(This post has a definite US slant, simply because that’s the only country whose culture I’ve experienced firsthand.  I suspect it’s different elsewhere - feel free to comment.)

This all started from a comment made by DNi on my post, Personal Privilege List. I started thinking about it, then some stuff happened, then I thought some more, and then I reached a conclusion: yes, there is a definite privilege extended to extraverts for no good reason.

First, a definition session since people often use “introverted” to mean shy and “extraverted” to mean friendly.  It’s not that simple. Extraverts are people who need external stimulation from others.  Introverts are people who are stimulated by their own thoughts and ideas, and sometimes need to limit external input because they’ve got so much going on internally.

When I tell people I’m introverted or that I enjoy time alone, I tend to get a couple of negative responses.  The first is boredom, because I’m talking to an extravert and my response to “what did you do this weekend?” isn’t providing them any external stimulation.  They have every right to find me dull.  Unfortunately, society takes it one step further, inviting them to judge me as lesser because I don’t provide the stimulation they want.  It’s considered normal that introverted kids who do well in school - “nerds” or “geeks” - should be bullied by extraverted jocks or popular girls.  It’s considered okay to promote a less qualified employee with a “better personality” (read “extravert”).  And so on.

The other negative reaction I get is the assumption that I’m emotionally damaged, and that’s why I’m introverted.  This assumption rests on the assumption that everyone is naturally extraverted.  In fact, there’s data to indicate that extraverts and introverts may simply be wired differently; brain chemicals in introverts may simply be a lot more active than in extraverts.  They’re more often in output mode than input, while extraverts are the other way around.

Furthermore, while I agree that emotional damage can lead to introversion, in my experience it leads to extraversion even more often.  Ever met someone who can barely function without a romantic partner?  Will lie to people to maintain friendships just so they always have someone to hang out with?  Constantly steps on people to get with a “better” crowd?  These aren’t exactly functional examples of extraversion.  And what about functional introversion?  Introverts are less likely to engage in damaging relationships because they’re content to be alone.  They’re less likely to get bored and frustrated when there’s not much going on.  They’re not going to create drama just to get something going on.

As I see it, the world needs both kinds of people.  My theory on why extraversion is considered normal and introversion aberrantin the US is that introverts are independent thinkers, and that doesn’t make for good little consumers, obsessed with “keeping up with the Joneses”.  It doesn’t make for the preferred type of voter, either - one who puts candidate likeability ahead of capability.  One who votes for what their friends or family vote for, instead of examining the issues.  Introverts are likely to notice those rather simple solutions you’ve been avoiding out of laziness or because your real motive has yet to be revealed.

And most offensive of all, introverts don’t want your approval badly enough to torture themselves to get it.

I’m making a list of personal privileges I’m aware of having. You’re invited to post your own list in the comments. The purpose of this exercise is to get us thinking, so there are no wrong answers. Some of these privileges are pretty lame.  Some of them have a flipside.  For now, I just want to look at how I look at privilege.

I am not counting any “privileges” I’ve earned for myself: by definition, privilege is something you’re simply handed.

Privileges I have:

• If a violent crime’s commited against someone I know, I’ll automatically be low on the list of suspects.
• Even when my family was quite impoverished by my country’s standards, I never had to worry about having enough to eat.
• Whether or not I wear makeup, long hair or polished nails, it’s very unlikely anyone will speculate about my sexual orienation on that basis.

Um.  Okay, that’s a very short list.  Believe it or not, I gave this an hour.  I had others; some I dismissed because I realized they were things I’d actually earned for myself, others because they just weren’t that true once I started thinking about it.  But if you join in, we can brainstorm together.

I came across this tidbit in an article I was reading online tonight:

Explorer Captain James Cook, who gave this plant the botanical name of “intoxicating pepper”, first discovered kava kava. Kava has been used for over 3,000 years for its medicinal effects as a sedative, muscle relaxant, diuretic, and as a remedy for nervousness and insomnia.

My first thought was a sarcastic “Wow, Captain Cook predates Jesus!” because, obviously, if it’s been in use for 3,000 years and he was the first to discover it, he must have lived 3,000 years ago.

Of course, this isn’t what the writer means. The writer means “Of the Anglo sect of humanity from whose perspective I write and you are forced to read, Captain James Cook was the first to encounter this ancient herb.” Kava had no existence before it was found by whites: after being found by them, its prior existence became a simple “history”, suitable for books and encyclopedias. No more alive in today’s world than the Spanish Inquisition.

After my initial sarcasm, however, I was sobered by the realization that I’d grown up hearing similarly idiotic statements and I’m not sure at what age I stopped accepting them without thinking. “Christopher Columbus discovered America! And a bunch of people living on it! Who, um, somehow had no idea it was there until he pointed it out to them!” And for a nice added dash of Anglo privilege, let’s not forget the man’s real name was Don Cristoval Colon - but if that’s what we’d learned in the first grade, we’d have immediately recognized he wasn’t of Anglo descent and perhaps gotten the dangerous idea that people other than English speakers could contribute to society (or whatever it was he did). As an added bonus, we gloss over the fact that he thought he was on the other side of the world and the natives he met were therefore Indians. Instead of getting a good laugh for that one, we just didn’t make the distinction for about 200 years - and when we did suddenly realize how unfair that was of us, we didn’t bother to consult the people we’d been calling Indians. We just came up with the name “Native Americans” and patted ourselves on the backs for being so PC. “American Indians” saw it a bit differently, however:

At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we will call ourselves any damn thing we choose. –Russell Means

Freedom, sure - but you’ll also need history privileges if you want to make it stick.

Every website has to begin somewhere, and I thought I’d start this one with some outside reference material on the topic. Invisible privilege comes in many forms - white privilege, class privilege, male privilege being among the better known. I’m starting with an article on white privilege that neatly addresses other forms of privilege (since none of them exist in vacuum to each other):

From Peggy McIntosh on White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack:

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow “them” to be more like “us.”

This is a well-drawn example of how the privilege pyramid works. It’s easier to see when others have advantages you don’t; tougher to see when you hold advantages others don’t. You’re trained from birth to see your privileges as rights you are owed simply for showing up. But if not everyone has those “rights”, then clearly they are privileges. If you claim not to support unequal rights dispersed on random criteria such as color or gender, then you need to listen carefully and investigate before dismissing claims that other people don’t fully share your “rights”.

Peggy’s White Privilege Checklist includes some thought-provoking items that hadn’t occurred to me:

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

Numbers 17 and 18 particularly interest me. As a woman, I know what it’s like to have my less-than-stellar moments put down to my gender’s alleged inferiority. I know what it’s like when people clearly expect less of me because I’m a woman. I know what it’s like to have to be nice when people applaud you for being “pretty good for a girl”, even though that’s the very thinking that eliminates you from competing with men. I wonder how white men are able to relate to this sort of thing? Perhaps the ones who come from a rich or poor family experience the class version of this: lowered expectations for the poor, for example.

Peggy goes on to say:

For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

Indeed. Some of these privileges need to be removed from the people who enjoy them - such as the privilege to ignore someone whose color or gender arbitrarily forces them onto a less powerful rung on the social ladder than you occupy - but others should be corrected by being extended to everyone:

For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them.