Risk, Love and Self Preservation
We need to talk about risk. Let's leave specific pundits, the politicians and the political operatives out of this discussion. Let's just talk about us, the people who live with the results of the world they are paid to create the rules for. The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of those people get to those places by never taking any kind of significant risk. They choose one of a few different prescribed paths in order to be allowed access and proximity to power, and then in order to continue to be allowed those positions, they not only take no risks, but then get to define the parameters of what risk means for the rest of us.
Let's also make clear that the risk we're going to talk about isn't the kind of risk listed on a stock index or the kind of decision made based on a credit score. We're going to talk about risks with much larger implications, and the questions of risk we're facing today. It's important to talk about risk, and to talk about it in this way because even as it is so central to the decision we make individually, which inform the decisions we make collectively, that they are decisions about risk isn't often faced squarely.
The kind of risk we're going to talk about involves existing. For many of us, and probably most of the people who'll be reading this, the amount of risk we live with is fairly minimal. To live in a patriarchal white supremacist society and to be white, heterosexual and cisgender is to live with as minimal the amount of risk possible, even more so for cisgender men. For women, there's always an elevated amount of risk, which is the function of living in a patriarchal society, so white cisgender women definitely live with an amount of risk white cisgender men don't. However, they are still given a degree of choice in the amount of risk they decide to face that women who aren't white or cisgender have to face, by the fact of their existence alone. The same is true as an individual starts to cross more than one of those risk qualifiers. A cisgender Black woman faces less risk than a transgender Black woman. Black women face maternal death rates much higher than women of other races. The murder rate for Black trans women is astronomical in comparison to cisgender white women, and though the disparity is lessened when compared to cis Black women, there is still a real disparity. Despite so many protestations otherwise, this isn't a hard concept to understand. The further one is from being a cis gender white male, the more varieties of marginalization and discrimination someone faces.
This may be one of the most simple ways to understand the concept of privilege. When you walk out your door each morning, how much risk is associated with the fact that you exist, as the human being you are? There's certainly a very different amount of risk for a man who is visibly deviating from masculine gender norms than there is for one who isn't. Being perceived as gay comes with risk. Just being perceived as being not masculine enough comes with risks, whether or not there's any perception of sexuality or sexual orientation. Again, being a Black man and being perceived as deviating from the masculine comes with more risk than being a white man and perceived as deviating from masculine norms comes with risk. The proverbial "closet" has always existed for exactly this reason.
This goes beyond risks associated with physical safety, though those are very real, they're more well understood than the rest of the risks. There's the risks related to employment. Do you get the job, whether or not you exist in some way outside of the patriarchal white supremacist norms? Do you get the home loan or apartment lease? Understanding privilege and discrimination is really about understanding the way risk works in reality. Privilege is to not have those risks present specifically because of what you look like or how you deviate from the norms of patriarchal white supremacy. Discrimination is to experience additional risk, simply because of the reality of who you are and to live in a society which will continue to act as if that isn't true and to deny you almost any ability to be able to prove otherwise. Marginalization is to have your ability to address those risks prevented, either in being prevented access to the public consciousness or as it relates to the access to power which could bring remedy, usually both, simultaneously.
We know privilege and discrimination come in many different forms. The most pernicious are those which can be determined by things we can see immediately. We perceive gender. We perceive skin color. We perceive people to be able bodied. Other varieties of privilege and discrimination aren't just things we can see with the naked eye. There's discrimination which exists against people with physical disabilities we can see, but there's also discrimination which exists against people who have physical disabilities we can't see or who have intellectual disabilities, disabilities resulting from emotional or psychological conditions. For people who are transgender, there is less risk for those who can "pass" (be recognized as the gender they are, instead of the gender they were assigned at birth) than there is for those who can't.
All of this is about risk. For people who experience them, discrimination and marginalization are about being exposed to greater risk. It's always been about increasing risk for them, and by default, decreasing risk for those who don't. The greater the number of ways someone is recognized as deviating from being white, heterosexual and male (and even more so when we add in wealth as a factor), the more risk factors are going to be added into their daily lives. This has been the great confusion about conversations surrounding the idea of privilege. Privilege isn't about having an added boost or having something which makes our lives easier, it's about not experiencing greater numbers of risk factors and barriers based solely on our identity.
Since there are many different kinds of marginalization and discrimination, and this is something it's worth thinking about for all of us or at least those of us who have some inkling we'd like to live in a society in which everyone can experience equality, equity and a recognition of our shared humanity. That there are so many different varieties of these forms of discrimination and marginalization is presenting us with a key and a clue now. It's absolutely true that we can be Christian, white and poor and experience marginalization because we're poor. There shouldn't be any doubt about that. We don't experience the discrimination of being Black or Muslim, as well as being poor though. More importantly, when we consider the number of different ways discrimination and marginalization work, and the number of different reasons it's been acceptable for someone to be saddled with the results of marginalization and discrimination, it starts to become clear that the only people it's not already acceptable to marginalize or discriminate against are those people who have already been granted power and/or status. For the rest of us, there's always an excuse to for us to be burdened with these added risks, while simultaneously denying that there is additional risk.
This brings us to a question which is going to be among the most important those of us who are living with relatively little status or power are going to have to ask ourselves earnestly, most especially for those of us who only experience marginalization or discrimination along one or two axes. What are we willing to risk?
There is a key here. An important piece of the puzzle about how we move forward to being a people who can live together in equity and shared human dignity. One part of it is trust. We've all been raised in a culture which values and weights competition as one of its most important values, and as such, it benefits those who experience less marginalization and discrimination to not take the kinds of risks which would chip away at the monolithic system of marginalization and discrimination in place. It also means we don't trust each other. It very simply comes down to the idea that we must take care of ourselves because no one else is going to help us.
We can begin to break this, through our own decisions about risk. We can begin to actually dismantle these realities and to change them, and by doing so, undermine the pundits, politicians and political operatives ability to set the rules which continue to see so many of us marginalized or discriminated against in some way. We begin to do that by building trust, and one of the most effective ways we do that is by beginning to built trust. That trust is built by taking the kinds of risks which chip away at those systems of discrimination and marginalization.
To say it, it seems like a kind of sysiphean task, but it's not. It begins with things which are simple. Not easy, and as is obvious from the whole gist of this conversation, not without risk, but they aren't complicated.
Right now, we are watching a movement dedicated to patriarchal white supremacist ideology rise. It is dedicated to seeing an even more strident conformity to that ideology imposed, through whatever means it takes to achieve it. The rise in hate crimes, mass casualty attacks by its adherents, the freedom political and cultural figures feel to empower it and identify with it are all unmistakable signs. As we're also seeing, they don't stick to a specific category of people to marginalize and discriminate against. The institutional and legal arm of their movement is currently trying to keep the focus on women, immigrants and transgender people, but they are using rhetorical gimmicks to hide their actions against people who have disabilities, people who have mental illness, and the ever present use of the criminal punishment system against Black people especially, and people of color more broadly. They might call it "preserving the right to private healthcare" or "getting tough on crime," but those things are de facto attacks on people already experiencing marginalization and discrimination because how badly those systems serve those people, and in the case of criminal punishment, how blatantly target people of color.
We can begin to eat away the foundation of what they're trying to build, in some very concrete, and also very direct, but simple ways. One of the first is to use the tools they've levied against people who experience marginalization and discrimination. Stop doing business with racists and fascists. Make a public statement that the business you run or work for will not do business of any kind with them. It forces them to make a choice. Making being a racist and/or fascist inconvenient is not complicated. It may not be easy, and it may seem like it is a self generated risk, but it is simple. It's not very much to ask to make it inconvenient.
It puts the choice on them, they can either stop publicly advocating for patriarchal white supremacist organizations, individuals and values or they can go do business elsewhere. It also means that even if they still want to hold those values, and support them in private, they won't have the luxury of putting the weight on you or the people you work with to address it in your day. The fascists and racists will overwhelmingly weed themselves out. By not being publicly supporting of people who experience marginalization and discrimination, what you're doing is making the bet that there are more people who are willing to live under the threat of violence inherent in their ideology than there are those who are not willing to. It's the wrong bet, and you will be rewarded if you bet on the people who experience marginalization and discrimination. They will recognize what you've done, and it will be a major step in gaining their trust.
That's just one of many choices we can make, which will show that we are willing to take some degree of risk to stand with people who experience marginalization and discrimination.
The reality is, despite how the power dynamics have now worked for too long, we, the people against whom power is now signaling it wants to levy marginalization and discrimination are the majority. When you begin to consider the number of different people they are targeting, it starts to paint a clearer picture. If you're a woman, they have some very specific ideas about what you should be allowed to do, most recognizably in terms of reproduction, but less obviously in terms of what kind of position in society you should be allowed to occupy. The same is true if you are a person of color, a person who experiences mental illness, an LBGTQ person or a person without a binary gender, an immigrant or a creed or religion that isn't Christian.
The only people left for them not to somehow target are wealthy white men who are in alignment with their ideology, so if that's not you, then whether you think you signed up for it or not, you're one of us, the people who power wants to marginalize and discriminate against. Of course none of us wants to experience marginalization and discrimination, so it's often hard to accept that this is the reality we live in. But be clear, we are people who experience marginalization and discrimination, we are not marginalized people. There's a difference. For all of us, the ways in which we experience marginalization and discrimination aren't the whole of who we are. We are a multitude of things, along with with experiencing these. What we clearly are now though, is the majority. This may be the only good thing which has come out of the last few years. That we experience these things does not mean they are the sum total of who we are.
The fact that those who are dedicated to furthering a system of patriarchal white supremacy want to target the majority of people living in the United States could not be much clearer, unless the institutions which have benefitted from that system started to flatly acknowledge it, which isn't in their interest. We may not experience it in the same way or in the same degrees, but what has been made clear over the last few years is that the majority of us are going to be targeted for marginalization and discrimination. This is a very simple equation. The worse our proximity or access to power and the wealth that can garner power, the better theirs is going to be, and for those who already have it, the easier it is to consolidate. The design of patriarchal white supremacy in what is The United States has always been about keeping the differing populations being targeted by patriarchal white supremacy from achieving anything like solidarity.
It's now a choice of which risk we would prefer to take. Do we prefer to take the risk that the institutions and individuals who have been responsible for this state of affairs are capable of or even willing to prevent this patriarchal white supremacist ideology from gaining further power and control or do we prefer to start taking the kinds of risks that undermine it? Do we choose solidarity over a proximity or access to power that we are being flatly told is going to be taken away? The risks associated don't have to be on the scale of grand actions.
They can be the variety of risks that involve challenging the power we interact with in our daily lives, like religious leaders in our communities who preach to a religious perspective that supports the marginalization and discrimination of us and the people we are our neighbors, coworkers and acquaintances. It can be cutting off ties with members of our families with whom there is only loyalty to the idea that some of us deserve these attempts to marginalize and discriminate against us. This isn't to necessarily say that we need to cut ties with any family member whom we politically disagree, but it is to say that we begin to take a more stringent look at whether or not it's a political disagreement, because this is one of the rhetorical tricks of patriarchal white supremacy. It paints all disagreements as a matter of mere politics, when in reality they often come down to disagreements about whether we even share humanity.
It's to take the risk to say to an acquaintance or friend, "No, that's not actually funny. You may not mean harm in it, but it's based in the idea that some of us are specifically more deserving of ridicule because of who we are, not because of our actions toward other people," whether or not you believe the rest of your circle or friend group is going to support you. It may mean supporting the person who does say something like this, and not letting an individual or group paint them as being unreasonable or hysterical.
It is to take the actions we can in our daily lives which make it less convenient and less comfortable to continue to serve an ideology which makes the majority of us targets in one way or another. These are risks. They're risks because they may mean losing relationships which have meant a great deal to us. They may mean putting our financial comfort at risk. There are instances where they may mean putting our personal safety at risk.
These are risks people who have been experiencing discrimination and marginalization have been taking everyday, for centuries, and not by any choice they've made. Those of us who haven't had to experience it to the degree so many others have can only gain by beginning to choose to take risks. There is more to solidarity and to support or being an ally than rhetorical support, and it is exactly the fact that many of us haven't had to risk much that separates us. Why should people who have had these risks added to their daily lives, without their choice, have faith that the rest of us are going to be willing to truly stand in solidarity if we don't demonstrate that we are willing to take some risks?
It's also a matter of strategy. The more of us who take these risks, means those dedicated to patriarchal white supremacy have less time and focus for those among us who have been most ardently targeted. It means putting them on the defensive. Like the rest of us, they only have but so much time and focus. One of the things that has worked in their favor has been that they have been able to continue to express their desire to marginalize and discriminate as being specific to different groups or populations. It should be clear now, they have specific excuses, but the desire itself isn't at all specific. It's extremely broad, and the majority of us are considered possible targets as long as we don't openly support their agenda and ideology. This is even the case for those who think "neutrality" is somehow going to save them. Neutrality isn't supporting their agenda and ideology and where it suits the will for power and domination, they're going to target what passes for neutrality as well.
These are our choices now. We can take the risks which put us firmly in the opposition to the growth and consolidation of power of patriarchal white supremacy or we can accept the risk which is continuing to believe the institutions and individuals in power who've failed to even correctly gauge the substance and scope of this threat are going to suddenly come to the realization that the majority of us with little access or proximity to power are being targeted or have already been identified as future targets.
We must acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of the people at work in, and supporting those institutions or in the positions of power have only reached those positions by consciously avoiding risks. They have taken the path of least resistance at every opportunity. These paths to power are not about expertise. They are about providing proximity and access to power. Another of the lessons of the last decade is that expertise is often in direct conflict with power now. There is nothing in self interest which would compel the majority of them to start to take real risks now. Not to say they won't express rhetorical support, but it is to say they will not take personal or material risks, the kinds of risks the rest of us are either living with or are now understanding are the threat of a future where this ideology and it's adherents aren't driven back to obscurity, at best.
And let's be very, very clear. Relying only on governmental and legal power to begin to stop this process is only going to insure further violence. To rely only on these institutions is to suggest this violence is inevitable, specifically because state power has the accepted monopoly on violence. It plays directly into the narrative of this patriarchal white supremacist movement to see the government and it's legal power levied against them. Relying solely on these powers is what lays the groundwork for the kind of civil war they have been whispering their hopes for. When the challenge to this ideology comes from state power, it feeds the conspiratorial aspects of the ideology. It's much harder to believe a conspiracy which would have friends and loved ones you've known for decades turned against you.
Equally as important, if you find yourself unable to take a risk of some kind, for whatever reason, DO NOT CRITICIZE THOSE WHO RISK IS FORCED UPON in how they choose to attempt to address that fact. If you want to believe you support people who experience marginalization and/or discrimination, then criticism without acting in solidarity isn't support. If you can help to spread risk from being so focused on them, you will find yourself in company who will be willing to hear your misgivings. If you're not willing to stand in any form of solidarity, you're doing the work of patriarchal white supremacy in further marginalizing them through aiding the narrative of people who express the reality of their experience with marginalization and discrimination as being "unreasonable" or "wanting special treatment."