Blind Privilege

I recently searched online for the question of how an adult abuse survivor might go about suing his or her abusive parent. The results I got astounded me, but they shouldn’t have. I know my country wants parents abusing its kids. It makes this clear so many ways. This is just one more.

First, the cultural. Most of the search results lead to other people asking my question. The responses they get range from “You’d be much better off just getting therapy” (yes, because clearly all adult abused kids are well-to-do and can afford the extensive therapy required to get over the abuse) to “now you sit right down, you ungrateful shit, and list all the GOOD things your parent did for you, since obviously, having donated part of your zygote, this person loved you and you are an asshole” to things like this trip to the little shop of horrors, in which someone asks Yahoo: “Can i sue my parents because they hit me?”

Consider first what you did to contribute to the situation.

There is never a reason to strike another person, but, you could have very well pushed them to their limit.

Underlying all of this is the myth that every child who complains of having experienced poor parenting is obviously a spoiled shit who in fact had everything too easy and isn’t grateful for the massive self-sacrifices her zygote donor obviously made. Also underlying it is the assumption that such a suit would be revenge rather than justice. To which the abuse survivors explain that, no, they want to see the parent held accountable in some fashion. Publicly.

Another reason I can think of for suing would be to send a message to other abusive parents: you might get away with this while I’m under your control, but after that? Oh, yes, there could indeed be consequences.

The doublethink required here is extraordinary. I mean, you just know these people answering these question are all the same people who read about horrid abuse cases in the paper and think “hanging’s not good enough for those parents.” But when someone puts a face on it, when someone says “I was abused”, they go into denial. Why? Why do they automatically, unthinkingly assume the parent is the one being wronged?

It’s a bit like assuming every alleged rape is really just a case of some vicious bitch lying. Why not? We’re big on victim blaming.

Then I found some forum posters who claimed that in most states, you have until the age of 20 or 21 to sue an abusive parent. As far as I can tell, that’s generally true in the case of physical, non-sexual abuse, so if you were beaten as a child, you have until you’re a junior in college or your third year working at Burger King to hire that pricey attorney! Otherwise, the US is A-OK with what happened to you. Interestingly, sexual abuse often has a much longer statute – in some states, it’s up to the lifetime of the victim. Apparently emotionally abused kids can just go fuck themselves, since it’s very hard to document emotional abuse the way you can document wounds a doctor has seen. I realize there are other issues, like the problem of evidence, but for the law to blatantly suggest that sexual abuse is somehow worse than physical and emotional abuse is sending a very wrong message: all abuse is equally wrong in a moral sense.

Eventually, I found this forum, in which yet another person was asking the same question, but the respondents appear to be fellow abuse survivors. The questioner is 23 and can’t really function in life – agoraphobic (from the sound of it), unable to hold down a job, etc. All of this could easily be attributed to the abuse the person describes enduring. Here is my favorite response:

I have been doing a lot of research on the same topic for the past few day’s it seems to me that it is quite feasible although I would speculate that a lot of lawyers would not want to dirty their hands with such a case, there are as the other person who commented said; who see the sanctity of family as untouchable. As the threes of us, along with many others know; there is no sanctity in abuse.

Here, in a nutshell, is America’s concept of family values: we need babies, because babies become consumers who buy crap. We mustn’t allow anything to discourage people from making babies. It doesn’t matter if the babies are born addicted to something and grow up in a slum with no education, or they’re born to wealth and made to pay for it with sexual favors from an early age. It’s all good, because as long as they are eating and wearing clothes, businesses can make money off of these kids. That’s what America values.

And heaven forbid anyone check in with the adult children of the people making and supporting these laws.

I sometimes think one of the strongest barriers to equality is that when you’re trying to join a group you weren’t born into, you have to either smile and nod while listening to the crap those people say about the group you were born into, or stand up for yourself and your people and alienate the very group of people you were hoping to join. Except now you’re wondering if they’re worth joining – unless you’ve learned to despise your own group in order to identify with the group you’re moving into.

Maybe I can make this clearer with an example. Let’s say you grow up in a socioeconomic class that didn’t enjoy the financial security the middle class has. You want to move into the middle class not because you hate the folks from your own class, but because you want and feel you deserve financial security. You eventually get a good job – the kind your parents never had a chance to get – and you’re working amongst middle class folks. Now, they had their parents pay for college and maybe their first home down-payment, so they’re still ahead of you financially as you struggle to pay your college loans alongside the rent, transportation and the “right” clothes for your job. But you’re getting there.

Except, you have to listen to your new-found middle class co-workers talk about poor people and how poor people defeat themselves and there’s nothing anyone can do to help them. Or, less offensively but still boiling down to the same ideas, they say anyone can get rich in this country, and if they don’t, it’s because they’re not trying hard at all. And you find yourself thinking of people you know or knew. People who worked two low-paying jobs because they were damned lucky to be employed at all in their economically devastated region. People whose college plans got cut short by a sick parent needing constant nursing the family could hardly afford to outsource. People who never wasted their money on anything, who lived frugally not because it was “green” but because it was survival. People who fought hard and burned with passion to set up their kids for a slightly less dismal financial experience. People who maybe endured harassment at work and kept their mouths shut for fear of losing a job they couldn’t replace. People who had no one to take them in if they got laid off or moved somewhere else in hopes of finding a job. And you think: applying the stereotype of laziness to these people just flat out contradicts your sense of reality.

But if you say it, your middle class buddies will either reject it flat out, or say you’re too sensitive. They weren’t talking about you, after all. You’re exceptional. Which is to say, you obviously did something brilliant that never occurred to all the people you grew up amongst for three generations.

Except, no. You simply seized an opportunity it took your family multiple generations to build. If the opportunity had gotten built in time for your parent’s generation, they would’ve done the same. If it hadn’t gotten built until you had kids of your own, they would’ve been the ones to Make It. You know you’re not exceptional, at least not in the way they mean it. You know you are simply the product of a whole lot of people working much harder than the middle class could probably endure, just to get one of you out of Going Nowheresville and into something like a nice life.

Only it’s not so nice, if you have to put up with this.

It’s not just a socioeconomic issue, either. Women who lose a lot of weight often find themselves borged into a Skinny Bitchez Club where they get to hear about the lazy disgustingness of fat women. And with race, it needn’t even be a mobility issue: a person of color can be born into a middle or upper class and find herself having to listen to all sorts of stereotypes about people of her color or ethnicity. She shouldn’t take it personally: she’s an exception.

If you’ve had a similar experience, did you ever find a balance? I’m still searching for it.

When you talk in generalizations about a group I have belonged to, you are talking about people I love and know, some of whom I know to be the antithesis of what you say they are – and in some cases, know to be much higher quality creatures than you. Don’t think you can tell me I’m an exception, and that makes it okay. I didn’t reject and abandon the group of people from which I came; I didn’t join your group in order to think poorly of them. I joined your group to get away from your oppression, not become a part of it.

Three years ago, I started this site. I’d heard “blinded by privilege” in a few places, and came up with the phrase “blind privilege”. It was available as a domain, so I bought it and started blogging.

Three years ago, I wasn’t very aware of able-bodied privilege, particularly in terms of specifics like ableist language. I mean, I was aware that being able-bodied gave me privileges, but I needed a lot of education on the ways in which society and individuals fail disabled people. I still need a lot of education on it, but I’ve gotten quite a bit since I bought this domain from people like Anna and Tekanji. My education on ableist language began one day when Tekanji objected to one of our posts referring to something stupid as “lame.”

I was content to take her word on it and stop using the term that way, but I also wanted to understand precisely WHY it was ableist, because the more I understand these things, the more likely I am to be able to figure out for myself when there’s something wrong with a term that’s new to me. There’s a great thread at Cerise about all this. Sometimes it’s something buried in the word’s history that gives it ugly baggage, and you couldn’t be expected to know it until you come across that history. Sometimes it’s a context you’re not aware of. Whatever the case, it’s privilege that isolates me from these words and the hurt they can cause, and the least I can do is find other terms.

And, on a side note, it’s true that some of these words are debatable, just like gendered slurs. For example, “bitch.” Does calling a man a “bitch” help neutralize the term’s slurring effect on women? What about proudly calling yourself a bitch because you are assertive and don’t take shit? I think there are valid arguments on both sides in some cases, but at least when you’re blogging for the world at large, get a thesaurus and avoid the problematic words. That’s my take. It takes work, and it’s not easy, but it really is the least privilege people can do.

Here’s what this is all leading to. A week or two ago, I was following links about the Feministing ableist language issue when suddenly it hit me: was “blind privilege” a gross example of ableist language? I decided I needed to research this, then got sick. Then Meg asked that very question just as I was getting well, which was a little uncanny. I did the research, and found the answer was yes, according to this blogger. When I chose this domain name, I was thinking of selective “blindness,” of not “seeing” a thing when it doesn’t convenience you to be aware of it. I didn’t realize there was anything problematic about describing that in terms of “seeing” or “not seeing” privilege. But RMJ is right. So is Chally.

I made a mistake. I didn’t mean to. I had no ugly intentions. But still, my privilege kept me from recognizing that a phrase I’d seen around the internet was problematic. Now I know.

My question to you is: what should I do about it? Changing the name of the blog is easy, and I welcome your suggestions for a new name. Changing the domain name is a good bit more difficult, but it can be done, more or less. Or would leaving the domain name the same but changing the blog name, and prominently linking a page that explains how it all happened be illuminating? Is there another solution I haven’t considered?

If you observe an abuse cycle in a family – e.g., “Mom abuses her kids because her dad abused her because his mom abused him” – you’re lucky if you can trace it back more than a few generations. Which always leaves me wondering: where did it begin? And how? Did this family have one rotten apple who decided to be an asshole even though no one had ever taught him or her assholishness?

I said in an earlier post I was going to write someday about how poverty leads to abuse within families. Now I’ve refined that idea: I think abuse cycles can start with large scale civil oppression and filter down to individuals in families taking out their frustration on whomever they have at their mercy. To use an example that’s been around forever: someone decides they want some cheap labor. Depending on the mores of the day, they may force some people into slavery or simply manipulate the conditions facing a group defined by location, race, gender, etc. so that those people are desperate for wages of any sort. Now whoever wanted the cheap labor has what they wanted, and the people who are doing the labor are depressed, angry and/or traumatized. And “management” clamps down hard on any attempt at solidarity or community among these people, or seeds the would-be community with issues of distrust that keep everyone divided and therefore conquered.

For a while, maybe some of the laborers have some optimism. But God never helps. Society never helps. Even those who come in blazing with heroics turn out to be all about the glory and not much for the human beings who have more to contribute than cheap labor, or who just want to be able to determine their own fate through their own endeavors. The frustration, anger and depression grows into a deep cynicism – trust no one. There is no hope.

Eventually, in one generation or another, some of the laborers decide to take out their frustration on whomever they can. Usually, it’s men harming their families. Sometimes it’s people engaging in criminal activities. Some just internalize it all – not hurting anyone, perhaps, but not setting a great example for the kids, either. Some drink themselves to death. What else can they do? They’ve been shown over and over that no matter what they do, they are going to get up again the next day and help build that pyramid or plant that cotton or go down into that deadly mine. They could cure cancer, score off the charts on school tests, write a symphony – nobody cares. God doesn’t care. Society doesn’t care. Even the hero types really don’t care.

I think it’s much easier for a group to get together and abuse another group than it is for one person to abuse another. Groupthink makes individual responsibility fuzzy. It’s that sense of individual plausible deniability that enables people to call for burning someone at the stake or hanging them from a tree. A lynching mob could conceivably be comprised of no individuals capable of doing such a thing on their own. But get them together, and it’s mob psychology. And what you’ve done as part of a mob may not seem so unthinkable to go home and do to someone there.

Another way that large scale social oppression could filter down to familial abuse cycles is via emotional abuse. Women, legally and practically restrained from taking care of themselves for centuries, got very good at manipulation on the whole. We had to; how else could we survive? We didn’t have brute strength over many men. We didn’t have a political voice. Hell, we weren’t even classified as people. Of course we learned manipulation. Girls are still taught to hint instead of coming right out and saying what they want, which is pure manipulation. Don’t take this as support for the stereotype that all women are manipulators – most of us aren’t, and many men are manipulative as hell. I’m just saying it’s a survival skill, and if you deprive a group of the right to ply any other survival skill, what do you think they’re going to do?

A frustrated or desperate woman who’s good at manipulating might well decide to subtly control everyone around her – and she might succeed for the most part. Men have been trained not to expect to need their brains when dealing with wives, and children lack the life experience to protect themselves from headgames that jerk them all over the place. Emotional abuse can replicate itself or lead to physical abuse – both of which are equally wrong and potentially lethal (emotional abuse can lead victims to suicide).

Why do most people caught in an abuse cycle (social or familial) not pass it on? I don’t know, but I think the root problem is insecurity – real fear of survival. Some personality types may be inherently better at optimism and self-confidence than others. It takes a lot of confidence to blame the person or group who deserves the blame, because you can’t touch them. If they so much as see it in your eyes that you blame them, who knows what they’ll do to you. And so you turn those feelings elsewhere – on yourself or on those around you.

I’m always revising my ideas – this is just what’s making sense to me now.

I generally avoid political topics, but once in a while, one of them is such a damn good example of privilege that I’m left thinking: what the fuck?

All the universal health care plans being yapped about at length by various committees within Congress (I could’ve sworn the Constitution outlined a clear procedure for proposing a bill and then voting on it that did not involve marathon committee circle jerks wherein participants vote amongst themselves and then whine to the press about the results) rely on forcing young, healthy Americans to buy health insurance to fund coverage for older and less healthy Americans.

Dude, if it was that easy, we could fix all our national problems overnight. I mean, c’mon. Next up: U.S. solves homelessness by passing a law that forces American renters to buy homes so we can afford to subsidize rent on apartments for homeless people. See? Problem solved! Because obviously no renter is renting because they can’t afford a home, or because they don’t think owning a home is the right choice in their situation. They’re just being assholes, so we’ve got a fine for that now. And if they can’t pay the mortgage at some point, no problem! They’ll become homeless, and we’ll stick them into subsidized apartments which may or may not be in the school districts they wanted their kids to be in, may or may not be within three hours of where they work, which may or may not be safe and up to standards, it all depends if the housing inspectors are on the take or not.

Yeah, problem solved.

Like homelessness, health care in the U.S. is a complex problem. You’ve got tons of jobs that don’t come with insurance and/or don’t pay well enough for someone to purchase his or her own. You’ve got the huge and ridiculous cost of insurance premiums. You’ve got the rising cost of health care in general. You’ve got the enormous unemployment that comes around every 10 years or so, whenever the big boys’ latest get rich scheme collapses and we end up paying for it. And that’s not even touching issues I’m not really qualified to talk about, like where substance addiction fits into all of this – what gets covered, for whom, and so on. If you don’t come up with something that addresses or eliminates all these issues, it’s a workaround, not a solution.

I do not love taxes, but at least I expect them as a normal function of government, and if you’re going to fund something on a national level, it should be funded through taxes. I really really have a problem with the government telling me I must do business with a private company or else get a huge fine or move to another country. Next thing you know, they’ll be offering me “protection” so long as I just throw all my business to [insert company here].

This is a typical conversation between a Christian and a non-believer:

Christian: Abortion/homosexuality/[insert incredibly incindiary topic here] is blah blah blah.
Atheist/agnotic: (smiles and nods)

We smile and nod because we know Christian beliefs are respected and other beliefs are not so much, and if we say something precisely as offensive/inane in response, we will be treated as if we just punched a toddler in the face. I’ve done this a number of times:

Christian: Abortion/homosexuality/[insert incredibly incindiary topic here] is blah blah blah.
Atheist/agnotic: Really? I feel abortion/homosexuality/[insert incredibly incindiary topic here] is the opposite blah blah blah.

For which I am a hideously offensive monster. Doesn’t matter that the Christian was the one who introduced a controversial topic into the conversation and stated an opinion as fact (which I don’t). Christians have long had the privilege of spouting their views uncontested, but if we respond with opposing ideas or criticism of their ideas, we aren’t just exercising the same rights they enjoy under freedom of speech: we are attacking them. This is why so many Christians today feel persecuted: they have been so mired in privilege for so long that they have yet to realize an equal but opposite assertion cannot rationally be deemed more offensive than their statements.

People of other faiths run into this problem in societies where Christianity is culturally dominant, too. Try responding to the above with some remarks on the hard and fast reality of reincarnation, and you won’t fare much better than the atheist.

For clarity, I’m not at all suggesting all Christians engage in this behavior. I’m just saying it’s a privilege available to them in our society, and it’s unfair to others. Of course they have the right to say what they believe. It’s just ludicrous for anyone to be offended when, after introducing a very controversial topic into polite conversation, they meet with intellectual opposition. Hell, when I argue that women are people, I brace myself for strong opposition to that oh-so-controversial view. If you’re arguing that you know God exists and what he thinks about things, you really need to be prepared for a healthy, respectful debate. And there is nothing unhealthy or disrespectful about someone voicing an opinion you find offensive, especially when you did exactly the same thing to them first.

No, I haven’t forgotten this site. I’ve been slowly making my way through a nightmare recently, and believe me, elements of what I’ve gone through will end up here, as there is a lot of privilege involved. But due to what I’ve gone through, it may be a while before I have the headspace and energy to get worthwhile articles written.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about a few other topics I want to write on. For example, anarchy and my concern that maybe the concept of fairness was the most harmful thing humans ever manipulated each other into aspiring to. If you knew life just wasn’t fair or equal and you were on your own, how would you have lived your life? Would you have been a selfish asshole, or would you have cooperated with others in mutual interests? If no one told you, “be patient, the government/daddy/the lawyer/etc. will fix it”, how many situations would you have fixed yourself, to your benefit, that instead you left to fester and cause you harm? Those of you who have reliably been able to get help from the government/daddy/the lawyer/etc. might wonder what I’m talking about. Those of you who – like me – did not have much luck with the people we were supposed to be able to turn to for justice might.

Another topic: how much does financial poverty contribute to abuse cycles in families? Money equals survival in a post-hunter/gatherer society. When people don’t feel secure, that leads them to either internalize or externalize the insecurity. Meaning, they either take it out on themselves or others, so it seems to me poverty tends to create families full of abusers and willing victims. And whatever good you may personally find in religion, it has undoubtedly been offered as a panacea to poverty. Just using Christianity as an example: it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through a needle eye than for a rich man to get into heaven. The meek shall inherit the earth. Etc. Chock full of delicious reassurance that we’ll be rewarded for taking shit. That’s a great way to set up a whole big class of people who will take abuse, and if you deny that religion has ever been used for that purpose, I’m not going to take you seriously. Being religious does not preclude admitting that bad things have been done in the name of religion. In fact, I would think it puts more of a burden on you to recognize those evils.

Possibly the best story in the Bible, for both topics, is the Prodigal Son. This son gets Dad to give him his inheritance early, and he blows it and ends up destitute. Comes home. Dad welcomes him and takes care of him. Meanwhile, the other son – who did his duty – wonders what the fuck is this shit. That’s the Bible being honest with you, kid. Get used to it. Do the responsible thing, and no one cares. Everybody loves to be a big fancy forgiver of sinners, so hurt them often and hard, and they will give you everything you want and then some. Irresponsibility always gets rewarded.

I don’t have a finish for this post – like I said, lack of energy and headspace – so I’m just going to stop. Comments are welcome!

The other day I got a fortune cookie which said:

Your happiness is entertwined with your outlook on life.

For the first time in my life, that sentiment did not piss me off. In the past, it always did because it blithely dismisses the fact that if you don’t have much power over your own life, your happiness is mostly entertwined with other people’s outlook on your life, and what they think it’s worth, and whether you’re someone they mind stepping on to get theirs. A positive outlook doesn’t keep a slave from being beaten to death. A positive outlook doesn’t keep a child from being murdered, raped or otherwise harmed by a sick adult in his or her life. A positive outlook doesn’t put food on the table.

But for the first time in my life I actually have some power, and that does change things. Now I understand why happy shiny people told me “Just cheer up!” Sure, if your basic needs are assured and you have some bargaining power over your existence, determination and courage and other positive attitudes are helpful.

Take my current situation as a renter. I’ve relayed stories before about how my theoretical rights as a renter just don’t enter into reality in a market as hot as the L.A. rental market. Normally in L.A., you’re so lucky to find a vacant apartment at all that you take it (at whatever price) and hope your landlord isn’t an asshole. Landlord ethics have an inverse relationship to booming rental markets – the bigger the boom, the less ethics they have. So my last three have been scum.

But for the first time in anyone’s memory (that I’ve talked to, anyway), L.A.’s vacancy rate is up. Suddenly, landlords are having to compete. Not only do they have to lower prices, they have to actually do those pesky things California law insists they do, or suddenly the renters have power over them. We can get them in trouble with city agencies. We can sue and win. We can find another place that’s cheaper and/or better managed. If they want to keep us, they have to actually do their jobs well for a change.

It’s a total paradigm shift for me to find the system working for me. Now I get it – the happy shiny people who always told me my attitude was the problem didn’t get what it’s like to be someone the system is designed to work against. How could they? They’re insulated by privilege.

As a child, I believed the US – and many other nations – really were intended to benefit every citizen who made an effort, and what caused them to privilege some groups over others were flaws in the system. Then around age eleven, I came to believe the systems themselves were really designed to create privilege echelons, no matter what we’d been told – a pyramid at which the largest part of the population was forever getting crushed at the bottom as the more fortunate stood on their shoulders.

It’s hard to detail exactly what changed my mind. The final straw came one day when I thought – really thought – about the fact that the original voters in the US were not just white, male and twenty-one or older – they also had to be landowners. All this time I had been getting taught that our “forefathers” were planning an enlightened democracy and I should forgive them for failing to include women and other races in it because they would’ve gotten there eventually, and what school had generally failed to mention was that even back then, people who didn’t own property were disenfranchised non-entities. This government was always all about the people who owned bits of it – the shareholders, so to speak, in the wealth of the country. It’s like a publicly owned company telling you “We’re really all about you, dear customer” when you know the shareholders don’t give a flying crap about the customer, and they are who the company really has to answer to. It doesn’t even matter how much money you spend buying from the company; it’s about the shareholder’s perception of their stock value, which can be based on anything – including fiction.

Once I looked at things in this light, I never managed to go back. Every once in a while, I find myself thinking maybe the government really is meant to work for everyone and just fails most of the time. Then I watch something such as housing prices soaring uniformly all over the nation over a seven year period – yay for people who own a piece of America! – because the banks are essentially churning the money. Making loans, then turning around and selling those loans so they can’t get stuck with the losses, and then the buyer of the loan sells again – basically, it was a period of lenders playing hot potato with doomed deals, cashing in on them in the short term and hoping they weren’t the ones who got stuck with the losses.

No one’s gotten stuck with those losses yet, by the way. They’re still not on the books. The foreclosures that are losing money for the banks are only the tip of the iceberg. But the government has so far refused to make them record the actual transactions that caused all this. To do so would cause an unpredictable level of havoc – no one knows what those losses will be. I suspect we’d discover something insane, like that the paper value of home loans in the US in 2008 exceeded the actual amount of dollars in circulation, and that would be the end of the US economy as we know it.

I also believe that even if some governments really did start out with the best of intentions toward the people at the bottom of the pyramid, it’s the nature of humans to organize in a pyramid fashion, and no system can thwart that behavior for very long. Ultimately, we revert to instinctive behaviors.

Even in an anarchy, people form pyramidal hierarchies. Look at the lawless Old West – we think of it as chaos, but it was quite structured in the same way a pack of dogs is structured. The leader is the person who’s most lately proven him- or herself as a leader. Because anyone may attempt to take over leadership, it’s much closer to a meritocracy than what we have now (in which college expense bars poor people from the best positions in society and your most important assortment of opportunities is defined by what your parents are able to hand you, yet we maintain the illusion that our choices are the determining factor). When you stop thinking of what we have as a system that needs some fixing and really look at what we’ve got, you see:

• Worthwhile people getting stuck in bad life situations not because of laziness or lack of intelligence/dedication, but because of poor health, bad family situations, or being born into families that couldn’t give them much of a start. In other words, not because of their choices, but because of circumstances beyond their control, some of which society could provide workarounds for, but doesn’t. Because it’s too busy ensuring…
• …the insanely rich getting even more insanely rich at the expense of poor people, and getting rewarded for it out of our tax dollars.
• Different groups receiving different punishments/rewards for the same damn behavior.
• Different groups receiving different opportunities than others, based on such insignificant traits as gender, skin color, etc., rather than on merit.

The distinct advantage anarchy has over any government is simple. In a governed society, laws limit the bahvior of law-abiders, but not criminals. In an anarchy, no one’s behavior is limited. Good people can fight back, and that’s the most powerful deterrent to both crime and aggressive acts of entitlement. You can try to rape me, but I can shoot you for it with no worries I’ll be the one to end up in jail. You can beat your kids, but they can kill you while you sleep. You and your posse can try to keep people like me from eating in your restaurant, but my posse and I can burn your restaurant down. I’m not advocating these violent solutions, though I do think they’re all that some people can understand. Just there mere possibility of good people fighting back is a deterrent. And the possibility of people being assigned positions and accorded respect because they’ve proven themselves must give the privileged nightsweats just thinking about it.

The only meritocracy is anarchy.

Every once in a while, one of my fellow Americans blows my mind with her assumption that customer service workers get insurance, paid sick days and paid vacation, and at least $10/hour. These assumptions are often of no consequence, but on some occasions they’re offered in justification of why no one should be trying to improve working conditions for minimum and near-minimum wage employees, or why we should feel free to take out our frustrations on $6/hour clerks. That’s when these assumptions do harm.

As we head into this holiday season, during which many shoppers will have more contact with customer service shop and restaurant employees than at any other time of the year, allow me to clarify a few things.

• Most people who work at shops, restaurants, hotels, non-union grocers, etc., do not get any sort of paid time off. If they’re sick and they stay home, they don’t get paid for those hours/days.
• They are forced by law to take vacation of at least one week per year, but employers are not forced to pay them. Many seek temp work during that “vacation” week because they can’t live without every penny of their normal income.
• They rarely have insurance benefits, and if they do, they almost surely pay far more for it than the average office worker.
• They rarely get 40 hours a week, which means many of them need to work more than one job to make ends meet.
• When the store needs to save money, it cuts employee hours. This means suddenly the 25 hours you were depending on may become 16 – or you may even find yourself with an unexpected week off. Not good if you’re living paycheck to paycheck.
• If you are terminated for any reason – including a layoff through no fault of your own – you don’t get a dime in severance pay or anything else. You’re just out of a job.
• There’s rarely any sort of retirement account for these workers.
• THESE ARE NOT EASY JOBS. I can’t stress this enough - these jobs are stressful, they demand true mult-tasking and lots of skills, and very often expose workers to confrontations with customers in which they are expected to somehow uphold store policy without irritating a customer who wants to cheat the system. If you’re not an asshole, you probably have no idea how “wrong” customers can be – they even engage in verbal abuse and various forms of harassment. And in most of these jobs, management will not back up the employee – they will instead let the customer run rough-shod over store policies, even to the extent of cheating the store, or get away with sexual harassment, and perhaps even demand the employee apologize for not kissing the ass of a customer who wanted to, for example, return an item a dog had clearly chewed to pieces 3 years after it was purchased.
• Retail workers generally make no more than a dollar above minimum wage.
• Restaurant workers generally make better money than retail workers, but still far less than most office workers make (excepting clerical workers, who are also paid dismally, but sometimes get some benefits).
• A disturbing trend in retail in the past 20 years has been not to pay commissions – which would inspire healthy competition, but to count each worker’s sales and give more hours per week to the workers who sell more. This inspires stress and panic as people compete for the right to “keep” their hours. Companies who engage in this are trying to get $50k/year salesperson quality out of workers making $6.
• These workers usually get a store discount, which is just not as great as it sounds when you’re working to pay rent and put food in your mouth.

If you think people on the bottom of the job ladder enjoy the same stuff you do, only with less income, you are deeply mistaken. Please at least give them some respect when you interface with them – they’re not getting much else. And if someone talks about raising minimum wage or other measures that might improve the lot of these workers, you don’t have to agree with their proposals (some of which are bound to be useless), but at least come at the issue with the understanding that there is actually a problem when jobs that weren’t designed to be someone’s sole living have become that for too many people. Understand there are regions where these are the only jobs available to all but a select lucky few; that there are disabled people stuck with these jobs because no office employers will make a few minor adjustments to accommodate them; that there are people stuck in these jobs because they needed to earn a living right out of high school and can’t afford to quit the job to go to college and can’t get a better job without college; and so on.

And surely we can agree that no matter what sort of work a person does, they deserve to be treated like human beings rather than enhancement tools for your shopping/dining/traveling experience.