[lbo-talk] Check your privilege?

[michael yates]

I have been accused of being privileged many times. At a party once, a person with whom I worked said that if I were a real Marxist, I would give all my money away to the poor. How I was to live without money seemed not to have occurred to this person. Not long after this party, I bought a house with a woman to whom I was then married. A part-time colleague of mine who lived far from campus stayed at our house two nights a week. She said one night that it was a big contradiction for me to live in a big house. Too much privilege I guess. My home ownership didn't last long though. The marriage hit the skids and we sold the house to my former in laws for a bargain price. I lost some money, but at least my privilege quotient fell. Not long before this happened, my wife said one night that she sometimes hated me because I had a good job and she did not. More privilege. She did get back at me in marriage counseling (which, like the marriage, failed). The counselor asked her that if she had to choose between the cats and me (there were at that time about 20 cats, three dogs, two ferrets, and a bird), which would she pick. She unhesitatingly said, "the cats." An hour later I got a speeding ticket on the way home from the counseling session. Not a good day. About ten years later, one of my brothers called me a rich capitalist pig. This occurred after I suggested that he should quit mooching from our parents. His comment reflected that he was poorer than I. In 2007, Karen and I traveled across the country for a few months promoting my book, Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate. In Spokane, a young man with a guitar sat silently while I spoke. Afterwards, I was signing books, and he came up to the table and handed me a sheet of folded paper. Back at our (cheap) motel, I read it. He said that I was a shallow hypocrite. Here I was talking about poverty, shitty jobs, inequality, and the like, while I was wearing a fancy outfit: expensive sports coat, nice pants, good shoes. He did say that my wife (Karen) was OK, not like me at all.

There isn't much you can say when you are hit with comments like these. And I didn't want to be poor. I wanted to have that good job. I liked that house, for awhile at least. I wasn't unhappy to be better off than my brother. I kept wearing that sports coat. Yet when the initial irritation wore off, I did think about what these people had said. And I have tried to be as generous as possible. Live in a space that fits our needs and isn't extravagant. When I had to buy a new sports coat last winter for a meeting I attended, I got one on sale. And so forth. And like Carrol says, do what I can to fight for a world with much greater equality and much less privilege. Be ready when that glorious day comes to put what I own into that great common pool.