privilege as wound

I've been thinking a lot about what privilege does to us. Mostly I've been thinking about his because I've been trying to understand the White Wound so that I can come from a place of compassion towards white people. I've noticed a couple of different mindsets some people have around privilege. I bet there are a lot more than the two I have noticed, but here they are:

1. Some people, knowing that others do not get the same privileges that they do, feel incredibly guilty. Sometimes people try to hide their privilege because of their guilt, sometimes they try to convince themselves that they really earned their privilege, etc.

2. Other people feel very blessed for the privilege, either wanting to use it to help others get to their level of comfort or just feeling very lucky.

I think there are some real problems with both of these mindsets. I could write an essay on the problems, and maybe one day I will, but for now I'm just going to talk about how I've been thinking about privilege. Hopefully you can help me see where my own perspective is limited and complicit.

Okay, privilege is a wound. I'm not quite sure yet if all privilege is a wound, but I'm starting to think that most privilege is. It is the kind of wound that we are taught not to notice, but nevertheless we still feel it somewhere inside of us. I think the depth of the wound comes because privilege teaches us that we do not need each other.

Let me give an example. For the first time in my life, I have access to a car almost whenever I want. I'm taught to think that kind of mobility is a freedom, a good thing to have, again something that makes me more free and independent. I don't have to depend on bus schedules like I have before, or the kindness of others to pick me up, or my own legs to get me where I need to go. I can be independent of all of that. But independence is a great American lie. I actually depend on a lot of other people to drive that car. Dependence on fossil fuels, on the workers who extract them from the earth, on the people whose environment and homes are destroyed, etc. But because I don't have to see them, I can pretend I am independent of them. I learn that I don't need others.

But we do need each other. We come from the same source of Love called God. We need each other because we belong to each other. All of us.

As long as I don't have to think of my privilege as a wound, I will want to keep my privilege, even if I try to keep it in order to make other people's realities "better." As long as I don't think of my privilege as a wound, I can stay sick without even knowing it. I can convince myself I'm right.


How is that working for you, Jess?
Yea, I didn't think so.