September 4, 2015 - 16:56
“’You are so lucky!’ she exclaimed. […] ‘You have a cause. You have a purpose to your life.’”
“First of all, speaking of race and class and gender in one breath, what she said meant that those lucky preoccupations of mine, from police violence to nuclear wipe-out, were not shared. They were mine and not hers.” –“Report from the Bahamas” by June Jordan
This quote was very impactful to me mostly because I understand where this woman was coming from and why she said what she did, though this does not excuse what she said. In my life, I have encountered many people who think this way. They believe that activists are fortunate because the difficulties that they went through gave them a purpose in life. They envy the passion and the motivation that comes as a result of being treated as less than human. Of course, this doesn’t fare well with those who are in a disadvantageous situation. After all, what June Jordan seems to argue in “Report from the Bahamas” is that those who have privilege are often blind to it. But, just because discrimination doesn’t happen to you personally, doesn’t mean you cannot have a part in eliminating it.
For most of my life, I grew up in a bubble. My childhood environment in Taiwan was so safe that at the young age of 12, I was allowed to walk home as late as 11 p.m. at night all by myself. I do not personally know anyone who was mugged or anyone who was even in a brawl. I grew up in a homogenous society where everyone thought the same way and everyone looked the same. I didn’t look like everyone else, but I was not discriminated against based on my looks. Quite on the contrary, in Asian countries, Westerners are generally treated with a lot of respect and are almost venerated. So, I definitely grew up with a lot of privilege.
Thankfully, I learned to love history. Through studying history, I became aware of my privilege. I realized that not everyone feels safe walking on the streets, and not everyone is treated with respect. People are judged by their appearances and by preconceived notions and stereotypes. However, unlike the housewife in “Report from the Bahamas”, I did not become jealous of activists like Ida B. Wells and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for finding a purpose in life. I’m not the type of person to be passively envious without doing anything about it. Acknowledging that other people have less privilege compared to what I have made me even more ready to change this situation.
I think that it all depends on mindset. The housewife believed that the struggle against discrimination of any kind was a one-sided struggle. She believed that those who are less-privileged are the ones who have to change things. That is not the case. I think that in order to change the society, all sides have to be willing to change. Those who have more privilege must be willing to give some up in order to allow others to prosper. This is what I believe June Jordan was hinting at as well. Jordan pointed out that the housewife assumed that all of Jordan’s preoccupations were not shared, when in fact they were. The housewife was simply not aware of it.
In a sense, the housewife was unable to make a connection with June Jordan and her struggles. She perhaps thought that there was no common connection based on their socio-economic or cultural background. I feel like many times I make this mistake as well. I tend to look for people who are similar to me, either in the way I look or where I come from, just because I think that we’ll have more in common. It’s a foolish mistake but it has to do with comfort zones and being unwilling to step out of them. Of course, this is an ongoing problem that I will have to deal with slowly, and I find that identifying the first step is already a lot of progress.
Ultimately, having privilege does not allow you to avoid the problem entirely. Dealing with discrimination is not the job of the underprivileged, but rather everyone. The people who are more privileged have a responsibility to be aware of the problem as more often than not, they are the ones who have more power to change things. June Jordan argues that a person is not “lucky” because they have a cause, and that it is the responsibility of everyone to deal with this problem. The problems in society are shared problems.