Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

how these shift in different contexts. A group of people who all identify as women of color may be composed of different religions, genders, class backgrounds, native tongues, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and conditions of mental health, and experience subtle power imbalances within their ranks accordingly. Similarly, it is a mistake to think of different forms of oppression as existing in a hierarchy of grievousness, or to argue that some manifestations of oppression are mere subsets of others; to do so trivializes the unique experiences of human beings, which cannot be measured or reduced to abstractions.

Many privileged people think of themselves as self-sufficient, assuming that they live in a meritocracy and that all that they have in life is the result of their own hard work or that of their famihes. In doing so, they overlook the institutional and cultural advantages from which they benefit. To take stock of what advantages you might have in terms of racial privileges, consider how many of these statements reflect your experience:

I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials in school tiiat testify to the existence of their race and to the history and accomplishments of others of their racial background.

I can go into a music shop and expect to find music made by others of my race, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can Undermining Oppression ^ork with my hair.

"Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

I can swear, dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, poverty, or iUiteracy of my race.

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

I can criticize the US government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being immediately seen as a cultural outsider.

I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge" I will be facing a person of my race.

If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not wonder of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

For more perspective, go over this list again, replacing "race" with ethnicity, sex, gender, age, shape, and so on. Of course, no two white people experience white privilege in exactly the same way, just as not every man feels safer walking alone at night than every woman. Some people have made life decisions that result in them not experiencing many of the daily privileges enjoyed by others of their demographic: a taxi driver may be as likely to refuse to pick up a white man with facial tattoos as a black man without them. But privilege, on a deeper level, is not easily shaken off The white man, in an extreme, can have his tattoos removed, while the black man knows that the challenges he faces in a racist society are inescapable. A woman from a middle class family may choose a life of poverty and even homelessness, but the fact that she is connected to people who might be able to help her in an emergency makes her experience undermining Oppression very different from that of a homeless person of a poor background. Similarly, the ad- 567

vantages that come from having been raised in a privileged setting remain throughout one's hfe, whatever else happens. Those of privileged backgrounds who choose a path of exile upon which they experience alienation and persecution can draw on these experiences to imagine what life is like for those who never had their advantages in the first place.

Rather than denying the privileges one possesses or imagining one could somehow wash one's hands of them and thus of complicity in oppression, it makes more sense to use one's privileges, whatever they may be, to undermine privilege in general. One way to do so is to find ways to put these at the disposal of others who can benefit from them (see Solidarity, pg, 489, and Coalition Building, pg. 183). If nothing else, one should always attempt to stay aware of the unfair advantages one has, and to take these into account in interactions with others; but simply learning to recognize and decry one's privileges while still cashing in on them does not constitute an effective struggle against oppression.

Reclaiming Identity: Identity Politics

Undermining Oppression 568