20150309.0702

The struggle to return to some semblance of normalcy after the hour stolen for Daylight Savings Day continues...and I note with some interest the intersection, pointed out to me by many, of International Women's Day with the shortened day in the US (as well as the coincidence of Black History Month in the US with the shortest month of the year). That I had considered neither is a mark against me; I evidently have more learning to do, more work to do to recognize and critically interrogate the ways in which I am privileged, and more fighting against my defensiveness and feelings of guilt and shame about the matter to conduct. I doubt that I am alone in it.

Yes, I get defensive, or I begin to get defensive, about accusations of privilege. I view myself as having worked hard to get where I am in life, and I continue to work diligently to maintain my position and to try to improve it. When I hear people talk to me about privilege, part of me hears it as a dismissal of the effort I have expended and continue to expend, and that sits ill with me. I come from people who pride themselves on their hard work and work ethic, and that background (as well as the prevailing academic tendency to measure worth in terms of production of pages of research, which is work of a different sort altogether) ensures that tacit or explicit accusations of laziness do not sit well with me.

I know, however, that while I have worked and I do work, and I have not been so privileged as have many who are in my line of work,* I have been very much privileged in other ways. I do not have to worry about whether or not I will encounter people who are, in at least many respects, like me. I do not have to worry about seeing my demographics represented, or represented in plenitude, or represented in variety; I do not have to worry about seeing versions of me deployed as tokens only, surface-level motions toward inclusivity. I do not have to worry about whether or not those who are like me will be depicted as heroes--they may also be villains, yes, but they are also villains. More, I do not have to worry that I will be pulled over by police for driving the wrong kind of car or driving in the wrong neighborhood. I do not have to worry that I will be assumed a criminal because I wear a hoodie one day--or that I will be shot for having my hands in its pockets. I do not have to worry that I will be sentenced more harshly because of the color of my skin. I do not have to worry that, if I am assaulted, it will be because "I asked for it" in how I dressed that day. I do not have to worry that if I am sexually assaulted (and I am not conditioned, as many others are, to worry about being sexually assaulted) I will end up pregnant and possibly have to suffer through a pregnancy I did not want and could not anticipate. All I really have to do is worry about whether or not I will be able to make enough money to live the way I want to live and work to earn or otherwise acquire that money.

It is a privilege.

*Donna Dunbar-Odom discusses the issue eloquently in Defying the Odds. Catharine Olive-Marie Fox does so as well, albeit with a different perspective, in "Toward a Queerly Classed Analysis of Shame: Attunement to Bodies in English Studies" (College English 76.4 [March 2014]).