The Balance of Privilege

 

First of all, I’m all over the place today. It finally started to snow at about 11:30 this morning, pulling the gray heaviness downward out of the clouds and relaxing the windless tension in the damp air.

It’s been a morning of Facebook, and there is most definitely a light-heartedness to most of the posts there today. Silly cats are back, along with non-political cartoons and miracle back-pain remedies.

(This could possibly be due to the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Yay!)

There was one post, however, that stuck out to me (which had nothing to do with the election) and I’m not sure exactly why it caught my eye so insistently, but it did.

(From the FB page Genders Together with Harris)

(post by) hooligan-nova

“All it means when people say “you’re speaking from a place of privilege” is that you’re likely to underestimate how bad the problem is by default because you are never personally exposed to that problem. It’s not a moral judgement of difficult your life is.”

 

I get it. I really do. But, here’s the thing— I can’t help but wonder why it is that someone would feel that it’s important to tell another person that they are “speaking from a place of privilege.” What’s the motivation here?

Why is the degree of someone else’s self-knowledge a matter for unsolicited correction? It smacks of self-righteousness.

Is it possible that what is offensive to the beleaguered recipient of such officious moral meddling is simply that it’s exactly that— officious moral meddling— and stems not at all from defensiveness born of guilt?

But, I didn’t really want to talk about nosy moral meddlers or self-proclaimed arbiters of wokeness. No, what struck me the most is that the very concept of ‘privilege’ seems to have gained a kind of personality or life of its own— one that I don’t think is at all wholesome. This suspicion was confirmed when I turned to the dictionary and found that the very definition had undergone a weirdly lopsided transformation. I was forced to turn to my giant hardbound Webster’s Universal dictionary to look it up. The first definition in my Webster’s is: “A right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most.” The second definition is: “A special right, immunity, or exemption granted to persons in authority or office to free them from certain obligations or liabilities.”

The notion of a ‘privileged class’ doesn’t even appear until the next entry, under “privileged”. Privilege isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we still use the word as an expression of gratitude, as in the saying, “It would be my privilege.”

What I object to is the finger-pointing; the gleeful annexation of the words “privilege” and “privileged” to be used by a gaggle of busybodies as a hostile epithet. I am appalled by the smug assumption that once a person has recognized and acknowledged their own relative position of privilege, they somehow gain the right to wag their didactic finger at those who have not achieved such a lofty position of moral correctness.

It’s discouraging to realize that we use words like “underprivileged” without ever recognizing that “privilege” is something of value which, in moral terms, ought to be equitably distributed throughout society. If we speak in terms of “privileges” rather than “privilege,” that will give us the freedom to be a bit more objective. It isn’t our awareness that some of us have more privileges than others which will enable us to be generous, kind, and humble toward one another. Even our personal awareness— that we enjoy a range of privileges granted to us by our class, our race, or our financial security— won’t automatically turn us into paragons of cultural virtue.

There is another side to the understanding of “privilege” which I want to use to balance the scales a bit. It’s used in the sense of “client-attorney privilege” and “doctor-patient privilege.” It’s what we mean when we say, “That’s privileged information.” It’s the sense of the meaning  of “privilege” that is associated with “privacy”— something shielded from public view, and considered to be protected and confidential.

Privilege can be manifested in a concern for privacy and a reluctance to impose our values on other people  (no matter how self-enlightened or “woke” we imagine our values to be) because we consider their morals to be inferior to ours.

Privileges can be earned, privileges can be granted, privileges can be balanced with other privileges.

Therefore:

I hereby grant every other person on this planet the privilege of being exempt from my value judgments, and, by virtue of my aversion to busybodies, I forthwith endow, allow, and vouchsafe to each and every aforesaid person the inalienable, absolute, and immutable right to the possession of their very own moral compass, entirely exempt from any meddlesome interference on my part. I furthermore confer upon all my fellow beings perpetual immunity from any unsolicited opinions I may have, or wish to express, about their relative state of enlightenment.