Kennedy 1

Jerry Kennedy

Dr. Kiefer

ENGWR 300

9 May 2022

“Well, How Did I Get Here?” - The Consequences of Unexamined Privilege

In the past decade, increased attention has been given to the subject of privilege in social

justice circles. Privilege in a social justice context is defined as “an advantage or a set of

advantages that you have that others do not . . . [that] are not due 100 percent to your efforts . . .

and the benefits of [which] are disproportionately large or at least partially undeserved” (Oluo

59-60). Unfortunately, the discussion of privilege has become fraught with tension in recent

years, to the point that privilege has become an almost dirty word to those who have it. Still,

gaining an understanding of the role of privilege as a means of propping up systemic oppression

is vital to the success of social justice work. This is especially true since a lack of awareness

about one’s own privilege can lead some to believe that their inherent advantages are earned, the

direct result of some merit on their part, even though they would not be able to explain the

correlation satisfactorily. Like the character in the Talking Heads song “Once In A Lifetime,”

such individuals may find themselves “in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife,” but may not

be able to answer the question: “Well, how did I get here?” The answer, of course, whether such

individuals care to acknowledge it or not, is privilege.

Volumes have been written on the subject of privilege; after all, privilege comes in almost

unlimited variety. Race, gender, class, neuro-type, physical ability, even certain body types and

attractiveness–all grant some amount of privilege. But how can it be said that privilege,
 Kennedy 2

especially unexamined privilege, perpetuates systemic oppression? An analysis of the way

privilege is addressed, both directly and indirectly, in William Vollmann’s Poor People, Michael

Spurgeon’s Let the Water Hold Me Down, and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass

Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness will shed light on the answer, as each author leads

readers to the conclusion that, if not the direct cause of the systemic oppression each of their

books address, privilege is at the very least an exacerbating factor. Such an examination will

offer insight into how a lack of awareness about one’s own privilege props up these systems of

oppression, and will reveal the need for those who find themselves with a measure of privilege to

employ their unearned and disproportionate advantages in a targeted effort to create a more just

and equitable world.

William Vollmann alludes to his privilege throughout his book Poor People but addresses

it most directly in the chapter entitled “I Know I Am Rich.” The chapter opens with a stark

confession from Vollmann: “I am sometimes afraid of poor people” (263). He talks about the

homeless who make their camps in the parking lot of a building he owns in Sacramento

sometimes as equals and sometimes as nuisances. He says of his encounters with these people, “I

was kind to them in ways that cost me little. Then I went across the parking lot and shut my door

on them” (271). He repeats the metaphor of closing doors on the poor a little further along,

stating, “I shut my door on them, just as when we who are in first class train compartments pull

our glass doors shut to drown out the poorer sort in the corridors . . .” (276). Vollmann is fully

conscious of his privilege, but that awareness does not seem to move him to change. He satisfies

himself with reporting on the conditions of the poor people he observes, and leaves it at that.
 Kennedy 3

Of the three works under discussion, Vollmann’s is the most pessimistic. In the

penultimate chapter of the book, “I Think You Are Rich,” Vollmann takes a fatalistic approach to

the idea of his own and his readers’ privilege. “Poor people and rich people,” he states, “we have

in common our mortal insignificance.” He seems to take almost as much pity on the wealthy as

he does on the poor. When pondering whether the poor people he met would be any happier or

more fulfilled if they were wealthy, he thinks about “the desperate burden of a leisured

consciousness for those to whom survival comes easy; I enter their expansively barren houses,

and I pity them” (289). Thus, Vollmann absolves those with a measure of privilege, including

himself, from taking any measurable action to analyze, let alone dismantle, their privilege. In this

way, his awareness of privilege is at the lowest level; it is awareness that is content with

awareness and feels no need to go further.

In contrast, Hank Singer, the protagonist of Michael Spurgeon’s Let the Water Hold Me

Down, spends the entire novel in seeming blissful ignorance of his privilege. If he notices the

poor and oppressed around him at all it is only as background to his new life in Chiapas. This is

especially apparent in his reactions to his friend César’s actions and attitudes toward the poor,

indigenous inhabitants of Chiapas. When Hank catches César in the middle of sexually

assaulting his maid, he offers only a mild rebuke to César before seeming to forget all about the

incident, choosing to play foosball instead (111). When César threatens to expel a sick worker

from his family’s ranch unless the man gets up to work, Hank chalks his friend’s racist

explanation for his behavior up to cultural differences (136). Even when he is confronted with

the plight of the indigenous locals that leads to the Zapatistas rebellion, Hanks seems mostly
 Kennedy 4

concerned about the inconvenience and hassle caused by the presence, first of the rebels, and

then of the military personnel who arrive to regain control of the town (230).

It is only when César’s actions finally affect him personally that he begins to wake up to

his privilege. As he is riding in a cab back to San Cristóbal to rescue his girlfriend from César, he

ponders how blind he has been, saying:

Men and women and children were being pushed right up against the edge

and they rose up, some of them with nothing more than sticks, some of

them with nothing more than their voices. “Ya Basta!” they said. “Ya

Basta!” [Enough is enough!] What did I do? I fed them a few pans of

leftover lasagna. And I had to be talked into doing that (337).

While Hank’s cognizance of his privilege has to be shocked into existence, unlike Vollmann once

he is aware of his privilege he is not content with just being aware; he is motivated to take direct

action. This motivation manifests in a poorly planned and executed attempt to confront César

which ends in César’s death at Hank’s hands (346).

This sudden awareness followed by hasty and ill-planned action is representative of the

experience of many well-meaning people of privilege. The shock of finding out that one’s

blissful ignorance is allowing, or sometimes even causing, the suffering of others can lead to

actions that actually exacerbate the problems of the oppressed. An example of this is when white

“allies” show up to Black Lives Matter demonstrations and cause confrontations with police that

lead to distraction from the intended message of the demonstration while also putting the lives of

Black protesters in added danger. This mode of privilege awareness is evident in “the broad

consensus in centers of white discourse that self-help is a corrective for structural racism”
 Kennedy 5

(Conwright); in other words, their is an awareness of one’s privilege and a motivation to take

some kind of corrective action, but that motivation is rooted in the desire for personal absolution

rather than meaningful structural change.

Among the three books, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow deals most explicitly

with the topic of privilege, specifically the white privilege that allows the vast majority of white

Americans to consider mass incarceration as a justified response to Black “criminality” (202).

Alexander tells white readers “Finally, we must admit, out loud, that it was because of race that

we didn’t care much about what happened to ‘those people’ and imagined the worst possible

things about them” (296). She admonishes white people that they must be willing to abandon

their privilege if there is any hope of bringing about a just and equitable society in America,

saying, “The topic of conversation should be how ‘us’ can come to include ‘all of us’” (320).

What tangible actions can a person of privilege take to begin attacking structural

oppression as a system? Alexander outlines three key steps in her concluding chapter, “The Fire

This Time.” First, privileged people must recognize their privilege without feeling defensive or

giving over to feelings of guilt. Specifically, Alexander addresses the need to abandon the idea of

“colorblindness” whereby well-meaning white people will state that they “don’t see color” as a

defensive reaction to having their privilege pointed out. Alexander states that such adherence to

the principle of colorblindness “form[s] the sturdy foundation for all racial caste systems” (301);

as such, this kind of defensive reaction must be replaced by a full awareness and acceptance of

our privilege. Second, once they have achieved such awareness and acceptance, people of

privilege must be willing to dismantle the structures, institutions, and systems that provided that

privilege. Alexander calls this process giving back “the racial bribe” (303). Third, people of
 Kennedy 6

privilege who genuinely wish to right systemic wrongs must be willing to hold space for the pent

up rage of the oppressed (324). Rather than making performative gestures with the expectation of

accolades for their allyship, such individuals must be willing to do the work alongside oppressed

and marginalized people who may treat them with justified suspicion as former members of the

oppressor class. This will require operating from a place of genuine humility.

Examining Poor People, Let the Water Hold Me Down, and The New Jim Crow through

the lens of privilege, it is evident how deeply intertwined privilege is with the topics of systemic

racism and poverty and, indeed, with all systems of oppression. Gaining awareness of such

privilege is the necessary first step in the process of relinquishing it in order to tear down the

systems of oppression that it protects. Learning that one’s advantages are not necessarily one’s

own but, rather, have been created by the oppression of others can be a shock; defensiveness is a

natural first reaction to such a revelation. Nevertheless, practicing humility by not only accepting

this truth, but actively seeking to use our privileges in service of the oppressed and, eventually, to

abandon those privileges altogether is how we will build a more just and equitable world for “all

of us.”
 Kennedy 7

Works Cited

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. 10th

Anniversary ed., New York, New Press, 2020.

Conwright, Anthony. “The Trouble with White Fragility Discourse.” AAPF - The Forum,

African American Policy Forum, 12 May 2022,

https://www.aapf.org/theforum-white-fragility-discourse. Accessed 13 May 2022.

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race. Kindle ed., New York, Basic Books, 2018.

Spurgeon, Michael. Let the Water Hold Me Down: A Novel. Sacramento, Ad Lumen Press, 2013.

Talking Heads. Lyrics to “Once In a Lifetime” Genius, 2022,

https://genius.com/Talking-heads-once-in-a-lifetime-lyrics.

Vollmann, William T. Poor People. New York, HarperCollins, 2008.