Privilege In the Eyes of My Hispanic Mother

My mother is a woman of many words. Many repeated words, actually. And it's ironic that her daughter, of all people, writes on a blog about privilege because if I were to make a guess, I'd say her top words are (next to "Chicana") rich, white, and privilege. And just to clarify for those who aren't living in Mesa, Arizona, these three words are basically interchangeable. The members of this community are, for the most part, very affluent and predominately white. As a Hispanic family who struggles to keep above the poverty line, the members of my household are, on paper, a clear minority. Off paper, when it comes to my sisters and I, not so much, but we'll dive more into this one another week. For now, the focus is my mother who, over the years, I have discovered an overwhelming bitterness in, especially for the rich, white members of our community.

It's through this bitterness that "privilege" was introduced to me as a dirty word. After my parents divorced, I was taught that we were fighting against every light skinned, nicely dressed lady I bumped into on the street because it is the privileged that are giving us dirty looks, the privileged cutting us off in the school parking lot, the privileged taking all of the good part-time jobs, the scholarships, the everything-that-is-affordable just because they have the money to take what is theirs. Our lives were hard, but it was the privileged who were oppressing us. At least, that's what I was taught.

Is teaching your children that wrong? Yes.

And yet, it all feels completely justified. My mom is a Hispanic who grew up in Arizona, a part of a generation that forgot how to speak Spanish because their bilingual, bruised parents told them English was the only safe thing to speak. We moved to Mesa, Arizona proven to be the most conservative city in the U.S. in the heat of SB1070. Discrimination is not just the occasional supermarket bigot, it is something that fills the desert air, makes it thick and suffocates the minority. My mom knows that well enough to fully warrant her bitterness. And further, how can a woman, a mother, not feel bitter about her own financial crisis when her children are surrounded by a pool of students more comfortable than they ever could be? When MORE is a tangible, but untouchable reality swinging in front of her face on a a day-to-day basis? 

The way she feels, it makes sense. 

But is it right?

That is the question I am posing today. And my opinion is that, when it comes to Privilege Profiling, empathy is the only thing that can really be extended in this situation. I can understand why my mother says what she does, but that doesn't make it okay to say that my white friends are incapable of extending good manners because their "privlege parents" never taught them to. You don't have to be a fan of privilege. And if you don't have a godlike sense of patience for the privileged, that's okay too. However, letting your viewpoint on privilege affect the way you view and treat people with privilege is not okay. 

Privilege is just another way that we are all different, and, as said before, differences are to de embraced. 

But that's just my take on it.

What do you think?