Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Assumptions

August 17, 2017

White Privilege Unfurled

On the day I was born, I received unearned privileges not available to everyone. Equally true, my life has been difficult because of unearned privileges available to men but not to me.

I was born White and Female. This complicates everything: gender and race; gender and politics; gender and academia; gender and the church; gender and role expectations; gender and power; gender and social events. Sometimes I’m welcomed with open arms even though I often experience something less than full welcome into the fold of privilege.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about white male privilege. I’ve spent considerably less time thinking about my white privilege. It’s easy to say I was born white, so it isn’t my fault. Which, of course, it is not.

Yet I know I’ve been the recipient of privileges friends and strangers of color do not receive. Many privileges are invisible to me. They’re the climate in which I live. I don’t need to think about them when I get up in the morning, or when I appear in a check-out line. More to the point, I count on them daily.

Today the USA is roiling, internally and externally, from a wound that has festered from the beginning. The assumption and reality of white privilege.

Here’s what I’m doing to clarify for myself what my white privilege looks like. Not yours. For me, this includes awareness of male privilege. Sometimes white male privilege only; sometimes all males.

For starters, I’ve located a website offering free material as well as formal leadership training (not free). I found two downloadable papers that will help me personally. Not simply with self-understanding, but with ideas about how I might change my daily habits as well as personal assumptions and goals.

Dr. Peggy McIntosh is the author of the papers and founder of The National SEED Project. In each paper she describes unpacking her own privilege. The papers include end notes in which she clarifies issues that arise when people begin to talk about privilege.

If you’re interested in knowing more, here are links to the website and two free downloadable papers.

Happy reading!
Elouise ♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 August 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Unfurl

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March 27, 2017

Manufactured faces

Manufactured faces gaze
From magazines and brochures
Scattered around the waiting room
Wherever I turn my eyes
‘They’ smile knowingly
If not mechanically
Picture perfect features
Enticing sirens of perpetual youth
White skin gleaming
Radiant in life
And in death

What do they know that I don’t know?
Is this happy heaven or happy hell?
I seem to have lost my way.

It’s Friday, March 25. I’m sitting in a nearly deserted, picture-perfect, calm, shades of blue cool color-coordinated waiting room. Not, I’m sorry to say, the plastic surgery (yes!) waiting room above. A plastic surgeon, on site only once a week, is going to remove two suspicious growths from my skin. Due to unforeseen developments, the wait will be longer than anticipated.

Upbeat music plays relentlessly. Every chair, magazine table, shelf and counter space offers indoor advertising for the miraculous powers of plastic surgery and the good life. I search in vain for a normal magazine or newspaper.

Alas, I didn’t bring a book or even my iPad. All I have is my writing journal. Into which I enter the thoughts above.

An hour later, things finally get underway. I also learn a thing or two. The surgeon is probably in his late 30s or early 40s. I’ve often assumed plastic surgeons are in it for the money.

This one, however, doesn’t fit that stereotype. His primary work doesn’t involve what I’d call elective cosmetic plastic surgery for the wealthy seeking eternal youth, or even for the rest of us with routine things like suspicious growths. He does this only one day a week, at this site. A break from his demanding schedule.

The rest of the time he’s at a downtown university hospital doing what he loves most. A form of intricate, creative plastic surgery. Most of his patients are women who’ve had mastectomies or trauma victims whose skin needs repair. He loves the challenge of each case, and knowing that what he does helps people recover from life-changing events.

I left feeling chastened and grateful I’d heard a bit of his story. Well worth the wait.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 March 2017
Photo of spectacular plastic surgery waiting room found pinterest

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