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I’ve been giving quite a bit of thought to both Champagne and Benezdrine’s post on privilege being “bullshit” and Britni’s response to it. My opinion falls on the side of Britni’s argument, and it’s not only from my exposure to feminist theory, it’s also due to classes I’ve taken on serving the underprivileged (hey, there’s that word with a prefix!) in the library. It’s difficult to see our privilege as we’re surrounded mostly by others in our same situation. If we’re middle class and white, we tend to find ourselves around other people who are at least one or the other of those things.

In the classes I took on serving the underprivileged, the point was made that values and experiences are so completely different. When you’re poor, you focus on learning “the system” so you can get the assistance you need (doled out by people of the middle class usually), this takes precedence over things like reading for personal enrichment. The middle class, however, has the luxury to make education and upward mobility a priority. They have enough resources that they don’t have to spend their time worrying how to get medical assistance with no money or insurance, or how to get enough food when their job doesn’t pay enough. The middle class, blind to their advantages, look down on the working class as not trying to better themselves when that’s not the reality.

In the public library, this tends to play out in the following way: the librarians are by majority middle class. They have had the opportunity to go to graduate school for their degree and they live in middle class neighborhoods and are, by vast majority, white. The paraprofessionals at the library vary from middle class to working class. The library patrons are usually working class or middle class, but how they use the library is often very different. (And Champers, you’re right that this is not an absolute, nothing is, but it’s very often true.) For the middle class, like myself, the library is chiefly a place where you can get books and knowledge to help further yourself (or for entertainment) and it’s a bonus that you can get other materials like DVDs and CDs. For a working class person, the library is chiefly a place where you can get internet access, which you can’t afford at home and ever-increasingly need to apply for jobs that don’t even require use of the computer at work. DVDs and other entertainment are important because you can’t afford it otherwise, and hell, being underprivileged you quite possibly need the escapism more than the middle class who can afford other forms of entertainment.

Looking at privilege is a difficult thing. In reading the articles that Britni linked, the one on white privilege made me really uncomfortable at many points. It’s hard to admit that you have advantages due to the lottery of your birth. A feeling of guilt often comes along with this. But it’s important to look at so you can work on bridging those advantages and bringing people of various classes together, not keeping them set apart. Of course, being of the dominant class there’s an impetus to keep the status quo, after all you benefit.

In thinking about this before I started writing, I realized a place where my privilege is showing – computer knowledge. I get frustrated with people who come to the library and need their hands held through basic tasks on the computer. I think to myself, “It’s 2010! Who doesn’t know how to use a computer or surf the ‘net?? Why haven’t we all learned by now? Why aren’t they asking me reference questions – it’s what I trained for!” This shows my privilege by the fact that as a middle class, white woman I have been exposed to computers in my office jobs and at college and I’ve had the money to purchase my own computers and internet service to use at home. However, others are not as fortunate and they rely on the library to help bridge that gap for them. By my looking down on those who are still new to using computers in this day and age I’m helping to keep them down – if they can see my disdain at helping them, they’re less likely to seek my help – and therefore less likely to get help and get the opportunity to rise up to the level of knowledge I have. In this situation, yes, I am a bit of an asshole. Not intentionally, but the whole point of discussing privilege is to make me aware of this so I don’t continue to act like an asshole and in the process help keep others down.

Champers, as an Englishman, I would think that you’d be a bit more aware of class differences than an American. The class system tries to blur itself in the US, but it’s still very much here, in the UK it’s more overt. In a class system (be it based on socieoeconomic status, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) the dominant class has an interest in keeping things the same. This will blind them to their privilege – however I think where Champers and others like him go wrong is that they then take this concept to be a personal attack – when it’s not personal at all. I’m not saying people with privilege (in many ways myself among them) are simply (and in all situations) assholes, not at all. They are people who are fortunate who need to become aware of how they are fortunate in ways that are not rational or fair.

Looking at one’s privilege is uncomfortable. It’s hard to acknowledge the unfairness in the system when that unfairness benefits you. The goal of talking about privilege is not to berate those who have it, the goal is consciousness raising (much like the feminists of the 70s) so that we can see where our advantages are creating disadvantages for others.

I think for those on the other side of privilege (such as when I, as a woman, read the article on male privilege) it’s obvious the myriad subtle (and not subtle) ways in which they’re oppressed. They live it every day. It’s easier to acknowledge when privilege oppresses rather than benefits you. When you try to point these things out to the dominant class, they get defensive. I think Champers is an intelligent and well-meaning person who strives to be decent to all. However, his privilege still blinds him at times. (And again, this does not personally make you an asshole, Champers. This is just something to examine. I may act like an asshole sometimes due to my privilege of computer knowledge, but ultimately I’m someone who strives to treat all equally. I strive to make library service accessible and as helpful to everyone as possible. But my privilege does blind me.)

The biggest privilege of all is the privilege to not see the privilege you have. Those who don’t have it, have no choice but to see they don’t have it. Champers, it’s pretty fucking ridiculous to compare the “female privilege” of being bought drinks at a bar to the male privilege of earning enough to do so easily. It’s absurd to say that because I’m seen as a sexual object (being female and all) and can then get out of speeding tickets (not that I’m hot enough to do that. I’m not. Unattractive, or average, women have less privilege than attractive ones.) that this is a wonderful thing.

Champers, by focusing on the ways in which you don’t have privilege, you help perpetuate the ways in which you do have privilege. By focusing on, “Look at me! I’m a white male and I have to bust my ass to feed my family!” helps distract us from the fact that a black man in the same situation will have to deal with a myriad of other difficulties and oppressions on top of that. By arguing that privilege doesn’t exist, you are helping perpetuate it and keep your place of dominance – whatever dominance you manage to have even though you’re not way at the top of the dominant group. The point of talking about privilege is not to confine us to where we were born, but to make all of us aware of how we oppress others. Practically all of us have some sort of privilege to look at – some of us more than others. Whining about how men don’t have the option to have babies (oh poor men!) helps cloud the fact that the ability of having babies comes with myriad disadvantages in life. It’s interesting that those who supported your post are by and large – like you – the people who have the most to gain by keeping the status quo.

You’re not bad people, but you are blind. Time to wake up. We’re not trying to berate you, we’re trying to help you see the folly of your ways so you can join us as an ally.