The perils of privilege
By Gitaanjali Nair, Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School
The highlight of my week occurs every Sunday evening. Dinner done, homework done, the house is quiet. I open my laptop, logon, and wait in a virtual room for someone to do the same. That someone is my grandma, Ammi. Ammi is 78 and used to live with us here in Melbourne. But she returned to India at the start of last year not knowing that COVID would happen, and she would get stuck there, all alone. These Sunday night Zoom sessions take me back to another time, another place. My grandmother is 10 thousand kilometres away in Southern India, without any human interaction other than these meetings. Imagine not just the physical but the mental strain that lockdowns have on her overall health.
She’s changed, her silences are longer… the smiles have disappeared. No visitors. She needs supplies, care, medical support but she just has to manage … by herself.
Things aren’t getting any better in places like India, one hopes it won’t be too late for people like her when the vaccine finally arrives. It’s another world, isn’t it? It’s not our world. Even during our harshest lockdown, we could get whatever we needed. We are getting through this… but, only because we have the resources to do so. We are privileged.
The pandemic has highlighted the shameful disparity between the haves and have-nots Yet, few of us have noticed. People, keen to only take care of themselves and their own families, have bunkered down, put the blinkers on and pulled up the shutters. We’ve chosen to look within rather than outside. Not because we don’t want to, we think we’re just holding on. This is what I want to touch on today. On the world stage, we Australians are privileged. But there are perils to privilege. Perils in not being able to see our position of privilege. Perils in being blind to the rise of scapegoating along racial lines. Perils that the rise of performative activism, a movement characterised by token gestures and little meaningful action.
See, for us social distancing and isolation are a privilege. We have a safe place to call home. Lockdowns are a privilege; it means we live in a country that can support us. Over there, in India, things are different. Ammi’s neighbour Ashok, a man we know well, lost his job leaving the father of 2 with no income and no prospect of job keeper or seeker. The last resort, taking on work at the crematorium, where sadly there is plenty of work. He performs the last rites for the unfortunate souls whose families cannot attend. From dawn to dusk, one body to the next.
Burning pyres, lack of oxygen cylinders, overflowing hospitals. There are many Ashok’s working there, no time for emotion, just doing the job to get food on the table. I end my call with Ammi. At school the next day, I overhear people complain about social distancing, wearing of masks, the ‘inhumane’ lockdowns – I’m shocked…
We forget it’s a privilege to even get to complain about these issues when doctors elsewhere are being forced to decide who should get oxygen, who gets the effective drugs, who gets to live. And so yes, it sickens me when kids on the bus complain about wearing masks for a 7-minute journey when health care workers around the globe are in their PPE drenched in sweat, without food or drink for more than 7 hour shifts.
COVID-19 has highlighted the disparity between the developed and the developing world. Last year, we heard statements like “I wish there was a vaccine… If only there was a vaccine”. It’s finally here but guess which countries are hoarding them? The developed ones. According to UNICED, 45% of all vaccine doses were administered to only 15% of the world in what the World Bank considers high income countries. Canada reserved 338 million doses, enough to vaccinate every Canadian five times over.
According to the BBC, Africa with a population of more than 1.3 billion, only has eight doses per 1,000 people while the United States sits on a pile of 40 million doses just in case an anti vax-er changes their mind. America has so much vaccine, some are getting their pets vaccinated.
It’s like we’re in a hundred metre sprint. Each country has a lane. The finish line is when we get out of this horror show. The lane is straight and clear for some; but some lanes have hurdles, some countries are running with weights on their legs some others are starting so far back, they are almost invisible. Ammi is no 100 metre sprinter, and nor is Ashok, but the hurdles they face every day are real.
The pandemic has exposed fault lines both globally and within nations that run along the lines of race. Despite this, The Black Lives Matter movement pushed us all to consider the privileges we have because of our skin colour. Even with the groundswell of this movement, the pandemic has seen racism out from behind closed doors, to infiltrate comments sections, public transport, newspapers, and school yards. White privilege doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard, it means that your skin colour isn’t one of the things making it harder. The recent increase in racist speech has coincided with increases in racist attacks. You’ve all heard it. References to the ‘China virus’, the ‘Wuhan disease’. Asians and people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to attacks, racist abuse, and discrimination, fuelled by pandemic blaming.
Racism is toxic, destructive, and certainly will not help us get through any crisis. Keeping the underprivileged, underprivileged, and overlaying it with a racist view of the world is how we separate us and them. Well, my grandmother is one of ‘them’, and she needs our humanity. As the American philosopher Noam Chomsky said, “The more privilege we have, the more opportunity we have. The more opportunity we have, the more responsibility we have.” And it is the acceptance of this responsibility I ask of us all. We need to acknowledge our privilege but do more than that. And this is where ‘performative activism’ comes in. If you don’t live it as a principle, don’t hashtag it for publicity. It’s just no longer enough.
It’s no longer enough for us to hide behind your virtue signalling and selective outrage. It’s no longer enough for us to sign online petition and leave it at that. Great start, not enough. Too many of us aren’t asking the uncomfortable question; what am I going to do about it? What am I going to do to remove the hurdles and make this race fair? Rather than posting a square on blackout Tuesday, we need to take the time to connect with people, be willing to ask questions and learn what they need rather than what we think they need.
I’m sick of scrolling through Instagram and seeing performative reposts. I’m tired of people with two faces, the armchair activist online and the ones who doesn’t speak up against racist jokes. It’s enough.
Enough with empty words, enough with the false promises, enough with the fake performances on social media. COVID and racial inequality are both pandemics. They are perpetuating each other. Open your eyes and see the privilege around you, and then open your mind and work towards making a change. We have the privilege to know. Now we have the duty to act.