Privilege Theory, the Politics of Envy, and the Bell Curve: Searching for Problems Instead of Looking for Answers

Several years back a company by the name of Canadian Tire – a weird amalgamation of Rona and Walmart, native to the frozen north – had an ad campaign which used the slogan “Where you end up has a lot to do with where you start.” I suppose this was meant to be inspirational, but it also contains a harsh reality: that the circumstances of your birth are going to have a lot of influence on where you go in life. The popular mythos of America claims otherwise – that Capitalism and Democracy are merit based, and that a middle-class girl like Lisa Simpson can become President, so long as she works hard and keeps her nose clean. But lived experience and (even worse – statistics) say otherwise. Yes, hard work and smart choices will advance you, but if you’re born into the middle class you have better odds of winning the lottery than of becoming the President, no matter how hard you work.

In retrospect, dangling this gold-plated carrot was probably a bad idea. When you promise somebody the world, and give them an okay house and a fancy car instead, it’s going to feel like they got ripped off.

Promises lead to expectations, and a cursory examination of society shows that these promises went largely unfulfilled. Turns out it was a rat race all along. What more, even that playing field seems to be tilted. Looking at the top, you start to see a demographic pattern that looks a lot different from what you see standing around you. Who are these people at the top, and how did they get there? And how did the American Dream go so wrong?

Privilege Theory

Privilege theory is an attempt to answer this question. First codified in 1988 by Peggy McIntosh, she delineated 46 categories of privilege; birth circumstances which are:

1. Advantageous,
2. Unearned, and
3. Invisible to you – i.e. “Growing up as an X, you’ve never experienced living as a Y.”

Unsurprisingly, many of these categories are controversial. For several reasons. Some privileges come with disadvantages – tall privilege comes with the probability of a shorter lifespan. Others are non-binary – rich privilege exists on a spectrum, with no clear demarcation. Still others seem to be a combination of other privileges rather than a privilege in and of themselves – is there such a thing as “Nice Neighbourhood” privilege, or is it simply a combination of Rich, Educated, and Intact Family privilege?

These criticisms aside, it behooves a reasonable person to admit the validity of the core concept – that where you end up has a lot to do with where you start, and that if you haven’t walked a mile in another man’s shoes, then perhaps some charity, rather than judgment, is in order. But this also speaks to the error made by those who try and wield Privilege Theory as a blunt weapon: that not only are many of your privileges invisible to you, but somebody else’s challenges are often invisible as well. That man in the nice car? Maybe he was beaten as a child. You just don’t know.

People are complex, far more complex than you can ascertain at first blush, and to base all of your assumptions off of a first impression is not just prejudiced, it’s downright foolish.

Population and Distribution

Most things in life fall into a bell-curve distribution; most people clustered around the mean, with very little difference between them, and a small number of outliers on either side. Within most pluralistic societies (all Western societies, at least) there is typically very little variation between demographic groups. Whether we look at men or women, ethnic groups, or regional variances, it’s very rare to find a large variation on the average of any particular trait. What most people fail to realize is how a small variation at the mean can create a huge disparity on the long tail.

The above curves model the performance of two cohorts on an imaginary quiz. Group A achieved a mean score of 65/100, while Group B achieved a mean score of 70/100. This is a very small difference. If you were to encounter a random sampling of either group, you’d find them to be roughly as knowledgeable as one another; and without a large sample size the variance would be imperceptible (this is why you shouldn’t be prejudiced, incidentally). However, when you start to look at the long tails – those who got an A (85) and those who got an F (50) – you start to see a 3:1 ratio between the two groups. A minor variation at the mean creates a major variation at the extreme.

A second type of variance you’ll find in Bell Curve distributions is variation in the standard deviation – how much a trait varies within any given group. The following chart depicts two groups, both of whom averages a score of 65/100 on the test, but one had a standard deviation of 10 points (i.e. two thirds of the group scored between 55 and 75), while the other had a standard deviation of 7 points (i.e. two-thirds scored between 58 and 72).

Once again, these variations are extremely minor. If you were to meet a random sampling of people from both groups, you’d fail to detect a noticeable difference between them. It’s only when you start looking at the long curves that the A and F students start to stand out. Group C has a tighter curve, so it could be said that Group D has more Nobels… but it also has more dumbbells.

The Apex Fallacy

Where you’re standing has a lot to do with what you see. This is one of the core concepts of Privilege Theory, and yet it’s the one most frequently ignored by its loudest proponents.

A common Privilege Workshop involves taking a group of people and having them line up in a row. Then a series of privileges and disadvantages are read off, and if they apply, each person takes a step forward or a step backwards. The following BuzzFeed video illustrates the exercise, and it’s worth watching the full four minutes to see where everybody ends up (it’s not as clear cut as your prejudice might assume).

There is an important part of the exercise which they skipped over in the video, however. They had people take steps forward and back, not side to side, for a reason: because when all is said and done you’re only able to see the people ahead of you in the privilege stack; it’s easy to forget just how many people are behind you.

This is known as the apex fallacy.

Let’s return to the bell curves from above, and look only at the top performers. If each of the four groups were composed of 100 people, and we looked exclusively at the top performers – what would we see?

If you’re a member of group A who’s at the 85^th percentile of achievement, you’re going to see 12 others from your group – and 27 of group B. A ratio of 2:1. If you’re at the 95^th percentile, it gets even worse – 3 and 11 respectively, leaving a ratio of 3:1. If you’re a member of group C comparing yourself to group D, it becomes even more extreme: 12 and 6 creating a ratio of 2:1 at the 85^th percentile, and at the 95^th you don’t see any members of your group. All of a sudden this minor variation looks like a major discrepancy – so long as we focus our attention on those who are at the top.

Those in the middle just aren’t interesting enough to bother with. If look at income, an average of $50,000 in the United States means a family that can’t afford a new car, but isn’t struggling with their mortgage, either. They’ve got a few privileges, and a few challenges. They’re unlikely to complain, and when they look around at other groups, they mostly see the same thing. Just folks doing the best that they can. Waitresses and bus boys get paid the same, after all. Those at the bottom, meanwhile, can’t afford to have a voice – and even if they could, nobody wants to hear what they have to say. Chances are that the billionaires belong to a different group than they do – but the lifestyles of the rich and famous don’t mean much when you can’t afford a bus pass.

It’s easy to forget just how lucky you are to be at the 85^th percentile. Economically this means that you’re living in a household that takes in over $150,000 per year – and at the 95^th you’re close to half a mil. Ironically it’s these people at the very top who are already amongst the most privileged people who’ve ever lived who are most likely to notice the disparities, and who have the loudest megaphones to complain about it.

The Politics of Envy… or Opportunity

Those who speak the most about Privilege Theory are those who typically know the least about it. Ideologues espousing the politics of envy, who boil it down to a convenient binary. The Privileged, over there, who are evil – and the oppressed, who must rise up and take what is rightfully theirs.

The reality is that most of us are a mix of both privileged and oppressed. Advantages we often ignore, and disadvantages which often seem overwhelming. When we read the news, we’re regaled with stories of those who are at the top – those who are rich, good looking, healthy, famous, who went to Harvard, who inherited land, et cetera, et cetera. We compare ourselves to that impossible apex, rather than looking at our situation and realizing that we have it pretty good.

Tiffany Jana, the founder of TMI Consulting, the world’s first Diversity and Inclusion Certified Benefit Corporation, said the following during her 2014 TED Talk:

Sometimes you have to change your frame to really see people. I changed my frame by… learning about the obstacles that my family overcame. And in doing so, I was able to see some things that I had been missing that were right in front of me. I was so fixated on the privilege that I didn’t have, that I missed much of the privilege that I do have… and that’s one of the traps our society lays for us. We think of privilege as something you either have, or you don’t have. It’s like a switch, it’s either on or it’s off. And if we allow ourselves to focus on the privileges that we don’t have, then it’s really easy for us to become blind to the ones we do have.

Debating how privileged other people are is missing the point. Focusing on how hard you have it is self-defeating. Over-analyzing the questions asked in the BuzzFeed exercise (Is that really a privilege? Is that question biased?) is just descending to the same level as those who espouse the politics of envy. The point – as one of the BuzzFeed staffers said:

It reminded me of when they talk about slavery in high school and you feel angry for a few days, but then you just realize, this is how it is… it just shows you that for some families, like each family, you’re meant to do better. My grandparents did good, my parents did good, and I’ll do even better.

History happened, and the consequence is the world we see around us. Some of it was good, some of it was bad, and most of it was neutral – people making the best out of a bad situation. The result is a world that is pretty good, all things considered, but far from perfect. Let’s try and improve it. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

People are born into circumstances outside of their control, with a spectrum of interests and abilities, which might as well be innate. This diversity within people creates a diversity of outcomes. How could it do otherwise? I can’t change it, you can’t change it, all we can do is figure out which things are within our control, and out of that small subset make the best choices that we’re capable of making.

At the end of the day, what Privilege Theory tells us is to count our blessings. To make the most of what we have. To leave the next generation better off. To not draw conclusions from a single data point. To reach across the aisle instead of punching down. And, as the old adage says, to hold back from judging a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.