Someone (ampersand, by handle) posted this on a another board (Ms. magazine boards) and it struck a cord with me at least.
quote: The more privileged you are, the easier it is to envision human beings as pure individuals, unconnected to other individuals in any way that matters.
Indeed, the heart of mainstream economic theory is a construct called "economic man"; a theoretical person who makes all decisions independantly, based on pure self-interest. When mainstream economists try and predict decision-making, they ask "what would economic man do?" (It's not a coincidence that they so rarely ask about "economic woman").
It's that sort of conception of human life - completely independant of other people, with only your own mind and desires to be concerned with - which is behind the thinking in ..."what does everyones thoughts have to do with you?"
For someone with a lot of privilege, the rational answer is, "it doesn't have much to do with me at all." The more privileged you are, the less other people's thoughts matter (this is why it's unsurprising that economics - by far the most white-male-dominated social science - is the one that came up with "economic man"). You go into a store, and you buy what you want, or you don't buy. You don't have to worry about what the store clerks think of you - what could matter less?
Let's say, however, that you're Debbie Allen, the very successful producer and choreographer, who is a black woman. When she walks into a store, it does matter what the clerks think of her - because those clerks might decide to refuse to sell her anything (she obviously can't afford it). This isn't a hypothetical situation - it really happened. Just as it really happened to Patricia Williams (a very successful lawyer who is a black woman), who had a clerk refuse to even buzz her into the store.
Those are two small examples, but they illustrate what I mean. To someone with a lot of privilege, what strangers think is irrelevant. To someone in a less privileged position, what strangers think of you determines what kind of access you get to the complex network of relationships that make up our society and our economy. When strangers often think less of you because of your sex or race, you will have less access to all the benefits of our society and economy.
People with less privilege are therefore more likely to see that we are, in fact, inter-related, not independant.
People with more privilege, in contrast, can easily imagine that they are independant. A big mark of privilege is that these networks tend to facilitate our goals, rather than block them. This makes it easier to ignore the social and economic networks around us. Imagine two roads: one smooth, well-paved, well-maintained, the other lumpy and full of cracks and pits. Most people will drive over the smooth road without even noticing it, but the pitted road - that gets noticed.
So your view of the world - in which what other people think of us only matters in our own minds - is a privileged view, in my opinion. I'd argue that the feminist view of the world - in which people are not independant but interlinked, and therefore what others think of you matters in very real and concrete ways - is much more accurate than the privileged view, in which we're all independant beings, who (if they're smart) don't care what others think. We are inter-related. No one is independant; we all rely on a network of social and economic ties to tens of thousands of strangers, just to get through a single day. (Who grew the food you eat? Who paved the road you take to work? Who built the house you live in? Who wrote the textbooks you learn from? I bet you didn't do all these things yourself.)
What jobs you have access to; what services you have access to; what housing you have access to; how the police and other authorities treat you; whether the legal and social institutions are designed to accomidate your life or not; all these are results of what others think about you. It does matter; it's not just something women and minorities need to learn to not care about.
Amp
So, folks, thoughts? Is independence prefaced on privilege? |
