Privilege, Responsibility, and Freedom (A Work in Progress)

This is a bit loose and unformed; nevertheless, I wanted to publish it because I thing it is an important topic that is frequently misunderstood.  The genesis for the post was thinking about the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

Responsible.  For what are we responsible?  Are we, for example, responsible for the totality of the effects of privilege?  Common notions of responsibility (and decency) suggest that we are or at least should be.  If one is born into a particular station or class, one enjoys the benefits or privileges of the class and so should be obliged to accept responsibility for the effects the class has on others.  If the class into which one is born exists because it marginalizes, oppresses, or exploits other classes then one cannot ethically accept the benefits of class membership without also accepting responsibility for the marginalization, oppression, or exploitation.  In this sense, though it may seem counter-intuitive and unfair, children are responsible for the sins of their parents despite the inheriting responsibility solely through the accident of birth.  Just as it is inherently unfair to ask the disadvantage to bear their disadvantage solely because of the accident of birth, so too is it unfair to allow the privileged to enjoy the advantages of privilege that have been bestowed solely through the accident of birth without also requiring them to bear responsibility for the deleterious effects of their privilege.  Every member of society is responsible to her fellow members of society and this is a duty that cannot be compromised or abdicated without also compromising or abdicating one's moral duty.

The responsibility we have to our fellows never ceases, though its force becomes more imperative when social classes become more stratified and fixed because in stratification privilege and disadvantage are distributed in gross and uneven ways that tend to externalize the effects of privilege for those possessing it and to force the disadvantaged to internalize the costs or negative effects of privilege.  When social classes are flatter and more fluid advantage and disadvantage are distributed more fairly among members of society, in effect ensuring that everyone bears both the costs and enjoys the privileges of one's class without externalizing costs and forcing another group to bear them.  The flattening and fluidity of classes also prevents the ad hoc and irrational distribution of privilege and disadvantage through the accident of birth and the nonsensical mechanism of inheritance.  If we do not accept responsibility for disadvantage when society becomes more stratified and fixed, we abandon not only the moral imperative of social responsibility but we also debase and make a mockery of any cogent understanding of "freedom."

How so?  Quite simply, the idea of freedom requires a foundation of radical equality in order for the idea to be legitimate.  Otherwise, freedom is a purely a function of privilege:  the more privilege you have, the freer you are.  The inverse means that those born without privilege are also born without (or at least with severely diminished) freedom.  In this sense a stratified society is not a free society because "freedom" is in all practical senses coterminous with privilege.  Freedom as a distributed social value only has meaning for individuals and groups to the extent that they can exercise it.  Otherwise freedom is nothing more than an empty platitude or an incoherent abstraction.

[More to come]