Guest post: The Old Boys aren’t going to go down without a fight
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Teach that everything was always fine.
The issue isn’t that people are born racist, the issue is that we absorb racism from the world we live in, because we can’t help it.
Ditto with sexism. Racism and sexism; we’re soaking in it. Simply pointing this out can bring accusations of guilt induction, particularly among those who want to pass off the status quo as a pure meritocracy that justly rewards the “industrious.” Those who lag behind or can’t hack it just have to try harder to get that job or make it to the podium. (Does this sound familiar?) We’re not supposed to look too closely at the ways in which the dice are loaded and the game is fixed. And the cheating isn’t necessarily codified in law; it can be ingrained in the beliefs, values and attitudes of any number of gatekeepers who control entrance into whatever system you happen to look at. It doesn’t take laws to keep an “Old Boys Club” going, but it might take laws to dismantle one: the Old Boys aren’t going to go down without a fight.
The point of that clause is to make teachers afraid to talk about how it plays out.
Which makes it hard to discuss white privilege and male privilege. This isn’t dredging things up from the past, a settling of scores from the Bad Old Days, it’s current reality. You can’t let bygones be bygones if they’re still ongoing and not “gone.” If your first response is anger, guilt, or resentment towards those pointing out structural inequities, then maybe you’ve got something to feel guilty about. But the point isn’t to instill guilt, but to fix (or rather unfix) the system. Removing unfair advantages, dismantling unearned privilege, and tearing down obstacles to full participation in society, and its rewards and benefits, benefits everyone. We’re at a point in history where we can’t afford to waste human potential. We need all hands on deck, and useful ideas about how to get through the multiple crises we are facing could come from anyone or anywhere.
Repair or healing cannot take place without determining what’s wrong in the first place. Pretending things are perfectly fine, and that your position at the top of the heap is quite natural and justified might not be the position of neutrality you’ve been led to believe it is. It looks like you’ve got something to hide when you try to convince the people at the bottom of a hill that a ski slope is a level playing field.
One problem with dismantling unearned privilege is that it doesn’t feel unearned to the people who have it. Most of the men in science, for instance, know they worked long, hard hours to get where they are. They aren’t aware that those of us that are not male, or not white, work longer, harder, hours, and don’t make it as far.
Plus, of course, it’s a real boost to them to feel that they are the “cream of the crop” and that everyone else had the same opportunities. That means they rose because they are smarter, harder working, etc. I heard E.O. Wilson say it one time: He described his boyhood, then added “Just like everyone else, of course”. No. I didn’t have a childhood anything like that. I wasn’t allowed to roam the local ecosystems catching insects and learning about nature. I was being taught to cook, clean, and submit. Children living in an impoverished part of town aren’t having that kind of childhood; they’re just trying to survive.
The privilege starts from birth, so they can’t see it as privilege. They just see it as the way things are.
Mrs Thatcher had that attitude in relation to feminism. From moderately humble (but never impoverished) origins she went to the top with no advantages apart from marrying a millionaire. If she could do it why couldn’t any other woman?
Athel: As I recall, that was Maggie’s attitude to the poor, nonwhite, and working classes in general.