Day Four- privilege revisited

I'm sure there will be many more posts about privilege.  It is such a deep and important topic.

I realized recently that it is only by going outside one's 'group' that one can actually see one's privilege.  If I had stayed within my group of friends or sphere of influence, I could never have seen the privilege I have.  At the same time, I want to be clear that it is not anyone else's responsibility to show us our privilege, we must discover that on our own.  We cannot burden another group with that responsibility, especially as they are working very hard to level the playing field.  Lesser privileged groups should not be responsible for having to break through our privilege.  We need to open our eyes and learn.  There is enough for everyone.  We don't have to 'give up' our privilege.  Instead, we make those privileges open to everyone.  We make opportunity a universal thing.

I like to think of a conversation I once had with someone about unions.  At the time, I saw unions as a bunch of lazy workers who liked to complain a lot.  It seemed to me that they didn't want to work hard but still wanted to be paid extremely well for taking all their breaks and not working extra hours.  I saw union workers who took advantage of the fact that it was difficult to fire them and therefore, the standards of their work may not have been as high as would be expected.  This all changed when the school I was working at decided to unionize.  At the time, it was one of the only language schools in Toronto that paid a good wage, offered staff job stability and a pay grid, and provided benefits.  This was all about to change as the school was bought by a company that had low wages and no job stability.  As the teachers went through the unionization process, I still felt that the union wasn't the way to go.  That the teachers should just accept that this was the new reality.  It was at this time that I sat down with one of my coworkers and they shared this wisdom with me.  He said that unions exist to protect the rights of workers and that it is because of unions that we have paid breaks and over time pay.  He pointed out that the conditions in which union workers work should be the conditions of all workers and that we should strive for the highest standards for all workers and that we shouldn't be dragged down to the lowest standard.  That last part stuck with me.  We should strive for all workers to have the highest standard of working conditions and not work towards the lowest acceptable standards.  That made a lot of sense to me.  Instead of being jealous of the high wages, long vacations, job stability and health benefits of the union worker, we should work toward every worker having those same conditions. (I will leave the conversation about the neoliberal agenda for another day, but learning about neoliberal politics was another eye opener for me)

So, when it comes to privilege, we should strive to bring everyone up.  This means that those of us with privilege must be open to the idea that everyone can have the same privilege and world will not fall apart.  It also means that we must be allies to those without privilege and work with them to meet their needs, not our need to feel good about ourselves (which is what happens in a lot of community development situations- a topic for another day)