Ferguson, Staten Island, and Advent

One lesson of the last few weeks I have tried to take very much to heart:

We must learn in this country how to better acknowledge our privilege.

This is not about “white guilt,” which is simply a mode of hiding our power behind a selfish facade of shame — a most insidious liberal piety!

Nor is this about mere “personal responsibility” — that hideous idol of the right that is blind to all the ways oppression is sustained systemically in our common culture.

No, this is about stepping back far enough to see how the simple accident of birth clothes us in undeserved power and rights over others.

And how by seeing, then, we might be offered a choice in the shared future we are willing to pursue alongside all of our sisters and brothers.