Fitting into the Team: Privilege Beats Bootstraps Every Time

Dear White people, some of you seem to be uncomfortable with the word "privilege."

When I say someone has privilege, I'm NOT saying that they are sitting in a penthouse eating bonbons and paste while getting paid for doing approximately "no work whatsoever."

I'm not saying anything about their wealth or their work ethic at all.

Privilege is a way of measuring how close your experience falls to a centered "standard" human experience mold; this mold is a creation of the societal group locally, or regionally, or nationally in power. The systems of society are optimized for the experience centered as "standard", so your life gets easier, more privileged, the closer you are to fitting into the mold.

National or international privilege outweighs regional. Regional outweighs local.

We have molds for business people, molds for class structure, molds for taste and style, and entertainment, and sports, and leisure, and education. We have molds for dating and molds for religion. The biggest molds are for race, and gender.

And they all fit together, so that if you don't fit into a basic mold for something like education, it prevents you from fitting neatly into more complex molds for housing and jobs and recreation.

Intersectionality describes the places where someone doesn't fit into multiple perceived "standard" molds, and the resulting complex lack of fit has a cumulative effect in making their life more difficult.

The harsh truth is this, in America the base molds have always been strongly defined.

White.
Male.
Middle-class
Christian.
Heterosexual.
Cisgendered.
White collar
College educated
Monogamous
Currently able-bodied
English-speaking

I'm sure you can think of more.

But abstracts are sometimes challenging, so let me give you something a little more concrete.

I wasn't always a minister.

A long time ago I had a sexy and exciting job or two.

I was an Assistant Director of Nursing and Licensed Nursing Home Administrator (decent money) and a Healthcare Industry Consultant (lots more money).

Yeah.

How did I get such a sexy and exciting job or two? I'm glad you asked.

Privilege.

My family spoke Broadcast Standard English. In grade school, I never got picked on for being on reduced lunches, because I had lunch money. I had water to bathe in and my clothing never smelled or had holes. I wasn't sitting up nights scared because I was homeless, and I always had a pencil and a backpack and someone home to read with me. I looked white, thought I was Middle Eastern, and I had a white, popular name.

By 2nd grade everyone knew who the bad kids were. They were loud and tired and never had their homework done. They acted up on school trips and forgot to bring money for souvenirs so they took them away from other kids. Their parents worked weird shifts and never showed up for conferences or events.

I was already learning how to "fit into the team" while those kids were learning that the team had no seat for them.

I got older and went to high school, and wouldn't you know, I didn't have problems there either. When I walked into class no one had already formed a negative image of who I was.

There were no language barriers. My parents signed permission slips and I never had unpaid fees. I didn't have to work in the evenings so I had plenty of time to do my homework, with my parents help.

By 18 I knew what the team looked like, and how it dressed, and what it ate, and what it complained about. I fit into the team like a hand in a glove.

I am not saying that poor children or black children or Hispanic children don't know how to behave, or that their parents don't do things for them. Not at all. I'm not saying that my parents, or my school system did anything wrong when they struggled to give us the best.

I'm saying that I didn't have anything holding me back, and other children started out the race carrying 200 pound backpacks filled with lead. I'm saying those packs got heavier every year, and pulled the children down even as privileged children were handed wings. The only way I could have had it easier was to have been born male.

I went to college and financially things got so tough that tough would have been an improvement, but I still had a leg up.

I had already had three years of college credits before I even came through the door. All my basic classes, done, because my high school had the funds for a gifted and talented track. I graduated in four years, without a student loan.

And even though I was amazingly poor I was able to get a decent teaching job at a wealthy private ESL school less than a month after graduation because my French was good and my English was precise and Broadcast standard and because I knew how rich people dressed so I bought the right interview clothing and bag at St. Vincent de Paul.

I still fit in with the team. Even though at home I was eating Ramen, and shopping at Goodwill and Sav a Lot, I fit in with the team.

I was able to rent a nice house on my parent's street, for less than I would have paid for poorer housing elsewhere, because I didn't have student loans to repay. No one asked for references or a credit check, which I would have failed, because they knew my parents. With my good grades, and a good address, in a good town, I was able to get into a good nursing school.

As soon as I graduated I was able to get a good job as a nurse. And because my high school and my college had had some of the first home computers, I knew about computers when almost no one else did.

So I was able to get a better job, fast. In three years, I was an industry consultant.

I still fit in with the team, and not only that but each team recommended me to other teams. Each team let other teams know that I had been vetted, that I knew how the molds worked and that I fit into my place neatly.

All one unbroken sweep of privilege, one train-ride of success made possible by unearned opportunity after opportunity.

Don't get me wrong; I worked hard. But I was given a chance to work hard because over and over someone decided that I fit in, that I would be more of an asset than someone else.

Because right now in America that chance isn't about the job.

It's usually about the other stuff. It's about fitting in with the team, and the team is usually white. The team is usually male. The team centers whiteness and defends whiteness and honors whiteness.

It's about how you dress, and what you have to do to make your hair look the way you want it to. It's about how you speak, and the songs you sing to your kids, and what you eat, and even what you smell like. It's about what you do for fun.

It's about will you shut up and be one of them who acts just like one of us so that you fit into the team.

It's about not seeing that we all start the race together, but some of us are carrying ten pound weights, and some of us have chains around our wrists and manacled ankles, and some of us have a jet pack and a cheerleading squad.

Right now in America that chance to work hard is about a false perception that says that everyone starts life with an equal chance to succeed, and that only your own actions determine your fate.

And that false perception leaves out brilliant, amazing people who are currently relegated to be supporting cast members the minute they are born into the world outside the ridiculous molds.Those brilliant and amazing people get left at the starting gate the minute they enter the race.

So before you congratulate yourself on how you did it all alone, or on how you don't have any privilege, think again.

White people, privilege is all around, and if you haven't seen it you haven't looked at all because you are not pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. You are pulling yourself along a line created historically to carry you to success, and you are walking on the heads and shoulders of the black and brown and queer and handicapped and female bodies that came before you in order to do it.

It's time to stop looking for people who fit into the team, and start making the team expand to fit into the future.

Molds are for Jello.