What is privilege?
We are each born into a body. We are also each born into a culture - or several overlapping cultures - and each of those cultures has a judgement about the relative worth of our specific body. The attributes of gender, race, body type, physical abilities, financial status, and the ways in which we process the world influence how others treat us and what they expect of us. These attributes - some of which are obvious at birth, and some of which emerge later - will impact how our parents, our families, and our society feel about our very existence.
Within our culture, some of these attributes are seen as “default” or “normal” and others are seen as a divergence from the norm. I grew up in a world in which the default human is an able-bodied, financially-abundant, white, Christian, English-speaking, cisgendered, straight male. Anyone who exists outside of this set of categories will face challenges which are unseen and unnoticed by people who have simply never existed outside of this narrow band of privilege.
People who are seen as the norm are able to choose whether or not to engage with the struggles of marginalized people. Privilege is the ability to make that choice. People who want to support and connect with marginalized communities will often strive to be an ally.
What is an ally?
Allyship is the process through which we become collaborators, accomplices, and co-conspirators with those who have less cultural privilege than ourselves. According to the ACLU of Southern California, allyship is “a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency and accountability with marginalized individuals and/or groups of people.” Through allyship, we can create connections with people who were given a more challenging set of identity circumstances than ourselves.
An ally is not defined by the ally themselves, but by the community with which they are engaging. In other words, you may decide that you want to be an ally, but only the marginalized group that you are aligning with can tell you if you have succeeded. An ally is not a static identity, but an ongoing approach of striving to use our specific nexus of privileges to support more marginalized people and groups within our larger community.
Through allyship, you can build relationships with groups of people who were dealt different hands than yourself. As a collaborator, you can contribute to their projects. As an accomplice, you find out what happens when you allow marginalized people to take the reins and set the agenda. As a co-conspirator, you can work towards making your community a safer and more comfortable place for everyone. The connections that you make throughout this process can benefit your own well being and mental health in several key ways: through increasing your compassion and your understanding of the world, by learning to accept others and by learning to accept yourself.
Compassion and understanding
Compassion and understanding are ways in which we can expand our small, individual existence. By empathizing with another type of person, we can see our own place in the world more clearly. Sometimes this process can be painful. Marginalized people often carry with them pain that is unknown and unseen by those with more privilege. Empathizing means to literally feel some of that pain - and as humans, our tendency is to generally avoid pain. Even worse than feeling the pain of another person is the recognition of our own role in a system which causes such pain to others. We may take actions which perpetuate these systems or we may passively benefit from the injustice.
Although it can hurt, increasing our compassion and understanding of the world makes us more resilient beings. Compassion and understanding strengthen our connections to others. They help us to live lives that may be more difficult, but are also more meaningful and fulfilling.
You can increase your compassion and understanding by learning about the history of the marginalized groups in your life. Although asking others to educate you is generally considered to be “bad allyship” because of the burden it places on marginalized people, you can follow your curiosity and ask for recommendations of books, movies, youtube videos or art from your marginalized friends. Then you can think about who this media was produced for and why.
Acceptance of others
Connection to others makes life worth living. At the same time, we have limited time and energy, and our tendency is often to withdraw into groups of those most like us, especially if we harbor hidden fear or judgements about other types of people. This unacknowledged fear and judgement can be corrosive to our sense of self.
The experiences of marginalized people often seem implausible or irrelevant to those with privilege. The most helpful way to ally with someone is to believe them when they tell you about their lives. When someone takes the time and effort to describe to you what it’s like to live in their body, keep in mind that if you have a different type of body, you will simply never experience the challenges that they do. If you want to ask questions about their experience, do so with a willingness to learn - after all, you have never experienced what it is like to exist in their body, so you simply don’t know what life is like for them. Ask questions if the questions support your goal of increased connection to that person, but don’t ask them to speak for their entire group - each of us has only our own experience of existing within our own body. Ask permission to ask questions if those questions might cause them pain.
Acceptance of self
We will all face moments and situations in which we, too, will experience some form of marginalization. At the very minimum, if we are lucky, we will grow old and face the judgments of a society that values youth. Allyship can help us accept those aspects of ourselves which are not celebrated by our culture.
To some extent, we all contribute to the oppression of marginalized groups - whether or not we belong to those groups. We live in a sexist, racist, agist and ableist society and we were raised alongside cultural messages that consistently value specific genders, races, ages and physical abilities. As a result, we will all have trace amounts of sexism, racism, ageism and ableism wired into our understanding of the world.
When we are unable to accept the unfriendly gaze that our culture has for a particular set of circumstances, we can experience shame, isolation and stress. Our efforts to “be a good person” may simply not take into account the circumstances of others and when this happens, we will prioritize the set of beliefs imparted to us by our culture.
One way out of this often well-intentioned trap is through humility. If someone is courageous enough to point out a way in which your own intrinsic sexism, racism, ageism, or ability impacts them, humility will help you reframe the encounter. Instead of getting defensive because someone is accusing you of not being a good person, try looking at it as an opportunity to be more connected to the common human experience.
By acknowledging your privilege, you can put it to work helping you expand your perspective and create connections. These perspectives and connections will make you more at ease in your body and in your life. They may even make the world a tiny bit more just.