I'm white... so what?

I have more privilege than I realize... I'm starting to realize.

I mean, really the only thing I don't have going for me is being a man. Other than that, I'm about as privileged as they come. I'm white. I'm upper-middle class. I'm American. I'm straight. I'm a Christian. I have a college degree. I'm working on another degree. I have a great family who is also all of these things.

I think this realization comes with responsibility, but I'm still figuring out what that responsibility is (and I'm guessing that this is a process that will last a lifetime). I have all this privilege, but I don't know what to make of it or what to do with it. Most of the time, I don't even see that it's there. But it always is.

When I first started to really grasp that other people don't have all the advantages that I do I felt angry and guilty. I wanted to lash out against the man. Part of me hated my privilege. All the sudden my advantages felt like an unbearable, ugly burden. I know how ridiculous and infuriating this might sound to someone who doesn't have my advantages, but it's how I felt. More than anything, it was guilt, and that guilt was rooted in a strange sort of self-absorption.

I've come to find that feeling guilty about my privilege doesn't help the underprivileged at all; it just gives me a reason to feel sorry for myself and then feel high and mighty for being sorry. So instead, I think our privilege comes with a responsibility.

This is where it gets sticky for me. How am I supposed to responsibly use my privilege?

I read a book a while back called Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. About 2/3 of the the book went over my head, but the fraction that I did understand has stuck with me. Freire talks a great deal about the need to join the oppressed in their struggle. When we work for the marginalized instead of alongside them, we further their oppression. We may have the best of intentions for these people, fighting for them to have (what we think is) a better life. But if we go over them in this pursuit, we're no different from their oppressors. We're just more privileged people who have treated them as sub-humans. We don't need to be "a voice for the voiceless," because there's no such thing as "the voiceless." Rather, we should be a voice alongside the unheard.

So I guess I do know what to do with my privilege in abstract terms: stand with the oppressed. I just have a hard time figuring out what that practically means.

I'm working on it though. In many ways I still don't understand my privilege or know what to make of it, but I hope I do more than just write about it from my laptop in my warm bed.