1/ I’m quite happy to consider “white privilege” in this context, given that people tend to be subconsciously attracted to those similar to them, and that the West is almost exclusively made up of majority white countries, even if that’s shifting over time.

HOWEVER... https://twitter.com/rasmansa/status/1290820634210115589

2/ Firstly, this “sameness” privilege would shift from culture to culture, based on who or what is considered “the norm” and who is in the position of judging people and based on what context. A minority in an HR position might approach employment different to, say dating.

3/ More importantly, however, we must then compare the relative privilege granted by immutable similarities against individual life experiences that can completely reshape two otherwise identical people.

4/ Let’s start with “Childhood stability privilege”. Arguably, this is going to be one of the most important defining factors in a persons life, and can drastically change how the child becomes an adult.

Even this can and should be broken down into sub categories.

5/ Take Childhood household income, for example. Children raised in poverty will certainly have a different perspective from those raised in a financially stable home, and again from a financially wealthy home.

Did the children of these families learn thrift or prodigality?

6/ Thrift vs Prodigality will show us how a family can become wealthy and industrious over a generation or two or, conversely, destroy an inheritance leaving nothing (or less than nothing, meaning debt and work) for future generations.

7/ Were children raised by supportive parents? Or deeply flawed parents? Some might choose to emulate their parents out of respect and admiration, some might inadvertently emulate their parents in a pattern of inter generational brokenness.

8/ Others might choose a wildly different path from their parents, either out of spite, desire to be better, or perhaps even due to a wildly different disposition or passion, but with the support of their parents.

And, folks, we haven’t even left the parents as influences yet.

9/ How did your parents model conflict resolution and perseverance in adversity? Did you unconsciously follow in a conflict avoidant pattern, taking the oath of least resistance? Or did you watch your parents do this, and vow to do better?

10/ Let’s say you vow to do better. You’ve lacked the modelling for healthy conflict resolution, and undoubtedly picked up a few bad habits. Did you manage to find a good role model in a teacher, coach, parent if a friend? Or did you blunder through it, ruining a friendship?

11/ Let’s talk about trauma. Even the happiest and healthiest families can experience trauma, and poorer families are often hotbeds for abuse, which leads to trauma. And, from personal experience, let me tell you that abuse flows downhill. You don’t want to be the youngest.

12/ Trauma, whether short and jarring, prolonged and exhausting, violent, passive,
intended, incidental (like a car crash), physical, psychological, emotional, sexual, etc will impact us differently. An out of the blue accident will be different to sustained predatory abuse.

13/ Even if two people grow up experiencing the same abuse, go back up the thread and look at the other potential influences. This may break them, this may refine them. This may make them resolute to see direct abuses stopped, this may turn them into an abuser themselves.

14/Trauma can lead to a whole host of other issues such as mental health. Plus,
Some brains just develop wrong and the most otherwise “privileged” kid will grow up with bipolar or manic depression or any of a whole host of other issues.

15/ Feed these back through our previous considerations. Is a mental illness trauma based? Can crippling mental states be induced by a smell, a song, or a few innocuous words? If this is you, do you have resources at your disposal to seek help? We’re you taught to seek help?

16/ Were you taught to face your issues head on and, if so, were you taught healthy mechanisms to do this, or were you taught that facing your issues meant “a stiff upper lip” and all that.

Each of these will influence how you face your inner demons depending on combinations.

17/ Dont get me started on sickness. While some conditions and illnesses are sex based, infirmity as a whole knows no colour, creed, wealth, status, sex, family dynamic, etc.

Some might spring from that family dynamic or trauma, some might be congenital. Do you have insight?

18/ Some might be completely incidental. I doubt anyone reading this has eaten raw bat before, but here we all are watching COVID stats around the world.

Is your infirmity visible or invisible? Is there known treatment or stability options? It changes from case to case.

19/ Let’s our some of these into a more familiar post modern language.

- Parental privilege.
- Wealth privilege.
- Trauma privilege (that is, you avoided it).
- Mental Health privilege.
- Physical Health privilege.

Each with their own sub categories of privilege.

20/ Intersectionality says that we live at the intersections of these various conditions, statuses, and privileges.

But if each condition, status, and privilege is both numerous and complex, the intersectionality is no longer a handy chart or scores on a checklist.

21/ Two trauma patients sit in adjacent beds in a hospital. One comes from poor, but thrifty and supportive parents, their condition is likely treatable, but they cannot afford it readily. The other comes from stingy, distant, and abusive parents. Their condition is ongoing...

22/ and will likely stay with them for the rest of their lives, but they can afford the best quality of ongoing, cutting edge, and even experimental treatment.

We might plausibly assign them both the same amount of “privilege points” on an intersectionality checklist.

23/ But any similarity of “privilege” will end there, as there ongoing circumstances will be radically different.

Again, two prospective candidates wait to interview for the same job. One comes from loving and supportive, but conflict avoidant parents. The other from...

24/ cold, distant, but “fave your problems head on” parents. Assuming all else equal in financial stability, and mental and physical health, who will be better suited to customer support and conflict resolution? Or sales? Or management?

25/ And so we see that, instead of a handy chart or a scores checklist, intersectionality (when carefully and consistently applied) becomes an impossibly complex matrix of layered, nuanced, individual experiences.

26/ Note the incredible and powerful complexities that can offer two radically and even completely opposite experiences, without yet having talked about the immutable characteristics of sex and race, skin colour, sexual preference, gender identity and presentation etc.

27/ So, a thought experiment. Two people.

One brought up in a wealthy home, to supportive and emotionally healthy parents. They recoeve good education, taught healthy conflict resolution, encouraged in their dreams and aspirations.

They’re also gay, black, and female.

28/ The second is raised in poverty. Their parents are manipulative, abusive, have no conflict resolution skills, mock their children’s dreams. There is physical abuse, sexual abuse, leading to long term trauma and physical infirmary.

The kid is a straight white male.

29/ Intersectionality would suggest to us that the second kid has “straight white male privilege”, and many would say that he has it better than the gay black woman.

Oh, that second kid? That’s me. I’ve been awake since 0300 from pain. Narrowly avoided a flashback last night.

30/ All this to say. Sure, “white privilege” might exist in the western world, I’ll give you that.

But compared to the myriad of other privileges a person can be blessed with or denied throughout their life, it amounts to roughly diddly squat in the big picture.

<\\TED Talk>