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Please note this essay is not directed at any particular person or incident. I have made privilege confessions in the interest of being anti-oppressive by owning my privilege, and despite future efforts not to, will probably do so again.

I’ve noticed a tendency among politically awakened people—those possessing a sociological imagination and an awareness and critique of systemic injustice—to own their privilege by explicitly stating it. This is especially common when one speaks about a particular form of oppression to other people who suffer more under that oppression. On a surface level such confessions of privilege are done in the interest of making one’s position in relation to a particular oppression manifest. This is certainly preferable to being unaware of one’s privilege and/or failing to bring it to bear in one’s analysis and discussion of systems of oppressions and the everyday inequities upon which they are constructed. However, (IMHO) there is a lot more going on in such interactions, complicated phenomena that I have not seen or heard analyzed, so I’m going to do a little dredging.

When someone with more privilege than me owns their privilege by explicitly confessing to it I find myself left with a bad taste in my head. Now that I’ve been reminded of all the things this other person has that I want but will never have, and sometimes made aware of things I didn’t even know I was missing, I am left struggling not to fall into self-pity, anger at the universe and society for not bestowing these privileges upon me, and resentment at the privilege confessor for enjoying what is denied to me. Now I look around and think, this person didn’t mean for me to react in this way, they just wanted to acknowledge our unequal positions relative to a particular oppressions, and that’s a good thing, right? Why do I feel this self-pity, anger and resentment? I need to get over myself and just listen to what this person has to say. But it doesn’t go away. Or at least not right away. I have to make an effort to forget my and the speakers relative positions in relation to the system of oppression being discussed, and become a disembodied disenculturated intellect.

Now, after decades or therapy and self-work, I have learned to take responsibility for my reactions. I have come to the conclusion that it is not by our reaction to another’s actions or inactions that their behavior should be judged; their actions and inactions should be judged instead by how they hold up to a given moral code. However, if there is a reasonable expectation that a given action or inaction will result in a particular reaction, then it seems fair to include the nature of that expected reaction in the evaluation of the behavior leading to that reaction. So, for instance, if I laugh at somebody I don’t know it is a safe assumption that they won’t like being laughed at, so regardless of my and the other persons positions in society and the circumstances leading up to my laughter, it is a cruel act, and runs counter to a moral code of conduct based on compassion. But hey, who’s perfect, right? Maybe they did or said something cruel to me, in which case I would forgive myself and strive to be less reactive in the future. Anyway, I digress, enough about me.

In the situation of privilege confessions the issues of intent and effect are a bit more complicated because it’s a reasonable assumption that most people don’t like to be reminded of what they don’t have, but it is also a reasonable assumption that most people don’t want to have their struggles ignored. So talking about an oppression someone else suffers under more than you without acknowledging the disparate impact ignores your relative privilege, but speaking of your privilege and by implication the other person’s lack of privilege is bringing to the forefront painful inequalities.

Taking other people out of the equation, privilege confessions are still problematic because they are in effect in service of stepping out of one’s privilege when it becomes inconvenient, a burden, a cause for self-censorship. What we are in effect saying when we confess to our privilege is, “here’s my privilege, see, I am aware of it, and admit to taking advantage and enjoying it. So you see I’m not like one of those clueless privileged people who think all the good things in their life are due to their inherent awesomeness and hard work and that all your suffering, my less fortunate brothers and sisters, is due to poor character and lack of trying. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way let’s just relate to each other as disembodied, disenculturated individuals—friends in a vacuum.” And now that we, as privilege confessors are absolved of our complicity, we shed our temporarily inconvenient privilege and speak freely. Sounds wonderful, except no one is ever free of systems of oppression or the inequalities they engender; they come in through our doors, sit on our sofas, and sleep in our beds, living in our psyches, manifest in thoughts and are expressed in words and deeds. To truly own our privilege we must acknowledge this reality and act accordingly. We must refrain making the comments we feel require such privilege confessions in the first place. We must let those who suffer most under a given oppression chose when and where and how they want to speak of it, if at all.

Confessing to our privilege is not owning it if it absolves us of our complicity in enjoying that privilege and maintaining the systems of oppression that foster it, allowing us to shed our positionality and relate as friends in a vacuum to those who face struggles and challenges in their daily life that we don’t have to. If we really want to own our privilege, we need to pay the price for it, we need to censor ourselves.

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