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I forgot to check my privilege at the door. Last night I had the honor of fellowshipping with my Brown brothers and sisters at Casa Solidarity House of the South. It was open mic night and one eloquent sister said, ‘We need to fight everything all the time at the same time.”
That is the impossible position people of color find themselves in here in LA. In any society steeped in white patriarchy, really. We did an exercise where we listed 4 things that make us angry and shared it with the group. Mine were:
- The current healthcare system-Covered California sucks in that if you need a subsidy to pay for healthcare to meet the requirement of having health insurance and at any time in the future are back on your feet they recoup the subsidy via your income tax return. For 2 years straight Covered California has taken my federal tax return.
- How hard it is to be free and yourself as a woman of color. Every day that I wake up I have to operate in an environment that doesn’t celebrate or accept me AS I AM. In order to survive we have been taking on the traits, characteristics or habits of the dominant culture…white culture. I have to fight every day to just be me. A Black woman in her 30s who has 2 degrees, single, with a cat, is on a journey of self-discovery, with a yearning for a connection to Mama Africa, who likes Ella Fitzgerald and Project Pat. Who cusses, hasn’t shed all of her habits from the hood and poverty, who wants to love and be loved in a deep, profound and ominous way. To live and just say and do whatever the hell I want to just like old people. But it takes such courage to be all of the things that I am on a daily basis. Sometime I am successful, sometimes I fail. The important thing is that I keep trying.
- Wages not meeting the cost of living in LA. I have a BS and MA and it is still a struggle to keep a well-paying job, follow my passion, afford a place to live, keep my car up and still try to go on adventures. I can only imagine how it is for those who have kids and no degrees to bolster their wages/salary.
- Corporations who don’t care about their employees. I’ve experienced this way more times than I thought I would in my adult life. It’s money first, as to be expected, but in the hustle they mistreat, cheat, and undervalue their staff. It’s a disease of greed.
But even with all of these gripes and obstacles in my life towards the end of the night I became acutely aware of my privilege while visiting South Central LA. The majority of those in attendance lived near Casa. I was going to get in my car and drive back to the safety of The Valley. I felt guilty that even though I had been laid off less than 24 hrs. before, I was in a position to live in relative safety and not have to worry about police brutality, food desserts, and gentrification wiping out Black and Brown culture all around me (there’s none to wipe away in my little corner of The Valley).
Because of my education, even while recently unemployed, I was afforded the privilege of a job that paid decently enough for me to live outside of a danger zone. I forgot to check my privilege at the door.
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