Dear PiePie,
You’ll meet many people in your life, and the further you traverse from home, the more different they’ll tend to be – whether in race, culture, upbringing, socio-economic backgrounds, attitudes to life etc. For the most parts, being different is not a problem, but things get contentious when those differences affect opportunities in life.
That is what “privilege” is. At the core, it tends to reference the inherent advantages or disadvantages that some people might have owing to circumstances beyond their control. As of writing this, partly because the concept is most established in the United States, white privilege is the most common version of “privilege”. But by the time you see this letter, the term “privilege” should be more firmly established within the common vernacular of more societies, and it might be something you have to grapple with more acutely than we do now.
Back to the people you will meet. There will be people who start off richer than you, who have connections and access to opportunities that you cannot imagine. But remember that even as you look “up” at those individuals, you are in a privileged position with many looking at you as well. Daddy may sound like he’s bragging, and you might not feel it, but you’ve at least struck the consolation prize in the lottery of life simply by being born to a family in Singapore. Of the more than 100 million babies born each year, you are one of 40,000 babies who are entering a country ranked top 10 in GDP per capita and life expectancy at birth. All that is to say, you’re pretty privileged yourself. It’s neither a blessing nor a curse, it just is. You had no control over that. While privilege and inequality may or may not be a cause you are eventually passionate about, you should be cognizant of your privilege as you navigate life.
More importantly, privilege is built upon inherent biases and heuristics that exist in all of us, even you. These biases and heuristics are shaped by the types of exposure we have in our upbringing, and differ from people to people, but we all have them. It is important that you recognize what your inherent biases are and do your best to prevent the perpetuation of that privilege.
Beyond that, it’s important to not get too caught up in “weighing” relative sufferings. Suffering is experienced on an individual level, and tends to be relative to the baseline of expectation. An individual may experience extreme distress by getting into only her third-choice Ivy League college, while another individual may feel absolutely fine not getting into any college, even if objectively, the Ivy-bound individual is better-off. It is, quite simply, not possible to just “step into another’s shoes”. And because of that, none of us are able to judge the sufferings of others. This can work both ways – whether it is trivialising some experience that you deem unworthy of causing distress or magnifying the suffering of something that may seem inconsequential to the “victim”.
Emotional topics like privilege and inequality tend to stir up heated comparisons, and yardsticks of equality and privilege differs from person to person. Listen. Try to empathise. And refrain from insisting that your yardstick of judgement is the one by which they should adhere to.
Love, Dad