Power and Privilege
A sermon by The Rev. Dr. James H. Macomber
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
We’ve all heard or read about the excerpts from The Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s impassioned sermons that have been broadcast over and over and over again. I think that privilege, more than simply racism, lies at the root of the media-inspired controversy over these sermons. Thus, I want to talk about power and privilege with you today. As you know, Wright is now the retired pastor of a United Church of Christ megachurch—one of the most liberal Christian traditions—in Chicago. It’s the home church of presidential candidate Barack Obama.
We’ve all heard or read at least pieces of the response that the media coerced Senator Obama to present in his own defense. Media commentators demanded in shrill voices, “Why haven’t you repudiated and disowned Rev. Wright for his unpatriotic rhetoric? Why haven’t you quit that terrible church?” Obama’s responses to these questions were thoughtful, measured, and gentle. He deftly challenged America to a conversation about race and racism. I’ve heard it said that his speech represents the most important reflection on racism since Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.”
Our own denominational president, The Rev. Bill Sinkford, calling Obama’s speech a gift to America, wrote this:
Much of the conversation about race is so filled with political correctness that truth is hard to come by. Whites move so easily to denial, citing the progress that has been made in recent decades and glossing over the glaring disparities in opportunity, income, and even incarceration that remain. African Americans and people of color generally, including myself, show up defensive, afraid that the reality of our lives will, yet again, be deemed unimportant, that we will, yet again, be made invisible.
My criticism of these responses to the media rush to judgment about Jeremiah Wright, and faulting Obama for his pastor’s rhetoric, is that we need to be much more systematic. The trouble is more than racism; it’s really about power and privilege. Wright, Obama, and Sinkford all focus on race and racism as the issue. It’s really only one of many issues. As Professor Cone implied in the reading, there are a host of “isms” for us to deal with in our culture. Collectively, they form a complex matrix of cultural privilege and thereby convey power to a relative few. The “isms” include racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, ableism, and classism—perhaps more.
We who enjoy privilege and the power that comes with it are most often oblivious to it. Power and privilege themselves can become invisible in that they become the “natural” way of doing things. Men open doors for women. Traditional courtesy? Or a subtle, sexist reminder that women are dependent on men?
Sociology professor Allan Johnson has written extensively about privilege in our culture. In his book, Privilege, Power, and Difference, he makes a compelling argument that the “isms’ that plague us do not exist in isolation from each other. I appear to be a reasonably able-bodied, straight, white, middle-class male, and these attributes convey privilege to me. The passing of time has perhaps cost me in terms of ageism, but that’s only one determinant of privilege among many. What privilege I have is not personal; it’s not something I’ve earned. Indeed, privilege is ordinarily unearned. It comes with group membership, with identity. And the media invariably tries to oversimplify the issue—as well as ignoring that privilege, and hence empowerment, is also part of every commentator’s self-identity.
Understand that I am not endorsing any presidential candidate. It’s just that the first media broadside was fired in the name of race. And make no mistake, it was fired at a black preacher mostly by privileged, white-male commentators under the cover of a privileged version of patriotism and the premise that black ministers ought to preach like privileged white ministers. You know what? That kind of preaching—in support of the status quo—was never what the biblical prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Jesus, ever did.
And it’s not what Jeremiah Wright was doing either. He preaches black liberation theology, the same thing that James Cone writes about from an academic perspective. It’s about the poor and oppressed who have enjoyed no measurable benefit from the civil rights movement. They’re still poor. They’re still oppressed. And America has let them down, and we deserve to be damned for it. They’ve become invisible, hidden by another invisibility: privilege. Exceptions? When disaster strikes: the Ninth Ward. Oh my! What is this phenomenon? How dare you become visible!
What do we privileged folk expect Wright to say? “Don’t worry, God loves you and is taking care of you.” There’s the lie. Privileged folk turn Jesus’ words, “the poor will always be with us,” into the false belief that humans cannot solve the problem of poverty, so why bother? Wright responds, “Oh yes, we can, and that it hasn’t happened is shameful.”
This country is capable of better, and it is patriotic to say so. But privilege can blind us; it can immobilize us. Privilege is not a black problem, it is not a women’s problem, nor is it a gay problem. It is the problem of those of us who are privileged. We must make it change, and sometimes it takes a prophet and strident language to get us to budge. Instead, we altogether too often merely get defensive as Sinkford warns.
Indeed, a fact I find very interesting is that each of the three remaining, viable presidential candidates connect with one of the “isms” that conspire to create privilege. Senator Obama and racism. Senator Clinton and sexism. Senator McCain and ageism. Wait till the media grab onto this. Given their insistence on making everything all about oversimplified conflict, they’ll be speculating about which “ism” is the strongest. Which matters most? And they will trivialize it into a game of rock-scissors-paper.
Have you wondered why they refer to the candidates as Obama, McCain, and Hillary? Could it be sexism? And why do they keep marveling at how well McCain is “holding up to the rigors of a national campaign?” Obama’s mother was white; why is he black?
Where does the trouble over privilege come from? Are we as individuals connected to it? Of course we are, but we cannot expect some groundswell of social change to solve suddenly our problems over difference. It takes individual effort to turn the wheels of change. In a word, the trouble—the reason we’re stuck—comes from privilege and the paradox of pretending it’s nonexistent. It is often invisible to us, even to us as people who espouse the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Some may think that I’m taking you to the woodshed because you’ve done wrong, that I’m going to blame you for being privileged. But it doesn’t work that way. Privilege comes from group membership and is unearned. Yet, it is defensiveness that keeps us paralyzed, stuck. However, to get unstuck over privilege and difference, we must act individually.
I am white. I am male. I am heterosexual. I am well-educated. My labors have been among the ranks of professionals. I am relatively able-bodied. I am privileged. All these attributes provide an identity that places me among the privileged in this society. But I am not a bad person, nor am I guilty of something. Except for the education and career pieces, these attributes were purely accidents of birth.
We seem to have an intractable supply of “isms.” Racism, classism, ageism, ableism, heterosexism, at infinitum. Every one of these “isms” means that somebody gets the short end of the stick. And for every short end, there is a privileged, long end of the stick. Those who get the unearned, long end of the stick are privileged and can wield power over the short-enders as a result. They can insist that Jeremiah Wright not preach the truth as he sees it.
Power and privilege accrue to groups, not to individuals. We might think that there are notable exceptions, like Bill Gates, for example. Great personal wealth seems to result in great personal power and personal privilege. How quickly would that restaurant lose your reservation if he wandered in without one at the same time you did and there was only one table available? Many of us get exasperated with apparent personal privilege. But in the broader social context, power and privilege are accorded to all rich people who are so recognized. It’s not personal. Power and privilege accrue to successful capitalists—as a group. White males, in our American society, have enjoyed, as a group, considerable power and privilege. Oh, that’s me! But I don’t feel power powerful or privileged. That must be other white males. Only some white males.
The fallacy: We may be tempted to say that we’re not a part of the problem, not a barrier to social change because we don’t actively participate in the system of power and privilege. Nevertheless, we benefit. I never get pulled over for driving around an upscale neighborhood. I never get followed around by store security when I’m shopping. I can display a picture of my spouse on my desk without any repercussions. I can ignore my racial identity and think of myself as simply a human being. To date, every U.S. President has been a white male. Yet, why does it follow that a woman or an African American or an Hispanic must be questioned about their abilities to do the job because of their identities?
Some people claim that privilege is a thing of the past. Not true! We as Unitarian Universalists have an obligation to help tear down barriers to diversity if we are going to honor our UU principles—and that means doing something about identity-based privilege and the power it confers. I remind you, racism is not a black problem nor is sexism is a women’s problem. These are problems of the privileged.
Put a little differently, why is there no white history month? Why is there no white Miss America pageant? Because the “whiteness” of these things has been taken for granted. Because our founding fathers were all white. Race, gender, sexuality, and other attributes become invisible to the privileged, and attempts to gain recognition, to even out the short end of the stick, are perceived to be attacks on privilege, on the status quo.
I’ve been able to get on any public golf course all of my life, because I am male and white—it has nothing to do with how badly I play. I have always been invisible in a way. I belong to a privileged group. My presence on the course goes unnoticed. Society says, “You have every right to be here.” That is still not true for my friend, The Reverend Roland Johnson, the African-American minister many of you met last week. Golf and tennis are not “black” sports; they go with the country club set, which is pretty white. Things have certainly gotten better in the past twenty years, which serves to illustrate that systems of power and privilege are not necessarily immovable monoliths that block diversity forever. Yet, there are courses where he and I won’t play because he is uncomfortable there.
We cannot do away with all vestiges of power and privilege with a snap of our fingers, or by merely waiting for the passage time so that diversity can naturally blossom. It won’t. Systems of power and privilege, and the processes that support them, have plenty of inertia.
We might say something like “Oh, that’s too bad. Roland sure got the short end of the stick.” That’s an easy thing to say, if you’re privileged and enjoy the long end of the stick.
Sociologist Allan Johnson makes some important points about short and long ends. We UUs pride ourselves on a sense of fair play and would nearly all agree that the folks at the short end of the stick are treated unfairly. But the folks at the long end are treated unfairly, too! They haven’t earned their privilege. A white male driver is essentially invisible even as a black male driver becomes the center of attention. The default golfer is a white male. Political and corporate CEOs are white and male. What is fair about this? And sorry, tokenism does not signal fundamental change.
Fair and equitable treatment means that we white males—as privileged a bunch as there has ever been—must give up a part of the long end. If we try to keep a death grip on the privilege that is the long end of the stick, we may hang on for quite some time. How long often depends on how long we can sell everybody else on the ideas that our privilege is really nothing and that we personally are not really involved.
Some defensive white males might claim, “Well, I’m not a racist. So don’t blame me.” Or we might say “What? Me privileged? No way. You must mean Bill Gates.” But consider this question: It’s fine that you’re not a racist, but what are you doing to end racism—and the other “isms,” thereby promoting diversity—in all kinds of social settings?
Even as we have systems of power and privilege in virtually all social settings, including this one, I think we UUs can take some satisfaction from our efforts to deal with many “isms” and dismantle privilege and barriers to diversity. Diversity cannot increase without our help, and we’ve done pretty well in several areas. Gender equality is one of those. Gender is simply not an issue when we nominate and elect congregational leaders; we’ve gotten past that. Furthermore, it seems that all of the women in our midst are quite capable of telling white males to shut up if we interrupt them.
Can we help others make different choices? The simplest, most effective way to encourage other choices is to make them ourselves—and to do so openly. I had a colleague at the University of Tennessee who loved to tell ‘gay jokes’ at our community lunch table. As I became more attuned to the privilege of heterosexism, I finally got up the courage to do something. This colleague liked to use the term ‘fag’ or ‘faggot.’ One day, after one of his jokes, I gave an explanation of where the term ‘faggot’ may have come from. In the Middle Ages, when witches were to be burned, the fires were often started by burning a homosexual or two. When they were reduced to burning embers, the witches would be piled on. In Elizabethan English, a burning ember is called a ‘faggot.’ A true etymology? I don't know. But after I took that less-traveled path, my colleague stopped telling ‘gay jokes,’ at least when I was present. Stopped cold. We can make a difference.
On a spiritual level, we face many bifurcations on our paths—forks in the trail. The easier, well-worn path is the one we usually choose. That's the one most everybody takes. Rest assured, it does not lead to social change, nor the dismantling of privilege. That worn path helps perpetuate the status quo. It takes individual courage to explore the other, less-well-worn path toward systemic change. For healthy change to occur, we as individuals need to choose the other fork in the path; too often it’s the road not taken. Consider Robert Frost’s closing stanza:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Indeed, may we so choose to help bend our universe toward justice. Amen.
