Most people don't turn their backs on their own privileges. But Meg Abbott did.
Most people don't turn their backs on their own privileges. But Meg Abbott did.
Sure, the mere existence of Caucasian skin (or at least the designation of such) could get you out of a pickle in the past: slavery, Jim Crow, concentration camps, the whip of imperialism, eugenic experimentation, etc. And to this day, whiteness does embody various surface-level benefits that are hard to ignore: better treatment by the police, a dominant beauty standard, etc. But why not dig below the surface of privilege and see what is really going on in 2015?
One of two things is true. Either I am delusional for analyzing privilege in the following manner, or everyone else is delusional for not doing so first. It is amazing how so many aspects of our lives are blatantly closeted here in San Francisco, which is why these Five Pillars reign so supreme and are yet so shockingly invisible at the same time.
Family Privilege
Pardon me if I keep referring to San Francisco, but this town has been my field of study for so long that I rely on its landscape to make philosophical points. That being said, it is hard to imagine that this town was ever a Mecca for orphans, even straight ones.
There is a dark, blistering wedge that divides the LGBT “community” here: those who reap the benefits of heteronormative families and those who lack any traces of such privilege. It underscores LGBT political struggles and priorities; it explains the neverending stream of LGBT homeless youth and their ceaseless obstacles; and it explains why marriage equality, and the private property benefits that come along with it, are not an absolute top priority for all of us.
The institution of family is a glorified conspiracy to hoard financial resources, real estate, food, genetic information, love, and sexual access (amongst only the parents, of course). Some families are more open to outsiders than others (in fact, the more open they are, the less likely they are to reject their own), but only open to a point. Orphans, as well as those who come from abusive families, can barely begin to compete with this enormous privilege. There is barely a discursive space to originate a conversation! So let me begin here:
I lack family privilege. (A lot of African Americans do.) I would go into more details, but The Great Closet prefers silence on these matters. Ten or so years ago, I did try to explain my situation to one of the most important friends I have ever made. This person’s response was flippant and dismissive, enough so that he/she had to apologize for making it. I doubt I will ever get any more sympathy than that.
Before long, San Francisco will evolve/devolve into a playground of Mommy This and Daddy That. The self-made man is a delusion; family privilege is probably lurking somewhere in his recipe for success. As for the rest of us, we don’t even have the pretense of a Punky Brewster anymore. There are efforts to aid foster children who are transitioning out into the real world, and I am thankful for that. But where will they go in the meantime?
You can always tell the family-privileged by their Christmas plans, namely, whether or not they have any. A little trick I’ve learned along the way.
Food Privilege
The idea of building an altar around dead plant, animal, and fungal parts seems as futile as worshipping at the altar of an invisible god. But such things are done anyway.
According to Feeding America, one in six Americans lives without food privilege, an astonishing fact with very little media awareness or revolutionary consequences. We all have Facebook friends who brag about their dietary extravagances but very few of them are brave enough to talk about their food stamp stories or the intricacies of SNAP. And it is like that for a reason.
The lack of food privilege has created a domain of shame that self-righteous and well-fed politicos zealously poke at. Take the question of whether food stamp recipients should spend their benefits on Valentine’s Day candy, or king crab, or high-end cuts of beef.
To even ask such a question is problematic enough. (If the impoverished shouldn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day or eat seafood or dead cows, then perhaps none of us should.) But to leap to such an assumption of authority hints at the existence of a privilege I will spend the rest of my life blasting wide open.
The sharing of food is essential to the formation of family as well as a wider sense of kinship. To watch the severely underprivileged eat is to witness a loneliness in constant motion. Besides, why on Earth would the super-privileged ever want to “do lunch” with people who can’t afford to pay the bill? What’s in it for them?
Growing up, food was either there or it wasn’t. I hated Family Ties because of Alex P. Keaton’s incessant advantages, but I was also jealous that his refrigerator for some reason always seemed unnecessarily bountiful. Food stamps were present of course, for which I felt occasional shame. But no one ever really visited that embarrassment on me. Not until six years ago when a certain legislative aide for a certain member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors insinuated, contemptuously, that I was currently on them – in an attempt to put me in my place, I guess.
Anywhere and everywhere, hunger is a shameful gift that just keeps on giving.
Employment Privilege
By far and away, employment is the most intimidating institution I have ever come across in my 36 years of existence on this planet. Perhaps I am too wedded to the dignity of my own labor, but why does the price of my somewhat cursed philosophy have to be so high? For me, it’s like throwing a celibate nun onto a street corner and forcing her into prostitution in order to eat for that day. It just won’t work. (There may be HR demigods out there, so I should govern my words from this point on, but doubtful.)
Employment is a pseudo-meritocracy often governed by the principles of racism, sexism, classism, ageism, sadomasochism, xenophobia, fealty, nepotism, patronage, bribery, blackmail, and passive-aggressiveness. Clearly, it evolved out of slavery and serfdom and holds those lowly marks to this day. Paydays and business formal dress codes are seductive smokescreens to all of this but smokescreens nonetheless.
Certain people “deserve” jobs, and certain people don’t. The game plays out in a wide variety of ways, depending on the sector. But let me focus on politics since I am most familiar with this area:
Privileged Person X leverages his or her other pre-existing privileges to get a foot in the door, a door bought and paid for by Privileged Person Y. Person X temporarily offers his or her labor for free, buys Person Y meals, and shares ideas while subtly swearing an undying oath of allegiance not only to Person Y but to all of their shared economic causes. Person X has a name (in other words, a well-off family) and earned a degree from one of those top places. HR does the contractual work behind the scenes and details like which cubicle or which windowed office are ironed out over a game of either tennis or golf. And if Privileged Person X is let go for some reason (like doing a shitty job at the job), by all means there must be a soft landing elsewhere!
Most politicians have such weak philosophies that they barely merit any serious investigation. Nevertheless, from what I see in San Francisco nowadays, the corporately-minded Democrats are bending over backwards for the employment privileged, in particular those in the technology industry. (They can afford to give campaign contributions, ya know.) Job-privileged techies are indeed Mayor Ed Lee’s raison d'etre. I guess that can count as a philosophy.
Ayn Rand’s smug overprivileged architects and Karl Marx’s unprivileged plebs (desperate for work) are fighting a cosmic deathmatch on the streets and within the offices of San Francisco. And I am not sure which side is going to win.
Housing Privilege
If you need any proof of the presence of a caste system in the United States of America, then take a look at the homeless. In fact, you could easily categorize all Americans by their relationship, or lack thereof, to their housing. Some people are homeless, some live in public housing or receive a subsidy, some rent, some are on the path to owning, some own outright, and some own a whole lot. Some will inherit homes one day while others know they never will. Some people are landlords (god, that word is so grotesquely medieval) and other live on such land – but instead of toiling the land for crops, we tenants either toil for rent or for the opportunity to rent.
Personally, I would rather starve to death than risk being homeless. (He who befriended many, but died alone – as one.) I say this not as an insult but just as a preference. It takes a special person to advocate for the homeless, and it takes a saint to befriend them. I am no saint, but I recently met a person who referred to himself as living outside. It would have been a tragedy if I had let privileged posturing ruin that conversation.
An Englishman named John Locke (1632-1704) is America’s philosophical grandfather. His writings on the nature of property illuminate everything here, from the uselessness of raw nature, to Manifest Destiny, to the automatic virtues inherent in owning parcels of land. Sexual morals aside, was Blanche Devereaux of a higher order of being than the other three Golden Girls because she owned the house they all lived in? Locke would begrudgingly say yes, but my hesitation lingers.
The idea that I will ever own real estate is beyond laughable. (If you lack the Five Pillars of Privilege, the first casualty is imagination.) But I suppose I could have come close with my grandmother’s house. It and she were a salon of sorts, something more than just a safe haven. It and she were where my family was at its best. Annette Jones was the only virtuous relative I ever had, but where did that virtue come from? From the fact that she owned her home? Is owning a bunch of walls the Lockean endgame for American creativity?
I have lived in exile from my tacky little homeland of San Bernardino, California for over 18 years. Yet I still dream of that house two or three nights a week, as if the allure of housing privilege tugs at the very core of my being. The steady supply of these dreams is pretty fucking weird: Annette Jones isn’t in them anymore, but if she were, she’d get a kick out of the people I invite to stay there. I wonder how a realtor would respond to this conundrum. Lay out a trail of breadcrumbs back to grandmother’s house, buy it out of foreclosure, evict whoever is living there now, and finally take back his or her birthright? When it comes to private property tugs of war, stranger things have happened.
And speaking of realtors, San Francisco politics is dominated by them. In my new homeland, not only do you need to have a home, it is best that you own it too. Finding a place to live here, and finding a way to stay here, can be Odyssean endeavors. How can things be salvaged?
One idea is to build more, A LOT more. We call it Manhattanization, a trickle-down condos approach of sorts. Take a look at my friend Joel Engarido’s view on the situation and judge for yourself.
Personally, I find his faith in the so-called law of supply and demand to be an insult not only to the unprivileged but quite honestly, it is an insult to math. No all demand is created equal, hence the existence of privilege in the first place! Some demands carry a lot more weight than others, and such variances cannot be easily plotted on a Cartesian plane. For example, there is no abscissa for massive income inequality in such a theoretical housing supply and demand curve. Why would the privileged want there to be one?
My pro-housing platform begins, and ends, with rent control – the only god I have ever prayed to. Sorry John Locke.
Beauty Privilege
To be honest, I am reluctant to include this privilege. But I like the number five, and I get to take a subtle jab at Islam, so here we go.
Beauty standards have varied widely throughout human history, but things seem to be coalescing around a handful of corporatizable attributes. African features have always been frowned upon, but so many of my white, heterosexual male friends want to have sex with black women that the situation may be more nuanced than I realize.
Physical beauty has no real relationship with virtue, but it will be one hell of an uphill battle trying to convince the world of that. Individuals who benefit from this privilege not only have more luxurious sexual opportunities but can worm their way a bit easier into the other four pillars. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, there are no attractive homeless people.
Beautyism is not yet an official ism, but one day. Take nudity in San Francisco, for example. Only the privileged are allowed to thrust their attributes forward. (The modeling and advertising industries are proof of that.) This town even banned it last year, but of course the ban is only tailored against a handful of naked guys in The Castro. Some supporters of the ban were rather vile in their beautyism, harping on these guys’ physical attributes and whining about “the children” or whatever.
I envy their courage, and am skipping the Oscars. I am not in the mood for corporate beauty parades and old fashion white privilege.
Privilege and the 2014 Elections
The elections were a disaster, with the G.O.P. (Guardians of Privilege) doing way better than I thought they would. Either the unprivileged didn’t vote or didn’t take their lack of privilege into account when they did. The only pillar that does not fit neatly into my analysis is the beauty privilege. It certainly didn’t do Alison Grimes any good in her fight against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. What a pity.
The red tide swept over San Francisco as well. I have been reluctant to weigh in on last year’s elections, but from what I see now, it was a privileged affair from top to bottom. The voters supported toxic tire crumb turf in Golden Gate Park, ostensibly for the sake of families and children – an argument based on privilege if you think about it. More people voted to tax sweetened beverages than voted no, a debate based on food privilege. And an attempt to tax real estate speculation failed, thanks to the efforts of the housing privileged.
I can understand people voting against both a tax on beverages and speculation (taxes are evil), or voting for both (revenue is good, and bad behaviors need to be deterred). My personal position was nuanced: I voted no on the beverage tax but yes on taxing speculation. (Taxes should be as progressive as possible.) But how could San Francisco voters support a tax on all those pesky nigga dranks but not on evictions at the same time and on the same ballot?
The only theory I have is that the food privileged and the housing privileged voted along their respective best interests in sufficient enough numbers. (Or people self-identified as possessing these privileges and voted these ways even when they actually do not.)The beverage tax needed a two-thirds vote in order to go into effect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it popped up on the ballot again.
As for the housing issue,…
The Leftover Privileges of Meg Abbott
People don’t usually abandon their social advantages, but Meg Abbott from The Leftovers certainly did. I guess that is why she is becoming my new favorite character on the show, a show I am way too obsessed with by the way.
A day or so prior to joining a strict cult, all of her privileges are on display, like jewels. She is at a nice restaurant with her handsome (and I assume, employed) fiancé as they plan their wedding. But for Meg, these social constructs are becoming more and more valueless. She turns her back on everything to join the Guilty Remnant. The only privilege she maintains is housing. (Her new cult is surprisingly good about that sort of thing.) Her beauty is no longer a bankable currency, and I doubt she eats well. Employment is obviously out of the question. Family ties are strictly severed.
I am not entirely clear what drives Meg (the death of her mother, I suppose), but the more dangerous things get for her, the more committed she becomes to her new cult: “I should be afraid, but I’m not.” When it comes to navigating America without many or any of these Five Pillars of Privilege, we should all be as brave.
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