centre/margin

A few weeks ago at group I was given a notecard where I was supposed to write down the names of people I knew who were on the margins, or who didn't have a voice. I didn't write anything down, because I had a lot of trouble identifying anyone. I would think of some people and then realize that they do have a lot of friends, or that they do have a voice, or that they do have people speaking on their behalf in places where they're not given a voice. I don't think I was necessarily "right," that's just what I was thinking at the time.

Since then, though, I wondered if some of my trouble in answering that question had to do with the fact that I don't know whether I'm in the centre or the margins. My leadership position suggests that I am, in some sense, at the centre, and so do all the connections that I have. But I don't always feel like that's true, and my sense of myself within those circles is sometimes at the margins of those circles (sometimes this manifests itself in physical terms where I'm consistently on the fringes of the group). Maybe it's just me, maybe it's common, but I think identity as centric or marginal is constantly shifting depending on what people I'm around and my attitude at the time. Sometimes it really is deeper than that though.

Sort of on the lines of center and margin: I read an article on white privilege today. Most of what was listed as white privilege (and I think it's pretty accurate) is the privilege of white people to avoid symbolic identities, where they aren't necessarily representative of their whole race (although I wonder if that's true in a non-white majority community). In any case, it emphasized even more for me the need to let everyone be their own life, and to listen to their individual experience.

This is something that's actually pretty important to me in interpreting literature, as well, and, I think, a point of contention that I have with other English majors. Part of interpreting literature is taking things on symbolic grounds, and there is a lot of truth that can be found there. But, it also means that human lives within stories are not allowed to stand for themselves as a unique human experience. In other words, if a man in a story is abusing a girl, the man represents all men and the woman represents all women, and the story is saying that women are subjected to male oppression. I think there is a problem with that sort of interpretation, and it's something that really frustrates me when I hear other interpretations of men or women as a whole that are based on one character.

Anyway, white privilege. What frustrated me about the article is that there were no solutions offered. The article ended by saying, "What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base" (Peggy McIntosh). This is not a solution. It is an ideal, and a value, and an end, and it is good, but it doesn't offer any means. And that is something that has been bothering me for years about racial issues, and especially about issues of white privilege: I am never offered any solutions of what I can do, especially what I can do as a white male.

But maybe what the ending is getting at, or maybe it's just the first step in my mind toward a solution, is not over-running the people who will let themselves be overrun, and encouraging people to speak who will not speak on their own. I'm keeping this in broad terms because if I'm actually serious about doing this then it's not just something that applies to race relations, it applies to every interaction I have with people. I know what it's like to know that people will let me walk all over them, and I know what it's like to do it, and to see it happen, and it's terrible. Anti-coercion, anti-intimidation, striving for weakness rather than power. And I'm not trying to suggest that non-white people let themselves be walked over, it's more just the first step that I can think of actively taking, if I am in a situation where I do have the power to run over someone else.