Tuesday 17 July 2018

Check your privilege, for crying out loud.

Today at work - a small coffee vendor on a station platform - a nice man, probably in his 40s or 50s, came up and told me about the best coffee he'd had there with an "exquisite" mix of syrups. Unfortunately he could not remember the exact recipe, and I couldn't help him since he didn't have enough cash to give it another try. We worked out it had been my sister who had served him the exquisite coffee but she didn't remember either. The guy stuck around to have a chat instead.

He told me he loved the area I lived in, that it seemed like one of the best places in England. No one is usually that enthusiastic about Buckinghamshire, but I happen to agree with him. He asked if I was born and bred Bucks, I said I was, and he asked how I'd enjoyed growing up here. I told him I'd loved it and that I'd been very lucky to have done so. That every school I went to was considered excellent by Ofsted, and that having beautiful countryside and London just next door was, to me, the perfect combination. He remained enthusiastic, nodding along to everything I said. "It was very different growing up in Hackney, you know?" he said. I told him I could imagine, but really my white, middle class existence in a home county is a million miles away from a black man's upbringing in the roughest parts of Hackney. There was no bitterness in his description of how he had to become streetwise very quickly, only a longing for things to have been easier, perhaps to have grown up in Buckinghamshire with nice schools, and nice families, and nice middle-class things to do every which way you look. Before he left he joked and asked if I was posh. I laughed and said, sheepishly, "probably". And then he grew serious and told me that it didn't matter, there had to be different types of people in the world, and that I shouldn't be embarrassed about it. I was a bit taken aback, but I told him I thought that even if having privileges wasn't itself a problem it is vital to acknowledge what I have and how it effects other people. He said "I guess" and then his train arrived and we said goodbye.

A few days ago I commented on a Facebook post about Dominic Raab and his views on "feminist bigots". I joked about the tough lives of straight, white, super-privileged men for never having had to face accountability before now. My comment was ironic, and I felt, as I always feel, the necessity for adding "not all men" was entirely redundant. Nevertheless a straight, white, middle aged man I do not know and have never met commented that he felt "judged". I restrained myself and told him I was sorry he self-identified as the "middle-aged white man" everyone seems to be so aggressively attacking and was sensitive enough to believe that what I had said had anything to do with him. I could have told him that the fact he felt judged probably pointed towards his subconscious guilt of being exactly one of the men I was joking about, or that his individuality as one of the "good guys" doesn't work if you wade in with your own pity story in a conversation you weren't in any way involved in. I could have told him to go and do something profane, as I felt angry enough, or I could have just told him to check his privilege. I held back not wanting to embarrass the friend whose post it was, but had it been my own I could have said a lot worse.

This is not my own analogy but imagine you're in a meeting in a job you've worked hard to get to.  Imagine the position you're now in gives you a lot of leeway and a platform for speaking out. Say you're a white woman from a privileged background but you still had to wade through the shit of office sexism and of everyday sexism to get there. You look around the room and take in everyone else sitting around the table. You give yourself a private pat on the back for doing so well, and then you take a note of every person in that room who is not being represented, who could be there doing a good job. Now you have the power, now you've used the privilege you got given in life to get where you are, it is your job to hold the door open for everyone else who needs to come through. Once you are in a position of privilege you have got to acknowledge it and you have got to use it for good. I don't see any other way around it, I don't see any better thing to do. Open the door and keep it open. Whoever you are.

Check your privilege over and over again, check who needs a helping hand, check why you are where you are, keep out of conversations that aren't about you, let people be angry who need to be angry. Except if you're a straight, white, privileged man in which case you can sit down and keep your anger to yourself because this has been a long time coming, my friend. Just look around you, look at the lives of other people, and try your hardest to keep going in the right direction. Because we are going in the right direction, I promise. I promise.

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