Power, Privilege and the birth of Entitlement

At a time when many of us have been hoarded into our homes like unripe bananas, it would be an opportune moment to have a discussion about privilege and its begotten child entitlement. The subject is more apparent given that the world is afflicted by a global pandemic as World Health Organisation puts, a ‘privileged disease’, as I sometimes refer to it. Privileged, because it has been to apartments and palatial mansions (a rare occurrence for pandemics) but we also know for a fact that it has sojourned in the corridors of the Buckingham castle. But that is not a conversation for today.

I will use a familiar tale, one that has been music to our ears for quite some time now; it has been drummed into us. We now know it like the back of our hands. In 1980, the current President of the country garnered courage (he picked up the guns later) to wage war against the government of the day. He was followed by his close friends, in-laws, kinsmen and well wishers. From a rag-tag rebel outfit, they became an embellished army who sustained a military offensive that unsettled the sitting government. However, for the eagle-eyed there was something fascinating about their organisational structure and ranks. There were fierce fighters who earned their pips on the basis of their heroic acts in battles and these were called loyalists. There existed another equally conspicuous group who enjoyed special status not because of their military abilities but majorly because of their tribal leaning.  These were called royalists. Stories abound of how time and again their Commander in Chief had to deal with various standoffs between the loyalists and royalists. But again that is not for today. The takeaway here is that status has a way of bestowing immeasurable leverage over and above the others. It is this that has the metamorphic ability to sire privilege.

In an attempt to underscore the context within which I talk about privilege, do not only imagine a politician who is chauffeured in a state of the art latest SUV. Consider those who are fortunate to pick their food from freezers, those whose deliveries are made at a click of an imaginary button or even the farmer who picks hanging fruits from their garden that sits on hectares. Privilege is more about possession and how it is used. But it is broader if you look at it in the context of race, of sex and gender or even tribe as Museveni’s royalists will tell you.

To look at privilege, we need to consider the bigger outlook that our society is. It was supposed to be organised to function smoothly and effectively with members sharing some basic tenets but that did not happen. Humanity was supposed to have a face whose outlook was accommodative rather than combative but that was only a utopian setting.

But what is wrong with being privileged? What is wrong with having the wherewithal? Absolutely nothing to start with but it can be everything in the long run. Privilege for starters has a position of thinking that it confines its hosts. They tend to look at the context of things quite differently. People can be insensitive to the suffering of others because they don’t have the imaginative ability of getting into the skin of another, to be able to see the world through the eyes that for once are not their own. There are people who have amassed power and with it come privilege. Their children’s main struggle is normally over the remote control in their plush living rooms, and many times the greatest danger they face is boredom. For others the greatest risk their lives are facing is not being texted back. They don’t understand that meals can sometimes be a luxury, that basic human decency, like water and food is a consistent inconsistency for many. But the dictates of life wouldn’t let many understand this because the only time they interact with food is on the dining table. The food chain is what they read in academic books but they don’t make as much meaning out of it.

So what then is the point? The point is that many times our selfishness that is born out of privilege hinders our ability to step in the shoes of the less privileged even for a moment. You can tweet from the comfort of your sofas, knowing that your fridge is fully packed, calling for the Fountain of Honour to impose a total lockdown on the country. The rest can always find a way after all there is an imaginary threat to your existence. How about those whose existence is being threatened on a daily by real dangers? Harm and peril that stares them in the face and lurks around them! Of course we would never know because they don’t have the luxury to tweet about it or be hosted in mainstream media to air it out. But like Achebe famously said, privilege, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.

So what should we do? Social exclusion, identity seclusion and isolation from the social mainstream are still the dark realities faced by individuals today. It is only when each and every individual is liberated from the shackles of such bondage and is able to work towards full development of his/her personality that we can call ourselves a truly free society. We concede to the diversity and variegated hues that nature has created but we can take steps by vanquishing the enemies of prejudice and injustice and undoing the wrongs done so as to make way for progress and inclusion.

*Inspired by Arinda Lillian