I didn’t earn my mother’s favor: an essay about privilege
Mother always liked me best.
That sounds like a schoolyard taunt, but in our family, it was actually true.
Mom certainly loved my brother, but she liked me best. I’ve never said those words out loud, but for more reasons than I’ll detail here, I know now they are true.
My brother knew it, too. My father certainly knew it. The truth of it damaged our whole family system, including me. But I’ve only lately come to terms with it, which was necessary, because it’s true.
I didn’t choose this favored status, of course. I didn’t earn it. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t know whether I wanted it, because life would have been so much different for me if it weren’t true. But it was.
My favorite-son, firstborn status didn’t mean I haven’t worked. I rehearsed long and hard to be the star of my high school musical. I went to college (the school my mother preferred), and polished innate skills, and kept at the same career for more than 40 years. No one gave me my secure retirement and my intact reputation. I earned them. But all of that was supported and encouraged by the fact that Mom knew I could do it and cheered on each accomplishment.
Not so much for my brother. The fact that his life was darker and sadder is likely due to several circumstances more complicated than my mom’s pattern of putting me on a pedestal. But there was no way for him to experience the favored position I took for granted. Surely it was a major factor in his inability to succeed.
My mother liked me best. I don’t feel guilty about that, because it’s not my fault. But today the fact of my privilege makes me sad.
It just is
My friend Adrian Williams and I were talking about privilege after he helped me write last week’s post. He compares privilege to the position of right-handed people.
“It’s a right-handed world,” he said. His best example is most college classrooms in America, populated with chairs equipped with fold-up writing desks, almost all of them designed to support the right arm of the right-handed students who will use them. Left-handed class members who arrive too late to grab a few of the left-hand desks in the back are out of luck. Their arms will ache after taking notes for an hour with their elbows hanging off the desk.
“I would never have thought about this if I didn’t have left-handed family members,” Adrian said. Me either, except that I married a left-handed gal who has been forced to adapt to scissors and oven mitts and coffee mugs uncomfortable for her simply because they don’t fit the way her body naturally works. It was a surprise to me to see that our can opener is easier for me to use than for her.
I don’t feel guilty about it. It’s not my fault. It just is.
We right-handed people didn’t earn our ease. It just is. We needn’t feel guilty about it, but now and then (especially if our spouse is left-handed!) it’s nice when we admit it.
A faster track
That’s the way it is with so many kinds of privilege. We didn’t earn our place in society by virtue of our birth family’s status. We didn’t earn all the economic and educational advantages that are ours because we were born in Indiana instead of India, in the suburbs instead of the inner city. We take for granted the benefits that come to us from family and our community’s culture. That’s natural, because our privilege is like the air all around us. It just is.
Can people with our privilege fail? Of course. Can people without it succeed? Look at Hollywood stars and high-paid professional athletes for just some of the answers. But those examples won’t unravel the fabric of the support system that propels some of us forward on a faster track than happens for others.
Just admit it
I know a white guy who earned his doctorate at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. As it turns out, he formed friendships with a number of African-American fellow students there. One night several of them were driving through the small college town when a police officer stopped them. My friend was sitting in the back seat, and he reported that the officer’s whole demeanor changed when the flashlight beam into the car revealed his lone pale face in the group.
Later his friends told him, “We don’t expect you to feel guilty because you’re privileged. We just need you to admit it.”
Too often I’ve silently jumped to the defensive when confronted with the subject of white privilege. But no one is asking me to defend my status. It doesn’t diminish me or my talent or my hard work. But it does enhance them. Meanwhile, those without my privilege must overcome obstacles most of us white people never considered. It’s time to consider them.
Many, many examples
There’s just no room here to document the uncounted ways most Black Americans experience lack of basic privilege: the privilege of driving down the street without fear of being stopped for no reason, the privilege of going to grade school without receiving sneers and ugly name calling from classmates who know nothing about me except the way I look, the privilege of scanning the aisles of a convenience store without being followed by the owner expecting me to shoplift. And those experiences, virtually universal among Black Americans, are only the beginning.
Those willing to consider the fact of privilege can find many more examples in published sources. Some that have helped me:
“My White Friend Asked Me on Facebook to Explain White Privilege. I Decided to
Be Honest,” by Lori Lakin Hutcherson. Read this for free, where it’s posted at Yes! magazine’s website.
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, by Austin Channing Brown. You can read this on one snowy winter afternoon, or easily over the course of a week.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. Or watch the movie with the same title. The film is emotionally wrenching, but it only begins to convey the scope of racial injustice in our justice system, illuminated by Stevenson’s book.
The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, by Jemar Tisby. Everything on this list made me uncomfortable, the last one maybe the most.
Figuring it out
Among other experiences and conversations, these resources have opened my eyes, but I don’t claim to be an expert. I don’t feel superior because I’ve started coming to terms with facts that many others don’t yet see. I’m not better than anyone else. As I said last week, I’m just trying to figure this out.
And I’m still deciding what I can do about what I’m beginning to understand. I want to share ideas from others about that question, probably in next week’s post here.
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Photos by Jon Tyson and Lan Nguyen on Unsplash
