In the beginning of the movie “Up in the Air,” George Clooney’s character, a business consultant specializing in “letting people go,” talks about carrying a backpack. He asks a group of professionals attending his seminar the following question:
How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff you have in your life…start with the little things…Now I want you to fill it with people…Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components of your life…The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.
I have seen this movie a few times now, and each time this idea of being a shark, and the concept of being rewarded for the ability to function like one in our society troubles me. Recently, I have been working as an intern for the Center For Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University, and I’ve noticed how much I have learned to consistently purge my backpack (mostly unconsciously it seems) in order to live a lighter (less guilty) and more mobile life. I am greatly concerned with, and feel connected to, others in pain. I am willing to get my hands dirty and stay with discomfort.
However, I am aware of daily systemic flaws (dangerous and unforgiving flaws) that weigh me down: people suffering due to little they can control, and clear cases of racial, cultural and socio-economic injustice. I am always trying to rewire myself. This limiting and hurtful wiring is one of the hardest things to undo. Life is easy when we go through it blindly. What is challenging, it seems, is to fill up the backpack with relationships, compassion, presence, and the desire to find justice. These things can feel like they weigh us down, but at the same time, I believe, being a “shark” can find us emotionally and spiritually bloated by chomping up the most easily attacked victims in our wake. Can we do something about the collective backpack that our society seems to encourage us to carry?
Just yesterday, walking to work, I saw 40 men standing outside the courthouse in Center City. Many of them had court-issued ankle bracelets on, and nearly all of them were African Americans between the ages of 18 and 35. This is no coincidence. This is an epidemic, and one which very few people (of unearned or earned power) want to carry, and consequently grapple with, in their backpacks of life. I see faces of full of anger, fear, resentment and sadness. I can easily return right back into my own simplified world, where such challenges aren’t present. This is what Clooney’s character is suggesting we do, if we want to be “successful,” “mobile” and shark-like. Over the years, my definition of success and mobility has changed and I expect it will continue to, but clearly it is still considered unrealistic to “weigh” oneself down with empathy, thoughtfulness and fighting injustice in a non-violent manner.
This brings me to reflect on some reading I did for last week’s class, ironically titled, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, written by Peggy McIntosh. She offers us a wonderfully honest and often uncomfortable article concerning white privilege and its many implications. She says she was “taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” Clearly, as a white male I represent this dominant group, able to do things (or not do things) simply because of my race. Furthermore, McIntosh states that,
“As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage”.
McIntosh then goes even further by giving us 26 specific examples of the “invisible knapsack” that is white privilege (e.g. #12. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to bad morals, to poverty, or to illiteracy of my race. #24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me).
In the end, McIntosh urges us to “start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies.” The fork in the proverbial road is “whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, or whether we will use any of our arbitrarily-awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.”
While I am deeply saddened by the state of the current power systems, today I find myself hopeful that I put some visibility and weight on my own backpack by adding self-awareness to my own power. Self-awareness is the foundation for growth and change. There is no immediate relief for much of the suffering that I see around me, but I am beginning to recognize that the injustices that fill McIntoch’s “knapsack” - primarily,
the self-serving advantages of white privilege - burden both my personal backpack and our collective backpack. Self-awareness, empathic connection and the willingness to get involved are powerful tools for change that are worth their weight.