There’s a story in the Bible commonly called The Rich Young Ruler. The man runs up to Jesus and asks what it takes to be accepted by God. Jesus appears dismissive at first - “Why do you call me good?”, “You know the commandments.” - but the man persists and Jesus is moved with love. “One thing you lack,” he says, “go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” The man is disappointed, and he leaves, ostensibly because he can’t, or won’t, do this hardest of things.
In the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the ensuing anger this latest injustice has stirred, I’ve been thinking about my own place in American society. I’m a straight white man, middle class and reasonably successful. I’m living the American Dream: a wife and five kids; a home I own and can pay to maintain; a job that covers my bills and then some; health insurance (and good health); two cars; and lots of opportunity for the future. In real dollar terms in America, I’m not wealthy. But in real cultural terms in America, I am The Rich Young Ruler.
I recently read a post on Facebook from another white man wondering aloud about his privilege and what he can offer in a moment like this. One thing he said struck me: “It’s hard for me to say I’m part of the problem, but this is the privilege I have: to do so does me no harm.” It’s true for those of us who are white in America, and particularly accurate for us straight white males. We occupy a position of supreme cultural dominance, a position that’s hard to admit to and also hard to contemplate, mostly because we’ve come to consider that dominance a desirable social default.
Taking a stand against systemic racism by someone not directly affected by it is easy. That doesn’t mean it’s not important, but until taking a stand incurs an actual cost - of comfort, of well-being, of a measure of that privilege - it’s hard to see how the system will change. There is a moral inertia within our culture that keeps the boulder of privilege in motion while simultaneously limiting the acceleration of equity and justice.
It’s not hard to recognize that you occupy a place of privilege within the culture; in an inequitable society, privilege is simple to spot. The sharp distinctions between the privileged and oppressed in our culture is both real and visible, and this visible reality in its very existence helps to maintain the status quo of inequality. We can SEE who is black; we can see poverty in poor neighborhoods; and we can see privilege: in the quality of neighborhoods and their schools, in the quality of education and opportunity the privileged obtain, and in the significant and persistent disparity in wealth between whites and non-whites.
It would seem that seeing social disparities will move us to change them, but this is obviously not true. I think that seeing such stark inequity reinforces the notion that it’s somehow natural. Poverty is so persistent and widespread - Jesus said famously, “The poor will always be with you” - that we take for granted that it will continue to exist. Those of us who are privileged to live in nice neighborhoods free from the blight of poorer ones aren’t scrambling to ensure they’re brought up to our level. Visible poverty has a way of making us thankful that we’re not experiencing it. It sends us running to our ideas of merit and hard work and allows us to complain about those people who can’t get their acts together.
There’s a reason the rich young ruler couldn’t simply follow Jesus while maintaining his wealth. The path of equality and justice requires, well, equality and justice. And contrary to our notions of the goal of equality - that meritocratic, capitalistic, and distinctly American ideal of everyone having a chance to get rich - Jesus was pointing to a simpler way to make everyone equal: give up your privilege. We Americans of privilege are pretty blind to the starkness of what Jesus commands here. After 250 years of conquest of the natural world, and after more than a century of a growth-mad focused economics, we’ve been conditioned to believe that wealth is both universally attainable and desirable. Privilege is what we’re all supposed to be seeking.
What then are the privileged to do? The temptation for those of us who are comfortable, who sit atop the unspoken and obvious American sociological hierarchy, who haven’t experienced oppression, is to look for ways to wield our privilege in the interest of equality and justice. This may be why wealthy individuals set up foundations and fund pet projects whose goals are alleviating various social ills - hunger, disease, poverty, environmental damage. To those with privilege and a platform, it seems obvious to leverage that platform in the name of social progress. If you have a voice, they say, use it. And so we have a lot of famous people of privilege amplifying the discontent of the oppressed; putting a megaphone to the mouths of the voiceless. Unfortunately, when you amplify silence you still get silence.
Whenever there is racial upheaval in these United States, we white folks have a habit of trotting out Martin Luther King, Jr. in all his nostalgic glory. MLK is our great American secular saint, a kind of megaphone in and of himself to those of us privileged enough to have a voice. King himself had a voice: he was eloquent, handsome, charismatic, and passionate. All of his great skill as an orator and statesman, mingled with his great faith in the goodness and justice of God, helped him gain a voice in a country that said he shouldn’t have one. Having a voice cost him dearly, and yet he never attained privilege. How could he? I don’t just mean because he was black - that alone ensured that, in America, he would never have privilege. I believe he refused to consider achieving privilege. King knew about The Rich Young Ruler and the demands Jesus makes. To him, Jesus - and the justice and love and promise he embodies - was worth the sacrifice.
Privilege is a self-perpetuating state; once you're in it's hard to get out. It is comfortable, a state we covet above all others. It’s also desirable because we’re conditioned to desire it. It's not just a goal, it's *the* goal. How then can we “check our privilege” when we want it so bad? We need an incentive, but it’s not going to come from outside of ourselves. The Rich Young Ruler wanted to know how he could obtain a higher plane - of spiritual revelation, of religious fortitude, of existential success and peace - but he hoped he could get there with his privilege intact. The message of Jesus is that you can’t. What Jesus is telling us privileged ones is that privilege isn't the goal, it’s the stumbling block. It’s not the path to peace, it’s the assurance of chaos. It’s not the mountaintop to obtain, it’s the slippery slope that keeps you from reaching the peak.
I don’t understand how to get to the kind of equality and justice that MLK dreamed of. I can’t come to terms with what Jesus says is required. And I don’t want to give up my privilege, even though in a sense I can’t. Until it is a privilege to be human; unless the mere glory of being alive as a member of the community of mankind is itself a privilege we recognize and refuse to violate in our social compact; until we have all been to the mountaintop together, privilege will be something that I either accept and live with, or something that I spend the rest of my life trying to live without. I know which path is the harder path, and the likelier road to justice. I know what I’ll have to give up. I’m not sure if I can.
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