| The Second Meditation on Privilege |
[Sep. 11th, 2012|03:17 pm]
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Read The First Meditation On Privilege before reading this, or else it won't make any sense and you will probably yell at me and I will be sad.
In the First Meditation, I tried to establish that I really do understand some of what women are going through regarding creepy guys by drawing a parallel to my own experience in India where everyone who talked to me seemed to be involved in a complicated plot to guilt or harass me into giving them money.
I think I did a pretty good job with the analogy. All aspects of the two situations line up in a nice parallel. However, some people criticized the analogy yesterday on the grounds that it seemed a bit offensive to call poor beggars "privileged" over rich tourists.
Yeah, that's not a bug, it's a feature.
One of the points I was trying to make with that analogy is that although the phenomenon of tourists being super uncomfortable exists and is very bad, the language of "privilege" with all its connotations is a uniquely bad set of terms with which to describe it. If I wanted to explain to Indian beggars why their behavior is hurtful - an explanation I think needs to be made and which is not necessarily destined to fail - I literally cannot think of any worse way to do it than by talking about "privilege".
Just to hammer the point in, here is a hypothetical dialogue between an oblivious version of me and the Indian beggar Ganaj from my visit to Varanasi.Ganaj: Hey man! I will tell you your fortune for fifty rupees!
Oblivious Me: Check your privilege.
Ganaj: What?
Oblivious Me: Your privilege is showing. It's okay if you're oblivious to your privilege. Most poor people are. But you know how you can walk outside without being asked for money? You know how you never have to worry if all the people fawning on you and offering you favors are just looking for some cash? You know how you can walk outside at night without thinking about getting robbed? That's the poor privilege you benefit from every day.
Ganaj: I don't feel privileged.
Oblivious Me: I know! That's the most privileged thing of all! Part of poor privilege is never having to think about poor privilege, because it doesn't affect you!
Ganaj: I still don't really feel privileged. Then again, I don't really feel anything at all ever since all my fingers fell off from leprosy.
Oblivious Me: Hey now, cut it out! We're not holding an Oppression Olympics here!
So what am I not trying to say here? I'm not trying to trivialize the rich tourist's problems. The constant harassment throughout my trip to India really did make me feel uncomfortable and unsafe to the point where I had to cut my trip short, and I and other tourists shouldn't have to put up with that. I'm not even saying that everything I told Ganaj about "poor privilege" isn't entirely true. I am just saying, once again that the language of privilege is a uniquely terrible way to talk about these problems.
Right now Ganaj is probably acutely conscious of the fact that he is dependent on me. I can make his day awesome or ruin it completely on a whim. If I tell him "No", I'll probably go off and eat a three course meal at a fancy hotel restaurant without sparing him a second thought. He will go to the alley where he lives, look to see if there's anything in the trash heap the dogs and rats haven't reached first, and then go to bed hungry and cursing my name. If I told him I'd consider giving him money if he clucked like a chicken, he might well agree. Under these circumstances, to tell Ganaj "No" is harsh though often necessary. To tell him "No, and man you are sooo privileged even to ask that" is just cruel, even though it does point to a real and important problem.
Likewise, a socially awkward guy who has never had a girlfriend sits next to an attractive girl in chemistry class or something. For some reason he decides he has a chance with her and asks her out, probably in a socially awkward way. She says no. Then she goes out to party with her attractive friends and her attractive boyfriend, while he goes back home to cry in his room alone and unloved and worrying that no one will ever love him (think this is an exaggeration? I've been that socially awkward guy and done exactly that.) The girl's feelings of discomfort and constant harassment are just as real as the rich tourist's. But when she calls him from her exciting party with her attractive boyfriend on her arm and interrupts his crying-alone-in-his-dark-room to tell him how privileged he is, that is exactly 100% the most offensive possible term to use at that particular time in the same way it is when I give the same lecture to Ganaj.
I'm not saying I don't understand why she might do it, though. Let's go back to the streets of Varanasi:Ganaj: Hey man! I will tell you your fortune for fifty rupees!
Oblivious Me: Check your...
Compassionate Me: (suddenly materializing) Hey, if you tell Ganaj to check his privilege, that's going to sound kind of mean. Here, let me handle this. (pushes Oblivious Me aside) Hey, Ganaj, I know your poverty must be difficult for you, and I know I can never really understand how it feels to need money as desperately as you do. On the other hand, I'm just a guy trying to take a trip through India without being stopped every three feet by pushy beggars who make me feel awful about myself. So if I wish you luck on your future financial endeavours, would you mind leaving me alone for tonight?
Ganaj: Well, it's very nice of you to say that. And as a reward for being so nice, I'm going to tell you an extra complete, extra-lucky fortune.
Compassionate Me: (suspiciously) And is this going to cost money?
Ganaj: Well, of course, I don't tell fortunes for free. It costs a lot to replenish the spiritual power involved, you see.
Compassionate Me: Uh...as I was saying before...I have a lot of respect for you, and, uh...I'm sure your fortune telling abilities are excellent, but I really just want to be left alone right now.
Ganaj: Ah! You think my fortune telling abilities are excellent! Then you should buy a fortune! Only fifty rupees!
Compassionate Me: No. Please go away.
Ganaj: But you said my fortune-telling abilities were excellent! Come on! Just one fortune!
Compassionate Me: Uh...erm...please...gah! (Compassionate Me has a protracted nervous breakdown. Somewhere around the five minute mark, Ganaj starts to feel awkward and walks away.)
Compassionate Me: Well, uh, that wasn't so bad. And at least we stayed compassionate.
Oblivious Me: Yeah. By the way, there are ten more beggars between here and the hotel.
Compassionate Me: Oh sacred truth and beauty NO no no no no. Will you handle this one? I promise you can tell them to check their privilege as much as you want.
Man, the thing with thought experiments is you never know where they're going to end up before you start writing them. Let's try this again:Ganaj: Hey man! I will tell you your fortune for fifty rupees!
Philosophical Me: Ganaj, are you authorized to speak for all Indian street fortune-tellers?
Ganaj: By a surprising coincidence, I am!
Philosophical Me: Good. By another coincidence, I am authorized to speak for all rich tourists. I propose an accord. From now on, no fortune-tellers will bother any rich tourists. That way, we can travel through India in peace, and you'll never have to hear us tell you to "check your privilege" again.
Ganaj: Unfortunately, I can't agree to that. See, we fortune-tellers' entire business depends on tourists. There are cultural norms that only crappy fraudulent fortune-tellers advertise in the newspapers or with signs, so we can't do that. And there are also cultural norms that tourists almost never approach fortune-tellers. So if we were to never accost tourists asking for business, no fortunes would ever get told and we would go out of business and starve to death.
Philosophical Me: At the risk of sounding kind of callous, your desire for business doesn't create an obligation on my part or justify you harassing me.
Ganaj: Well, think about it this way. Many tourists really do want their fortunes told. And a certain number of fortune-tellers are going to defect from any agreement we make. If all the cooperative fortune-tellers agree not to accost tourists the defecting fortune-tellers will have the tourists all to themselves. So if we do things your way, either you'll never be able to get your fortune told at all, or you'll only be able to get your fortune told by a defecting fortune-teller who is more likely to be a fraud or a con man. You end up fortuneless or conned, we end up starving to death, and the only people who are rich and happy are the jerks who broke our hypothetical agreement.
Philosophical Me: Then it would seem we have two possible options. First, we could challenge the cultural norms that prevent tourists from approaching fortune-tellers and that prohibit fortune-tellers from advertising in the papers at the risk of appearing fraudulent. Second, we could come up with some protocol for interaction between tourists and fortune-tellers that maximized the chance of tourists who wanted fortune-tellers finding them while minimizing the degree to which tourists felt harassed.
Ganaj: Either of those sound reasonable.
To be continued... |
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