How am I supposed to be proud of being…? Accepting Nuances in Identities

I was in a seminar at the Center for Women’s Studies, with students all studying for an MA, and one of my friends said ‘How am I supposed to be proud of being middle class?’ I presume I was the only one who heard her, as I was sat next to her and it didn’t alter the discussion. We had been discussing language and identities, what it means to be on the borders when you are pulled in different directions, and the issue of class came up. In England, this is a topic that is still relatively taboo, even within a progressive institution where we were supposed to be aware of the intersections and effects of different kinds of privilege and disadvantage. Had anyone replaced the words ‘middle class’ in that sentence with ‘male’ or ‘white’ or ‘able bodied’ and said it to the aforementioned student, she certainly would have been able to craft an answer explaining exactly why that question was derailing, defensive and unhelpful. As it was, it drifted by unnoticed to the group, but it stuck with me. Probably because she was the most class-privileged person I had ever met and as a person from a distinctly working class background trying to navigate an inherently middle-and-upper class institution, it really struck me how much that perspective jarred with everything we were learning. 

When we initially realise that we have been unaware of a privilege we have, our natural reaction is usually to be defensive. Most people don’t want to think that they are causing harm, even when they know they have done something harmful, we have a tendency to justify our actions, even if we would feel differently if someone else did the same thing. Part of this is to do with losing the illusion of control we think we have over our own lives. As soon as you start to recognise structural issues and the impact that has on individuals, it becomes clear that we are actually in control of very little, and that is terrifying. We also mostly want to believe that we are good. Recognising a privilege can feel like we are being accused of causing harm that we have no control over, yet we are still responsible. However for the most part, that is not what is being said. That’s the tricky thing about identity politics, it is both deeply personal and political, speaking at once about individuals and society as a whole. For example, when people say ‘white people’ they are mostly talking about the systemic privilege of white people as compared with a person of colour, all other measures of dis/advantage being equal, as an average experience of a cohort of the population as a whole, which may not be you as an individual per say, though statistically it probably is, but also as a part of that cohort you probably didn’t realise it was happening because of your privilege. No wonder trying to sort out how we feel and respond to this is a bit of a mind fuck.

One of the issues with identity politics has always been the tensions that inevitably arise as a result of the lived experience of intersectionality. Most people don’t only belong to one group whether it be defined as a disadvantage or privilege, because our identities and experiences are more complex than that. It can feel weirdly safer to take on the core identity of the part of you which is oppressed as a way of shielding yourself from more difficult introspection. This has long been a criticism of feminism as a movement, in that it historically centres the experience of women for whom gender may be the only form of disadvantage they face. Though modern discussions are supposed to be more enlightened, the narrative of identity politics still feels like we have to choose; what are you prioritising in your fight for emancipation? Your race or gender? Your disability or sexuality? Your class or age? We don’t even necessarily define these things in the same way. All of this leaves most of us very uncertain of where we are, who we are, and what is the right thing to do, and inevitably the most arrogant people, are the ones who are heard, whether or not they are actually right. And the biggest irony is that we still have a binary way of discussing our identities, split into pride or shame. As a way to overcome oppression, cultivating pride in an aspect of our identity that imposes disadvantage makes sense. But it has also led to the assumption that the morally correct opposite must be shame, as if you are proud of your privilege, that infers you believe it is justified. What we need to make space for is simply acceptance. None of us come into the world being able to choose what value society places on the different aspects of our identities; whether it is a disadvantage or a privilege, it is an imposed social construct, and we have to figure out how to navigate it while having very little ability to immediately change it. So much of our experience of privilege and disadvantage happens when we are children, at a stage in life where we have the least amount of power and control, except perhaps in our old age. The foundations of our privileges and disadvantages often start immediately at the beginning of our lives, and that privilege or disadvantage accumulates over time, leaving us in a position we haven’t chosen as adults, but need to take some responsibility for. Accepting that aspects of our identities mean we have some amount of privilege enables us to break free from guilt and shame that isn’t ours to carry, and isn’t helpful to anyone. Instead, we can focus on making our society more fair and equal so that we are not forced into these positions in the first place.