The Way We Measure Privilege is Broken

Why counting doesn't work

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Also, I wrote this listening to this.

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I find that I generally gravitate towards writing about things I haven’t quite fully figured out. I am also always tempted to publish that which is taboo to speak about publicly. So, of course I’m going to talk about privilege, because privilege became one of those words in recent years that feels like a dead-end, like there isn’t much I can say that is “acceptable,” given I am a very privileged person.

Still, I want to write about this because I feel the conversation I see happening online about privilege is quite 2-dimensional. I’m going to get lampooned for this but I’ve gotta go for it anyway.

The world is a very unfair place, I’m pretty sure we can all agree about that, but what humans have tried to do is create systems to measure and police these imbalances that focus only on the things we can see and measure, and not on the things that we cannot see and cannot measure. That’s the part of the conversation on privilege that’s missing.

Let’s begin with the things that we can see:

What I Grew Up Learning About Privilege:

I grew up in the Suburbs of Portland, Oregon, one of the whitest major cities in the the United States. It’s a super liberal city in a super racist state. I’m talking very racist, free Black people were legally barred from residing in Oregon until 1926 (!!!). Thank God those days are over but also that was not a long time ago at all.

Nobody alive today is at fault for the atrocities of the past, maybe I’m naïve but I also don’t know anyone that’s actively trying to perpetuate unfairness in the system — not personally at least, I know they exist — but still the system is quite unfair in a million different ways and the past cannot be erased. So 100 years on, it has become all about illustrating how not-racist you are. All kinds of new words were created to illustrate this awareness.

During the time that I grew up there, Portland was a place that was quite focused on identity politics, which is a “leaderboard” of sorts to measure privilege, based on how many disadvantages you face. The irony of this being it was mostly done by privileged white people (many of whom struggle to know what to do with this privilege).

So self-silencing was encouraged. Which is why for years I thought it frankly impossible to write this essay as a white, straight male. Not because I’m secretly a conservative who was trapped in a liberal bubble, but because I’m actually trying to toe a fine line between recognizing the ways society is ass backwards and inequitable towards certain groups of people and also not believing this measuring system we’ve come up with is as helpful as we’d like to think.

I am deeply empathetic to the plights of minorities in the United States (and around the world). I gravitated towards books like A People’s History of the United States in high school which shined a light on the atrocities committed on Native Americans (amongst others), over the last few centuries.

At the same time, I am deeply grateful to the United States for letting my immigrant parents leave a dictatorship in South America and create a far better life for me.

And still, I feel like we’re really missing something on this topic of privilege. Something about the way privilege was being measured felt obtuse throughout the entirety of my adolescence, I just didn’t have the words to articulate how exactly and why. There was way too much guilt and shame and self-silencing at play for this to be the answer.

It’s Hard to Talk About it:

I have shared a lot of my life and my experiences on the internet. A recurring comment I’ve seen both on my own videos but also across social media is, “oh you’re so privileged.”

Which is a true statement. I don’t shy away from this. There’s nothing worse than someone who is privileged pretending they aren’t, or performing struggle. I grew up in a safe neighborhood. My parents were the first generation in my family to get a higher education and I had the privilege to be the first in my family line to choose not to get a higher education.

Maybe sometimes this kind of comment is meant as a friendly reminder (of something I could never forget, given the obsession with this topic in 21st century liberal American cities and across the internet) but often it just feels like an expression of frustration.

What I find troubling about the use of this word in this way is that it’s basically a conversation-stopper, there’s no good way to respond to that without coming across as defensive or out of touch. Replying with a simple “you’re right, I am” also doesn’t lead anywhere. That could come across as smug or condescending. The whole topic is so touchy, it feels like there’s a million ways it can go wrong.

Through the things that I make, I always seek to generate conversation, self-reflection, critical thinking. The objective is to not live on autopilot, which means I often make and do things that kick up the dust, for myself and for the people that choose to watch or read or listen to what I make.

Of course, when someone writes “you’re so privileged” there’s a lot of other stuff going on underneath. It’s a way of saying: I don’t have what you have, I want what you have, but there’s nothing either of us can do about this so I’ll say it in a way that suggests you’re out of touch or otherwise invalidate what you’re doing. Any remorse or feelings of guilt you may have make absolutely no difference, and any displays of these feelings are entirely performative so you really cannot do anything other than be quiet.

At the crux of the problem are the imbalances and injustices that we see in the world, the unfairness in how things are set up. Hard work is not enough. The reality is that things have always been unfair, nature is hardly a force for fairness where animals are primarily focused on survival and reproduction, and we’re animals after all.

Humans really struggle with what to do about this because we all like to buy into the idea that life and society could be fair if we all just get our act together and get on the same page, but that’s never going to happen for a variety of reasons, including the fact that our lives are governed by forces we cannot control. Why was I born as a man and not a woman or intersex or without an extra copy of chromosome 21? Why was I born in North America in the late 20th century and not South America like my mom or in Egypt like my grandma or in Turkey in the 19th century like my great great grandparents?

Again, this is not to argue my way out of the fact that I am very privileged. I just find the way we go about all of this so limiting.

But perhaps what I find most frustrating about this non-conversation about privilege that we’re all not engaging in beyond anything surface level is how random this framework is. It has all kinds of gaping holes and feels quite arbitrary. The comments I will get about this almost always revolve around being white, American, being a man or maaaybe being straight though plenty of people like to speculate on my sexuality.

Oh yes, and money. That’s got to be the one people are most focused on. And why wouldn’t they be? Money is something we all need and want to live well in society, and we spend our lives trying to acquire it, preserve it and increase how much of it we have. Money means power or safety or freedom. And if there’s one thing people are good at on the internet, it’s assuming stuff that isn’t true. That I am a trust fund baby (I am not) or that my parents gave me money at all (they did not). My parents HAVE given me something else that is, in my view, a far greater privilege that surpasses everything else that I’ve mentioned thus far. But before I go into that, I’d like to run through a few examples of privilege that aren’t policed:

1 ) Health. I get to enjoy all 5 of my senses (my eyesight is terrible but glasses take care of that), I have full functionality of all of my limbs. I don’t have any autoimmune diseases. These are massive privileges, and I wouldn’t wish ill health on my greatest enemy.

2) How about beauty? Brad Pitt has it pretty good, why can’t I get the same? Women swoon just by being in his presence. We all know that when you look really nice people treat you differently. Good genetics means you get a greater selection of sexual partners. I’m way below the average height of a man in the West. I’m 5’ 6'“ (166cm), and this Duke University study showed for every inch below 5 feet 10 inches tall, a man has to earn $30,000 more to be seen as equally appealing to women in the dating market, which means I’m 6 figures less attractive to women as a starting point. So basically… I’m screwed? I could feel sorry for myself but then again I’ve actually dated some really awesome, really loving, really beautiful women and my height or how much money I make or how white I am or how bad my eyesight is didn’t matter at all. And yes I’ve dated women that are considerably taller than me!

I know plenty of men that are stressing about going bald… I could keep going but my point is just to show how reductionist it can be to measure people as merely a list of attributes (which is probably why dating apps so often don’t work).

We just all want to be loved and get scared when we think we won’t be loved because of what we are because we forget that we are so much more than what we look like.

The Privilege You Can’t See:

I ultimately decided to write this because I feel there is something else that has more profoundly shaped my life, that is orders of magnitude more significant AND absolutely nobody has ever given me shit for it.

I didn’t do a single thing to deserve it, I cannot explain why I have it, it was entirely outside of my control. It is perhaps the single greatest contributor to my self-confidence and ability to take risks in life, which later led to the creation of a highly enviable lifestyle of adventure, autonomy and financial security. I have a much easier time dating women because of it. Can you guess what it is? I’ll tell you:

I am loved and fully accepted by my absolute rockstar parents. My wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, empathetic, introspective parents, who bucked all kinds of ass-backwards trends in the family, who broke the chain of trauma handed down generation after generation to become the parents they wish they had had. I cannot write that sentence without getting emotional. They have acted like a forcefield from the bullshit that life throws at all of us, and unlike so many parents out there that compound the burden we must all carry, they looked at themselves and never stopped asking how they could do better, how they could better rise to the occasion with more heart, more compassion, more understanding, more awareness.

My mother was beaten by her mother and I was not. Both of my parents felt estranged and alienated from their families when attempting to express themselves freely, and I do not. I think that says it all.

There is no greater platform to build on in life than the knowledge that you can do whatever you want and someone will still love and accept you. Change anything about me and still my parents would be there for me: I could be unemployed, I could (and did) move far away, I could be gay or change my pronouns or be asexual, I could become a Buddhist or a Muslim or wear only yellow. I could (and did) skip university and the safe career path altogether. I could stop talking to them and still I know they would love me.

I literally could not ask for more. In this stupid world where we like to measure everything, I am immeasurably lucky in this regard. I do not shy away from any of my privileges, I do my best as a man to better listen to and support women. As a white American I feel especially sensitive to the struggles of African Americans and Native Americans and all other minorities in the United States.

But it is without a shadow of a doubt that it is this immense privilege of being loved that most gives me a leg up in life. Their decades of combined therapy created the platform that became my starting point.

There is nothing “fair” about this situation. I’m also not trying to rub it in. All I’m saying is that if we’re gonna measure privilege (which I don’t think is a useful or productive exercise, for the record), this is where we should place our focus. This is what’s missing from the conversation, this deserves our attention as much as anything else. It should be about how deeply you love and are loved, and that alone should shift our entire perspective on the topic because love isn’t something you police and it’s also not a limited resource.

The beautiful thing about this is that my parents were not victims to what they are or where they came from. They made this happen.

You cannot do much about who your parents are and you certainly cannot change them, but you can do what my parents did and offer your children or anyone else in your life the immense privilege of being accepted and free to be who they are. Build the family you wish you had, whether that is by blood or by the people you choose to surround yourself with.

My parents worked their entire lives to offer me a better life. And they succeeded tremendously in doing that, but not by giving me money or sending me to an elite university.

Their message to me was so very clear: you are so much more than what you look like and where you come from. Do not let anyone dim your light.

The words that my mom always used was that she wanted me to “spread my wings.” She told me that when I moved to Mexico to live off my savings and follow my dreams.

The gift they have given me, the gift of feeling loved and seen and cared for, it does one thing above all else: it makes me want to go out into the world and make other people feel that way, too. No matter what you look like, where you come from, or what you believe. And that’s because love multiplies. It’s just what love does.

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