Being Powerless Can Give You Strength

What I find interesting about the posts I've read so far is that many of them are very personal, and as I always follow the crowd...

It was the spring of '92, a full six months before we saw a plucky young First Lady Elect begin her fight against the Republican Horde for universal healthcare in the world's richest and most powerful nation. In fact, the whole healthcare fiasco would be a great topic for today's musings, but I've already chosen to write about myself and my experiences with power and privilege. Anyhoo, I was up for this scholarship, given out by a huge multinational corporation that produces a market-dominating soda that is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia that I will not name here in such a public forum. I was flown down to Atlanta in order to defend an essay that I had written to make it into the finals of this scholarship competition. My parents bought me a suit for the occasion, a solemn black affair. I hated it, but I wore it. I looked mature, professional, a right little Eichman...

So I walked into this long room with a long table that had at the far end three old white guys and one token older woman. Suddenly, I knew that I would not be getting the full $20,000. The essay topic that year was if you could change one historic event, what would it be? I sank Columbus. My whole essay was about how I felt that European men destroyed the Western Hemishpere. And I had to defend that thesis to old Southern men. Joke's on me, fellas.

But instead of judging this crowd for what it was and giving up or backpedaling on my thesis, I dove headfirst into my reasons that the world is worse off for the destruction of cultures that may have contributed to the path of human history is so many positive ways, but instead was enslaved or killed off by disease. And you'd think that these wise old sages across the table would have listened to my central argument about the richness and scientific advances of indigenous cultures, but no. They stopped listening and starting mentally lashing the essay reading committee for letting a whack-job like me get through that far. Sigh.

I learned a lot about power and privilege that day. I thought I had privilege, and maybe I did to some extent in my small pond. But in the larger world, it was the white man that said yes or no to whatever it was that I could or could not have. But only because I asked them for something. And yet, don't we always have to ask some old white guys for something? Oil, food, clothing, cars, homes...it really is a sad situation in which we find ourselves at this point in human history. Yet for some reason, I don't get down about it. I am cynical, true, but it is not hopeless. The fact that I am rather powerless makes me stronger and more determined to change the playing field. Like in all good drama, you must have an antagonist. My antagonist is apathy and indifference to the plight of those who are powerless, and almost everyone is powerless at some point or to some extent. Use what power you do have to bolster those around you, because there is strength and power in numbers. Each generation has a new chance to get things right, and I for one want to be right there guiding those generation, giving them my power to see our collective struggle and how best to navigate the world and its ways in a productive manner that gives each child his or her own power, or at least the strength to question those who do have power and perhaps chip away at the wall of inequity that defines our society.

And much like Michelle, I get mad when I see a commercial about cleaning products that only feature women...oh, it makes me so angry! I write a lot of emails to companies about their ads, and I run a minor, minor blog about issues I have with advertising in general. And yet, who owns the vast majority of the major national ad and marketing firms...yep, white guys. I'm so sick of white men owning everything that I secretly cheer when Asian firms buy up American companies. I know it's bad economically-speaking, but part of me laughs at the hubris of those Ivy-educated dumb-dumbs.