Kristen Gyles | The privilege of advocacy

Someone who lives in a garrison of dog-hearted criminals and gangbangers, occasionally being put to sleep by the not-so-soothing sounds of gunshots, likely doesn’t care about the constitutionality of a state of emergency.

Someone who finally lands a job after years of unemployment and financial instability probably doesn’t care if their equally qualified coworkers are getting paid at the same rate as they are. They also probably don’t care that much whether they are being paid at market rate or whether they will have to work more than the standard 40 hours per week.

Someone who has no clue where their next meal will come from probably doesn’t care that much whether it is packaged in a Styrofoam box, plastic container, calabash bowl or eco-friendly, recyclable, paper-based, biodegradable plate. They also might not care if the bag they get it in is made of paper, plastic or choice fabric.

Someone who depends on the Good Samaritan Inn, Salvation Army or any other charity organisation for clothing, probably doesn’t care if the clothing package they receive includes a ‘PNP’ or ‘JLP’ branded shirt or a shirt imprinted with some political slogan like ‘Make America Great Again’ or ‘My Body, My Choice’.

Someone who finally gets water in their pipes because of the intervention of their MP, after not having running water for weeks, probably does not care if that MP goes to parliament and refers to a colleague as ‘boy’ or ‘massa’ or any derisive or inappropriate nickname.

PRESSING MATTERS

Sometimes there are just more pressing matters. What is pressing to someone who hasn’t eaten a decent meal all week is not necessarily what is pressing to someone who is well fed. It doesn’t mean that things that are pressing to the well fed are unimportant – they may just not be the most important issues for those who are less privileged.

The ability to care about social issues and society’s ways of addressing them is an inherently privileged position to be in. It is a privilege to be comfortable enough to hyperfocus on the fairness and equity of wages, disparities between gender, definitions of gender, forms and expressions of classism and racism, etc. It’s all a privilege. And that is fine.

However, with this privilege also comes responsibility. Someone will need to hold the bad-behaving MP accountable for his or her behaviour and it won’t be the constituent who has been getting handouts from that MP. Someone will need to raise the conversation on whether crime-fighting measures are predicated on stereotyping young men with plaited hair and bleached out faces and it won’t be the citizen who lives in the garrison with plenty of plaited-haired, bleached-faced criminals. Someone will need to advocate for the improvement of working conditions for low-income employees in an organisation and that person might just have to be a Board member.

The privileged are a special group. They are often the most poised to champion social causes, simply because the most underprivileged people get hardly any attention. People in power sometimes seem only ever willing to listen to concerns when they are raised by people who are either also in power or who belong to the highest socioeconomic classes. This is just the sad reality.

One example of this phenomenon is borne out by the life of one of our national heroes, George William Gordon, who lived during the immediate post-emancipation era. Gordon’s mother was a slave and his father was a planter and an attorney. Gordon used his privilege as the self-educated, near-white son of a planter to enter politics at a young age and advocate for the formerly enslaved.

ESTABLISH BUSINESS

He was able to establish his own business and acquire land using his income. Much of this land he subdivided and sold to poor black people at very low costs since at the time, property-ownership was a determinant of a person’s right to vote. He also rented land to poor black farmers who wished to cultivate crops to sell. It was because of Gordon’s advocacy and commitment to defending a cause that hardly impacted him that he was martyred, but his efforts helped to wear down the proponents of a wicked and unjust system that oppressed poor black people. He could have chosen to live a life of relative ease but chose instead to spend his life championing the cause of people who meant hardly anything to the ruling planter class.

This is exactly why advocacy is important. Some people do not have the time, money or effort to champion the very social causes that affect them because of… well, the social issues affecting them. Even if they were to spend their entire lives advocating for themselves, they would likely not achieve much, because of the social barriers that stifle their influence.

This is an important concept for children to be taught from an early age. We should not live only for ourselves without ever giving thought to the issues facing our neighbour. Every school bully is enabled by students who turn a blind eye to the bully’s nasty behaviour. What if children were being taught to stand up for each other? What if children were being taught from an early age that it is not okay to stand by and watch (or even worse, video) two fourth form boys beating up on a seventh grader? Are we growing the next generation of advocates or the next generation of wimps who have only enough care and courage to stand up for their own needs and wants?

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com