Check Your Privilege
By Richard A. Robinson, Ph.D., Hackley English Department Chair
On March 28, 2017, African American journalist April Ryan said, “I was roadkill today.” She was discussing her attempt to ask then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer how the White House would deal with the House Committee’s investigation of alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia. Spicer cut her off, accused her of trying to smear Trump, scolded her for appearing “disgusted,” and told her, “Stop shaking your head.” If she had an agenda, it was that of Republican John McCain, but no one scolds him. Many women have observed no one would silence a white male journalist this way. Many men have said, “Nonsense.”
The silencing of women’s voices — and others — keeps coming up. At an Admissions Open House in 2016, I offered a presentation on Margaret Atwood’s poem, “Spelling.” The poem depicts the historical silencing of women’s voices, comparing women’s writing with witchcraft and suggesting that dominant discourses have regarded women’s words as dangerous subversions to be contained at all costs, much as men gagged witches they burned at the stake.
I chose Atwood’s poem in response to the political climate; after all, if literature does not connect with life why does it matter? I expected lively interest. I did not expect silence as I spoke in the PAC [Performing Arts Center]. I know what respectful silence for a speaker sounds like: one hears faint observations sotto voce, stifled coughs, the stir of bodies seeking comfort in uncomfortable chairs. But this was the tense silence of held breath, anxious watchfulness, bodies at attention.
After the faculty presentations, I made my way to my classroom to discuss Hackley with families on tour. I chatted with men and women about my talk, much as I had in the past. But this time, women far outnumbered men.
A good number of women and some men thanked me for showing that Hackley fosters an environment where their daughters will not only learn, but also take ownership of their voices. We shared titles of poems, books, and TED Talks. An eighth-grade girl solemnly congratulated me for fighting the good fight.
But some mothers and daughters were much less outspoken — even wary. They pointedly stepped away from husbands and fathers and fellow tour-group members to tell me in subdued tones how much they appreciated my talk.
These conversations unnerved me more than the silence in the PAC. Here were women speaking to me almost voicelessly to thank me — a man — for speaking out for a woman’s right to her voice. Where had their voices gone?
Some of these cautious mothers and daughters were bolder and rolled their eyes or nodded towards husbands and fathers standing at a distance in frustration or discomfort. They would say, just loudly enough to reach the men, “I wish some men — cough! — understood what you said today.” “Grand!” I thought, “Just what I need to do: start marital strife.” One man glared at me with ill-concealed hostility, as if blaming me for what once would have been called “getting the womenfolk riled-up.”
But I was not creating a problem: I had stepped into one. These women felt contained four decades after Atwood wrote the poem. “Voiceless? Nonsense,” the husbands’ crossed arms and impatiently tapping feet insisted. “Of course she has a voice. We don’t have a problem.” But she wouldn’t have spoken to me as she did if she thought she had a voice. That’s a problem.
I also realized these women would not have spoken warily in front of others on tours if they had not feared their feminism would be condemned. That’s a problem.
Finally, I realized that even those who praised my “fighting the good fight” reminded me that the fight isn’t over. As any feminist will tell you, a male dominated discourse will deny the problem.
When my wife and I were minutes married, my grandmother told us, “Never go to sleep angry at each other, and always remember that if one of you has a problem, both of you have a problem.” The first bit of advice is clear: so that problems cannot grow, you must communicate and not normalize anger. The second bit has a side that goes beyond teamwork: if one of you has a problem with the relationship, the other owes it to him or her to recognize it as his or her problem, too. If one person feels silenced, the other has a duty to understand and to help. There is no saying, “Nonsense, we don’t have a problem. You don’t have a problem. You just think you have a problem.” The concerns of others are not immaterial or imaginary.
I’m not here to offer marriage counseling. My grandmother’s rules are rules for good relationships: respect and communicate, and know that if one of you has a problem, you both have a problem — or your relationship will suffer. Hackley’s mottos — “Enter here to be and find a friend,” and “Together we help one another” — both point in the same direction. We are in relationships and owe each other understanding and support.
We should recognize that we are in relationships with the members of our various communities, cities, states, and nation. We know we should love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31) and know that even someone we meet in our travels is our neighbor and deserves help (Luke 10:25–37). If they have a problem, we have a problem. Martin Luther King reminded us of this when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
To behave as if we are “tied in . . . an inescapable network of mutuality” is not easy. That people so intimately tied as husband and wife may fail to respect and help each other shows how hard it is. Still, one step is for those of us who experience privilege — because of gender, wealth, race, sexual orientation, or other reasons — to seek perspective on our actions. As a philosopher in my eleventh grade class puts it, “We need to check our privilege.”
Checking our privilege begins in learning to hear ourselves and to recognize when we are ignoring or deflecting a problem — one that makes us uncomfortable because it challenges our socially constructed authority or morality or entitlement to benefits.
We need to hear ourselves when we deny a concern about equity without stopping to present evidence. “She says she’s voiceless? Nonsense. Of course she has a voice. We don’t have a problem.” Here are four denials without a stick of evidence. This happens all the time. While the Pew Research Center and other groups report that women — particularly blacks and Latinas — are paid at a lower rate than men doing the same work and have lower lifetime earnings, some white men call this nonsense. Speaking from a position of privilege, they cannot conceive that anyone suffers injustice, that they are blind to it, or that they may have failed to remedy it; they just dismiss the charge without thought. If you call out nonsense without evidence, check your privilege.
We need to hear ourselves when we deny a concern about equity by cherry-picking. When faced with data that women are paid at a lower rate than men, some argue this is because women typically work in jobs that pay less. While this is true, this argument ignores that the Pew study and others compare men and women in the same jobs. More important, it fails to ask why women still work primarily in jobs that pay less. Unlike flat denial, this answer requires thought, but dishonestly cherry-picks to avoid inconvenience. If you cherry-pick, check your privilege.
We need to hear ourselves when we accuse someone of being unreasonable for challenging discrimination. I have heard liberals, conservatives, men, women, gays and straights, members of all religions, and people of all races described with phrases like “it’s that time of the month, what did you expect from her?” and “those people always want it all now” and “those people exaggerate” and “they’re so sensitive; they can’t take a joke.” Such words turn guilt or discomfort into the fault of the victim. If you use such phrases, check your privilege. Also, in a half-century I have never heard anything truthful said about “those people.” If you say it, check your privilege.
We need to hear ourselves when we accuse someone of ignoring real problems and dwelling on non-essentials. At a Christmas party, I heard a father castigate his son for “wasting” efforts on gay rights when there are more important issues. Pausing to ask, “You’re not gay, are you?” he explained that while homophobia is a problem, it’s not a major problem unless you’re gay. So much for compassion — and for the idea that “[i]njustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If you hear yourself accusing someone of missing the real problem, check your privilege.
We need to hear ourselves when we hastily, negatively generalize communities in order dismiss their concerns. In 2008, Barack Obama dismissed working-class voters in failed industrial towns saying, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them. . . .” Obama wrote off, silenced, contained this constituency for all of his presidency. And then liberals were shocked by the 2016 election. You can’t ignore people. And while Hillary Clinton criticized Obama for his being “elitist” and “out of touch,” she dismissed the same people when she said, “You . . . could put half of Trump’s supporters into . . . the basket of deplorables.” If you negatively generalize people, check your privilege.
We need to hear ourselves when we blame “outside agitators” for stirring up trouble we have not noticed. In 1963 Martin Luther King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting segregation. A group of ministers condemned King as an outsider causing trouble. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he explains that he came to protest at the invitation of the Birmingham chapter of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. In a half-century I have never heard of a protest blamed on outsiders that did not reflect a real local problem. If you blame outsiders for riling folks up, check your privilege.
We need to hear ourselves when we accuse a group of seeking “special treatment” or “special rights.” Certainly some individuals seek unfair consideration, but too often the charge is leveled to dismiss a claim of injustice. If you hear yourself making this argument, check your privilege.
What you find when you check your privilege is that you have failed to imagine another’s circumstances. But just by checking, you begin to cultivate imaginative sympathy for the views of others: you begin to live in what King called a “network of mutuality, . . . a single garment of destiny.” We all need to check our privilege, because ‘[w]hatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
One more thing. I heard this one quite recently. If you hear yourself telling someone they are not suffering an injustice because their group no longer suffers discrimination, check yourself.
This is the text of a Chapel Talk offered to Hackley students on April 4, 2017.
