Privilege (2)

Michael Berube mentions the privilege walk in his new book. It's some sort of exercise done with college students. They step forward or back depending on their privilege. I figured I'd be one step behind the most privileged, so still pretty privileged in the US scheme of things--not male, but white, upper middle class, Ivy League education, able bodied, straight enough for government work. I don't think myopia counts against me; does height? I'm not quite 5' 2".

I agree with Berube that it's a lame exercise. But my reasons may not be the same as his. I think the exercise is a problem because most college students still don't know who they are. They haven't entered their powers, as it were. They aren't yet fully formed, so they all have insecurities. They all worry, are unsure--even if they are faking it (for why would they have to fake it if they weren't unsure?). I cried nearly every day my first year at Princeton--and not only because I was close to failing Russian. No, even the most privileged college kids can't quite recognize it yet.

When your recognize it, what do you see? You see the presupposition that things will work out, go your way. You see the supposition that you have agency and make things happen in the world. When there are problems, they are because other people are stupid, lazy, incompetent. A friend told me today that growing up working class led to a different sense--when things don't work out, it's because you don't deserve any better.

The privileged live with a sense that we make things happen. Sure, I was shocked when my mother died--despite the stage 4 or 5 cancer diagnosis 6 months earlier. But I know that privilege doesn't equal magic; people still die. Privilege is then facing reality (people die), looking on the bright side (she didn't suffer too long; I didn't have to live with an elderly parent; I could be a mom on my own terms without having someone tell me that I'm screwing up; and, then, the financial benefits, the necessary material support of privilege).

The thing is, even as you live with a sense of agency, it's agency with a set terrain, within the status quo, within the symbolic order that renders privilege privileged. Incidently, this is what makes Lukacs--or should I say, von Lukacs--fascinating: he moved from aristocrat to revolutionary, to critic, to functionary, to apologist. His agency was remarkably adept and adaptable. Yet, I expect that more often than not the agency of privileged comes with at a cost--a disabled sense of seeing otherwise, seeing differently, imagining the possibility of other better worlds even as one sees full well the wrongness of the world that has created one's privilege.

Comments

[Adam Elkus]

What I find fascinating about privelege in America is that one must both affirm and deny it at the same time. Someone like George W. Bush has to fake being a rural blue collar Southerner in order to get elected, and John Kerry was mercilessly ragged for his aristocratic pretensions. Yet in financial background and family history both are essentially the same.

It's almost like our strange attitude towards sex, splashing naked girls all over the television but forcing abstinence classes in public schools instead of sex education.

[Jodi]

Adam--insightful point, this simultaneous affirmation and denial. Could call it the Real of class, the underlying antagonism, etc. But more interesting is the actual empirical observation. I wonder if some hatred of Clinton was that he seemed too much to try to escape or leave his background. So, he was a rural boy from a difficult background, but then he goes on to Oxford, Yale, and hobnobbing with the big shots. Or, notice how George H W Bush failed at his effort to be everyman--no one really believed that he liked pork rinds.

[pebird]

Your accomplishment and justified pride is certainly not a factor in your privilege. Instead it's an act that opens up the possibility of life without privilege.

Having a material problem and addressing it is seen as part of the masculine realm. The feeling of seeing the other side, taking a risk and winning while overcoming those old back of mind misgivings is remarkable. It is that hint, that taste of freedom.

The thing about privilege is that it is granted, there is a big Other behind every privilege.

Privileges are not enumerated, they appear contingent, a part of nature, assumed as one's birthright. One who fully accepts their privilege as right adopts the attitude of “take it, I’m entitled, I deserve it”. As a pacifying agent, privilege functions to incorporate the individual into group activities and by tacit acceptance, support the group hierarchy and its political programs. So the hidden debt is repaid.

While we all desire big bangs, breaking out is a series of hammer taps against the wall, consistency, patience and discipline. A small thing – fixing a stove.

[pebird]

Above is supposed to be a comment on the Pride posting - too many windows open.

[Adam Elkus]

Ah yes, those pork rinds, haha.

I think the hatred of Clinton was more due to the culture war. Clinton was the personification of everything conservatives believed went wrong about the Sixties. He dodged the draft, smoked pot, played the saxophone, and married an assertive and well-educated woman. In addition, he believes in....ahem..free love.

He did all of these things, and people didn't care. It was an empirical confirmation that the hold of the Right's oppressive morality was weakening. And that drove them crazy. They hate him more than any other Democratic politician with the exception of his wife.

That's a good point though about the Real of class. Perhaps a reflection of what Zizek wrote about the concept of authenticity?

[McKenzie Wark]

When Nixon was in law school his nickname was 'iron butt', because he was always working. Clinton had the demeanor of someone to whom it all came naturally, without too much effort. I think some resentment was of the impression that he didn't deserve privilege. If privilege comes from working your ass off one can feel Ok about lacking it, since one has made another choice. But if Clinton can appear to just swan in and scoop up the prizes on charm alone. That hurts. (None of this need actually be true, of course. I'm talking about impressions, mythology, etc.)

[Adam Elkus]

That's an interesting point. I remember that Kennedy also had to use his war hero image to negate his playboy background. Of course, there was also his youth, speaking skill, and promise, but he negated any class-based criticism through his war record in the Pacific.

[Jodi]

PE Bird--I love what you wrote. I love the small things, the breaking out, the possibility of something else. And, the analysis of the big Other is insightful. Thank you so much.

[thivai abhor]

I don't know how I fit into the scheme of things academic--I never have really understood this system, even as I become a part of it--I'm now a coordinator of a department.

I was raised in a working class family. No one ever said I should think about college. It was more you should learn a trade so that you don't have to dig ditches for the rest of your life. I rejected all of it and left my family at 15 and lived the next four years of my life on the streets until I ended up locked up for unsanctioned business activities (commonally termed crimal activities by the establishment).

My saving grace was that I always read--hell, interrogative reading would be more like it. I tore through and tore up everything I could find--refashioning and restor(y)ing the texts I could get my hands on. It had made me valuable on the streets b/c I could move in circles that others couldn't b/c I had the knowledge/language/culture that could be used as entree into certain circles. Of course this was probably my downfall as well in that it made me somewhat more vulnerable (I can't say why here).

Anyways--I left home when I got out. I came to a place so freaking alien and alienating--set down and worked for a year in ditches (materially and metaphorically) until I had enough scratch to enter a community college (I was a high school drop out). I would walk into the door sof the college and the place was so alien to me that I would get physically sick. Many times I left a classroom b/c I felt overwhelmed and sick. I always thought that some authority figure was going to come in and throw me out on my ass--you are not supposed to be here. I was confused--I asked a lot questions, continuously... desperate for meaning, I desired so much to know more.

Anyways--I always wonder how easily it is to look at a white male and say he is privileged and a part of the system (at the same time I say this, I remember the tribal system I was a part of on the streets. A community of 20+ people--eight of them died in the two years before I left, by the time I had a B.A. six more were dead. Could I move out and beyond so easily b/c I was white/male?)

Questions, always questions...

[Piddle]

Two quick thoughts. You're right about undergrads. They're still forming a identity of themselves in the world. In teaching inequality I've asked students to write a brief social class autobiography and many of them remark that up until that point they hadn't thought of themselves in class terms. I think for each soul I help recruit for the revolution I end up helping to form two more bodies to defend the uber rich.

Also privilege isn't easily grasped - especially one's own. Birthright affluent white academics are eerily confused about their status. I like to pass it off as them being educated beyond their intelligence but I just don't know. Sometime it simply takes an angry mob to highlight their privileges.

[sixfootsubwoofer]

I'm an artist working with issues of class and global material production. I am specifically targeting (for now) issues of privelege involving major players in the art world. Once approached, these liberal individuals are quite interested. Once they are subjected to the questions that are part of my project,however, they inevitably stiffen and are offended.

Privelege is so inextricably tied up in our current ideology that it has been obscured much in the way that issues of sexuality were centuries ago. It's perfectly acceptable to talk openly about the most intimate sexual details with someone, but to speak of their income or background is more taboo than ever. Like the Zizekian "They know what they are doing but they are doing it anyway", those priveleged players in society will admit to being priveleged, but are either too emotionally reticent or intellectually inept to dissect their own priveleges as they relate to others.

This academic game of the "privelege walk" is exactly the same sort of vapid approach to class issues as those that are now being employed in the art world. Class issues are like pets in both the academic and art worlds, and teaching undergrads about class from the inherently priveleged position of the university (and art school) is more of a tool of obfuscation than education.

[Watson Aname]

thivai abhor:

Like you, this is something I've wondered about. There is a certain amount of congruence in our stories. I was an immigrant child of working class parents. I too left and dropped out of school, spending some time on the streets. Managed to avoid jail time as much by blind luck (and police incompetence) as by being clever. Even then, in what you aptly describe as tribal society, I was set apart by reading amongst other things.

I remember a friend telling me he couldn't understand how I seemed to avoid making enemies. At the time he was slowly bleeding from a knife cut on his throat that hadn't been applied very seriously. I tried for half an hour to explain to him that it was mostly about conceiving of other possibilities. Not that violence was entirely avoidable; far from it --- but I framed my relationship with the world far differently than he did. And yes, it gave access to places he would never be accepted in.

I walked away, too, and had a bizarre experience of community college (again, as a way of bridging from high-school dropout to university). After making it through initial awkwardness, I kept going through grad school and a ph.d. Most of the time it isn't too weird now, but I never quite feel like I fit anywhere, either. There are occasionally very odd moments.

As a an educated white male in north america, I can move seamlessly in this society if I choose. I wonder if I could have made it so far from the streets if not for my gender and skin?

I still have a core of ejection of the class I now inhabit, however uneasily. I added some facial peircings a few years ago; so far as I can tell, I just wasn't comfortable fitting in too well. I guess it says something about my security in this space that I can afford to push it, even that tiny bit.

[EW]

Gosh, an "it's everything about me, me, me and my feelings" galore. Can't you people just be what you are and stop musing about it?