2018-10-22
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Mark 10:35-45
OK, confession time: some of you know that my brother Tim is a TV sportscaster in Bangor, Maine. He’s been doing this job for nearly forty years, on the most-watched station in northern Maine. So when he walks through the downtown or the local mall, he is always noticed. Heads swivel, people whisper excitedly to each other, and they’ll indicate with some sort of gesture that he’s walking by. It’s probably not as common with him as it is with Bangor’s most famous resident, Stephen King. But it’s pretty pronounced. Tim gets preferential treatment at pubs and golf clubs and almost everywhere. And I have to tell you that I have not been immune from envying that. I have sometimes salivated over all that attention and recognition. How nice, I have thought, to have that sort of privilege.
So I get it when James and John come somewhat stealthily to Jesus and say to him, “Arrange it . . . so that we will be awarded the highest places of honor in your glory—one of us at your right, the other at your left” (Mark 10:37, The Message). I, too, want to stand out; I, too, want to be special.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many or all of us weren’t, to some extent, sons and daughters of Zebedee—Jameses and Johns intent on our position and our recognition. Why shouldn’t I be the one in the front row at the concert, the one singled out for recognition at work, the favored child at home? Don’t most of us want to be the one selected for the promotion, to make the varsity soccer team, to be chosen for the lead in the musical? Who of us, at least in some measure, doesn’t want to be in the privileged few?
It’s important to be aware that there are at least a few people here today who seldom get singled out for special mention, who rarely are recognized for singular accomplishment. If you’re in a home or workplace where you’re picked on, where your faults are constantly highlighted, where you’re totally taken for granted, then there’s a hole in your life. And if you’re subject to ongoing physical or mental abuse, then there’s something deeply wrong. It can be painful and lonely. We can feel generally worthless.
And truth be told, probably many of us feel that way at one time or another. We can readily identify with the other ten disciples, who, when they hear of the ploy of James and John, are fearful that they’re missing out on something that someone else is getting.
I suspect, though, that the lesson of the day is that many of us have more privilege than we sometimes realize. What they all fail to see in the story—both James and John in their subterfuge, and the other ten in their anger—what they all fail to see is that they are all already with Jesus. They have privilege to which they are totally oblivious.
And my sense is this is the way it is for most of us, as well. When I go into a store, for example, I am never followed around suspiciously. When I walk through Chagrin Falls, I always know I will run into people who look like me. Throughout my life, when I have applied for a job, I have much more often than not been invited for an interview. I have privilege that I often don’t see or appreciate.
And a good part of this has nothing whatsoever to do with my own gifts or work ethic. These things accrue to me, in large measure, because I am white and male and straight. Doors open for me, just because of those traits, that don’t open for lots of others. I am regularly held in relatively high esteem due to qualities I had nothing directly to do with.
We wouldn’t be doing justice in this matter if we didn’t acknowledge people’s own efforts. I would say I have worked hard in my life, and some of what I have is likely traceable to that work. But at least as telling as my own efforts are traits and qualities over which I have had little or no control. I am, just to take a simple example, relatively tall, and, as you may know, “research has shown that taller people are more likely to acquire power; [they] make more money, on average, and are more likely to be promoted” (https://psychcentral.com/news/2012/01/24/power-linked-to-perception-of-height/34028.html). You talk about a quality over which I have zero control—it’s my height.
Doors open for me because I’m a man, too. In the early 1970s, my mother was hoping to be a minister, and not a single church would even interview her. This despite the fact that she later became remarkably accomplished in her field. If I had been looking for ministry positions in that same time period, I would certainly have been interviewed—not because I’m so inherently wonderful, but simply because I have an X and a Y chromosome. And while certainly much has changed on this score in the intervening decades, we all know gifted women who have not been interviewed or promoted, simply because of their gender. And we are all only too aware, in this #MeToo moment, of the continuing pattern of male power and female victimization.
Other benefits accrue to me solely because I’m straight. In many quarters, a strong undercurrent of moral disapproval still follows people who are LGBTQ+. I was at a social gathering recently in which a woman whom I had just met roundly disparaged people who are LGBTQ+. I never have to wonder if it’s OK to hold hands with Mary in public, or to kiss her. I never have to worry whether I’ll be beaten up because I’m a “fag.”
And of course, I receive countless benefits from being white. As I say, I’m never followed around a store. People don’t cross the street to avoid passing me on the sidewalk. Seldom, if ever, does anyone wonder what I’m doing in a particular neighborhood. They know I belong.
As part of a study not long ago, “economists at MIT and the University of Chicago sent out 5000 resumes to 1250 hiring employers. Every employer got four resumes: two average applicants (one with a ‘black’ name and one with a ‘white’ name), and two highly skilled applicants (one with a ‘black’ name and one with a ‘white’ name). Then they measured which applicants were called for interviews. The resumes with white-sounding names triggered 50 percent more callbacks than resumes with black-sounding names. . . .The average ‘white’ applicants received many more callbacks than the highly skilled ‘black’ applicants. Shockingly, the employers in the area stated they were actively recruiting for minority candidates” (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/). There is, in so many quarters, an implicit bias toward people who are white.
Many of us saw the viral video this week of a white woman in St. Louis refusing entry to a black man who was trying to get into the apartment building in which they both live. She asked him what unit he lived in and tried to block the door as he came in. The simple truth of the matter is that that’s never going to happen to me, and to most of us. Not because we’re especially virtuous, but simply because of the color of our skin.
I’m tall, male, straight, and white. And because of that, I am granted a certain respect that I have never had to earn. I’m the recipient of that sort of privilege largely because of factors that are totally beyond my control. What is in my control is at least an awareness of the benefits that come to me in all sorts of subtle ways. When we’re not aware of those cultural benefits, they tend to pervert and contort our shared life.
When people talk about so-called “white privilege,” I know it raises the hackles of a number of people. Many people, and maybe a number of you, just don’t feel they’ve been given special privileges. We all know the feeling that life is simply not working for us: the dish washer breaks, the bill is too big to pay it when it’s due, our child is going through a crisis. Privilege? Hah! I am sensitive to this dynamic, and am aware of this feeling that we are sometimes denied what we’re due, that the world is, in truth, working against us.
At a conference for ministers that I attended this week, though, we were presented with a list of the things that so many of us in this room can do without even thinking about it, things that people of a different color can seldom take for granted. Because of white skin color:
· I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
· I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
· When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
· I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
· I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to bad morals, or the poverty or illiteracy of my race.
· I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
· 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 a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
· I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
· I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
· I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
· I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
That’s twelve of fifty daily effects of white privilege listed by Peggy McIntosh, a researcher at Wellesley College. The other thirty-eight are similar. And McIntosh says it is painful to face this in herself and in the culture, because it forces her to give up what she calls “the myth of meritocracy.” As she says, “many doors open for certain people through no virtue of their own” (“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”). These are benefits that come to us irrespective of whether we have done anything at all to earn or deserve them.
It’s striking and sobering how many doors open to us through no merit of our own. We have so much privilege that passes by virtually unnoticed. And I suspect Jesus is inviting us, nudging us, pushing us even, to see and acknowledge the privileges we so often take for granted.
And then he’s pushing us beyond that, to remember what’s at the heart of Christian discipleship. Centuries ago, Francis of Assisi said something that hangs on a print in the laundry room at our house. “Let it be your privilege to have no privilege.” These are words that could have been spoken to James and John. And they could well be spoken to us. “Let it be your privilege to have no privilege.”
Some years ago, the distinguished psychiatrist and author Robert Coles went to visit the great Roman Catholic social activist Dorothy Day. She had founded the Catholic Worker House, which ministered to poor people in New York City, and she was certainly the most well-known Catholic social activist of her day. Coles wanted to meet her and to interview her.
When he arrived at Dorothy Day’s house, she was in the midst of an intense conversation with a poor person who had come to the house for help and support. Coles stood to the side for several minutes, waiting patiently for the conversation to finish so he could introduce himself to Day. As the conversation with the woman went on, Day finally interrupted it briefly and turned to Coles, and asked him, “Are you here to talk to one of us?”
Coles tells that story because it conveys what it is to exercise the privilege of having no privilege. “Are you here to talk to one of us?” No presumption on Day’s part that Coles was there for her. In her mind, Coles could just as easily have been there to talk to the other woman.
We mentioned earlier the man who had been blocked from entering his own apartment building by another tenant just because he was black. He was subsequently interviewed, and I was so struck by his attitude toward the woman who had blocked the door. D’Arreion Toles said this when he was asked about her: “Don’t respond negatively [to the woman], don’t go after [her]. Let her be at peace. Let her live her life. I’m not mad at her, I’m not going to go after her, legally or anything like that. I wish her the best. I’d [still like to] have a conversation with her.”
And I couldn’t help but think: that’s grace. That’s the sort of mentality that is invested in giving rather than taking. It is indeed the gift that God has given to us. And it’s the gift that’s asked of us in return. “[W]hoever wishes to become great among you,” says Jesus, “must minister to you, and whoever wishes to be first among you will be servant of all” (Mark 10:43-44). On this day when new members join our number, “Let it be [our] privilege to have no privilege.”