Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. My intention is to offer food-for-thought, and today, I want to talk about privilege. What it is, what it's not, who has it, and what we can do with it. Privilege is an unearned advantage or immunity available only to a particular person or group.
When someone tells you to "Check your privilege," they are suggesting you recognize your advantageous position due to a particular social category to which you belong through no fault or doing of your own. Even being good-looking according to cultural standards is a privilege with its own perks and benefits. So this discussion is truly about privilege without any political agenda between the lines.
For example, I am privileged in that I am temporarily able-bodied, and unless I use my currently able body to ensure every public space is made accessible to those who are not, then I'm part of the problem, not the solution. I don't need to wait until I'm personally in need of accommodations to demand them. There are people who need them right now.
Resources are systematically available to people who are physically, psychologically, cognitively, and intellectually-able, but it comes at the expense of, and often without consideration for, people with a disability, be it physical, psychological, or a learning difficulty. I didn't earn my privilege, and I can't get rid of it, but I think it's important for me to acknowledge it and then use it to help those who aren't equally represented.
Privilege is not a bad word; it only carries a negative connotation if someone thinks that something isn't even a problem if it doesn't personally affect them. This can present itself as male privilege in a world where men aren't concerned or actively involved in making sure women have free access to menstrual products, for example, or industries where men earn more money than women to perform the same job.
It can also be in the ever-controversial white privilege, where caucasians don't serve as long a prison sentence after being convicted of the same crime as someone of color, not to mention historically benefiting from wider and more positive representation in the media, advantageous racial profiling, and so on.
Again, privilege is not about assigning blame to someone today for something that has existed for years, it's simply about recognizing an advantage someone has and can therefore use to even out the playing-field for everyone. Privilege, in-and-of-itself, isn't inherently the problem. Some male actors are now refusing to accept roles in movies where their female co-stars are paid less than they are.
It's a step in the right direction, and it requires men be allies for women, just as allies are necessary in every revolution and evolution. People get very defensive when their privilege is pointed out to them, but there's no need to be. I am privileged because I'm also white and I identify as male. Those are two unearned advantages I didn't even ask for, and yet benefit from.
The mature and adult question we can each contemplate is: what benefits am I enjoying that I didn't earn, and can I use my privilege to help others have access to the same treatment? If we look at someone else's struggle and say, "Well, that's not MY problem!" then we take part of the destructive force of privilege. Rather than being the voice for those who aren't heard, we increase the distance between us.
I may be male and caucasian, but when I first moved to the U.S. as a teenager, I was most surprised by Christian privilege, where school holidays and paid time off work was, and still is, scheduled around Christian holidays. But being born Jewish, I had to either ask for special treatment or go to school or work because the Jewish calendar isn't recognized here. Heck, California recognizes Indigenous Peoples' Day, while many other States in the U.S. still celebrate Columbus Day.
And nowhere but in the State of Hawaii, does anyone know about, let alone observe any of their State holidays like King Kamehameha Day, and so on. So, lacking the Christian privilege was perhaps my first face-to-face confrontation with an uphill clmb that I've inherited through no fault of my own, while the majority enjoyed smooth sailing and time off with their families.
When I was younger, I thought privilege was simply a matter of majority rules, but there are more women than men, yet, as the saying goes, "It's a man's world." So let's talk about what privilege is not: someone tried to publicly shame me online for being so privileged because I don't have to support any kids or a family, but that's not a privilege, that's a choice.
Luckily, someone else who is a parent to four children, immediately commented that parents are actually the privileged ones because they get to raise children and have a family, while I do not, and many people literally cannot. Privilege isn't something for others to use against us, it's something with which we must all come to terms and then use as a tool to create the very balance we seek.
From a Buddhist perspective, having been born at all is a privilege, let alone during the time and in the place we were born, in human form, no less, when we could have been born as any other animal. There are over 800 different schools of Buddhism, and some do believe this life was earned through karma in a previous life, but regardless, life itself is a gift for which the only appropriate response is: Thank You.
And as a practice of gratitude, we can express our appreciation by committing our lives to help reduce the suffering of others. Let's use our personal advantages to help others advance. If we have more than enough, let's make room for everyone at the table. There's plenty to go around without anyone having to suffer at the expense of another. So contemplate what benefits you enjoy, whether you've earned yours or not, and use that privilege to help others.
Some have worked really hard to overcome the many obstacles on their path toward privilege, which is where I often find the most hope: in those who help others up because they know what it's like to be down. Waking up from our illusion of separateness is what Buddhism is all about. And it's a practice we can all master, which is why I'm grateful to have been exposed to
the teachings of mindfulness and awareness. And I'm grateful for every person who listens to this podcast, reads the book, watches and shares the YouTube videos and monthly emails, comments, likes, and spreads the message to others, who may have otherwise never come across the message that has enriched our own lives so much. Keeping it to ourselves would be a disservice to others.
So, thank you for listening with an open mind and heart despite any apprehension you may have initially had about the topic. I appreciate you. Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp. For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED-Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.
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