Mother’s Day has been over for almost a week, but it’s
still on my mind. I’ve been thinking so
much lately about the privilege of peace, and of all those mothers who live in
terror and horror that I never have to even think about.
At the heart of my starting this blog was a desire to write
about the privilege of peace. I wanted
to write a book about it, but that proved to be far more time consuming than
the bite-sized chunks that a blog entails.
My premise is based in oppression theory. We all have privilege that we are unaware
of. Some people get very defensive when
you point out that they have privilege, and those same people get upset when
folks who don’t have as much privilege as they do aren’t getting as far in
life, because they don’t experience the invisible glass ceiling that others
live with.
My introduction to this topic was the work of Peggy
McIntosh, who wrote about white privilege.
I never considered myself a racist by any means, and it was very
unsettling to entertain the concept that I was walking around with privilege
just by being white. One of her seminal
works is the list of white privilege, which is a real eye-opener. Go ahead, take a minute and read it the
50-item list of the daily effects of white privilege:
It never occurred to me that these things weren’t true for
others until it was pointed out, because I was in the majority and my
experience was the “norm.” Thus began
some research into privilege, and I found lists for male privilege, able-bodied
privilege, thin privilege, class privilege, hetero privilege, you name it. The majority of us move in and out of
privilege throughout our lives in one way or another, and that comes with some
responsibility. As a white, hetero
person, I feel a strong sense of obligation to be an ally and supporter of
people who are LGBT or persons of color.
Because I have built-in credibility that I did nothing to earn, the
least I can do is use it to do the right thing, right?
I have taught classes on oppression theory, and I could
write pages and pages about this issue alone.
People who deny their unearned privilege aren’t doing the world any
favors. It just is what it is, and
rather than be defensive and deny it, isn’t it better to work together to
create a society where nobody feels marginalized?
Looking at this from a global view, it’s important to
realize there is additional privilege that nobody is really talking about, and
that is what I call the privilege of peace.
While our lives aren’t perfect, we also are living in bombed out
buildings, or in non-stop terror of imminent attacks and death. We do not have to worry that we will put our
child on a school bus in the morning, and that bus will be bombed, or the
school will be bombed and our child will not come home because of wide-spread
terror and war. We don’t have to worry
that soldiers will bust into our home, drag off our loved ones to torture and
death. We don’t have to worry that our
sons and daughters will be forced to be child soldiers, or that we will have to
watch them slowly die of hunger or disease because some corrupt government or
regime is withholding food or medicine for political gain. We don’t have to wonder if our unborn child
will be born with deadly deformities because of the U.S. military using
chemical weapons such as white phosphorus in our neighborhoods. We have the amazing luxury of thinking and
dreaming ahead, planning concerts and events and outings without worrying about
whether we will survive the day.
Yet nobody is talking about it. We think the world is a lot bigger than it
is, and let’s face it, all that misery and drama is a lot less upsetting if we
pretend it isn’t happening, and maybe those other people on the “other” side of
the world don’t matter quite as much as we do.
We can turn on the TV or the computer and tune it out, and be glad it
isn’t us. Well, some people can do that,
but I just can’t.
I spent Mother’s Day thinking about this, because I was
thinking about how being a mother, and a grandmother, changed my life
completely. I learned so much from those
little people about what love really means.
This isn’t exclusive to Americans; this is a universal experience. The mothers of those little girls kidnapped
in Nigeria are enduring the kind of hell I can’t imagine. The temptation, because it’s so horrific, is
to say, “Thank God that’s not my little girl,” shudder, then try not to think
about it. But we must. We must realize that by being able to push it
out of our mind, we have privilege.
Those mothers don’t have that privilege.
If we are really going to honor mothers on Mother’s Day, we
need to remember all of the mothers. We
need to acknowledge the universal things we humans have in common, and know
that people in war-torn regions love their children just as much as we do. Then we need to commit ourselves to not being
part of the cause of their pain.
Considering the fact that the U.S. far outspends the rest of
the world on “defense,” (see this link: http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison),
and there aren’t any bombs dropping on us, it’s reasonable to assume that we
are a big part of the problem. We have
the privilege of all this wealth and we are using it to make the lives of
others hell, all over the world. The
figures don’t include the money we make by selling arms to despots and tyrants
to use against their own people, so we are complicit in that as well. And as long as we’re talking complicity, we
are complicit if we are aware of these things and aren’t speaking out against
them.
On Mother’s Day, my heart went out to mother’s everywhere
who were suffering. I reaffirmed my
commitment to devote my life to ending war, whatever it takes. I’m ashamed to be one of the oppressors, and
I’m ashamed that my government has caused so much pain and suffering and death
for others. And on behalf of my country,
I apologize to mothers everywhere. I’m aware
of my privilege, and I will be an ally, even if it means alienating other
Americans who refuse to see their own privilege. I will continue to speak out about the
atrocities being funded by my tax dollars, and I know of many others who feel
the same way I do.
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