Maybe I’m Not So Great, After All?

Coming to Grips with Privilege

William Sundwick

“If they had to walk in my shoes." How many times have we thought this to ourselves? Even if we don’t verbalize it, we’re looking for sympathy.  Often, the burdens placed on us by real or imagined expectations and barriers seem overwhelming. We want that sympathy. Life is hard.

But, do we have a good understanding of just how hard we have it? Do we even know what it’s like to walk in our shoes? What if we stepped back far enough to see our daunting task objectively -- compared to the tasks of others?

We think life would be easier if we could claim some disability, or disadvantaged status. Something that would reduce expectations. But life really is easier when we have no disadvantages. That condition, called “privilege,” makes us special. It is not earned. It’s a gift. Since we don’t deserve it, conscience sometimes rears its head and motivates us to do something for others whom we call “special” – as compensation for their disadvantaged status.  At best, we may transition from wishing that they could “walk in my shoes” to walking in their shoes.

There are many measures of privilege. It consists of wealth, gender, race, ability. Some data:  if your annual household income is higher than $214,000, you are in the top 5% of U.S. income distribution. If your net worth (wealth) is $1M or more, you are not yet “wealthy” (you need at least $2.4 million to meet that definition now), but you are in the top 10 per cent of wealth distribution. You are financially privileged. If you are disabled, you are in a cohort that comprises 12.6% of the U.S. adult population (if you live in West Virginia, your cohort comprises nearly 20 per cent of that state’s population). You are definitely NOT privileged in this group, although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has made some compensation.

If educational attainment is a sign of privilege, only about a third of U.S. adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher. But, it was only 5 per cent in 1940. Men are no longer more privileged than women in that statistic (in fact, the age 25-34 cohort has appreciably more women than men with bachelor’s degrees or higher). A higher percentage of Asian-Americans than any other ethnic group have attained this level of education – and they are more likely to be in a higher household income level than other ethnic groups, too – including non-hispanic whites. Are Asian-Americans privileged?

We learn about privilege from interactions with our fellow human beings. What sort of social contact do we have with people of a different ethnic group than us? With a disabled person, if we are able-bodied? With people in a cohort either much more educated, or less educated, than us? Do we even interact socially with the opposite gender, beyond our spouses? Whatever contact we have with different demographic groups, do we know what makes them happy? Sad? Angry? (The last is, of course, the trickiest – it may be us that makes them angry!) We know what elicits those feelings in us, but can we assume the same things motivate them? And, even if we can, how easy is it to come up with those ego strokes for somebody who is clearly different from us? Beauty? Brains? Strength? What flattery can we provide – while still appearing sincere, and not obsequious?

Privilege, it seems, is a scarce commodity. If you have it, you’re inclined to hide it from others – for fear they may steal some of it. If you confront someone whom you think enjoys more privilege than you, your approach is more likely to try inflating your privilege – to seek equal footing -- and committing the error of confusing social status with privilege. Social status is self-assigned, privilege is a gift. You are born with it.

Unequal privilege positions make social interaction very difficult. Sometimes, the tension can best be resolved by simply knowing when to sigh and give up. Inequality exists, full stop. It’s always easier not to walk in somebody else’s shoes, but desire to do so can be conditioned by either competitiveness or guilt (depending on whether you want to go up, or down, in social status).

If the challenge is too intense, and continued attempts at gratification fail, one typically finds the desire to alter the status differential, “to walk in their shoes,” diminishes over time. Desire tends to dissipate if unreinforced. Privilege, since it is bestowed rather than earned, is usually immune from desire.

Need does not dissipate. We may mourn our own lost desires, but that does not diminish the needs of our fellow humans -- in our neighborhood, our country, our world -- to obtain some privileged status. Surely, exercising some of our privilege to help others should not threaten our position. If we are part of a demonstrably less privileged group, we owe it to our children, if not ourselves, to seek improvement or empowerment.

If I were great, I would take a deep breath and start focusing my attention on groups who have real needs – the truly marginalized -- rather than assuaging my conscience about my own privilege. There are venues for action – churches, community organizations, politics. So, what’s stopping me?

Who Am I, and How Did I Get Here?

Rare Reflection on Origins and Motivation

William Sundwick

What is my earliest childhood memory? It’s hard to say. Experiences from early childhood can sometimes be counterfeit. But one that I identified years ago, when my parents were still alive to confirm its authenticity, is standing in our driveway on a warm summer day, looking at the sun glinting off a sparkling two-tone green 1950 Chevrolet.

Both Dad and Mom agreed, as the memory flashed unexpectedly into my consciousness, it must have been when we had just gotten a new car – right about the time of my third birthday. My mind’s eye saw not only the car, but the red brick house on one side, the side door to the kitchen, the green grass of the front yard. It was real to me. No photograph was found, and the family photo album was intact at that point. Why did it appear to me just then?

Had the memory been somehow implanted earlier by my parents? Or, was it truly experienced, suddenly disgorged from my subconscious? Does it matter?

Here to Please

Pleasing my mother and father was one of my most important goals in early self-awareness. I remember the emotional distress of that struggle (especially pleasing my father). I remember my mother being forced to “run interference” between my father and me from a very early age. I had no siblings.  A fils unique has a special burden since his parents’ entire legacy is embodied in him! Yet, he also has the advantage of a simple family structure to master. He is there to please his parents, full stop.

I don’t remember any pain in childhood. Anxiety, for sure. But, actual physical pain, no. If asked today, I’d say my childhood was a privileged and comfortable one. Yet, another early memory (vague compared to the car in the driveway) is my mother telling ME, age 4 or 5, that it was wrong of my father to spank me -- although I don’t remember the spanking.

As I grew older, loneliness became palpable. Another bit of collateral damage from singleton status? Again, it was emotional rather than physical pain. There was always a wall between me and my neighborhood and school friends, even between my cousins and me (three of them my age). The cousins had different parents -- and siblings. I retained no connections in adulthood with any childhood friends, and little with the cousins for that matter (except for polite Christmas cards).

As I progressed through school, the drive to please was seamlessly transferred from parents to teachers. I did well. My learning style seemed to favor logical discourse, more than analytical experiment. Sciences were okay, especially physics and astronomy, but math needed to stop before it got too abstract – no calculus for me. People did interest me, however, and studying their behavior was fun. I loved to draw, then write. Mostly, I drew cars but wrote about people.

There were conflicts. I believe I was bullied – but, do not remember details or assailants. Again, don’t remember pain, only anxiety. I relied on authority figures to protect me from bullies. It usually worked.

The Sundwicks and the Chambers

Extended family filled the void left from limited immediate family. The Sundwick clan, especially, was a powerful force. They came from Swedish-speaking Finland in the late nineteenth century, settling in Michigan’s Keeweenaw Peninsula – Houghton and Hancock, the UP “copper country.” My paternal grandfather was a piano tuner by trade, and violin maker by art. He sold his violins in the area, and several have been recovered by the family.  He had eight children -- my five aunts, my dad, Uncle Bob, and a third boy, David (who died in my childhood, never knew him well).

The Chambers family of Wisconsin, by contrast, was largely a mystery to me. My mother told me of her eleven siblings (yes!) and itinerate Methodist minister father (circuit riding?). But, she left her family when she married my dad. I’ve had no contact with any of the Chambers family, not in childhood, not in adulthood. One sister-in-law showed up only at Mom’s funeral in 2007. It was a very sad story. Why?

My mom and dad met during World War II in Detroit – the war industry (nee automobile) employing both. My father had an occupational deferment as an engineer. Mom felt she was “adopted” by the overbearing Sundwicks; did her own family even miss her? What dark stories lay under the surface?

The Sundwick family dynamics placed the two oldest sisters and my father as titular (but squabbling) family heads.  The younger siblings were always the “children” – this seems to have taken a toll on Uncle Bob, in particular.

Family hierarchies tend to last a lifetime. Four of the eight children died early, by my reckoning. One survives (she’s 95). My father’s two youngest sisters, especially, tended to portray Dad as a demi-god. He was revered, and fawned over, by both. Uncle Bob, on the other hand, was generally ignored – his contributions minimized. He died early of heart disease. His brother David had died even earlier, after crippling war injuries sustained in the Pacific. I knew him only as wheelchair-bound. But, it was cancer that killed him.

Flint

In 1953, when I was not yet six, we moved from Dearborn to Flint. We lived only a few blocks from Uncle Bob and his family of three kids. Flint seemed to me like “Sundwick City.” My mother wasn’t happy about it.

Yet, all my schooling from age six through high school graduation was in the public schools of that fine industrial city.  It was mostly my mother who kept the standards high – and she was class-conscious. She embarked upon a college education for herself, would become a high school English teacher upon completion of her degree in an early graduating class of U of M-Flint, 1960. She was an adult, part-time, student. We had hired help around the house (Thelma, our African-American housekeeper and Boyce Buckner, our African-American yard man). Mom was going to get that college degree! She loved English literature more than anything, but I remember a sociology discussion with Mom about the distinction between middle-middle and upper-middle class. She steadfastly maintained we were middle-middle class. I heard her, but as I look back, it really seems more like upper-middle – at least in that Flint environment. My father’s position in plant-level management, with an engineering degree, solidified our standing -- especially when Mom became a high school teacher. Our country club membership was a marker, too.

I needed to move on. The Flint public schools did nothing to encourage me to stay and contribute to the community. My high school guidance counselor, my teachers, my parents, those aunts, all understood – Flint was no place for anybody like me, the anointed one in the Sundwick family.

My dad always talked of job security, his chief concern – you won’t find it in industry, work for the government, he said. My mother felt that a mind was a terrible thing to waste. And, my friends all received those same messages. We all left. Apparently, that trend only accelerated over the ensuing decades. Flint is now the poorest city of its size in the U.S. Not surprising that it would be forgotten five years ago when planning water supply redirection.

Getting Out

The social milieu of Flint, Michigan in the 1960s was perhaps an extreme case of the opposite of what I sought. Any “Big City” was the draw. It would only be there, I imagined, that I would ever fit – among intellectuals, people who made a difference with their minds and words. Not so much their hands, feet, or backs.

My strategy would be to get established somewhere in the public sector (or academia), then build a life. Unfortunately, the prospect of an end to student deferment after my college graduation forced a decision during those peak Vietnam War years. I postponed graduate school.

I wasn’t drafted, however (high lottery number). By that time, I found myself working in a public library system in Tampa, Florida. It was close to my parents, who had left Flint when I went off to college. The story continues with my pursuit of graduate work in the library field, at the University of Maryland, called “Library and Information Science” in those days, now simply “Information Studies.” From there, I embarked on my father’s dream career, the federal government – at the Library of Congress.

As the anointed one in the family, I was obligated to become a parent.  I had two sons with my wife, and my new role as solid rock, playful pal, and guarantor of their safety, was activated in the experience of parenting.

Now that I’ve “gone the distance’ – the boys are men, self-sufficient (mostly) –retirement has become feasible. Some personal issues remain: how long do I have? What happens when wife retires? When to downsize? But, these are still beyond the horizon. As I ask myself, “does it matter?”, motivation does sag a bit, as I’ve accepted that the world is bigger than me and my family. My contribution to it may be relatively small. But, it keeps growing.

Grandparenthood has given me a slight burst of enthusiasm -- grandchildren do matter, after all. As I replay the rock, the playmate, the safety guarantor, roles yet again, I reflect on those origins. The family line continues.

My legacy could be teamwork. One son sees himself as the natural leader of a team, the other as a contributor to the team. What defines the team? Common bonds and purpose, I think. It’s not as hierarchical as the large family of three generations ago – much flatter organization chart!

I can enjoy that structure.