Why is Thad Glad?

On a Saturday in September, I felt great on my semi-regular weekend bike ride through prairie trails in the northern Chicago suburbs. I enjoy reflecting on life during these rides in nature. It was a beautiful sunny day in the low eighties. I had not exercised on Friday and had gotten a good night sleep. I felt rested and energized.  I sped along almost effortlessly and found myself thinking about ‘privilege.’ 

Maybe you too have noticed the word ‘privilege’ gaining prominence in our language over the past few years and especially now, as America reckons with issues of identity and equality focused mostly on race. 

My first and negative reaction to the word privilege was that it was Orwellian doublespeak used to influence public opinion. For me, it seemed like a deliberate effort to shift the focus of historic injustice toward people who had seemingly accrued unearned social standing, mostly white males like me. I compared this linguistic maneuver with some classics like switching from the now pejorative political descriptor of ‘liberal’ to ‘progressive’ or the use of the phrase ‘alternative facts’ for the President’s lies.  Admitting privilege seemed like a call to admit that I am a bad person and that I am responsible for injustice.

The funny thing is that while the concept of privilege was new to me, it is not new at all. Peggy McIntosh wrote about it in the 1980’s and her article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack seems to be a bit of a classic. I scored forty-nine out of fifty white privileges listed. 

The concept of unearned privilege goes against my accepted view of the world.  The Unites States (US) is the greatest and freest country in the world. We were uniquely founded on the ideal that all people are created equal. I believe in personal responsibility and equality of opportunity. I think that most adverse social consequences are a result of a lack of personal responsibility. I also believe that people can overcome adversity through hard work and determination. 

You might argue that my belief in personal responsibility is a result of cultural brainwashing and is further evidence of my privilege. Maybe. I would add that it is also based on personal experience.  I think I first made the link between effort and results through weightlifting then sports, school, and work. Consistently showing up and trying hard leads to success. The US is a meritocracy and I had empirical evidence to support that belief.

I still prefer the comfort of the meritocracy narrative.  Though, I have noticed that the narrative has been cracking in my mind for a while.  The cracks are the result of my growing awareness of difficulties faced by people who live Chicago’s low-income minority communities. I have become more aware of how some people who live in certain communities of color face unresolved social disparities like gang violence¹ with murders up 50% in 2020, mass incarceration, persistent poverty, and improving but poor performing schools. 

Crack #1:  The first crack emerged in 2012 when I heard  Paul Tough interviewed on National Public Radio (NPR) and then read his book How Children Succeed.  The book describes issues that affect educational outcomes in distressed communities.  Most impactful to me was data that links Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) with negative adult outcomes – the more ACEs one has, the higher correlation to bad health and bad social outcomes. Psychologists had establish a link between stress and both cognitive and emotional activities, ‘…children who grow up in in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments, and harder to follow directions,’ all of which hinders performance at school and in life. Tough shared compelling Chicago stories that linked childhood trauma around violence, poverty, and sexual abuse that led to depression and withdrawal in some people and violence and bad behavior in others.  In comparing Tough’s stories with the difficulties that my children faced, it was clear that children in some inner-city environments do not have the same equality of opportunity as my kids.  (For a list of ACE’s and more information visit Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Crack #2:  Because I have primarily lived in monochromatic upper middle-class communities and my personal and professional circles lack significant diversity, I have very little experience seeing or understanding the effects of racism. Ross Gay’s Some Thoughts On Mercy published  in the Sun in 2013, which describes his experience with racism, was an eye opener for me.  This article was probably my first awareness of the all too common experience of driving while black and other acts of bias and racism that people of color face.  

Crack #3: Te-Nahasi Coates’ The Case for Reparations in the Atlantic exposed government sanctioned and socially embraced systematic racism in Chicago. As a product of public schools and a history major in college, I am surprised about how unaware I have been of prevalent discriminatory practices.

Random Cracks: While my top three cracks have had the most impact on my thinking, there have been others. I learned on a podcast interview that the parents of Senator Cory Booker, who is younger than me, enlisted the help of a white couple to purchase their house in my home state of New Jersey to avoid housing discrimination. I learned from NPR that there was a cross burning in nearby and now upscale Deerfield, Illinois around 1962 as racial tension flared due to the prospect of a developer who planned to sell houses to African Americans. I learned from a Malcom Gladwell podcast that Woodrow Wilson re-segregated the Civil Service. I encountered Martin Luther King’s 1966 quote, “I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hateful as I’ve seen here in Chicago.” I learned that low income minority zip codes in Chicago have life expectancies that are sixteen years lower than those in more affluent and more white neighborhoods located just a few miles away.

I think about the timing of civil rights legislation in relation to my life span.  African Americans did not have true legal protections against discrimination until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I was born in 1965. It still surprises me to believe that anybody older than me lived when discrimination was legal.

Despite much progress, the events of the past few years indicate that more progress needs to be made. I had been inclined to think systematic racism cannot still exist and then hear reports that Ferguson Missouri’s police force actively targeted African American residents for traffic violations to fund local government. I think about the recent list of people killed by police that should not have been, including George Floyd. I know these examples may be at the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I also know that other groups face discrimination and that the iceberg that many of us ignore is the genocide of many Native Americans cultures. While it was not performed with the efficiency and central planning of the Holocaust, it led to the devastation of native cultures, a fact likely understated by the phenomena of victors writing history. I do not think we can fix the past but hope we can fix the future.

In recent diversity and inclusion training at work, our instructor compared privilege to tail winds.  As a bike rider, I know about the impact of the wind.  On that Saturday bike ride, I was flying down the trail because I was aided by a tail wind.  When I reached the turnaround point, I had to peddle much harder to counteract the opposing force of a head wind. 

In thinking about my life, I did not face the head winds of prejudice, discrimination, or poverty.  I was born an able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual white male. I am reasonably intelligent and athletic. I have always lived in safe neighborhoods and was raised by high functioning and loving parents who believed in education and hard work and encouraged both in their children. If I really stretch to find an identity-based disadvantage, all I can come up with is that is that I am an introvert.  Everybody knows that society prefers extroverts. My life challenges have been related to procrastination, insecurity, and some depressive tendencies, stuff that limits people regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. If you add it all up, I bet you would agree that I had tail winds.

So why is admitting privilege still hard for me to accept? I think it has to do with human nature and our tendency to compare ourselves against people who have better circumstances. For me, people with privilege are from families where kids go to the top private schools, whose parents pay for their education at elite colleges and graduate schools and maybe even fund big down payments on nice houses.  They might even drive Porsches. I think ‘Those People’ have way more privilege than me. I had to struggle for what I have. However, I can also see how somebody else might look at me as one of ‘Those People’. Status and struggle are relative.

Because we are wired to want to have more and to be better off and are prone to jealousy and envy, it takes a conscious effort to compare our situations with those who are less fortunate. It takes humility and empathy to understand factors that might hold others back, especially when they involve the uncomfortable topics of racism, sexism, classism and more. It takes honestly and perspective to admit that maybe standing and status are the result of the birth lottery and merit. It takes courage to change.

Yes, I am privileged.   

Yes, the US has many flaws. Yes, our citizens and governments have made some terrible and violent mistakes. Yes, we continue to make hurtful mistakes. Yes, we need to improve. However, I know we are still a country founded on a belief in equality and freedom. I am hopeful that this common belief will unite us more than it divides us. Even if our founding beliefs are still aspirations, they are worthy aspirations.  We can all get there together if we point our bikes in the right direction and keep peddling, no matter which way the wind is blowing.

¹Speaking of Orwellian doublespeak, progressive voices seem to prefer the term ‘gun violence’, which for me incorrectly deflects responsibility from the perpetrator of violence to the tool of violence.