Making Sense of "Privilege"

One of the many important teachings from the Greek philosopher Socrates is the value of self-knowledge. Know Thyself. Socrates said that an unexamined life is a life not worth living. The quest to know and understand one's self is a quest, a life-long journey. Every day we discover something about ourselves- our lights and our shadows.

When we express our malasakit, pakialam, and kalinga towards our kapwa, we bring with us our selves- our stories, struggles, strengths, and shadows. We do not come empty and value-free when we enter into dialogue with, make sense of the conditions, and come up with discerned responses for and with our kapwa. We bring with us our values, narratives biases, and perspectives. Getting in touch with them by going through self-inquiry is a crucial step because they influence our ways of interacting, questioning, judging, and creating with our kapwa.

An important activity of self-inquiry is to check our privileges. Ijeoma Oluo, a Nigerian-American writer who authored So You Want to Talk About Race, said “When somebody asks you to 'check your privilege' they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you've had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing and may in fact be contributing to those struggles. It is a big ask, to check your privilege. It is hard and often painful, but it's not nearly as painful as living with the pain caused by the unexamined privilege of others.”

In one of my sessions with my students, I asked them to do a Check Your Privilege activity. Each of them begins with 100 points. I read out a total of 25 statements. In each statement, they were asked to reflect on their own reality in the most honest way possible. If the statement is TRUE for them, they had to add 5 points to their score. If not applicable to them, they had to subtract 5 points. The highest possible score that a student can get at the end is 225 points. The following were the sample statements:

• We can practice social distancing without any difficulty in our neighborhood or the area where I live.

• I have not experienced an income/wage loss since the pandemic started. (If you are a student: Family members who are providing for our family have not experienced income/wage loss since the pandemic started.)

• I can show my affection to someone in public without fear of ridicule or violence.

• I did not need to anxiously wait for “ayuda” or any form of government assistance this past year.

• I have never experienced a disproportionately heightened fear of the police or the military.

• I am not taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces and I can walk around my neighborhood at night without legitimate concern for my safety.

The scores were very extreme. While the activity does not capture the totality of the student's experience of abundance or lack of privileges, the result depicts the reality of societal inequalities and injustices. After the activity, I invited my students to reflect on the following questions:

• What is privilege? What does it do?

• Should there be privileges in the first place? What causes privileges to emerge?

• What’s the significance of checking one’s privileges?

From my encounters with my students on this topic, I've realized that in our current society and world, many fundamental rights have become privileges. The mainstream paradigm has put in place structures that promote the privileging of people who are already in advantageous positions, while further marginalizing those who are already very disadvantaged in the first place. However, my students also pointed out that there should be proper nuancing with our understanding of privileges. One cited that certain privileges are given as rewards for hard work, diligence, and a sense of responsibility. Privileges are also accorded to people with special needs and concerns like pregnant persons, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, etc. And most of them pointed out that privileges should not be prematurely antagonized and that what is crucial here is how we deal with or make use of them to benefit not only ourselves and most especially the greatly disadvantaged kapwa.

The insights of my students on these questions about privilege were very varied. I can feel my mind and body struggling to facilitate the sameness and differences in their perspectives, narratives, experiences, and emotions. I wonder if this is how it feels like to be in the metaxological space which we have been discussing with Dr. Nat in GMF...