I Get To Make Mistakes

One of the privileges that comes with being from a financially stable family, being white and being male is that I get to make mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has moments in which they use poor judgment or make poor choices. One of the advantages that comes with privilege is that mistakes don't have to come with huge costs. Privilege means getting a second chance, means people let it go because they know you're really a good person.

How do you handle that?

I don't think it's useful to have survivor's guilt, a sort of version of the white liberal guilt of the sixties. Somebody else lost chunks of their life over things that you also did with far less consequence-- I'm not sure there's anything you can do about that, exactly, nor do I think volunteering to wear a hair shirt really helps anybody.

I think this is another pay it forward kind of situation. Somebody paid for your mistake, your flaw, your screw up, your bad judgment. That means you owe a debt, and like most life debts, you probably can't pay back the person that you actually owe.

But I can pay it forward. I can remember, when I'm the person who catches someone else's mistake, or when I'm simply someone who knows about their error-- I can remember that I owe a debt for something just as bad. I owe. And the very least I can pay back is in understanding and decency to the person who is on the bottom. I don't have to be understanding-- maybe the transgression is something beyond my comprehension. And I don't have to giev a free pass-- maybe the mitsake is one that still has to be apid for, no matter what. But at a bare basic minimum, I can be kind. I can see the other person's mistake as proof that they are human, not proof that they are less than.

Put another way-- the fact that I didn't have to pay for my mistakes does not mean that I can forget I ever made them. The measure of a person's mistake is not how big the punishment was, and getting away with something doesn't mean you didn't do anything wrong. So part of privilege and the recognition of it is recognizing that different consequences do not erase the similarity of transgression. If we can see that, it can help overcome one of the worst side effects of privilege-- the belief that my privilege somehow proves that I am fundamentally different from lesser people. Because I'm not.