Privilege is not a sin

Something went terribly wrong between the original formulation of privilege and the popular understanding of it, which landed us in the unenviable state where people throw the word “privilege” around like an accusation, people feel bad, and nothing happens.

But from the start, “privilege” was never meant to be an accusation. It was supposed to be an observation about how people who benefit from power structures can become unaware of them, and that while some privileges are damaging and need to be dismantled, many of them are good - rights or necessities that should be expanded. In fact, as privilege spread across the internet, it almost exclusively became the latter. Things like “I expect that as a white person my requests will be prioritized over those of a person of color” we recognize now as straight up racism, whereas “my race is not a consideration when prioritizing my requests” fits more in the popular understanding of privilege.

So if we narrow privilege to these “just” privileges, I feel comfortable making the statement: you should not be ashamed of your privilege. In fact, when people point out your privilege, they are pointing out that you have a tool at your disposal. And if you want to moralize about something, moralize this: you have an obligation to use this tool to extend it to others.

What is privilege?

There are two components to privilege: (1) an unawareness of unfairness others encounter, and (2) guaranteed fair treatment in situations where others would be treated unfairly. (1) is a debuff on perceptual or input-related activities, like listening, seeing, understanding. (2) is a buff for output related skills, like speaking and acting. So to properly utilize privilege, you need to adapt to both. Unfortunately, we have to first deal with the perceptual debuff before we can make use of the acting buff. After all, you can act effectively if you have an accurate understanding of the situation. So the first step to using privilege is to listen.

Listening is power.

Listening gives you power, but because the way our society is structured, it may not feel like it. Instead, speaking and writing, aka expressing, is considered powerful. For example, in public school, when a teacher stands at the front of the class and teaches you something, you listen to what they say. In that moment, you gain that knowledge and the ability to act on that knowledge - aka power. But in our education system, that moment isn’t important. It's only when you reproduce that knowledge, either verbally or in writing, that the education system considers you to have “learned." In this way, we are conditioned that merely having knowledge doesn’t quite “count” until you can demonstrate it. That's why "listening” without speaking can often feel disempowering for people with privilege.

People without privilege learn this power to listen because they must. When people who have different experiences than you have power over you, you very quickly learn what they consider “good”, “right,” or “logical” in order to appease or avoid them. For example, via patriarchy, our culture associates leadership with low, booming voices, even though the pitch of one’s voice has no bearing on their ability to lead. When someone comes into a group and speaks with his high-pitched voice, he sees that he is not taken as seriously. If he takes the situation at face value, he may believe this is because he is “not good at leading,” even if he knows that he possesses experience, vision, compassion, and other leadership qualities. In order to succeed, he has to become actively aware of this bias, either to work around it by adjusting his pitch, or by persisting in spite of it and preventing it from affecting his self belief. However, someone who has a lower voice, misses the bias, the obstacles, and the extra work that needs to be done to offset it, and thus is unlikely to question it at all.

The process described here is essentially observing, naming, and adapting to attitudes, values, and practices that are different to your own. If your worldview is aligned with the privileged worldview, it is easy to think that there is a universal worldview, or that other worldviews exist but only yours “makes sense.” Going through this process once teaches you of the existence of multiple worldviews. Repeating it multiple times, you quickly learn that what is “good,” “right,” and “logical” are questions with many answers, and that you can’t just fall back on what you already know to answer them.

Privileged or not, I don’t think any of us have a great process for learning to listen. Being forced to learn it to succeed and survive isn’t fun or smooth, and involves a lot of self-doubt. The self-doubt is probably somewhat intrinsic to the process - after all, you are shaking up the pillars of your own attitudes, values, and practices, but maybe the struggle doesn’t have to be a part of it. I think it starts with asking “what if?” “What if people were judging me for the pitch of my voice?”, “What if someone who has a valley girl accent is also compassionate, experienced, and makes good decisions?”, “What if someone who is kind to me was cruel to someone else for their race, sex, disability, or gender?” Consider the possibilities without dismissing them, keep listening to see if you can find the answers, stay vigilant for when your worldview attempts to close your ears.

Speaking with Privilege

One way to think of having privilege is like having a megaphone. Everything you say will be heard a little louder and more clearly than people who don’t have privilege. In some ways, it’s even more powerful than a megaphone: not only are people more likely to listen, they’re more likely to consider what you say as useful and correct. Also, unlike a megaphone, it’s not obvious that you’re speaking with amplification, so you’ll have to actively remind yourself that you need to be careful with your extra volume. Some best practices:

1. Take care not to interrupt or talk over people
2. Make opportunities for others to contribute to the conversation
3. Use your amplification to boost the voices and viewpoints of others who are not as privileged
4. Disagree judiciously and kindly, perhaps making use of (3) to make sure the point you disagree with is also heard
5. Take extra care to listen—the amplification can make your own ears ring too!

Consider also whether this is a megaphone-appropriate conversation. It could be that it’s just better to have the whole conversation happen at “speaking volume”, ie without having to wrangle the difficulties of communicating across different levels of privilege. Remember, again that listening is a way for you to increase your own power, agency, and effectiveness, and it’s hard to listen effectively while you’re talking.

Acting with Privilege

When you act, privilege is kind of like having a mildly positive personal relationship with the people who are in charge. As such, you are much more likely to get away with shit. And you can and should use it to help people who don’t have that privilege.

For example, a coworker thinks the scheduling is unfair—you can bring it up on her behalf. Someone is criticized for the way they dress—tell the criticizer to chill out. A policy is being implemented that disproportionately affects a minority—don’t hesitate, bring it up (though again, listen if the actually affected people suggest some other action). You are much less likely to be punished for your advocacy than someone who is marginalized.

And don’t forget, your actions, like your words, are positively-amplified because of your privilege. Make sure that if you have unprivileged co-conspirators and actors that their actions get just as much credit as yours.

Conclusion

Privilege is not a crime, a sin, or a criticism. Privileges, the “just” ones, are things that everyone should have, such that they cease to become privileges at all.

Even then though, privilege will probably never completely go away. Even if we wiped racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, ableism, from the earth, some of us will still be taller, shorter, healthier, sicker. Some of us will always be in the majority in some respects, the minority in the others. Some will have, and some will have not. Having privilege is not the problem, but to refuse to use it to offset inequities as they arise. In this sense, privilege is not a crime, or even a boon, but a duty to listen and to care for others.