A Privileged Life
Looking back at the nearly 90 years of my life, I realize that I have been one of the most privileged humans ever to have lived at any time since humankind became self conscious. I have male privilege, white privilege, English language privilege, American privilege, and the privilege of good health and appearance, as well as having been born in 1931. For most of my life, I thought that I was simply lucky and made a few fortunate choices that made life pleasant. But now, I realize I was born into great privilege at a very good time.
A simple definition of privilege is adequate to alert a person to their position in American society in 2021. Privilege means “the unearned access to social power based on membership in a dominant social group.” Because of the privileges I possess simply by being a male, white, English-speaking, healthy, and an American living in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, I have been extraordinarily privileged.
Male privilege. For almost all of human history men have had much more say in life than women. How this came about has much to do with greater male muscular strength, freedom from childbirth and care, at greater ability to roam farther, remain independent, and band together with other men with similar freedoms. It has taken me many years to become aware of this privilege. Growing up I was unaware of the privileges society gives to men because my major interactions were with the extremely strong women who surrounded me. Even as they felt the oppressive power of male privilege, they were strong, especially at home.
I was raised mainly by my mother and two sisters. (My father was a hard-working man and family provider; but he did not play an important role in my emotional and intellectual life.) My mother’s family was composed of my grandfather and five women–my grandmother and her four very strong-willed daughters. My grandmother had married her teacher to escape the life she could see around her in a very small, late 19th century, agricultural community in eastern Oregon. She moved with him when he moved and she raised their family. As a Quaker, my grandfather came from a more egalitarian society where women were educated and leaders. My grandmother supported these ideals and raised her daughters to become educated and live strong lives.
My mother, the third daughter, was educated and taught school, but became a house wife when she married. Mother supported my father’s male privileges–moves, wishes. and dominance; but she held power at home. After we children had left home, she became an excellent artist, painting, etching, and experimenting with lithographic printing. Her cultural hero was Georgia O’Keefe, not only because of her art but that she could live independently from her well-known husband. My older sister, Janice, who was very important to me as a very young boy, raised five daughters, all of whom have been very successful in their professional lives. At the same time she became a manager of a branch bank and contributed greatly to the family income. My other sister, Joann, whom I knew less well as an adult, raised three daughters and a son.
As you can see, I have been surrounded by powerful women who were able to overcome some male privileges. They did well in their own right. However, they did not have the privileges that I and most men have simply for being men. I well remember my mother when in her late 90s commenting on how she still catered to my father’s whims about when and what to eat, what TV shows they watched, and even when her friends might visit. But she was very pleased to see how young women could now overcome many of the restrictions that had limited her. Women no longer needed to work in an office, teach, or become a nurse. Nevertheless, women still earn less money than men and have not entered many professions or trades overwhelmingly dominated by men. I was largely unaware of these distinctions for many years because the women in my life were very strong and self assured. They had successfully adjusted to the limits placed on them by male privilege.
The first explicit expression of male privilege of which I was made aware was from my university freshman English professor who was but an instructor among several tenured professors. She had a Ph.D. whereas many of her colleagues did not. Because of nepotism rules, she could not teach at the university where her husband taught even as she was extraordinarily well qualified. And of course, her salary was much lower than that of her colleagues. She was the first rebel to male privilege that I had met who expressed her views to a wider audience–her students.
I now am aware that male privilege continued to play a part in higher education when of the 53 Ph.D.s awarded before me in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, only one was a woman. And I have taught in five university geography departments at times when the faculty was all male. I now know that I was advanced professionally, because of a long history of male privilege.
In my marriage, my wife, who was more intelligent than I, gave up attending the law school where she had recently been admitted, to travel with me for field research in southern Angola where she cared for the camp and prepared the food as I gathered information for my dissertation (which she later typed.) While I was writing the dissertation, she supported us by becoming a secretary. She followed me to my teaching positions in Eugene and New England, where she also worked as a secretary. However, I handled all of the major family finances. When I was offered a job in Nigeria during that country’s civil war, she and my two daughters came with me for two years. I know now that I had simply assumed the benefits of male privilege.
White privilege. For most of my life I was unaware of white privilege simply because I grew up in an area that was almost exclusively occupied by Protestant Christians of western European descent. In my public grade school, I was unaware of ethnic diversity. In my class there were only one Catholic, one Jew, one child of southern European ancestry, and two Black girls, the daughters of Pullman porters. I am now aware that the internment of Japanese at the beginning of the Second World War was in large part based on white privilege. Several families of Japanese origin lived in the neighborhood. My Cub Scout den mother who had been born in America was Japanese American. (Her son, a Boy Scout, was a third generation American.) In 1942, they were hastily relocated to a concentration camp. But as a 10 year old white kid, I did not question the official view that they were a threat to American security.
Throughout my high school days I knew but three or four people of color. And those few did not disturb my privileged white society. The Black boys were sons of people who, during the Second World War, had come to work in the Kaiser Company shipyards. But with one or two exceptions, they were not in my academic or technical classes. However, a Black student and a Japanese American , returned to Portland from a detention camp, were student body and class officers.
At Oregon State College, similarly, there were few non-White students. Even at the University of California in the 1950s, few minority students attended any of my classes. In my department in graduate school there was only one minority American student, a man of Japanese heritage. As a professional geographer, I knew no colleagues of minority status. And in the US Army I encountered few Black soldiers, probably because I was an officer in the Signal Corps, a technical service to which few Blacks were assigned. I was only truly made aware of the position of Blacks when I was on duty at Camp Gordon near Augusta, Georgia. Flagrant signs of discrimination existed openly there. The restrictions placed on Black residents were shocking because I had never before encountered them. That was my first brush with outright discrimination based on skin color.
I became aware of the benefits of White privilege both while doing research in Portuguese Angola when it was still a colony and while teaching in a Nigerian university. In both countries, the penalties for negatively discriminating against Whites were rapid. In both places, I was treated with preferential treatment in large part because I was unmistakably White. In Angola I was a white man of European heritage in a colonial state governed by a white authoritarian leader. In a newly independent Nigeria I retained the respect formerly given to White, British officers who had held similar positions. However, I was told directly by the university chancellor (later foreign secretary of the Nigerian government) that I was to restrict my activities strictly to teaching and not to express other opinions while at the university. (That was a Nigerian privilege denied me.)
In sum, because of my White privilege, I have not directly experienced any form of racial discrimination. Intellectually I have known of racial discrimination. But that knowledge has neither been emotional nor empathetic. The reading of Wilkerson’s book, “Caste,” and the discussions that are associated to “Black Lives Matter” have greatly expanded my intellectual understanding of what it means to have had the white privileges that I have enjoyed all of my life.
Christian privilege. Although I am not a Christian, I grew up in a Christian society in which Christian symbols, Christian songs, references to a Christian god, and church-going and bible-quoting were recognized as normal. Because I was curious about the Christian practices of my playmates, I occasionally attended Sunday school. When in college, I attended a church service for the first time. I could sing “God Bless America,” “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and play Christian hymns on the piano without thinking about the religious content of the words. It was simply part of being an American just as was learning about the Civil War. And intellectually, I did not find a need to think about how a god or gods played a part in my life until President Eisenhower decided that the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag should contain the phrase “one nation, under God “. Only then did I realize that I simply coasted along with Christian privilege, simply because I was part of a dominant American culture. Only as an adult have I had to learn to articulate my non-Christian religious beliefs.
English-speaking privilege. Speaking, reading, and thinking in English is also a privilege that I have enjoyed throughout my life. To speak, unthinkingly, the world’s currently dominant language, has given me opportunities for participating in a wider world through conversation and access to books, scientific literature, international conferences, and thoughts recorded in many places. Because English speakers were a major colonizing force, generations of people in former British colonies, (upon which the sun never set) had had to use English as the language of government and to learn in schools. English was the language of record where the diversity of native languages was great. Further because of the political, economic, and media power of English speakers has been so great, most speakers of other indigenous languages have had to learn English to participate fully in the modern world. Of course my Anglo privilege has seemed “natural” to me because the dominant early settlers and founders of the United States spoke English and more recent immigrants learned English to participate fully in American life. Although more immigrants have come to the United States from non-English speaking countries, the dominant language in America remains English.
Because of the privilege of speaking English, I was able to communicate in English even in remote parts of Angola in 1958-9. I was able to lecture at a German university and travel with a German student tour while only speaking English. I lectured in English at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, in 1967-69. All of my students there had learned to speak, read and converse in English in high school. In the Army at the Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe, in Paris in 1954-5, the common language used within the command was English, not French. Wherever I have traveled in Europe, Latin America, or Africa, I have had little difficulty in finding English speakers.
I have learned to read and speak a bit of Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese–none with any fluency. However, English-speaking privilege has not required me learn to communicate in other than English nor to alter my way of life in any major way. I realize that only knowing English, like the other privileges of my life, has limited the breadth of my consciousness; but it has, as have other privileges, lessened many difficulties I might otherwise have experienced.
Gender Privilege. As a homosexual, I had repressed my sexuality for all of my young adult life by conforming to the heterosexual standards of society. During those days homosexuality was not only considered an illness, but also illegal. The privilege is still being questioned. I was never discriminated negatively simply because I did not openly express my sexual feelings until after I divorced.
American privilege. Probably my greatest privilege is having been an American at the peak of the nation’s greatest cultural, political and economic power. America has provided me a good home, supported me with a good education and the luxury of an interesting and profitable professional life, given me immense material wealth, allowed me to travel widely throughout the world, and offered me freedom of speech and movement. Of course, these privileges are not unique to America, but have been available more broadly and more continuously here than in most other places.
American privilege has steadily grown from the time of early European settlement. Americans have benefited from the course of their conquest of the lands and peoples of the North American continent. New territory to occupy and new resources to exploit, at the expense of native Indians, provided the incentives to move westward. Initially, soils, trees, and waters which had been little exploited by a sparsely populated, largely non-agricultural native people provided energy in excess of what was required for the mere existence of European immigrants. And when this first surplus energy was degraded by soil erosion and deforestation, the excess White population could simply move west and continue to cut trees on more ‘virgin lands’.
When the early inventions of the industrial revolution were coupled with the energy captured by water power to drive mills and wind power to move goods long distance by sailing ships, the American population continued to expand. Those who stayed in the East and Mid-Atlantic states developed industries based on exporting agricultural surpluses and manufacturing goods that processed newly untapped mineral and other natural resources of the country. In the early 19th century, American prosperity became based on the energy of the rich soils west of the Appalachians and on slave labor in the South but also on rich coal and iron deposits. Coal provided energy that could power evermore factories. Steel and steam engines were also fundamental to creating a system of railroads that could move masses of people, goods, and resources throughout the nation and overseas.
But this was merely the beginning. With the discovery of extensive petroleum deposits and the concentrated energy that they contain, America became the major economic and political power that it is today. The energy from fossil fuels has grown exponentially from modest beginnings at the end of the 19th century to its peak today. The release of the energy that was previously locked up in geological beds of compressed and altered ancient forests is embedded in all of the goods and services of the 20th and 21st centuries. American entrepreneurs have been able to take advantage of massive amounts of coal, oil, and gas–vast new sources of energy– simply for the cost of extracting and transporting them to manufacturers, who in turn could use this cheap energy in making the products and services that distinguish the material wealth for which America has come to be known. Huge deposits of cheap energy and an early start has allowed American economic, cultural and political power backed by military force to colonize economically many of the nations on earth. Cheap energy and resources, first local, later from all over the world, are the basis for American privilege.
Most Americans assume that their privilege is based primarily on their ingenuity, skills, and exceptional form of government, not on the energy provided by rich soils and fossil fuels. The process of remaking our world by using fossil fuel energy has come to be supported by thoughts and beliefs that Americans now accept as usual and “natural.” These ideas were most clearly expressed fifty years ago by Lewis Mumford in his book, “The Pentagon of Power.” He grouped these ideas–this American worldview–under words all beginning with ‘P’: Power itself, then Production, Profit, Property, and Publicity. The power of energy has supported production, which through publicity–salesmanship–, the creation of profits–through capitalism–, and the monetization of property–everything is for sale–, are basic to modern American ways of life. The resulting changes in American lives since 1900, especially since the “Great Acceleration” in the years following World War II, are also underlain by the relatively modern concept of exponential growth, or unceasing Progress. Supporting the fruits of “progress,” and without which public health, modern medicines, electricity, the outpouring of goods and services, and on and on, would not be possible is the energy derived largely from fossil fuels. In recent decades, as Americans we have benefitted from the available energy of fossil fuels, equivalent to the energy of 300,000 human slaves working 24 hours a day for each of us.
I like to relate this progress to the lives of my family in the Twentieth Century. My father, who were born in 1901, I, born in 1931, my daughter, born in 1964, and grandchildren born in the 1980s have been submerged, unquestionably in this Pentagon of Power.
We have seen the generation of electric energy increase 100 times between 1900 and 1935 and another 100 times during my lifetime. Our life spans have steadily increased. White, American males at birth in 1900 had a life expectancy of 48 years, in 1931 of 59, in 1964 of 67, and in 2020 of 78 (but in 2920 for the first time, declining.)
And part of that American privilege has been the result of wide-spread use of vaccines against small pox (1900), (pertussis (1914), diphtheria (1926), tetanus (1938), early influenza (1940s),polio (1955), measles and mumps (1967), rubella (1969), hepatitis B (1981), chickenpox (1996), rotavirus (1998), hepatitis A (2000), pneumococcal (2002), shingles (2008), and covid-19 (2020). And of course, sewer and water systems have greatly improved public health.
We have been privileged by being American our entire lives. We have not been restricted in the ways many people in the non-American or “underdeveloped” or “developing” nations have been in their own search for modern goods and services. We have believed that America and Americans have the greatest society on Earth. That’s what I mean when I say I have American privilege, unearned, largely unlabeled, but basic to most American’s life.
Personal and Temporal privilege. I have to acknowledge, without pride or prejudice, that I have experienced the privilege of good health mostly from having good genetic background and non-toxic environments. (My mother lived to 101; my father to 91; my sister is 95; one grandfather lived to 93, the other to 87.) At a very personal level, I have had the advantage (privilege) of being tall, conventionally good looking, and free of disabling bodily conditions.
The air and waters of the places where I have lived most of my life have largely been free of pollution. Because of many of the privileges I have had from being an American, I have had continuous sources of good food, good lodging, and good medical treatment.
Probably as important as any of my privileges, is the precise time of my lifespan. In the ninety years since my birth in 1931, I have benefitted from privileges unavailable to many born in earlier and later generations even if they were healthy, white, male, speak English, and are fully part of American culture. I am part of what is known as the “silent generation”–Americans born between 1926 and 1945. Until the 1980s, the silent generation could be distinguished in the population pyramid of the United States by its wasp waste–more people were born both before and after it.
In a study done in Great Britain in 1985, it was found that people born in my birth year, 1931, “outstripped everyone else in terms of not dying.” Not only were the actual numbers of the 1931 cohort who died lower, but also the rate at which they died was lower than that of those born in both preceding or subsequent years. Those born in 1931 were an anomalous cohort.
( The “silent generation” is also distinguished because it was the only generation in America history that had not produced a President of the country until Joe Biden, who was born in 1942.)
I say that I am privileged because I did not suffer from the anxieties of the Great Depression. I was too young, had adequate food and loving parents. I went to an elementary school that was fully staffed, teachers having been hired to teach the larger classes that preceded mine. I was also too young to serve in the Second World War. And unlike Europeans, I was not bombed or displaced during the war. After WW II, I benefitted from the immediate post-war prosperity during which both of my parents had full-time employment. I could easily get employed as a teen-agers. Ever since, I have lived through the greatest acceleration in growth of material goods and services in all of human history.
In college, costs were low. At the University of California, my greatest expense was the $200/year that I had to pay as an out of state student. I was required to enroll in R.O.T.C., which, during my last two college years, paid me a stipend even as the Korean war continued. But the war ended just as I was reporting to active duty. Thus I did not serve in an active war zone. After discharge from the Army, I was too old for the Viet Nam or subsequent wars.
Because of my Army service I received generous veterans’ benefits: essentially free university graduate education and very low-interest home loans. I benefitted from easily available research grants from the Federal government. Furthermore, I completed my graduate education at a time when multiple professional opportunities became available in higher education. In part, as teaching in American universities was expanding rapidly because more students could afford higher education, my professional advancement was also rapid. As well, grants were available to attend conferences, paid sabbatical leaves, and for travel for overseas research and teaching. American universities had excellent retirement programs and I never had had to consider saving for my old age. Thus when I came of retirement age after teaching for merely thirty-three years, I could retire comfortably, as I have for the last twenty-seven years.
Many of the privileges of being, healthy, white, male, English-speaking, and American were greater simply because I was born in 1931 and a member of the “silent generation.”
Future of Privilege
As I view the future of those many privileges that have made my life so comfortable, I see that these same privileges are now being questioned. The circumstances that made them possible have been radically altered. Social, political, economic and cultural systems inevitably change with the introduction of new ideas, new memberships, and new circumstances. However, the inertia of existing privileges and their accompanying prejudices remain strong. Those lacking unearned privileges will resist male privilege, White privilege, heterosexual privilege, Christian privilege, language privilege, and most of all, American privilege.
White, male, heterosexual, Christian, English speaking privileges are the backbone of conservative Americans, who rile against the liberal objections that ethnic, religious, and linguistic, and sexual minorities as well as women should have all of the privileges that traditionally dominated life in America. In recent years conflicts between liberals and conservatives have created a powerful political divide as well as problems of personal identity and allegiances that were previously subsumed in a now questioned American identity. Democracy, the Constitution, and Progress are no longer enough to unite many Americans.
The feminist movements beginning with voting rights and continuing with demands for equal access to economic, legal, sexual, and personal rights has confronted male privilege.
The Black Lives Matter movement and demands for minority rights of all people of color strongly questions White privilege.
The secularization of many religious beliefs and the growth of Islam and other non-Christian believers in the United States threatens many who have benefited from Christian privilege.
The increase of non-English speakers, particularly Spanish speakers has required major adaptations to providing government services such as education and health services.
The awakening of LBGTQ rights movements has questioned the heterosexual privilege that dominated American society for most of its existence.
The privileges of accumulated wealth, which I have modestly attained, have become increasingly concentrated in the United States. Wealthy, privileged Americans in recent years have greatly manipulated the Pentagon of Power to their benefit and ignored those who have least benefited from the general American privilege that they still long for.
Ultimately more important than the changes to the privileges I have listed above are the inevitable changes to American privilege that result from radical, human-altered disturbances to the ecological systems of the natural world. American privilege is now being tested by the reality of Nature, not simply by the power of other human beings. In pursuit of American privilege, we have, until recently, been unaware of the consequences of the negative changes we have wrought on the physical world. Nor have most Americans who have prospered in the world of exponential growth of progressive capitalism seen the physical impossibility of continued growth. American privilege as it is now known will disappear because it is based on physical realities, not social, cultural, or political realities.
The use of energy derived from fossil fuels and the exploitation of other natural resources cannot continue as it has in the era of American dominance for two major reasons: 1. limits imposed by the availability of the Earthly resources and 2. the pollution and ecological disruptions caused by beliefs in progress. Energy has become more expensive in physical terms. It now takes more energy to find and extract energy from less accessible and lower grade sources. When the energy gained approaches the energy used in getting it, its value is lost. (The ratio of energy received on energy invested. EROEI) Concurrently, the continued use of energy use has risen above the level that its waste products can be absorbed by the Earth’s ecosystems (The Ecological Footprint has been exceeded.) This results in levels of pollution, extinctions, and destruction never before experienced by humans, some having reached a tipping point. Because it is based on fossil fuel energy, American privilege as it has been experienced in the past few decades has reached its peak and will disintegrate as the realities of Nature, in particular privilege based on exponential growth in energy, come into play.
American social, economic, and political processes rarely consider the immediacy of the negative physical changes that are inherent in the natural systems that support American privilege. Whereas discriminations caused by the other privileges can be ameliorated by social, political, and economic actions, American privilege cannot. In fact, social, economic, and political programs may actually accelerate the decline in that privilege. Who will benefit from the decline of American privilege is hard to predict. Possibly, only an elite group that controls the declining sources of energy will become the primary possessors of the unearned access to social benefits of the American dream.
Conclusion
I have reflected on the privileges that have benefited me throughout my lifetime. If I had not possessed those benefits, I might feel differently and want to experience those same privileges. In one way or another I think that is behind the slogans “to make America great again,” or “return to a normalcy based on economic growth and personal consumption.” However, those particular forms of American privilege are no longer attainable. To replace current privileges and unearned benefits with the noble goal of greater equity will require a complete reorientation of beliefs in what is important to human life. I strive for those goals in spite of the difficulties of reaching them in a society that values both rampant capitalism and individual freedoms over community. When the very future of American privilege is in doubt and the condition of our Earthly home is uncertain, I think that, more than ever, I must deeply appreciate having lived with privileges that placed me at the very peak of human comfort, personal freedom, and luxury.