Some Thoughts on Privilege and Getting Yelled At
Adapted from a comment I just left at Feministe.
You probably can’t make yourself non-racist, but you can make yourself anti-racist. And in the end, being anti-racist is actually more important.
No, you can’t ever rid yourself of privilege completely. But you can go a long way to rid yourself of ignorance of that privilege, and more to the point, you can make yourself into an opponent of privilege as it exists in the world, rather than just as it exists in you.
Jill hit the nail on the head when she said that the struggle to be — and to be seen as — “one of the good ones” can be a distraction from the real work of the activist. If you find stuff that needs doing, you figure out how you can help, and you get to work on doing it, that’s activism. Checking your privilege is best seen as a part (and an
