February Vacation Post 2: On Privilege

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:01 Tom: Privilege, most of who you are, you don't deserve to be. Every really important thing that will shape the outcome of your life, you didn't earn. That's okay.

0:00:15 Tom: And embrace the fact that who you really are is mostly a combination of things you had nothing to do with. Most of who you are will be determined by forces you cannot control and which you will have to consciously work in order to see. That's also perfectly fine because this is true for everyone. We're going to talk about what that really means, why it's important, and what that means for how you should live your life.

Think about this for a second, like the taste of black licorice. Many people don't. I didn't choose to enjoy black licorice. Black licorice is not chemically or physically different for me than for you or for anyone else. Yet I enjoy it, and others hate it. Why? Just chance.

Some combination of forces, the way my brain wired to perceive the chemicals in black licorice and associate them with pleasure rather than disgust, and social forces, eating black licorice in a setting with loved ones where the smell and taste created pleasant associations, perhaps. These things wired my brain to believe that black licorice is good.

That I like black licorice, while it is a feature of my preferences, is neither reflective of some objective fact about whether black licorice tastes good, nor is it something that I chose about myself. It is instead just a silly example of the complex byproduct of how forces outside of our control shape our choices, our preferences, and our desires. Most of life is like this. Think of some other examples. Think about some things that we admire in ourselves or in others.

Some people are born very, very smart. Why? Because they deserved it? What did they do to earn it? Does some characteristic of the self we do not choose or control make us more virtuous? What's funny is that all of us recognize two contradictory things. One, that of course smart people didn't choose to be born smart, and so of course they didn't earn it. And at the same time, we mock those whose circumstances of birth didn't provide them with that same advantage.

We have a hundred derisive adjectives to mock and belittle people for not having had the good luck and good fortune of others. Being smart isn't a choice we make. It is not a signal of someone's virtue. It's not something someone deserved because it's not something they had to earn. Here's another example. Think about looks. Some people are just born really attractive. You know, they have good skin, symmetrical features, and bodies that grow into the proportions and shapes that we are wired to find alluring.

Most of this is, again, this is just good luck, a spin of the genetic wheel that lands in just the right position. It's not a choice or a signal about someone that conveys any meaning reflective of their character. This is as random as a coin flip. Think about whether someone is funny. We all know that person who from the time that they were young, they had a quip or a retort ready at hand. So think about that. These people have been funny their whole lives.

Being funny is just a lucky happenstance of the way some people were wired. If you don't believe me, think about people you've met who are just super serious. And they've been super serious since they were small. Again, this is not the result of their choices. These characteristics are the result of chance, both social and genetic, which shaped the way some people learned to respond to others. Some people are naturally social. Some people are naturally detail-oriented.

Others may be anxious, and still others seem to have no problem shedding worries and cares. Some people have an ear for music and others can't tell one note from the next. Some people form beautiful mental images in their heads and others close their eyes and see very little. Some have a natural sense of physical balance or an affinity with words. There are people who can read the slightest shift in body language and others who can't read nonverbal cues at all.

Some people have a very high tolerance for risk and others are nervous without the comforts of routine and predictability. The list goes on, but I think that you get my point. Most of who we are is not the result of deliberately made choices. And if the idea of deserving means anything, it has to be tied to the idea that you deserve something because you made meritorious or deleterious choices. But that's not how the world works. It goes a little deeper. Think too about where you live.

From the moment you were born until you reach adulthood, where you lived was not your choice. That means not only the country you were born into, but the state, the neighborhood, the social, economic, and racial makeup of your home. You had no way to choose or influence these things in any way as children. Whether your parents were stable or chaotic, loving or abusive.

Whether you never wanted for a hug or were left to fend for yourself, whether you were able to join the swim team, or whether you had to walk through an unsafe neighborhood to get to school, none of this was the result of any of your choices. None of your parents, or their parents, ever made these choices when they were growing into adults either.

0:06:05 Tom: Most of who we are is a combination of forces determined by chance that we have no control over or say in. A person cannot just wake up and decide that they will be taller if they are not. We can't decide we were born into circumstances of opportunity if we weren't, or that we are naturally graceful, or decide to be sharp and quick -witted if we are more careful and deliberate with our thoughts. Funny people don't deserve to be funny. Smart people don't deserve to be smart. Attractive people don't deserve to be attractive. Americans don't deserve to have been born here. Kids with loving parents don't love more than kids with less loving parents. Being who we are is not, in most significant ways, up to us.

0:06:59 Tom: So what does this mean? Well, it means a lot of things. First, don't idolize or vilify any trait or characteristic unless it is earned. Don't look down on those whose lottery numbers didn't come out as well as someone else's. Don't look up to someone whose ticket just randomly afforded them more opportunity. The world is easier for some people than for others, and it will always be that way. We'd all like to be smart, to be funny, to be attractive, to never struggle with illness.

We'd also like to have every opportunity to be surrounded by love and stability, but that simply won't be the case for most of us. Most of us will have some of these privileges, but not all. Some people have way more than is fair. That's true, because that which is determined by chance will never be fair. Other people will get screwed at every return. That is a horrible reality of a world ruled by chance.

Let's revisit some of our earlier examples because you do have responsibility to your privilege. And the first one is to recognize and acknowledge where you are privileged. Be grateful rather than proud. Celebrate your good fortune without laying claim to these privileges as if they were virtues that you've earned. But where you are privileged, you have responsibility. Take the case of intelligence. Sure, there are natural variations in intelligence, and you can't do anything to change that. What you can do, however, is to maximize where you're strong.

You can work to overcome natural deficits with additional effort. You capitalize on the places where you have natural gifts to make them work for you. But I want to be really honest. Work cannot bridge every divide. That's okay too. Your responsibility isn't to be something you're not. You are only responsible to be the best version of yourself possible. Again, think back to attractiveness. Like I said, much of that will be good luck, but you can spoil that luck through neglect and abuse of your body.

So don't do that. Don't waste an advantage through neglect of yourself. Even if you're not gifted with big wins in the looks department, you can attend to the strengths that you do have. You

0:09:28 Tom: Dress your body in a way that flatters you. What you should not do is to neglect yourself because you are not perfect. No one is perfect, and there is no ideal. Think too about a few of the natural traits of personality that I've mentioned. Some people are just naturally anxious. If that's you, you can work on that anxiety. You can build tools and strategies to cope with it so it doesn't hamstring you and prevent you from finding joy and seeking new experiences.

Again, this is something those who are privileged to live without anxiety don't have to do. That's great for them. They are lucky. That's what privilege is. Learn to identify the places where effort can fill in the blanks that luck has left out. You can't change everything about who you are. You shouldn't try to.

But as you learn more about who you want to be, find the places where luck left you short and decide if there are ways you can supplement luck with effort to get you closer to your goals. A few other notes on privilege. First, privilege exists because of inequity. That's literally what it means. Privilege stems from the fact that we are not all granted the same body, the same mind, the same family, the same community, the education, etc. The unequal distribution of bodies, minds, and experiences is at the heart of why some people have advantages over others. For those privileges which exist that can be eradicated through social change, you should fight to erase privileges, even if you are its benefactor, because underlying all privilege is inequity. Most privilege isn't something you can decide you don't want or choose to get back. I can't just decide tomorrow that I'm not a heterosexual white male or that I wasn't born with certain other advantages. There's no receipt.

There's nowhere to go. There's no one to return my privileges to. So don't try to hide the fact that they confer to you significant benefits or pretend that you don't have them. You should also understand that if you accept and embrace your privilege, you must also accept the responsibility of that privilege. You cannot accept and extol the joys of a privilege and then bemoan its downsides. That's a bullshit way to live. Think about it like this.

Imagine if you were lucky enough to be born clever and quick -witted. And as a result, you were surrounded by people who enjoyed your wit and humor. You never want for friends and companions. People seek out your company. They validate you with smiles and laughter. You enjoy this, and so you hone that skill through use and repetition, and the social advantages of this behavior reinforce your use of that skill. It then becomes part of who you are and how you are known to others.

Still, that same reputation may mean that it is hard for people to take you seriously, or they may want you to perform, which may at times make it hard to be authentic or serious. Would you trade being quick-witted if you could? Almost certainly not. Most of the time, you would not, even if we could, trade in your privileges. You don't see lines outside plastic surgeons' offices full of attractive people seeking to be made less attractive.

Like most of life, there are downsides even to those things which are in other ways massively advantageous. The nature of of privilege means, though, that the advantages outweigh the drawbacks. So, don't be the guy who accepts all the benefits of something and bitches that those benefits are imperfect. Remember, the nature of privilege is that it is an advantage others don't have. So, don't complain about your good fortune just because it may be imperfect.