9: Power and Privilege
I don’t feel particularly powerful, but I have never been on the receiving end of the UK’s systems for controlling its citizens. Police attention bypasses me. I don’t need to deal with them, because the marks of privilege hang around me like yellow and black bands of a wasp, the signs that say to officials, “better leave this one alone, he could be troublesome for us”. But I have power. People listen to me, respectful body language is my norm.
I am a typical Quaker, white, middle class, highly educated, affluent. I have never had to worry seriously about affording any reasonable enjoyment. I assume my right to excellent health care and my ability to confront the system if it falls short of my reasonable expectations. My four children are healthy, educated in excellent schools and all of them went to good universities. And I have always assumed that these marks of privilege came to me without any detriment to others and that this was the nature of things, and that our grandchildren will, in due course, have the same opportunities and privilege.
Last week I took part in a simple exercise with a group of my peers. Our facilitator asked us to line up across the room, facing the outside windows. She posed a serious of privilege related question. If I recognised that I had been advantaged (did you go to university?), one step forward. If disadvantaged (do people move away from you on the tube?) one step back. By 8 questions in, I and most of my colleagues were up against the outside wall of the room. And we could not even see those behind us, those who had stepped back because of their life opportunities. Thy had become invisible as we advanced.
So, I am facing a dose of reality and it disturbs me very deeply. I must digest the idea that much of the things that make my experience and life have been built on something deeply wrong and that I have no simple easy way to make amends to those invisible hordes who I’ve never really seen behind me. This is a spiritual problem, and only spiritual response can lead me to right action. Action without discernment would be ineffective and stupid. Maybe there is no action in the sense of Quaker leading. Only the humbled heart can learn well.
Fred