A little over a month ago, I started my year of service. That is, I am spending the next year working for a non profit making virtually no money. I'm doing this for a number of reasons, but mostly out of a desire to put all of my academic theory reading to practice as well as having almost no idea as to what to do after I graduated from undergrad. Now, I chose my service organization because they showed a dedication to social justice and intentional community. They also seemed the least fucked up out of all the service organizations I looked into. That said, I'll confess one of my current qualms: the lack of meaningful discussion of privilege.
Part of my organization's orientation was to attend an anti-racism training. The training was helpful, but it did not explore how we, as volunteers, carry and perpetuate privilege (or lack thereof). It did not engage us in meaningful discussions about how to navigate that tense place of wanting to serve but also being an oppressor and privileged. (Side note: most of my program is white, straight, middle class, educated women). (Other side note: there are so many women in my program that it sometimes comes across that the few men that do participate are given an unnecessary amount of consideration and space because they are a "minority group" in the program).
Recently, we had a workshop about "service tenants." These tenants were pretty fucked up. They were communicated in flowery language (i.e. "stay for tea" instead of "build relationships") rather than simply lay out that in order to do good service work we need to check our privilege, build relationships with who we are serving, and treat people with dignity and respect. My biggest issue is that this program never once used the word privilege. Instead of telling us to check our privilege, it told us to "check our filter." According to the organization hosting this workshop (it was separate from my service org), your "filter" is your worldview as in the identities and assumptions you carry with you. Of course, when they told us to "check our filter" they were telling us to challenge our assumptions and our privileges. Just without actually talking about privilege.
It is a privilege to spend a year doing service. From my limited time in my service organization, that appears to be the big taboo thing to actively discuss. Someone will mention it in passing, but no one really engages with it. And why would they? Those uncomfortable feelings that come from talking about how we perpetuate privilege merely distracts from the good feelings we have from being so altruistic. But we have privilege. And we cannot check it if we do not actively acknowledge that it exists. We cannot do good service work until we engage with our privilege. We need to learn and work at being intentional with our service work on a micro level before we can ever do it at a macro level. Essentially, we have to do the dirty work of self-reflecting on how in our service placements we perpetuate our privilege.
I'll use myself as an example. I am an educated, white person with no experience of homelessness or injection drug use working with and educating people experiencing or have experienced homelessness and/or injection drug use. About half of the people I serve are also of color. In an effort to not perpetuate my privilege, I listen and ask questions. I ask about their own knowledge and story. As I learn about them, I give them resources and information I think would be beneficial. And then I ask if it is useful. I also understand that I will most likely fuck up. A lot. I will accidentally use inaccessible medical jargon. I will not own up to the fact that I'm not familiar with injection drug use. And I know that instead of soaking up that uncomfortableness and using it as a learning opportunity, I will try to avoid it. But I have to work and be better. And it's not for me. I can't focus on challenging my privilege because I feel guilty or I want to be a better person. My intentions don't mean shit. My focus needs to be on the impact of my actions. Challenging my privilege is to lessen the perpetuation of my privilege and to work against systemic oppression. It's not because I want sainthood or some bullshit warm fuzzy feeling.
For service to be selfless it should start with challenging and check your own privilege.
