What I learn about my white male privilege

Comments (2)

1. Yes, I agree with that.

   I am deeply offended when someone talks about “white privilege” completely detached from the historical context of a person’s origin. The category of “white people” is discriminatory because it serves as a leveling category. There is no single community of white people; there are white individuals with diverse historical experiences. Canada and the United States are societies of immigrants, and speaking of “white privilege” in an immigrant environment is simply unacceptable.

   Personally, I came from a country that was destroyed by communism. All my ancestors lived and worked in a village. Strictly speaking, this means that until 1862 they were serfs – slaves – and were forced to give a significant part of their harvest to their masters. None of them had a formal education; they worked hard and made great efforts to raise their children – this is not “white privilege.”

   Then, after the abolition of serfdom, they had just over 50 years – less than two generations – when no one appropriated the results of their labor and efforts. After that, the communists came, and the results of personal, individual efforts became “common” again. Those of my ancestors who by that time had become relatively successful farmers were repressed because they suddenly were considered wealthy, and all their property was transferred to those who exerted less effort or none at all.

   Then came the war, in which my great-grandfather died, and my grandfather was drafted when he turned 18. He survived, he overcame his suffering, he started a family, and worked hard all his life to raise his children. Then came the great famine, when everyone was forced to eat plants and roots that were not meant for consumption. He and his family coped with that too, but they were forced to move to the city.

   Essentially, my parents were the first generation that had access to full education. But their life was not easy because by the early 90s, when they had a family and children, the communist state had fallen, and another period of chaos and widespread poverty began. My grandparents were already elderly, but nonetheless, they had to return to farming to feed the family. My father worked in a factory for 12 hours a day – a tough, intellect-killing job he hated but couldn’t quit because he needed to raise children.

   My own childhood was in the 90s, amid widespread poverty, the prevalence of street gangs, and criminal wars. In my family, I was the second generation that had access to full education, but obtaining this education required effort. There were always not enough free places at university, and to have this opportunity, one had to excel in school and then apply the same or even greater effort in university to get a degree. Education was not a privilege; it was the only opportunity to try to overcome the threshold of extreme poverty and need.
   And here I am, grown up and moved to Canada, went through university here too, adapted, and found a job because I wanted my children to have a peaceful, stable future, so they grow up without the social upheavals that regularly went through me and my ancestors. And what I hear in this society now is that after everything my family has gone through, after experiences of slavery, communism, war, poverty, hunger, I am supposedly full of “white privileges,” and so are my children. Therefore, I am deeply offended even by the expression “white privileges.” And I certainly know that a society that tries to equalize everyone, artificially diminishing the value of the efforts and labor of some people in favor of other people who did not and do not exert the same effort, is an unjust society. Moreover, such a society is doomed.

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2. I think that ‘white privilege’ gotta be understood more like the ‘luck’ to have parents/village that motivated you to go study, told you that stealing is bad, put all the good traits (honesty, hard work, good ethics) in you that allowed you to flourish later in life. Odd is that somehow it’s your fault that other groups tend to have a shakier value systems and that keeps them in poverty and underachieving.

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