I remember the time I first heard the word “privilege.” I had just finished up my high school senior year exams and was volunteering with my middle school art teacher. I learned a lot during that month of work, but most of the lessons I learned didn’t resonate with me until a year later. I worked with another girl in the art room, and during our lunch breaks she would talk about issues regarding race and the oppression faced by people of color. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand that the criminal justice system isn’t always fair; I didn’t understand that the police don’t always treat people with respect; I didn’t understand that widespread racism is still a problem. The one time I was pulled over the officer smiled and offered to pump up my tires. I just didn’t understand. My coworker was obviously frustrated by my ignorance, and one day she yelled at me about my need to check my privilege.
I remember how angry, how attacked I felt that day. Privilege? I had worked incredibly hard in school to get myself into Duke. I had survived two abusive relationships. How was that privilege? I told my coworker as much and wrote her off as an overzealous activist.
I think about that conversation often. It took me over a year to realize how right she had been and how utterly *privileged* I have been and continue to be. I have never feared being killed by the police for walking down the street the wrong way; I have never been persecuted for my sexuality; I have never wondered where my next meal was coming from. I have never faced these injustices.
When people hear the word “privilege” for the first time, they often feel attacked – “Don’t you dare say my life hasn’t been hard.” I know I was one of those people. But the concept of privilege doesn't exist with the goal of telling you that your life has been easy. Privilege, simply put, means there are certain injustices in the world that you yourself have not experienced or will never experience.
“What are these injustices?” you may demand. But that’s just the thing; privilege is blinding. If you have to ask what injustices occur in your world – against people of color, against women, against LGBTQIA people, against the poor, etc. – chances are you are coming from a place of privilege. A horse wearing blinders isn’t likely to see the commotion on the sides of the street; it sees only the open road ahead.
To some degree, we all have blinders on, and it takes real work to be able to look past them. It is easy to say that inequality doesn’t exist in your society when you yourself do not suffer from that same inequality. It is easy to attribute problems that a community faces to that community’s perceived ineptitude. It is easy to do these things because it makes us feel as though we are absolved of responsibility and of blame. It’s their fault right?
We don’t like to be told we are wrong, especially at Duke. Being wrong feels like being a failure. We were all those kids in high school who shot our hands into the air when the teacher asked a question and we fed on the praise we received when right. We were taught to always have an answer, and that not knowing was not acceptable. That’s how we got in to Duke. But it is precisely that mentality that makes it so difficult for us to understand our privilege. Because having privilege means that we need to stop talking, sit down, and not be the first to raise our hands. It means giving people of color and other oppressed groups the opportunity to speak about the problems they face without our uninformed voices drowning them out. It means not writing articles about how oppressed people oppress themselves when you aren't a member of the oppressed. It means respecting trigger warnings and requests for you to use certain terminology. It means listening.
We need to listen in order to learn, but there is nothing to listen to when your own voice joins the chorus of millions of others trying to drone out the minority voice. No one can control the millions of other voices, but you can control your own. You can choose to listen to what marginalized groups say. You can choose to do the work to attempt to grasp what that group is feeling, with the recognition that you’ll never truly understand. And while we are blessed to live in a country where free speech is the law, recognize the great responsibility that comes with that freedom. True, no one is forcing you to be a responsible stakeholder in our community. You do indeed have the right to believe and say whatever hurtful things you choose. You have that right. But that doesn’t mean you should.
So before you make generalizations about groups of people of whom you are not a part, ask yourself why. Why do you feel the need to insert your voice into the conversation when you have done little or no work to try to understand the people you are condemning?
Listening instead of talking may make you feel attacked, or feel like you are at fault. I know I felt that way at first. But just remember that the anger or frustration you may be feeling comes nowhere close to the struggles that marginalized people face. You are experiencing a mere bit of what they always experience.
Writing this I realize I am writing from a place of privilege. People of color have expressed these same sentiments a hundred times over, and much more eloquently than I. Yet it is my naïve hope that someone will read this and reconsider. It took me 18 years, some painful conversations, and a lot of listening to even become aware of the fact that I was wearing blinders. Looking past them was hard because it meant the world was not as I had thought it to be. But I would much rather be living in a world where inequality is recognized and people are taking strides to correct it instead of a world where that inequality is written off as a figment of imagination. And sometimes, the most helpful thing you can do is to sit down and listen.
Dana Raphael is a Trinity junior. Her column will run bi-weekly in the fall.Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
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