{"id":1612,"date":"2020-12-16T21:06:56","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T21:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1612"},"modified":"2020-12-23T01:24:27","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T01:24:27","slug":"privilege-repentance-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/16\/privilege-repentance-forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"Privilege, Repentance, Forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Privilege, Repentance, Forgiveness<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Identifying privilege offers insight into grace and allows us to take responsibility for both our own responses and the needs of others.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Sarah Ngu<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Since graduating from college, I have received countless emails asking alumni for donations, most of which I have ignored. After the umpteenth solicitation, I started to think about why I should \u201cgive back\u201d and reflect more deeply. \u201cWhat benefits had I received from my elite education?\u201d There were some obvious answers: social prestige, higher income, intellectual capital, and an influential network. But I also recognize subtler benefits, evident in my own behavior and that of graduates from similarly elite institutions.<\/p>

Take how you address your boss at work. There is a fine balance in body language and tone we use to demonstrate respect for his or her authority, while at the same time exerting a casual confidence so that we don\u2019t slide into servile deference. This approach to hierarchies as \u201cladders, not ceilings,\u201d as \u201cenabling rather than constraining\u201d was not learned in a Career Center workshop on \u201cnetworking,\u201d but in classroom interactions with professors. There, we learned how to listen attentively, to raise our hands politely in order to contest our professors or offer up our own ideas, and to speak professionally in the classroom but then casually, even intimately, during office hours.<\/p>

We learn, in other words, how to embody ease in almost any social situation, and so we carry ourselves comfortably in the interview room, in a brainstorming meeting, or at the bar. This ease is at the heart of our social education in elite academic institutions, according to Shamus Khan, a professor of sociology at Columbia, who undertakes ethnography of St. Paul\u2019s, a top boarding school whose students typically go on to the Ivy Leagues. In Privilege: The Education of an Adolescent Elite, <\/em>Khan argues that for these students, nearly 70 percent of whose parents were handing over $50,000 a year, their economic privilege manifested itself in far deeper ways than the size of their wallets. It inscribed itself on their very bodies and the way that they carried themselves. It was a cultivated ease that was evident in their casual references to both highbrow authors and mass-culture pop songs, in how they managed to look busy without looking overwhelmed, and how they respected hierarchies without treating them as permanent blockades.<\/p>

Khan takes great pains to demonstrate that the practice of ease is cultivated through experience and is not something one is simply born with. At the same time, \u201cprivilege\u201d exists in that we, by virtue of belonging to a particular group and through no merit of our own, receive the right conditions that allow us to cultivate the trappings of ease. \u2014such as a family who values education and who can afford not only to buy a house in a good school district but also to chauffeur us around to our various extracurricular activities. And this goes beyond having an \u201cadvantage,\u201d like nice weather during a sporting event or finals, because like other \u201cprivileges\u201d it represents a systematic and sustained advantage (which is why \u201cprivilege\u201d tends to be classified along the axes of race, class, sex, and sexual orientation).<\/p>

The mistake of the students at St. Paul, then, lies in the fact that they understand their success mainly in terms of individual effort. As a friend of mine puts it, \u201cRecognizing\u00a0privilege\u00a0doesn\u2019t mean we aren\u2019t standing\u2014it means we know we are standing\u00a0on\u00a0someone else.\u201d Or as Sir Issac Newton famously put it, \u201cIf I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.\u201d<\/p>

The Christian tradition provides resources to acknowledge our privilege and steward it responsibly, while also acknowledging the richness of creative, human agency in the face of adversity, for Jesus occupies the role of both the privileged and underprivileged. He gave up the privilege of Sonship and was unjustly crucified to enable us all to become privileged sons and daughters of God.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The possibility of blessing for those who suffer exists because they possess redemptive agency.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This paradoxical perspective goes beyond most of the discourse surrounding privilege, which sorts everything in terms of systems with \u201cwinners\u201d and \u201closers\u201d rigidly assigned. At its worst, it is brutally reductionist, defining people mainly by their privilege or lack thereof, leading to an arrogant silencing of those with privilege from speaking or having any epistemic credibility (e.g. \u201cYou are only making that claim because of your privileged identity\u201d). Language such as \u201cblessed are the poor in spirit\u201d or \u201cblessed are those who mourn\u201d cannot exist in such discourse. The possibility of blessing for those who suffer exists because they possess redemptive agency. As Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar who worked as a counselor for prisoners, observes, Jesus provides an example of how one can use one\u2019s own wounds for redemption.<\/p>

After all is said and done, pure critique of privilege does not get us where we need to be. We need an alternative vision of what the good life is like so that we can work towards the restoration of relationships and not just the eliminating of wrongdoings, to move towards forgiveness and not just equity, so that we have something to fight for and not just against.<\/p>

Yet it is still a useful, albeit limited, lens. To learn and uncover privilege is to acknowledge that one\u2019s epistemic position\u2014how one sees, defines and interacts with the world\u2014is influenced by systemic factors far outside of one\u2019s agency or consciousness. It is, in other words, affected by the narratives\u2014of race, class, sex, and so on\u2014that one is a part of. The real power of the lens is when it illuminates how the power dynamics between multiple narratives provide the context for discriminatory actions and norms, when it looks behind the black-and-white realm of moral innocence or guilt to see what is underneath. Because both privilege and the experience of being underprivileged touches all of us to varying degrees we need the lens\u2019s moral critique.<\/p>

Stephanie Wildman, a law professor, writes in Privileged Revealed<\/em> that the \u201cthe characteristics of the privileged group define the societal norm, often benefiting those in the privileged group.\u201d She goes on to note that the \u201cconflation of privilege with the societal norm and the implicit option to ignore oppression mean that privilege is rarely seen by the holder of privilege.\u201d For example, males do not have to deal with or care about misogyny if they do not want to, whereas women do not have that option. It is when we, confronted with other people\u2019s pain, choose to ignore it and move on that we become complicit. If someone tells you that your Native American headdress for Halloween effectively demeans his or her culture, the proper response is not, \u201cI didn\u2019t intend to offend with my dress, so that gives me the right to keep wearing this,\u201d but, \u201cI had no clue as I never had to be in your shoes before. I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>

Jesus goes one step further in challenging those with privilege. The rich, young man cannot stomach leaving his riches to follow Christ. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, cannot, partly because of his elite education, comprehend what it means to be \u201cborn again.\u201d The very benefits of privilege can turn into snares that prevent us from receiving the ultimate privilege of salvific grace, which requires that we lay down our crowns, put down our arms, and humbly receive what cannot be earned.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Within the Christian tradition, the greatest privilege of all is to be adopted as children of God not because of our merit but because of Christ\u2019s atonement.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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At its best, privilege can be seen as grace. Having parents who care about you and have enough money to support you is a blessing that should make us grateful, not guilty. However, we should remember that some benefits have come at the expense of others. The privilege of being an American and receiving better treatment in developing countries as a tourist compared to locals is a fact of American dominance. But our relative prosperity rests on many shoulders past, including not just our prescient founding fathers but also African-American slaves.<\/p>

Moreover, having privilege makes it much easier to ignore the concerns of those without it. In 2011, one in four women experienced workplace sexual harassment, as opposed to one in ten men. The predominantly masculine privilege of not having to worry about sexual harassment at work might explain why 59 percent of men call workplace sexual harassment a problem as compared to 69 percent of women. In all of these examples, agency is nowhere to be found, which is what distinguishes privilege from moral guilt. Privilege consists of undeserved benefits bestowed upon everyone to dramatically varying degrees; moral guilt is harm intentionally committed of which everyone is capable.<\/p>

Within the Christian tradition, the greatest privilege of all is to be adopted as children of God not because of our merit but because of Christ\u2019s atonement. Yet it is also a privilege that came at the cost of Christ\u2019s life. When we understand that it was our sin for which he paid so dearly, we are driven to our knees in humility. This posture of humility towards one\u2019s privilege can branch into a myriad of responses ranging from gratitude to guilt to awe, but ultimately the responses must translate into service. This is where moral responsibility does lie: one\u2019s response to one\u2019s privilege.<\/p>

In one of his blunter parables, Jesus tells the story of the unmerciful servant whose enormous debt is forgiven by his master. Later on, the master finds out that that forgiven servant had jailed one of his own servants for not repaying a much smaller sum. The master summons his forgiven servant and says, \u201cI forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.\u00a0And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?\u201d That servant is led off to jail himself. Jesus does not mince words: \u201cThis is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.\u201d Thus we pray in the Lord\u2019s Prayer, \u201cForgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.\u201d The privilege we have as the forgiven is inseparable from our responsibility.<\/p>

How far does responsibility extend? Once again, the model of Christ provides guidance. The apostle Paul writes to the church in Philippi:<\/p>

Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.<\/p>

Christ was not reactive but proactive in adopting the experience, even the nature, of humanity. He is a model to those with privilege and those who suffer. To those who suffer, blessed are those who mourn and who are poor in spirit, for you can better identify with Christ\u2019s suffering and also share in his redemptive power. To those who are better off materially or socially, Christ gave up his comfortable privilege and stepped into the lives of those who are estranged from the Father in order to reunite us with his Father. Christ provides not just a \u201cmodel example\u201d of how to steward privilege in a redemptive manner. He is the Redeemer and the Messiah in whom we can put our hope and trust, freeing us from the overwhelming anxiety of constantly assessing our privilege in the mistaken belief that we alone shoulder the burden of \u201csaving the world.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sarah Ngu<\/strong> lives in New York City and works for LRN, an advisory company that helps other organizations align their values with their culture, operation, and governance. After graduating\u00a0from Columbia University in 2012, having studied American Studies and Political Science, she was a\u00a0fellow at the wonderful Trinity Forum Academy in 2013.\u00a0<\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Identifying privilege offers insight into grace and allows us to take responsibility for both our own responses and the needs of 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