Present Privileges, How History Impacts Current Oppression and How we Must Act

Perhaps it is unwise, perhaps my voice and opinions are irrelevant or unnecessary to the conversation at large.  I, however, cannot listen to that.  I am compelled to speak.

So, if you don't want to hear my opinions, you are free, welcome and encouraged to move along elsewhere and do what you will without listening.

I want to start by addressing the fact that many people are saying everything I feel much more eloquently.  But I have two pieces I'd like to share that I haven't seen being talked about with quite as much detail as I think it deserves.  First Privilege and second a bit of history from a historian.

Privilege as an Idea - How to sit with it and think about it productively

We have all heard a lot of talk about the word Privilege.  It makes people uncomfortable for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes they feel convicted, guilty, shamed because they know they are privileged people and have seen wrongs they have done nothing to correct.  Maybe they feel guilty because they know that they have seen injustice and they have turned their heads and walked past.

Sometimes the idea of privilege makes people feel uncomfortable because they feel as though it invalidates their own daily struggles.  Not everyone has a voice.  Many people feel the lack of agency and voice keenly, even if it comes from a different sort of hardship or oppression with which they struggle than the very visible racism we are talking about today.

Sometimes the idea of privilege makes people feel uncomfortable because they do not like the idea of benefiting from the suffering of others.  That's a good thing.  Sit with that feeling.  Think about it and figure out a way that you can help create change, and help alleviate suffering.

Now I wanted to address a few things about this.  Privilege comes in all forms and everyone has at least a tiny bit of privilege that another person might not have.  You might be male and have the privilege of benefiting from a system and a culture that does not objectify you and tolerate your harassment.  Of course it is possible for men to be harassed too, but I have not met a woman yet who has not had at least one very scary experience with harassment and fear for her safety because she is a woman.

Examine your feelings

The point I'm trying to make is that we should examine our feelings and see where they are coming from.  See what they are telling us about our fears and our thoughts.  See what actions your feelings are demanding you take to satisfy them.

And then take a minute and think about what your present privileges are in this life.  And think about what a present duty is for that privilege.  I got this idea from Danielle Coke on her lovely, informative and inspiring Instagram page @ohhappydani.  You should check it out for yourself.

Here is a picture of her examples of how to think about her privileges and what duties she feels come from those privileges.

This is on @ohhappydani's Instagram profile.  You can find this video under her permanent highlight called Privilege.

Her examples of privileges that she has, and the duties as a result of those privileges are as follows:

1. Having the ability to stay home ---- duty to stay home and protect those who cannot stay home
2. Socioeconomic privilege  --------- duty to donate to causes and organizations

I think this is a really important point.  Privilege is anything that you a blessed with, and you should be aware that you are lucky to have it, and think of how to use it for the good of your community and society.

So, I'd like to take a moment to talk about my Present Privileges, what they are, how I feel about them, and what I feel are my duties that come along with them.  I am, perhaps more aware than most, that some privileges are fleeting.  Socioeconomic privilege being one of the most transitory things in my life.  So, bear in mind I'm talking about the privileges I currently have.

I am privileged with:

Being a person with very light coloured skin.  

I know this means I don't normally experience the sort of racism people of colour face daily.  I only say normally because I have been in situations where I faced daily hardships as a result of my skin color, but it is not currently my situation and I realize that this very fact is a privilege.

Now, if I'm allowed my feelings about my skin, I will tell you about them.  I feel irritated by my skin colour.  I think dark skin tones are beautiful, and I've personally always wished I were a darker skin tone myself.  I hate burning in the sun in under five minutes.  And in the summer when the bugs come out on cool nights I resent being so luminescently pale that I attract them like a light source.  I always thought darker skin tones were more practical for these reasons.

I feel that it is my duty, as someone who benefits from this privilege to use my voice to correct oppression and racism of people without this privilege.

I currently have socioeconomic privilege.

I have just recently acquired a part time job that allows me to work remotely.  This has been good for me mentally and health wise.  I am currently struggling with Lyme disease and have a compromised immune system.  So, the ability to work from home was a great benefit to me even before Covid-19 happened.  It allowed me to work when I needed and attend doctor's visits and schedule my life as my health required.

After lockdown in Southern California started I felt incredibly lucky that I had the ability to work from home while I was compromised.

My duty as someone with socioeconomic privilege at this time in the country is to support those who are suffering.  I have helped support local businesses, restaurants and donated to causes I believe will help people who do not have the privilege of a job and economic stability at this moment.

I currently have the ability to stay home.

As I mentioned above I am lucky enough to have found a part time job that allows me to stay at home during this lockdown.

I feel my luck, I assure you.  I was unemployed for the last six months and ill on top of that.  I feel lucky to be able to work from home and pay my bills.

My duty is to stay home as much as possible to protect those who cannot.  To wear a mask in public when I must go out and to limit my trips outside to save our community from increased exposure and danger.

I have the means to make masks

I have the fabric, sewing machine and skills to make my own masks that fit properly on my face.

I realize that not everyone has this privilege so it is my duty to help where I can.  With the help of my mother, who did most of the work, because my hands hurt with Lyme Disease, helped to make masks for two local food banks, whose volunteers risked their own safety to feed the community.  We have helped make masks for the friends and family who need masks and cannot make them.

I have more than enough food

It is my duty to help provide for those who do not have the money or food that they need.  I cannot, right now, volunteer my time.  But I have donated food and masks to local food banks because that is what I can do.

I have friends and family who love and support me

I feel it is my duty to pass on the love and support that I am freely given to others.  When I can I perform what acts of service I am able to offer.  I offer words of love and encouragement when and where I can.  I listen to other people's pains, fears, and hopes for a better future and I do what I can to alleviate their suffering and help with their dreams.

I have a gift for writing (at least I think so on some days)

I believe it is my duty to share words of hope with the world.  I believe it is my duty to stand up for Truth, Equality, Justice and Hope.  I believe it is my duty to fight racism, injustice and lies about the futility of efforts to create change.  Change is difficult, yes.  Change is painfully slow.  But change can be made out of the tiniest pieces of hope.  Change comes when millions and millions of people do just the one thing that they can.  For me I think it is writing about the Truth and writing about the struggle for Justice and hope.  Most of all, I think we need to maintain hope even in the face of extremely difficult battles.

I think Lizzo had a post that stated this beautifully on her Instagram account.

I found this on Lizzo's Instragram page, and it seems to have originally been a tweet by the eloquent @Lindss_tastic

We need all of the different jobs to bring about a lasting change in our system.  You do not need to personally do all of them.  You only need to do what you can, just your one bit.  We need the people who are loud and the people who are quiet, those who are hard and those who are soft.  We need those willing to stand firm, and those who help pick up the pieces and soothe the broken when it's all gotten to be too much.  We need all of these functions in society and in our causes.  

Do not feel that you have failed your fellow countrymen and citizens if you must stay home during this time.  There are other ways to help, including signing petitions, helping to talk to the people you can manage to reach (even from home) and surviving to take the fight onwards to another battle on another day.

I have the gift of insight into our past

I am an over-educated historian.  I have two degrees in history that do not make it easier for me to find jobs.  But I do have a window into past struggles because of this.  It's both a blessing and a curse.  

Sometimes it is a burden to me, to see things ramping up to replay themselves in all the old familiar ways.  One very obscure example is that during the reign of Peter the Great in Russia (roughly around 1698) decided that he wanted everyone to be clean shaven like the rest of Europe.  So he tried to force everyone to shave with a beard tax, fining them if they didn't.  There were beard revolts.  It sounds weird but it's all too true.  You can read about why Peter the Great did this here.  And you can get an overview about the beard tax here.  Why did I bring this up?  Because a few years ago I saw an article where they were planning to forcibly demand Tajik men shave to stop radicalization.  I wrote about it in a this post here.  I talked about how stupid it is to try to force men to shave in an attempt to keep them from radicalizing.  Another article and I, both agreed that it would probably have the opposite results, forcing someone to shave might radicalize an otherwise peaceful man.  Just like it did in Russia with the beard revolts.

Anyway, it gives unique and sometimes burdensome insight to see things replaying themselves in ways that I know will lead to unrest and violence.  And it is hard to watch.  But sometimes it gives me a view into why things are the way they are.

So, if you'll permit me to talk about the history behind oppression, I have a few things I haven't seen talked about yet and I think need saying.

Why We Need to Seriously Consider the Cycles of History and Systemic Oppression Today

Now, I know that things have changed from the 1700's and the 1800's.  I'm a historian, believe me, I know what has changed.  But allow me to point out a few things.  I am not trying to make anyone feel guilty about what privileges they do have.  I'm just going to point out that some cycles are almost impossible to overcome as an individual.  What I am trying to say is that our system has failed our citizens.

There has been a lot of talk about crime and desperation in the last few days.  I would like to address where this crime stems from in a broad historical manner.

Consider that after black people were freed from slavery they had no land, no money, no education and no possibilities.  They were essentially displaced refugees and they faced blatant and widespread violent racism.  How were they to better themselves with everything against them?

Now let us say that we have moved forward in time.  People have moved into cities where jobs are more prevalent and there may be hope for more opportunities.  Black people still have to fight poverty, and unemployment because of racism.  This means they are less able to attain degrees in higher education and higher paying jobs even when they have degrees.  They will experience a life of more unemployment and lower paying jobs on average.  Financial desperation is one of the main motivators for crime.  Rises in unemployment correlates with rises in crime.

Consider the words of Thomas Moore in Utopia:
“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”

Our system is set up to make thieves and then punish them.  In cities where crime and gangs abound and minorities struggle to survive we have failed our fellow men.  We have failed to educate them.  We have failed to give them jobs and a way forward.  We have failed to keep them from the corruption of violent gangs, and we have failed to give them safety without them falling into the ugly patterns of gang life to survive.  We failed them.  They turned to the only things that could give them economic and physical safety in their neighborhoods, crime and gangs.

We have systematically created thieves and we are now punishing them for trying to survive in a world we created that only left them one option.  We make thieves and then punish them.  Of course we aren't calling them thieves in the media.  We are calling them "criminals".  But we made them that way.

And now it is our duty to recognize the in-congruence of this terrible behavior on our part to look at the outcome we allowed and to blame it for its own existence.  How dare you be angry and desperate and unlawful?  How dare you be a criminal!  We must understand that we do not have to excuse the crime, to excuse the "criminal" that we have created by our own inaction.

Of course it is not right to hurt other innocent people, or harm their businesses.  But as we know many of the people who are starting off the rioting and looting are not actually the protesters.  Even so, we do not have to agree with the crime, to be sympathetic to the plight of those causing it.  In many ways we have given them no options.  As an individual you may not have done anything wrong, but as a society we are all to blame.  This injustice, this racism, this cycle of creation and punishment must stop.  And we must all stand up and stop it today.

Action is the Only Way Forward

I implore you.  I beg you.  Act in a positive way.  You can make a difference and you can choose to make a positive impact.

I have sympathy with those who are angry and those who feel they have no other way of being heard.  But I beg you, as an individual to be involved in long-lasting change.

Violence and large scale protests are going to generate awareness.  But if you do not act to help enact laws and change, all of this will be a flash in the pan.

And we cannot allow these injustices to continue. We cannot allow police brutality.  We cannot allow racism.  We cannot allow the continuance of cycles of oppression and hardship that create and then punish thieves.

YOU, just you alone, can make a difference.  You can sign petitions and vote.  You can speak up, and volunteer.  You can march, and you can change minds.  You can effect change.  And I beg of you that it will be positive.

Stay angry, but act positively.

Let your righteous anger guide you to act.  Sign a petition to demand justice for George Floyd.  There are plenty of other ways to act.

I will share the words of Barack Obama which rather eloquently state that we need to understand and sympathize with the legitimate frustration, but also we need to act, vote, and create change.

Here is Obama's Instagram post in photos:

Barack Obama's Instagram post

Barack Obama's Instagram post

He has several helpful links on his website if you want to check that out here.  We must act.  You don't have to join a protest or demonstration.  You can do research and speak from an informed place.  Starting with credible sources that lay out facts like this article from the The New York Times on the facts of the last 9 minutes of George Floyd's Life.  You can vote, you can sign petitions.  You can join the Innocence Project to reform the criminal justice system or Black Lives Matter to fight racist policies head on through petitions or support of other kinds.

And now, I want to make one more plea, for patience with those who don't yet see.  I am not saying it's your job to educate them, or talk to them, or change them.  I am not even asking you to listen to them if you cannot handle that.  I am just asking you, in your anger, your justified anger, to not say or do anything that will alienate others, even those in the wrong.

I know that's asking a lot in the face of such tragedy and injustice, in the wake of a history of long centuries of oppression.  But to change our society we must bring everyone with us.  You don't have to change them, but one of us must.

So I ask you the question I asked on my last post about injustice and communication.

Is there still room among the Woke for those who are just awakening?  

Think long and hard about that before you answer.  I beg you not to doom our future with a self-fulfilling prophecy to a world that cannot change, a world full of eyes that cannot open.  

Again, I do not say this because I think it is every person's job to educate everyone they see who is walking on the wrong path.  It is not your responsibility to correct everything and educate everyone.  I am simply asking everyone to reflect before they speak.  Or walk away and do not engage these people.  I'm begging you not to make worse enemies out of people who have not yet seen the light, but need to.  If you cannot deal with them with patience and forbearance walk away, do not engage.

I'm begging everyone to act not solely upon an emotional reaction, but thoughtfully and in a way that will encourage, and firmly demand change, lasting change in our society.  Sometimes it requires more patience than you should be asked to exhibit in the face of injustice.  Sometimes it simply requires compassion for those who are in the wrong but also emotional and feeling attacked.

Is that fair?  No.

But we must make an effort, all of us together, or we will never change as a whole.  I'm not even asking that you personally do these terribly difficult things.  Just remember that someone must.  Someone must help educate the ignorant, must gently stand firm in the face of ugliness and make room for someone who is not yet on the right path to start to come towards it.  We must.  We cannot afford to have a society where we do not bring all people along with us.

We cannot allow people to remain ignorant, and uneducated in these areas.  Is it your job to educate them?  No.  But I beg you, if you cannot do this work, of patiently facing ignorance and biases, do not make it harder for the person that follows who must.  Because for the sake of our society, someone must do this work.  I beg you not to further embitter someone with heated words spoken in the moment.  Walk away.  And leave room for someone else to stand in the gap and educate calmly, to patiently address wrong ideas and irrational, emotional fears.

Remember that we are in this fight for the long haul.  And we must win.  So we must find a way to make room amongst the Woke for those who have just begun to awaken.