A gnawing feeling...

Sometimes I just chew and chew and chew; it is like I have a compulsion to grind down my teeth and the thing itself through the process of perpetual friction. I think of the everlasting gobstopper: the perfect candy that just keeps on churning out the sugar. But, in this case, I am chewing on the tart stuff, the sour stuff, the leather bottoms of overly worn shoes.

What is it about my brain that latches on and holds in its grips the rotting mess that other people turn their backs on?

So what am I chewing on today? you ask. It may not be the things you would expect from me: the sexual exploitation of women across the world, the horrors of "getting the president you deserve," the ridiculously low wages we expect people to work for and then live on, or even the idiocy of dissertation writing and the education process. Today I am turning something else over and over in my mouth while my saliva dances around it.

Today I wonder: how to live with privilege. How do I recognize my own? How much can I avoid? Do I want to avoid it? How can we have a world without privileged people and instead have a world where rights are preserved for everyone? What happens when one is privileged by race or nationality but prohibited by sex or class? Or what of the other combinations? What happens when a family of privilege: white, American, wealthy adopts a child without: Asian, Chinese, poor. The child becomes both privileged (by family and some opportunities) and an outsider (by birth). That's a whole other road...

But my chewing today is more about me. I keep driving my spanking new hybrid car to my expensive yoga classes, during which I wear expensive Canadian yoga clothes, and I leave feeling like a Sunday 12:00 Baptist leaving church. I go home to my huge and underused home, cook organic and brand names foods for my overweight belly, watch premium channels on my oversized television nestled in a large hardwood armoire. I don't even use my gas fireplace surrounded by marble, and I eye the empty neighborhood playground every time I drive by it. But, even if I sell the house, denounce the yoga and the clothes, and eat vegetables grown in my own garden, I am still white and American.

What are the things that I don't even recognize as privilege because they have always been part of my existence? I know that the teenagers working at the ice-cream store are much nicer to me than to the brown gentleman buying four cones for his children. I know that when we applied for our first mortgage, the banker approved us before we signed anything. I know that when I am pulled over by a police officer, I am actually speeding. But there must be things that I don't know.

And even if I could root out all of the privilege, could I do anything about it? In the end, how do I live with myself? I chew, and I chew, and I chew...

Anyone out there? Any comments?