I Never Really Think About It Much

"Write about the inconsistent standards in a community or neighborhood to which you belong."

I felt chills run through my spine when I read this promt. I was walking out of the dorm going to dinner, planning to write this post when I finished. I thought dinner would be a good time to formulate my ideas so that when I sat down, I could just write the post and submit it by the deadline. Thinking about it got me nowhere.

I'm white. I'm male. I'm straight. I never really thought about it much. Not until I came to Andover. When I started hearing Andover community members using terms like "inconsistent standards" and "privilege," I thought these were terms of the past. I thought of racism as Jim Crow laws, as cops arresting blacks for sitting in the front of a bus, as nineteenth-century plantation owners forcing innocent people to do manual labor for no pay. I don't think I ever stopped to wonder if racism occurs today.

When I was in fourth grade, I was one of two Jewish students in my class. There were two Jews, two Muslims, and a roomful of Christians. I was an intellectual kid, so I always loved when our teacher would ask us to get in front of the class and explain our religion's traditions. Whenever there was a Jewish or Muslim holiday, our teacher had the two Jews or the two Muslims get up in front of the class and teach everyone what the holiday is about. I guess that is what people consider "inclusion."

Freshman year, I flipped out when I heard the term "affirmative action." To think that I could have the exact same qualifications as someone else for a board position and be denied it because I am a white male really bothered me. Over the course of my time at Andover, I have been on four club boards (not simultaneously). Two of the boards were all girls except for me. This exclusivity was never a concern, and the club functioned normally. The other two were all guys on the board. Both clubs were scared out of their mind at the thought of lack of female involvement, and in both instances, there was a huge push to try to find specifically girls to join those clubs in a desparate effort to diversify the board. In one of those clubs, a girl was given a position of leadership over a guy who was arguably more qualified for the job.

I never thought about that part of fourth grade again until this evening. I remembered those presentations we gave because I enjoyed giving them. I loved educating others about my family traditions. But is that inclusion? Were those presentations tools for us to make ourselves equal members of the community, or inconsistent standards we were expected to live up to so a room of Christians could gain some cultural exposure and feel like they were in a diverse classroom?

I have a deadly peanut allergy. In fourth and fifth grade, our school's method of coping with it was making me sit at the one peanut free table in the cafeteria. I was allowed to invite a maximum of three friends to come sit with me. The peanut free table was in its own corner, far from the rest of the tables. I always sat in the same seat: the one that faced the rest of the cafeteria such that I could see everybody else in the room sitting at a big table with all their friends enjoying their food, most of which contained no peanut butter. Is telling the little nine-year-old that he can invite three friends to sit with him the best way to include him in the community? Is it an "inconsistent standard?"

If there is one thing Andover has taught me about privilege, it is that I don't get it. I don't get what it is like to be non-white, I don't get what it is like to be female, I don't get what it is like to be homosexual or bisexual or transsexual. I'll bet you're waiting for me to slap down a concluding sentence that ties all of my anecdotes together and connects them all to the words "privilege" and "inconsistent standards." Well, you're out of luck. Because as a white male, I don't understand the privilege I have been given. I try my best, but I also know that it is impossible. The only way people can understand privilege is if they have been denied it. All the anecdotes I told are just my feeble attempts at understanding what it is like to be deined privilege and consistent standards.

Do I understand what it is like? No. There's no way I could possibly understand. I'm white. I'm male. I'm straight. I never really think about it much. Not until I'm prompted to.