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“I just don’t think feminism is needed,” said an acquaintance of mine, as he explained why he refused to read my blog. “Women have the same rights as men, and I believe they should. But feminism’s already achieved that, so what’s the point?” he asked, adding, “We’re all equal.”
The last remark made me giggle. We’re all equal – and unicorns fly over rainbows as the sun rises in the west. It’s very easy to say that we’re all equal, I thought, when you’re a white, masculine, cissexual, able-bodied, English-speaking, Christian, wealthy, heterosexual white male who attended one of Cape Town’s more upper-class private all-boys school.
It’s pretty frustrating to talk to someone who refuses to acknowledge their privilege. It was this thought that encouraged me to look at myself and my own privilege.
I have a number of identity privileges – I’m cissexual, I speak English as a home language, and I come from a Christian background. But what I really think is relevant to South Africa is my privilege as a white person – something I never really thought I had.
Even though I might not consciously note it, seek it or want it, I have white privilege.
I never thought I had white privilege. I grew up with very little money; my household always had enough money to just get by, but throughout high school I knew I was way poorer than my friends. The only reason I was able to attend my academic, well-reputed, ‘ex-Model-C’ school was because I worked really hard in primary school and managed to get a scholarship – otherwise I’d never have been able to afford it.
My family had no real assets, no ‘means of creating capital’ that was taken during apartheid and passed down from generation to generation, and therefore I believed that I had no white privilege. Everything I had in my life, I thought, I had gained through hard work and not inheritance.
How wrong I was. I might not have inherited anything material or economic – which is what most people refer to when discussing white privilege – but there was something that was handed down to me from generations and generations of (mostly) white-skinned people. Two things, actually: my culture, and my skin colour.
My skin colour gives me privilege in ways that I don’t always notice, especially because I’ve never been anything but white. And although it might not mean much to me, and I don’t put much stock into it, it means something to the people around me and it affects me in that sense. I never realised it until I spoke to people of colour, but when I pass little old ladies in the road, they smile at me instead of clutching their purses tightly. I’ve never been followed around a boutique by a nervous shop assistant.
When I was locked outside my house one afternoon, I tried to climb over the wall. The police stopped in front of my house and asked if I needed help, instead of questioning me. My skin colour means that some people think it’s okay to make racist jokes with me as opposed to about me – although I’ve been told that works both ways.
My culture also gives me privilege. My family might not have been rich, but they’ve all had solid basic education, mainly because of apartheid. As such, I had the support of a family that not only valued education, but understood how to support my education. And I think it was because of them that I was able to do well enough at school and get that scholarship – my passport to a better life.
As an English-speaking white person of Anglo-Saxon origin, I’m pretty lucky: the education system was pretty much created for kids like me. If you ever had to read through a couple of matric-level English Home Language papers, you’d perhaps notice that most of the comprehensions mention or allude to English folklore, fairytales, idioms and European history.
Seriously, Rudyard Kipling is about as African as it gets. I don’t think it’s intended or even noted that well, but everything down to the cartoons studied in History have at least some aspect that demonstrates that our education system is Eurocentric.
There are so many examples of white privilege. And I think that, to a large extent, it works both ways: some kinds of ‘female privilege’ could exist, and I suppose some could argue that some kinds of ‘black privilege’ can exist. However, it doesn’t really matter. Nobody should have identity privilege, because identity privilege hurts everyone.
My white privilege might work for me some times, but it doesn’t mean I want it or like it – hell, I don’t even fully identify as white. And the reason why I don’t want it is because the system that keeps it in place – racism – is something I find unethical. Whether it works in my favour or not, it harms me because it harms the society I live in. Racism hurts me, not just because there’s a backlash – such as black-on-white racism – but because it favours some whites over others.
Racism hurts me when an acquaintance purses her lips when I say that I have coloured cousins, or when someone thinks it’s okay to be racist in my presence. Generally, racism hurts those who aren’t racist. Likewise, male privilege hurts males, because the system that keeps it in place – sexism, or the patriarchy – is unethical. The patriarchy favours more masculine men over others, so it essentially marginalises and oppresses a whole group of men under the guise of something that advantages them.
So I have privilege – and you might too. Acknowledging your privilege is the first step to creating a better, discrimination-free society. Using it to make oppressed persons heard might be the second.
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