Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 35

I am listening to CBC Ideas in the early hours of the morning. They are kind enough to rebroadcast this magnificent program full of content worthy of a liberal arts degree at four in the morning as well as nine at night. This works well for me because I am usually in bed and drifting off to sleep at nine or a bit later, when the evening broadcast is just getting under way. Today's selection is about the social and political underpinnings of poverty, or, why in a world, in a country of such plenty, we have so many people who work hard for a living and still have to choose between spending on food or housing. I accept that I am one of the lucky ones. I live in government-subsidized social housing. This isn't heaven on earth, though. I live cheek-by-jowl, with tenants who have some real issues and social and mental health problems, which I alluded to on my most recent post, Gentle Reader. I would love to move away from those neighbours, because sometimes they can be really difficult, a real pain, and on occasion, dangerous. Yet, I just can't up and move. On my slightly higher than minimum wage, market housing is out of the question. Even if I were to find an affordable bachelor unit like the one I live in, but at market rates, I would be paying at least nine hundred a month, before utilities, leaving me not quite enough food to eat, and regular visits to the food bank. I would have no money left over for savings, for emergencies, for dental care, clothes, transportation (I would have to walk everywhere, making my job very difficult, and likely resulting in a reduction of hours, because I have to see clients who live all over Vancouver, and sometimes walking between assignments is just out of the question, unless no one minds my arriving two hours late.) So, I put up and shut up, and barring any real housing options, I am in pretty good shape. However, I like to travel, and I actually need to do this. I need, for my psychological wellbeing, to be able to spend one month away from where I live, because some of my near neighbours in this building are also clients of the mental health system that employs me, and from time to time I end up interacting with certain neighbours as my clients. I also live in an unsafe area of downtown and this is also a major cause of household stress for people who live here. I already mentioned that in this fabulously expensive city, I cannot move, and why. At my age, relocating in a different part of the province or in another province is out of the question. It has taken me years to establish some of the lasting friendships that I enjoy here and I do not feel up to the social isolation that would be awaiting a near-senior trying to get reestablished in a new area. Employment would be difficult, given my age and the regionalized specialization of my field of employment. So, I stay where I am, make the best of it and it really isn't bad. I only wish that I had the kinds of options that my better-paid colleagues enjoy. Then there is this myth of white privilege. You are reading correctly, Gentle Reader. White Privilege is a myth. I am a white male. Neither race nor gender have done diddly-squat to give me an advantage, socially, economically or professionally. I have always been a low wage earner. Take a walk on the streets downtown and in other communities. Look at all the beggars. Most of them are...drum roll...white males. There are some aboriginals as well. No East Asians, no South Asians, almost no Latinos. And yet, the Politically Correct Thought Police would have us believe that poverty is a problem of white privilege, caused by white privilege, and that by assumption, someone like me must be either mentally ill, or a drug addict, or maybe just lazy. Well, I am not mentally ill. I am not a drug addict. I am not lazy (I have actually worked most of my life). I am a white male, and I am poor. Invisible on the socially progressive radar. I really do understand the popularity and appeal to poor and working class American white males of that shameless imbecile, the Great Deplorable in the Oval Office, el presidente Dump. The failure of the academic classes to really address and reign in their own intellectual laziness has contributed to this electoral catastrophe. Naturally a dumbass populist like the Dump isn't going to really care about, or do a lot for the people who have become his power base, because he was simply exploiting and channelling their vulnerability and anger in order to get elected. But I still think that we owe it to ourselves to de-racialize power and privilege, at least insofar as our assumptions are concerned. In a truly progressive society, no one is going to be left behind, not even white males. To simply claim that those who complain about loss of rights are just complaining about their loss of privilege does nothing for our collective wellbeing and serves only to shut down the conversation. Privilege needs to become a shared property and no one should have to feel like a branch broken off the tree so that something else can be grafted in its place.