[Today’s run: 3.4 miles]
I had an interesting conversation with my son today about privilege. I’m a middle aged white guy of nondescript appearance. Like I told him, if I dress fairly nice people have a certain expectation about who I am and how I will act.
In a way that is privilege because shopkeepers don’t follow me around thinking I’m going to shoplift, and customer service people generally will listen to my side of the story. Store managers and policemen and other folks act in particular ways which might not be how they would act if I had scruffy clothes or hadn’t shaved for a week. It is a privilege that I have some control over.
If I look funny, smell funny or otherwise break the spell then I trade my personal liberty (the choice to get a big eyebrow piercing) for some of this privileged treatment. I can make a personal statement “I’m not like you”, but then I may lose the benefits of being assumed to be on the same team.
He made the astute observation that everyone has some sort of privilege and that it mattered most what they did with it, if they used it for good instead of selfishly.
Other folks may have some built-in handicaps (for lack of a better word), they might be poor or look strange, talk strange, things that they probably don’t have any control over. And people’s standing changes by where and when.
My wife sent me a facebook thing about women’s body image changing as they get older. That’s an example. Someone who used to get cheerleader discount now gets senior discount. Somehow it doesn’t quite seem to even out. There’s something to be said for a society where elders are respected. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen to be ours.
Anyway, it was a good conversation and thought provoking.