Mr. Biden’s uncomfortable behavior toward women. Caring more about which TV shows run or who’s in office over the lives of women affected (and most likely the lives that will be affected) by the people in question is male privilege.
A Personal Anecdote
And, to make it personal, consider these two shirts. The gray shirt is a running shirt. The white shirt is an undershirt. I wanted to go jogging wearing the white undershirt, and my wife stopped me:
“You know what that’s called? A wife beater.”
“Yeah. But I’m not a wife beater, and the other shirts are dirty, so who cares?”
“I don’t want people to make assumptions.”
“I could just wear no shirt, ya know? Is that better?!”
“I’ll lend you one of mine.”
Caring about a few inches of fabric off my shoulders while running in hot weather vs. modesty and the comfort of the people around me, including my spouse–just because I can?
That’s privilege.
My wife was right. I put on a different shirt.
Do I have to Hate Myself?
Before you leave, if you’re reading this for a glimpse into the white male psyche, there’s one more facet you have to see.
A great fear of the white, male psyche as I’ve seen it in myself and others, is that it is somehow to blame for minority people’s problems.
Furthermore, I fear that undermines the possibility of having an acceptable identity as a white man.
And history certainly paints a complex, if grim, picture of things to atone for: violence, rape, discrimination within or without the law, and more.
And, so, the white male psyche is simultaneously attacking itself for past injustices and pointing the barrel of embattled privilege at faceless others who seem to conspire to engender feelings of worthlessness or moral bankruptcy based on being white.
A Hellish Sentiment
Most white men recognize that the sentiment of “The White Man’s Burden” is a grotesque, hellish notion that we are somehow superior and need to colonize or press into forced labor the people who don’t share our skin color.
Yet, this raises a question of white, male identity: if I am confronted again and again with stories of white men spreading disease (sometimes intentionally), burning natives’ histories, killing those who support natives, stealing native gold, kidnapping and killing their rulers after ransoming them, raping women, and a list of other atrocities, including slavery–I ask myself, must I hate myself?
The perception among some of my white male peers of a conservative persuasion is exactly that: the end goal of all efforts to right the wrongs of white males throughout history is tantamount to expunging the white male from history by doing what he so often did:
Tearing down his monuments, rewriting his history, destroying his artifacts, downplaying his contributions, deriding his God, denouncing his traditions as wrong and primitive in an enlightened country, and forcing him to mind his “betters.”
White Guilt, and a backlash against it, has replaced the White Man’s Burden as the reigning paradigm.
A Needed Correction?
And, to be honest, some part of me agrees with the idea that perhaps this is a correction, similar to when investors overvalue a stock, or overestimate the strength of the economy and pull back their funds, cutting their losses.
The white male is overvalued. Perhaps there will be a correction.
But, a lot of resistance to change comes from the fear of the loss of privilege and then the reversal of privilege: mistreatment.
It’s not necessarily the minority person’s job to help grown men overcome fear, but it may help to understand that it is there and it is a force to be reckoned with.
Bridging the Gap, Historically
What I haven’t discussed yet is Christianity. In my art history class, Christianity is often viewed as “The White Man’s Religion,” spreading out with various colonial ambitions to the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific Islands.
This missionary and colonial zeal overlooked or misunderstood places like Ethiopia and certain parts of Asia, where Christianity had already existed in some form.
Yet, such historical realities from other parts of the world may not do much to model relations among Christians from different ethnicities, races, and genders. If anything, they may exemplify the challenges of connecting Christians in different cultures: European Christian’s tried to convert Ethiopian Christians to the European Catholicism.
Bridging the Gap Today
I said that it’s the responsibility of white men to deal with privilege. Particularly in the church, if we have an advantage, we have a clear blueprint for how to use it:
“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:3-7)
Jesus had every advantage: all the power, all the authority, and actual, existential superiority as God. Every positive attribute any race, gender, people group, or class has ever pretended to in terms of superiority was actually true of him. And he used these advantages for others.
Curiosity: Beyond Hatred and Defensiveness
And maybe some of what I think I’m good at is legitimately true as well. And some of it isn’t, but society will listen to me and let me do things others couldn’t.
My responsibility is to also look to the interests of others; I can still look to my own interests, but only in dialogue with theirs.
Do I even know the interests of others? Or, am I too preoccupied with my own experiences to care?
Do I as a person, as a Christian, know the interests of others? What would a Hispanic mom in my congregation need? A white granddad? A single, working man? The newlyweds? The people who just had their fourth child? The Indian man who likes photography? The woman who travels for work?
I’m sure I could do worse than just asking: “What’s going on with you?”
But, here’s the catch: really listening. Half-listening would have seen me out the door shirtless or in the “wife beater” undershirt, having ignored my wife’s concerns in favor of my own interests.
Humility is in play, here: I have to “check my privilege,” not to set up a safe space where nothing real is discussed for fear of offending someone, but in order to be able to receive anything.
If I am immediately defensive or dismissive, I don’t have a Christian mindset. Sometimes, people will express hurt, and sometimes it will rightfully or wrongly land at my feet.
I’m called to bear others’ burdens, and perhaps that even means taking on something that I’m not directly to blame for–it certainly meant that for Jesus. He took my sin.
If someone is hurting because of racial or ethnic tensions, do I really want to fulfill the law of Christ? Or do I want to be left with my identity as a prison, holding me back to less than I’m called to be?
Instead of the burden of white guilt or the “White Man’s Burden” of supposed superiority, turning to the one whose yoke is easy and burden light is perhaps the best way forward.
The Hammer of a Higher God
G.K. Chesterton said in Orthodoxy: “How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!”
As long as a need lurks in my mind to be superior, to be the master of my own world, I’ll never be free.
Nietzsche once wrote: “Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.”
Jesus called us beyond this dichotomy: “No longer do I call you servants,for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15)
If we cling to the idolatry of white, male privilege, we cut ourselves off from the life of Christ in community with others. Any fear of not being in charge is surely lesser than the reward of belonging to a universe where we are at liberty to change and relate to others in the true love that casts out fear.
First Steps
- Have you ever been somewhere or done something outside of your culture? See a movie, visit a restaurant, store, or museum from another culture. Try to understand the differences. Maybe you’ll learn from and enjoy a departure from your status quo.
- Talk to someone from another culture. Perhaps there’s someone at church, work, or the playground, if you’re there with your kids. It might feel awkward, and you might make mistakes, but you might learn something too.
- Listen. You don’t always need to defend yourself or fix the problem someone else is telling you about. “I’m sorry that happened.” “That sounds hard,” may be stock responses, but you might learn something helpful about someone’s perspective. You don’t know what you don’t know, so don’t assume you’ve heard it all.
- Enjoy things. Sometimes, I can be paranoid about offending someone by liking something outside my background. I sang “Cielito lindo” to my baby son at church, because he was crying and the song was about singing and not crying, because singing makes hearts happy. Some of the Spanish speakers at my church said “I love that he sings to him,” and didn’t seem offended that I wasn’t singing something in English.
Hopefully, these ideas help you and I to move beyond the barriers we put up out of self-preservation into the reality that we are most alive when we are experiencing the richness and variety of life alongside others.
If we cling to the idolatry of white, male privilege, we cut ourselves off from the life of Christ in community with others. Click To Tweet
