I’m going to read you a couple of Bible verses that have nothing to do with what I want to talk about today. I’m not trying to trick you. This is not a bait and switch. I don’t think they are technically related, and it would be more than a stretch to say that they are. But in my personal Bible study and prayer I was directed toward this verse while I was in the midst of trying to grasp how to speak about the issue of privilege – and somehow I could not help but let the two converge in my mind. It’s not fair or reasonable, but here we are. As my friend Andy says whenever he sends me something awful online, “If I had to see this then you do too.” The reading is from the 51st Psalm and it goes like this:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a generous spirit.
I think the best argument people make against the idea that they have privilege is that they have struggled and suffered too. To be clear, I don’t think this argument holds water. I don’t think it’s a good argument. But it’s the best argument: Because it makes any further conversation almost impossible. I am saying this as someone who for most of my life did not believe I had any kind of privilege, and who made this exact argument as proof of it.
In the past I have argued I don’t have privilege because I have struggled and suffered, and because I had to face adversity and work hard to get where I was – and I meant it. Saying that in the conversation about privilege allowed me to resist looking outwards at what other people have experienced, to keep myself at the center of my own story. And keeping myself at the center of my story is the surest way for me to keep from being transformed.
“I’ve struggled too” is also a powerful argument because, even if it’s unhelpful and distracting, it’s still utterly and incontrovertibly true. All people suffer. All people. Every one. Buddhists say that all life has some suffering to it. I hated that the first time I heard it. I realize more and more as I get older that I mostly hated it not because it wasn’t true but because I wanted it not to be true. I dreamt of a life in which, if I just said and did and believed all the right things, my suffering would be relieved. But that does not seem likely this side of Heaven, and maybe the Buddha has a point there. Everyone suffers. Everyone struggles. Everyone knows pain. “I’ve struggled too,” is a fact.
I shared a bit of my story last week – my story of just some of the struggles and suffering I experienced growing up. Those struggles – which were real and true and painful – were the first things I thought of the first few dozen times someone told me I had privilege. The memory of those struggles emerged instantly and acted as a potent defense from hearing what was actually being said. When I was told I had privilege, what I heard was that I’ve had it easy, that I don’t know real struggle, and that I haven’t earned the things I’ve got.
But that’s not what privilege actually means.
Privilege means that our culture, our society, is set up in such a way that benefits me in ways it does not benefit others who are not like me.
That’s all.
I live in the same neighborhood as a lot of pediatricians. Our children go to school together, which means they play together, which means we adults end up spending time together and developing friendships. So now I have a lot of doctor friends. When my child gets sick or feels off, or gets something stuck in his ear, I don’t go down to the emergency room and wait for hours and figure out how I’m going to pay for all this: I text my doctor friend and say, “Hey what do I do here?” And they text me back and tell me what’s what and help us out. Because of course they do: We’re friends and neighbors. They’ve done nothing wrong and neither have I. And if my kid is in pain, that pain is still real. And also, my life – and my child’s suffering – were navigated more easily because of where I live and where they go to school. That’s privilege, plain and simple.
Here’s how noted conservative Newt Gingrich acknowledged White privilege a few years ago: “It is more dangerous to be Black in America… it is more dangerous in that (you are) substantially more likely to be in a situation where police don’t respect you and where you could easily get killed. And I think sometimes, for Whites, it’s difficult to appreciate how real that is. It’s an everyday danger. It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this. If you are a normal White American, the truth is you don’t understand being Black in America, and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.”
I appreciate especially the recognition that my experience is not other people’s experience, and that I do not know what it’s like to be other people.
And I think here is why that Psalm from earlier connected with me. What I heard in the Psalm was a pleading: A pleading for God to work on my heart, to make it open and generous and steadfast, to not give up on me. Because I am a real piece of work if I’m being honest – and an unfinished one at that. To make this plea to God, to pray like this says that if I have any interest in experiencing the joy of God’s salvation, I need God to kindle and sustain within me the flame of generosity – a generous spirit. That means if I want to keep experiencing authentic joy, I have to look outward, to really see you, to really listen and pay attention to your life and to take you seriously.
“I’ve suffered too” is defensive and protective and couched in the fear that acknowledging the hardships of others will invalidate my own pain. It doesn’t mean to be selfish, but it is anyway. And that is not how God works in our lives for salvation. God’s salvation is found in our turning towards the world and loving it as Christ loved it: in witness and understanding and solidarity. God gives us one another, and that is the only way forward.
For the many of us who experience great privilege, God’s salvation of our souls will require us to look outward, to decenter ourselves, to listen to others’ experiences without trying to defend ourselves, to actually care about others. That is how God will begin to create in us clean hearts and place within us new and steadfast spirits.
Like Pauli Murray once said, “Yes, we must suffer with and for one another before we will be healed of the sickness of our common history, before we will be free to face one another and walk together toward a brighter future.”
Acknowledging my privilege takes nothing away from me that I didn’t need to lose in the first place. It frees me to face you, to hear you, to suffer with and for you while you do the same for me, so that we might walk together toward our shared salvation and healing.
