Privilege: Acknowledging and Accepting our Privileges

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Privilege: Acknowledging and Accepting our Privileges

Whenever someone invites me to a reading group to discuss Marxist/Socialist literature, I often decline the invitation. Why? Because being Deaf, I require a sign language interpretor in order to understand what people are saying, so that I can follow the conversation. I can read lips on one to one, but I cannot understand people in a group setting. I can speak, but my deaf accent is not always so clear, so sometimes people have a hard time understanding me. I like to have an ASL interpretor voice for me when I speak so that everyone can understand what I’m saying. Thus, it’s hard for me to participate in a group reading session made up of hearing friends or collegeues, because none of them know ASL or can provide me an ASL interpretor.

When I tell them that I cannot participate to my reasons cited above, they then apologize to me and would say something like “oh, damn, I forgot you’re Deaf.” This, my friends, is called privilege. They are hearing and they don’t have to think about how a group reading is not fair to a Deaf person. Or if a person in a wheelchair is invited to a party but cannot attend due to lack of accomodations in a house or building. Or if a black man is stopped by a police officer for looking “suspicious” when he has done nothing wrong. Or if a white or light skinnd woman of color is adored and praised for her beauty and given modeling gigs, while dark skinned or very black women are ignored or given very little attention. Privilege is when a person does not realize that someone else don’t have the same privileges as them in a certain setting, whether it’s academic, work, social, political, casual, etc.

When we speak of white privilege, some white people feel like that we are attacking them for being white. That’s not the case. We’re criticizing their white privilege, the fact that they don’t have to think about how in certain situations, their whiteness may play in favor for them, such as being arrested by cops or being victims in a crime, or winning praise for their artistic works while women and people of color are ignored or pushed aside to another category. Just like for any hearing people, their hearing ability plays a huge favor for them, while my deafness prevents me from participating in a casual group reading session with hearing Marxists when there is no ASL interpretor present.

Each one of us has certain privileges over others. I acknowledge my light skin privilege over other Indian & South Asian women. I acknowledge my oralist privilege over other Deaf people who cannot speak or read lips. I acknowledge my Indian privilege over Pakistanis. I acknowledge my Western privilege whenever I am visiting relatives in India. In some ways, my privileges play in favor for me, and in other ways, I struggle from lack of privileges in certain situations, such as being Deaf, Muslim, South Asian, female, and brown. EVERYONE has privileges, and it’s about damn time that people acknowledge them, so that we may make progress in our very complicated and complex society.