The Privilege of Personhood: Tripartisan Existence and to whom it is Endowed
This is a little blurb I composed recently while reflecting on the nature of whiteness, white identity, and the privileges of belonging to the ethnic majority. I originally wrote this just to put it on paper, not necessarily to share publicly. Then I considered how it could be of assistance to my fellows in this, as I describe below, as an exercise of self-reflection and comprehension of the realities of injustice.
I was also motivated to share by the sentiments I have heard recently from the Black women in my life and many online who are expressing deep frustration with the burden placed on them to do all of the work, to educate and comfort the world, and yet, also being those who enjoy little, if any, reciprocity of support and solidarity. This motivated me to publish even the short and seemingly inconsequential reflections on privilege and injustice because part of privilege is responsibility. Having heard and seen for many years how Black women are expected to educate everyone about the reality of white supremacy and misogynoir, I felt it would be remiss of me to sit back and archive these thoughts.
Instead, despite their brevity and lack of citations, I choose to share and hope that the reflection it inspires in one person will save a Black woman’s breath later on. If some of my work has the slightest potential to alleviate the burden, I feel the obligation to share.
I have found, in my comparatively short time on this earth and my even shorter time as a relatively self, socially, and politically aware person, that there is a form of privilege rarely mentioned in popular discourse pertaining to justice and liberation. I believe it is a privilege that almost everyone who doesn’t have it is acutely aware of, while everyone who enjoys it remains completely ignorant to its reality. As one of those enjoyers of this privilege as I have understood for years but only recently found my ability to articulate the specifics of, I wish to iterate in my own words for everyone, but particularly my fellows in this, the nature of this privilege and what it means to enjoy it.
Imagine, my fellows, and consider, all, a scenario in which a stranger who happens to hold resemblance to you in some way, shape, or form, is accused of committing a bad action. Whether the accusation of this person has evidentiary support, whether it is determinable to concede that the action did indeed occur, and whether the action was caused by an individual or collective cause matters not. The situation merely communicates that the person, who shares something with you, stands accused of this action.
Regarding this, are you afraid? In this hypothetical, are you concerned for the consequences the accusation will have for you? For your children? Do you dread interacting with people who don’t share whatever it is connects you and the accused as you believe they will consider you accomplices?
Or, are you baffled by the previous paragraph? Are you lost as to why the actions of someone you have never met would impact your life? Are you dismissive of this supposed fear since the bad action can clearly be deduced to have been the result of a particular opinion or experience of the individual in question, which has literally nothing to do with you.
If so, congratulations! You hold this privilege. The privilege in question is essentially personhood; the understanding that you will be perceived by others as yourself. Your unique experiences differentiate you from the people closest to you, and despite any resemblance that may unite you, you are never put in danger by “grouping”. The generalisations people may or may not make about you and your fellows might bewilder you, but it would never be accepted by larger society and certainly never put you in danger. Because you exist in all three tiers of identity: humanity, culture, and personality. You are a member of the human race, you are a member of your culture, and you are the proud owner of your own personality. You might call such an understanding a “tripartisan existence” in Platonian fashion. The tripartite soul, as Plato explains in Book 4 of The Republic, describes the three major parts of what constitutes a “human” in his view: rationality, spirit, and appetites. The full description of these aspects isn’t necessary for the comparison, so I’ll simply leave it to this summary above. The tripartite soul, according to Plato, is a part of every human man. He proposes that women are not in possession of one of these elements, making them supposedly “bipartite souls”, though nothing is exactly translatable to that effect. He deems the aspect of the soul which encompasses rationality exclusive to men, and claims that women have merely the spirit, which is often described as the centre for emotions, and appetites, meaning desires.
As a woman and an aspiring academic, I have naturally always resented this. Luckily, this perception of gender relations died out in mainstream discourse before my birth, but the thought of it still irks me. I am furious to have been excluded from one-third of the humanity owed to me (human rights are obligations too, you know) even by a dead Greek. To have been excluded from the perception of humanity, anyway. I believe that all the theoretical parts of the soul belong to me, regardless of anyone’s beliefs, but am opposed to the propagation of ideas that would render me socially devoid of one of the three major elements of human identity.
I consider the anger I have for such an injustice, and apply it to the privilege previously discussed. I propose that the tripartisan existence of a person consists of: humanity, culture, and personality, as has been discussed by sociologists, psychologists, and scholars from many disciplines. To be generalised as inherently and constantly behaving and believing according to one’s culture, or rather the perception of one’s culture, with no regard given to the unique personality each human possesses, is robbery. It is theft of personhood. It robs individual people of their right to be perceived as individuals which we afford to our fellows constantly.
While I believe this is something every person is capable of, as every human possesses the ability and often the tendency to give more grace to oneself and their in-group than those they perceive as Other and outside their experiences, the privilege does not come with it. The sin of the attempted theft of personhood may very well be universal, but we all know who really pays the price. The rhetoric of this dehumanisation is amplified exponentially by existing structures of power, which creates the privilege of the guaranteed maintaining of the personhood of some systemically and the denial of dignity to others.
Personhood is a privilege. To be perceived individually, as a representative of one’s personality and particulars, is a privilege not afforded to all. Consider the impact of media, in all its mediums, on human social understanding. Consider the nature of “generalisation” in all its necessities and problems. Consider “culture” and what it means to participate either consciously or subconsciously in the shared beliefs and traditions of those around you. Consider how you expect yourself to be perceived in your community and through mainstream media. If the idea of the deprivation of your humanity through generalisation baffled you rather than concerned you, you enjoy this privilege.
