Privilege isn't a bad word

A long while back I wrote a piece about the misinterpretation of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality. I believe intersectionality is a critical concept in understanding… well… pretty much everything in the universe, but specifically in understanding social justice issues and systems of oppression.

The importance of the concept of intersectionality, as I understand it, is this: you can’t examine systems of oppression in a silo. Looking at racism, classism, sexism, ableism, etc. as a singular focus will inevitably lead to misconception and misunderstanding because we can only comprehend the effects of these tools of oppression when we understand how they effect each other to paint the whole picture.

It’s worth mentioning that intersectionality is also exceptionally relevant when examining other crises outside of social justice: environmentalist, late-stage capitalism, colonialism, ecocide, and more. The more that we continue to look at all of these systems as interrelated, the better we can understand the issues, causes and effects, and help develop more rounded and full solutions to the problems we face. I’m currently reading Peter Gelderloos’ The Solutions are Already Here and his presentation of these issues as interrelated is astounding.

Intersectionality itself, however, has come under fire along with “woke culture” and anti-racism work, mostly, I think, because of misconceptions and over-generalizations. Critics will blame cancel culture on this woke left but, like everything else these days, I think that there is the desire to paint people with broad strokes, and Crenshaw’s intersectionality has been swept up in the polarization that is coming to define post-pandemic life.

These days, I often see the term intersectionality used in reference to conversations around claiming specific identities and using those identities to affirm expertise on account of lived experience in that specific identity or cross section of identities. While there is validity to this practice, I don’t see this adoption of identities as Crenshaw’s original intention for exploring intersectionality. Part of the problem for me lies in the extrapolation that if someone doesn’t claim an oppressed identity, that person’s privilege necessarily clouds their judgement and makes impossible any attempt to learn, change, help, or question. When people with privilege or a lack of oppressed identities seek to join specific social justice movements, they are often met with the response that their privilege automatically excludes them from being able to participate in the discussion.

And here we come to another problem because there are many different oppressed identities and many different positions of privileged. Moreover, any one person is likely to hold both privilege in some ways and be oppressed in others. One person might be black, queer, and rich while someone else is white, trans, and poor. Someone else might be neurotypical and disabled while another is neurodivergent but able-bodied. From here there becomes this sort of battle for “who is the most oppressed?” and who’s experience or position should be invalidated because they hold “too much privilege”. These are clearly the wrong questions in the battle against oppressive systems and furthers the divisiveness that keep pushing us further and further apart when we should be working together to dismantle or abolish ALL systems of oppression.

Over the last few years, I have spent a great deal of time and energy examining my privilege and trying to better understand systems of oppression, especially ones that my privilege helped me avoid, namely racism, but also classism, ageism, ableism, and gender issues. I have had sleepless nights, racked with guilt about how I was perpetuating these systems with the near constant reminder that others were suffering and I was indirectly benefiting from this suffering by not doing my part to change it. I believed this to my core. I have cried tears, I have plunged in and out of depression, I have lost sight of things that are light and good - all because of the guilt and shame of carrying privilege. When others pointed out my privilege, I would have visceral responses: I would get angry, I would get defensive, I would get depressed. I would cycle through days or weeks of being consumed by theoretical arguments in my head about the nature of systemic oppression and my position in these institutions.

But here’s the thing I’ve come to accept: I don’t get to control oppression or privilege. It’s largely something I’m born with or without. I don’t choose where I land. And my position doesn’t necessarily cast others onto the opposing side, like the battlefield us-versus-them imagery that I’m being fed. What’s more: having privilege doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person and being oppressed doesn’t automatically make me a good person.

Privilege and oppression are not value judgements.

They are systems I exist in based on the socio-economic and cultural systems of our time, not parts of my personality.

What makes me a good or bad person is what I do with my privilege when I have it, and how I live with my oppression when I’m faced with it. I am much more responsible for my actions and my choices than I am responsible for where I fall into these systems, largely based on how lucky I was when I was born.

So all that anger, all the defensiveness and the endless hours lamenting my privilege in life? Well, I want to tell myself that it was an important part of my personal growth: in learning and understanding the realities in which I exist and had been sheltered from for so long. But I don’t think that I need to be ashamed of my privilege anymore than I should be ashamed of oppressed identities that I hold, only that I should use that privilege to help break down barriers, provide support to others, and ultimately do what I can to help remove these barriers for everyone.

Obviously I can’t do this on my own - we need real systemic change to happen from the top and from the bottom, but I definitely am not going to let the guilt from being privileged stop me from participating in building strong communities with alternatives to the oppressive systems that keep these barriers in place. Privilege is not a bad word and those with privilege don’t need to carry the weight of oppressive systems on our shoulders. We can acknowledge our positions of privilege and then start doing the work together to tear those systems down.