Themes: privilege, family, understanding
Today marks my first week since my flight landed in Singapore, and so much feels like it has happened. Aside from just experiencing culture shock, I’ve adjusting to living standard shock too.
My parents immigrated from India to North America before the 2000s. They’ve told me of the struggles they faced in their early life; eating tiny meals (if you could call them meals) to save every penny they could, walking extra far to go to the cheap grocery store, living in the tiny apartment on the used mattress and the creativity needed to make these things work.
They worked their way through these struggles, climbing up the financial ladder with job promotions, their propensity to count pennies and elbow grease. They did this all to give themselves and their kids access to a lifestyle that wasn’t as frugal one the one they led in their early years. Their sacrifices and love mean I’ve grown up privileged.
But I didn’t think I’d grow up to be as ashamed of my privilege as I’ve become.
I realized I was privileged when I started hearing about much better the city school in my area was compared to the city school in a neighbourhood downtown. When I asked my parents about the discrepancy, they told me that the downtown areas were less wealthy.
That’s when I started seeing the downtown area. The houses didn’t have yards like mine, the grocery store floors didn’t gleam, the sidewalks had more cracks and plants growing in their crevices and the parks had more scratches and doodles.
Looking back on my childhood, I never felt deprived. If I couldn’t have something, I never felt it was because we couldn’t afford it. While it may have been because my parent’s cost-saving habits were normal to me, it still feels like a privilege.
So, that’s how I came to learn what privilege looked like.
As someone who must acknowledge my privilege, I can tell you that it feels like exceptionalism, ignorance and having the ability to wear rose-tinted glasses. I’ve realized that needs have hierarchies to them; for example, the starving man wouldn’t struggle with portion control or putting down the box of chocolates and the overworked single parent who doesn’t give a damn about “healthy fats” probably doesn’t care that avocados cost 3 dollars a fruit.
When I moved to a new school in a less wealthy area than where I grew up, I started getting jokes aimed at my privilege. Because I took them so personally, I started resenting the things I had and hating that people could point them out.
I started glorifying my parent’s struggle story. I didn’t want anyone to think I had it easy. But even the ability to have that thought, harbouring the wish for other’s to not see the privileges I had, is restricted to people with privilege.
So I was swimming in an ocean of privilege and continued to feel bad about it. To this day, I don’t know how to positively deal with the fact that I’m privileged. This has come to be a problem now that I’m moving into the social justice space. I know I must understand my positionality very well in order to be good at my job, but I wonder if I’m capable of that. I want to understand what it is like to be underprivileged, but I shamefully don’t want to leave my own position of privilege to do that learning.
But here in Singapore, I’m not in the privileged position that I’m in at home. At least, the privilege doesn’t feel the same. Perhaps because I’m forced to care about my spending, I’m staring at every receipt and getting concerned about each additional purchase I want to make.
Is caring about your spending a hallmark of struggling? Absolutely not. But it’s a new phenomena for me.
But most profoundly, I’m realizing that the greatest privilege I have at home isn’t my financial freedom. Its the people I’m close to and the life they created for me. Since I’ve come here, I’ve started noticing how tightly babies cling to their parents when they cry and with how much freedom a toddler runs to into someone’s open arms. I’m seeing migrant workers video-calling their family on the side of the street, sweat drenching their shirts but with no hint of exhaustion in their voice. The man on the subway at the end of the workday carrying a bag of takeout for four. I’ve also started noticing the difference between eating dinner alone and eating dinner with others. Even when you are coerced into trying fish eyes in your dinner by your housemates, food is better had with company.
Hence, I’ve concluded that understanding the intricacies of someone’s experience requires you to somehow experience it yourself.
This means I’ll never understand what it’s like to experience financial struggle growing up. I won’t understand that feeling of deprivation, or systemic structural oppression that comes with having the under-staffed school or worn playground.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t try, and it doesn’t mean that I’ll choose to forget where I’ve come from. My experiences are teaching me things that only I can understand, and I want to share them with you. And by hearing other people’s stories, I hope I can live through other people’s realities too.
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