If you're like me, you've got some anger to burn off these days.
I've started to spend Sunday mornings in my basement gym, whaling on my heavy bag while listening to something inspirational. This appears to be an excellent combination for allowing me to respond to and engage with the rest of the world in a nonviolent manner.
There are a few human behaviors in this miraculous, beautiful world I actively despise, and they are all so prevalent at this moment, actively roaming around in our lives like zombies, that it is difficult not to feel embattled and aggressive.
These include but are not limited to:
- White Privilege, male privilege, entitlement, and their everyday, negative impacts on our communities large and small: racial, social, economic and cultural oppression and inequity at every level, rural and urban.
- Unauthorized uses of armed force, the next steps onto the slippery slope of authoritarianism;
- Presidential Lying -- 'nuff said;
- Mismanagement, such as the federal government's response to COVID that is going to extend the community health and economic suffering far longer than necessary;
Having done my rounds of jabs and power punches at the bag this morning, let's think about this first set of behaviors -- unacknowledged privilege -- and how they relate to the last -- mismanagement.
And let's take this away from the federal government, as that is just too easy and obvious. Let's acknowledge instead that the patterns that exist in our families, small organizations, towns, businesses -- nonprofits and otherwise -- and communities are amplified at the national level.
Using my experiences with rural nonprofit boards as a consultant and a board member, here's how this works. (Truthfully, its underpinnings can be found in the white Calvinist Protestantism on which our nation is founded: the idea that American "exceptionalism," success, and wealth are signs of God's providence. Go with me here.)
a. People who have been materially successful, due to birth (including but not limited to historic land theft and enslavement), education, work, or a combination of any of these believe this success makes them uniquely qualified to do anything. This is ENTITLEMENT.
b. These "uniquely qualified" people are sought after for nonprofit boards or community service in the hope that they will share their wealth and bring their friends along with them. They immediately vie for leadership roles because their privilege is evidence that they know best. Thus, people with no experience in leadership roles believe they should be leaders. People with no experience in event production believe they should be producers. Etc.
c. In meetings and during decision making, such people--feeling themselves uniquely qualified by their wealth (or maybe even chosen by God, who knows?)--take up a lot of air space with their opinions. So much so that others often can't get a word in. White/male privilege is terrible at listening as the nature of these complexes lead individuals to believe, mistakenly, that they don't have much to learn: rather, they believe others need to learn FROM them. They promote themselves and their own opinions over others, even when said opinions lack the foundation of any expertise.
The sad truth is that there are many, many organizations -- and whole communities -- whose mission-based work is hampered by dysfunctional boards and committees weighed down by the entitled behaviors of privileged white people.
I've been a reporter, silently observing, in many of those meetings. I've been a consultant, hired to observe and to counsel. I've watched local rural people talked over, talked down, and otherwise silenced by newly arrived retired residents from the city. As a board member I've had to endure people with no expertise taking up so much space that decisions never get made. I've watched as people unconscious of their privilege assume their rightness, speechifying without ever asking questions. I've watched good programs get sunk by the obstructionist behaviors of those who feel they are more right than those they are there to serve.
White privilege and entitlement is a CULTURE. It is a set of habits and behaviors that are the root of racial and economic and gender inequities. Its behaviors--characterized by an unconscious inability to put one's own needs and beliefs to the side, TO STEP OUT OF THE CENTER--are also the enemy of the good in many other situations.
This is why a heavy bag and a pair of boxing gloves come in handy during Sunday morning observances.
