Checking my Privilege
One last act of Woke?
What are my privileges, exactly?
I am referring to “privilege” in the political left ‘woke’ sphere of discourse, a sphere that I historically belong to. The idea is that there are certain qualities about a person (inherited, adopted, chosen, unchosen) that are Privileges: advantages in the social, cultural, and economic world that better equip you for life. In the accepted sense of the term, the more privileges have, the more likely you are to succeed at your goals in life and the less likely it is that your failures will be entirely beyond your control.
There are probably people who would dispute this definition I’m using, and they’re probably right to an extent, but this definition is workable and it makes sense to me this morning so I am going to use it.
So, what are my privileges? Let me list some of them.
I have a family safety net; if I went broke, got evicted, and everything in my life turned to ruin, I would not be out on the streets.1
I am white.
I speak English.
I am a citizen of Canada (and I have an easy pathway to UK citizenship as well if I want).
I am physically very healthy.
I am relatively young.
I am neurotypical.
I am of slightly above-average IQ (based on the OSPP online test, which isn’t a great source).
I was raised well in an upper middle class household.
I had a stable home life.
I am not disabled.
I am not deaf.
I am a male.
I am cisgender.
I have a university education that was mostly paid for by my parents.
I have work.
I have work that I can do from home.
I have work that I can do from anywhere in the world, mostly.
I have a good apartment in a fabulous city.
I have a decently strong internal locus of agency.
I am socially proficient.
I am high stamina; I can walk for a long time.
I had the opportunity and means to come to the Inkhaven Writer’s Residency in Berkeley, CA for a month.
This is a good start.
You might expect me to now get to my list of disadvantages in life, and I will get to that, but I’d actually first like to interrogate the framing of this type of post in the first place.
CGP Grey notes (convincingly to my mind) that the problem with a pro-and-con list (and the same with a “privileges-and-disadvantages list”) is that it sort of makes the assumption that each pro is just as bad as each con, and that if the two are equal in list length they are equal in value.
The problem, of course, is that this isn’t how “privilege” works. A privilege can only deliver you utility up to a certain point: your typical wealthy educated white man still has to put in at least some work in order to have a ‘good life’.
On the other side of that, disadvantages can be deeply, deeply bad. If I became physically disabled and unable to walk ever again, my life would basically be thrown into chaos. This is not to say that the disabled can’t live fulfilling lives, but my life as it is (and as I plan it to be) is shaped around being able-bodied for the foreseeable future.
I think my life as it is right now is pretty easy. I have a lot going for me, but it is also worth considering the disadvantages that I have (and whether they negate my privileges in any meaningful way).
To the best of my ability:
I do not have enough savings.
I have no investments.
I am in debt.
I am queer.
I am overweight (according to my BMI + ad-hoc US Navy tape test).
I am of low physical attractiveness (according to a few indices).
I have issues with depression and anxiety.
I have low to very low self-esteem.
I am introverted and not socially gifted.
I am a (sort of) practicing Catholic.
I am a freelance contractor (arguably misclassified).
I have non-trivial sleep problems.
I am a renter and probably will be for a long time.
That is most of what I have so far. But notice the pattern. Basically all of these things are things that I can change, fix, or otherwise deal with. These aren’t things baked into my genotype, nor are they things that have been thrust upon me by circumstances entirely beyond my control. I could fix or negate the negative impacts of all of these.
So, there it is. I’m quite privileged. That wasn’t very hard for me to work out on my own.
I’m a Resident at Inkhaven 2 in Berkeley, CA. I am writing 30 posts in 30 days for the month of April. See my progress here!
I think this is my single greatest privilege in life right now.