In some conversion on social media that I was involved with (I wish I could remember where so that I could give credit), I heard this proposition: when privilege meets equality it experiences oppression.
When privilege meets equality it experiences oppression.
I heard this weeks ago, and it continues to return to me and invite me to consider how that may have played out in my life.
When I was in the second grade, public schools in Alabama finally relented and began integrating schools in accordance with federal law. On the weekend before that was to happen, I overheard adults talking (they did not know I could hear them). On the following Monday, black students from nearby black schools would be coming to our school which had been whites only up to that point. One of the adults insinuated that these students would likely be carrying knives. The implication was that we (white children) would be in danger. Of course, no such thing happened.
Listen to the dynamic. When privilege (white people and their children) meets equality (public education is a right of all children), it experiences oppression (our children won’t be safe because they all carry knives). Notice how the oppression becomes “us and them” binary language.
Consider public bathrooms and creating gender neutral bathrooms so that all people have access to them. When privilege (cis-gender people identifying as male and female) meet equality (provisions of public bathrooms that include trans and non-binary people) it experiences oppression (bathroom policing to ensure that predatory men dressed as women don’t hurt “our women”). You can run this through many situations and get an instantly clearer understanding of the dynamics at work.
When privilege meets equality it experiences oppression.
Our value of equity is a call and insistence that all people receive what they need to survive and thrive. For that to happen, change is required, and that’s where I see compassion entering into the work of equity. When we see a group of people not receiving what they need to survive and thrive, it requires the privileged to meet the demands for equity with a letting go, an opening up, and a willingness to expand rather than contract.
My experience of compassion invites me to consider your suffering, allows me to experience suffering together with you, requires me to notice your suffering, conjures my curiosity about how I might respond to your suffering, and calls me to be courageous in league with you about the suffering we hold together.
~Bob Patrick
