Am I Privileged?

After being accepted into a leadership program at the Kansas Leadership Center in 2016, I received an email with the bios of the 30+ participants.  I scrolled quickly through the list and was instantly struck by the notion that I had stepped into the deep end of the pool.  While most came from Kansas, there were participants from Australia, South America, Canada, Europe, and across the United States.  There were college professors, counselors, and consultants from the business world.  The majority were women.  Virtually all had advanced degrees.  It was a smart group.  I was definitely in over my head.  Maybe I didn't belong in this program.

By the second afternoon of the week-long class, I felt I knew the answer to that question.  I was struggling.  The class schedule was chocked-full and there was little time to catch a mental break.  Around 4:00 pm that second day, I was watching the clock - ready for some down time.  Then from a spot near the front of the class and slightly to my right, I was jolted back into the classroom with two words: white privilege.

I missed the exchange leading up to those words, but when I heard them my first thought was, “Okay, now it’s gonna get interesting.”  I sat up a straight and dialed in my senses.  I quickly realized this wasn’t an abstract, offhand comment and that the phrase included an unspoken word: white male privilege.

The speed at which I went from curious to pissed was astounding.  A 30ish year-old Korean American woman had tossed this grenade into the room.  The evening before, I sat with her during dinner.  I had learned that she was widely travled - the first in her family born in America - and that she was educated at Harvard. 

I made a quick mental comparison.  My mom and dad grew up in poverty.  Both dropped out of school at an early age.  My mom was 16 when they were married and I was born the following year.  Daddy worked 55 hours a week for 40 years with the same company before being “downsized” out of a job at 59 years of age.  While I consider them both successful - they are extremely successful -  nothing in their lives came without hard work.

My childhood was much easier due to their determination to break that cycle of poverty.  They sacrificed so I could have piano lessons and never balked at buying us books.  I went to the community college after high school and received a vocational diploma.  I spent five years in an auto body shop before taking a job as a wildlife officer.  At 34 I went back to college and spent most of the next six years working on an associate’s degree, taking a promotion (which required a relocation) and then finishing up my undergraduate degree online.  As I was wrapping up those six years, there were a couple of semesters in which I worked full-time, taught part-time, took a full class load online, took an additional class at the community college, and tried assume some semblance of a father and husband.  There was hardly time to breath.  I was taught that hard work, sacrifice, and dedication result in success.  I still believe that to be true.

No one gave me anything.

I earned every achievement.

The accusation that “privilege” played a role in what I accomplished was impossible to consider.

Over the next days in that Kansan classroom, the words “white privilege” continued to spring up.  There were only seven or eight white males in the class.  I viewed the continued use of the term as a warning for us white guys to shut up.  It worked.

The final day we had a great discussion on why this subject repeatedly surfaced and how it impacted our group’s dynamics. I offered that we can be shut up and closed down, but questioned the cost to the group.  If we lose a perspective, we lose insight, and when we lose insight it negatively impacts our ability to make well-informed decisions.  It sounded good, but I felt as through I was grasping, trying to maintain the status quo.

I left Kansas and for much of the past year I have wrestled with the question of whether I am privileged.  I have reached the conclusion that I am.

I won’t speak for others from my gender, ethnicity, or social class.  But, these are a few of the privileges that I have personally enjoyed and from which I continue to derive benefits.

1.     I was privileged to have elementary school teachers who looked like me.  A recent John Hopkins University study found that having one black school teacher between the 3^rd and 5^th grades results in a 29% increase in high school graduation rates for African American students.  For very low income black boys, the results are even greater.  All of my elementary school teachers were white.  One was even male.

2.     I was privileged to have my father in my childhood home.  The impact of growing up in a fatherless home can adversely affect every aspect of a child’s development and adult life.  According to numbers from 2015, 25% of non-Hispanic white homes were without a father.  42% of Latino households and 66% of African American homes were fatherless.

3.     I am privileged to be male.  Even after the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, women still only earn 79 cents for each dollar earned by men.  This number is the average across the United States.  In many states, the wage gap is much greater.  

4.     I was (and continue to be) privileged to have a broad network of friends and mentors with professional jobs.  Perhaps more important is the access I have to my friends’ professional networks.  Studies have shown that these extended relationships are key to finding jobs and advancing to higher level positions. 

5.     I am privileged to drive or walk down the street without arousing suspicion. North Carolina has collected traffic stop data since 2002.  In a report of the analysis of this data, a University of North Carolina article shows that black men are searched twice as often than white men during traffic stops.

6.     I am privileged to speak English.  The inability to speak or read English in our country removes the speaker from reams of information from traffic signs to healthy lifestyle literature to the ability to fill out job applications.  There are some who assume that someone who doesn’t speak English lacks intelligence.  And even if good English spoken, but with an accent, those same assumptions arise.

The list could go on.  Nothing from that list guaranteed me success.  It still required effort on my part.  At least that's the story I tell myself.

Perhaps I made this too personal.  I felt stung and dismissed when I heard those accusations of privilege last summer.  My initial emotional response was to push back and offer denials.  It has taken the better part of a year to sort through the emotions to the point where I can begin to consider this issue in a logical fashion.

But what if it isn’t about me?  What if the real story is the structures that we as white men have carefully constructed over the years to give us, our friends, and our families (especially our sons) a competitive edge?  Even those of us concerned about racial disparity and discrimination may still benefit from those structures, and unconsciously contribute to their maintenance. 

I have arrived at a point that I can admit I am privileged.  Doors have been opened because of my gender, skin color and social status.  Yet, that settled nothing in my mind.  What if this privilege is like a super hero's powers and can be used for either good or evil? If that is the case, now I have to consider how to use that privilege in a selfless way that benefits my community - my entire community - and not just me.  Or do I set this power aside and sit quietly as I did in Kansas?

But, I'm truly nagged by these social structures that I may unconsciously continue to construct and maintain.  How do I help address those structures that not just gives power to the powerful, but takes power from the powerless? That is the most difficult question of all.