invisible privilege

So...

This Thanksgiving I am grateful for something that also makes me a little sad.

Looking through past archives of Thanksgiving and gratitude and as lucky as I am with my social support network, I'm realizing things.

In June, I attended the national conference of this new org that I really really like (ask me about it bc it is my new favorite subject). While the primary goal was to support the organization's goals, I had an undercover objective as well, of intense networking and gaining some useful contacts for career purposes.

On the final night of the four day June conference, I chatted up a few of my new friends at their post-conference reception. I also managed to score a few coffee / informational interviews. I think it's relevant to know that I did put in a lot of effort for this: during the whole week (including pre-conference) I was super "on". Outgoing, social, sunny, optimistic. This was fun enough work, I enjoy being social, but it was definitely effort to remember everyone's names and interests and such.

However, one coffee offer of the night struck me, a few hours later after I went home.

I greeted a brand new member of the org, introduced myself and thanked them and welcomed them. We had a few minutes of conversation about our backgrounds and our goals. After the briefest of preliminaries, he offered his help with my goals and let's meet for lunch and advised me of a job opening he knew about at his former place of work. I gratefully accepted his help.

It struck me after I got home, how many levels had I skipped? How many hoops did I bypass because of my appearance? Because of my face, my clothes, and the way that I talk. Because of my participation at this paid conference. He didn't vet me. He assumed that I was worthy of his assistance, of his vouching. He was willing to share his contacts. He likely made assumptions based on my ethnicity that I had a certain type of intelligence and ambition. That I had a foundation of higher education. That I didn't have any skeletons in my past, or any criminal record. That I was of a social class that could easily and competently fit into a professional work culture, and that he could recommend me to colleagues without risk of harm or embarrassment to his reputation.

What would the difference be, if I was a different race, if I didn't grow up middle class and my speech and my clothes showed that class privilege? I could still be just as smart and just as passionate. But I might have had a lot more hoops to jump through, to prove that I was capable.

It wouldn't have been a two-minute conversation that led to an offer of help. That's what people mean when they talk about the invisible knapsack of privilege.

So it was uncomfortable to realize that I've always had this privilege, and I can easily make myself "busy" and "work hard" with the privilege I have, so it doesn't feel unearned. It certainly didn't feel like I have "saved" time, because this was extra time I had been wholly unaware of until this point. It's is invisible to us and I have always used up this time. But it's extra time because it's time that I don't have to spend to convince people that I'm worthy of their assistance. That's what is meant when people talk about the time and energy deficit that is faced by people without privilege.


Yes, I do think that I worked and put in effort for my opportunity. At the same time, I still didn't have to work as hard as I probably would've had to, had I not had my face and my privilege. I have unearned privilege but I also worked for opportunity on top of that privilege. I am grateful for the help I receive but also sad that everyone doesn't have my opportunity and privilege.

And I think it is a responsibility of those of us with outsized privilege to use some of that "extra" time to correct for these inequities in the world. At the very minimum, to spend that time learning about our own biases and ways that we are passive citizens of this unfair system, and how do we change from being passive enablers to active fighters against the unfairness.

Recommended further reading: search for "invisible knapsack" by mcintosh.  purchase beverly tatum's books, like the 20th anniversary edition that just came out. (Imagine being someone who was born in 1997 and ask if we haven't moved backwards since then.) Look up her moving walkway and smog analogies.


I hope you also spend some time thinking about the stuff you don't realize you're grateful for, and think about what you can do to correct this injustice.