A privilege, not a right

[jedusor]

I knew what privilege was when I was a kid. It was the set of things I was allowed to have and do that my mom could take away if she was feeling bitchy. I knew I had a lot of it, because Mom liked to remind me of this fact, usually when I was acting persecuted. I was annoyed when she did this, because by my understanding of the concept of privilege, all she was doing was throwing salt in my wounds about how much control she had over me. When she said I should be grateful for what I had, I thought she meant I should be grateful to her. Which maybe sometimes she did. But being grateful to circumstances is different, and when I think of privilege now, I think of circumstances.

I am not rich right now. I'm pretty sure that technically I'm below the poverty line. But socially, I'm definitely middle class, and I have a lot of resources and support. It's something I never thought about when I was told I should be thinking about it, but I'm thinking about it a lot now.

I know a fair number of affluent kids who clearly don't think about it either. It makes me wonder what can be done to raise people who understand the context of what they do and don't have. Sometimes I see their parents trying to get it across to them, and I wonder if there's a way to do it right. There was Anytown, of course, which I think every teen should attend, but I don't know what can be done for younger kids. I guess operational definitions are a good place to start.

Comments

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

In the context of wealth, I can see your point, but I don't think your other example of liberty holds up to the "intrinsically limited resource" qualification. And I do think my support network and other social resources are a function of my privilege, in that there are people close to me who are in high social positions (wealthy, educated, connected and so forth). My own education is an aspect of my privilege too, regardless of how much debt I'm in for it.

I agree that privilege must be denied to others in order to be privilege, but I don't think the people who have it need to actively seek to deny it to others, and defining it that way opens it up to the "I'm not privileged because I don't try to be" reaction Kit mentioned.

[gerald_duck]

Hmm. I see liberty as a relative rather than an absolute, possibly because I tend to view such matters in relation to the social contract. I'm not free to murder people, and I can't be without denying someone else the freedom to stay alive. Murder is so obviously wrong that we don't usually view preventing people from doing it as a curtailment of their liberty, but what about, say, smoking in public places? Then it's more obviously a case of winners and losers, whatever society decides.

When you said a lot of resources and support, I assumed you were talking about friends rather than contacts that afford you privilege by proxy. I'd agree that access to privilege is privilege.

To clarify, I said "things someone would ever seek to deprive another of", rather than "things you seek to deprive another of". One can be privileged without trying, but I'd assert that one can't be privileged without someone, somewhere, somewhen, somehow having exploited someone else.