Passing the Parcel of Privilege

Remember the children's party game "pass the parcel"? A much-wrapped gift is passed around a circle of kids sitting on the floor; each one takes a layer of wrapping paper and ribbon off the gift and then passes it on. The person who ends up with the last layer unwraps, and "wins", the gift. S/he is usually meant to share it with the whole group (it's often a box of candy).

Are we playing the Gift of Privilege game, as adults? Who gets to be "privileged" now? It was originally (allegedly) white men, then all white people, all educated people, and eventually all races and nations were vouchsafed "equal rights" according to late-20th century western liberal-humanitarian values. 

But then, some identity groups claimed that this was only window dressing and that some groups were still more privileged than others. Black people, brown people, aboriginals, disabled people, trans-sexuals and a proliferation of other "identities" now clamoured for not equal but special rights. Equal rights were no longer an ideal, and "people" were no longer who we thought they were: they were not ethnic groups but "people of colour", not genders but "birthing persons" not women but "persons with vaginas" (though confusingly, not always ...) People were not physically or mentally handicapped but "differently abled". Then there's Non-binary people, Two-spirit people ... in short, there's no longer any "we" in "we the people".

This Pass the Parcel of Privilege game is the new infantilization, and it's gotten out of hand, as children's games tend to. Children start by agreeing to rules but end up howling "that's not fair" when they don't perceive themselves as winning. Now that attitude has invaded the world of universities (that speaker can't speak here), of government and corporate offices (follow DEI or your DEAD to this employer), and of media (take a look at current Submissions Guidelines of book publishers and magazines). The rules of academic, professional, public and media activities are in constant flux, depending on which participant howls "not fair" the loudest this week.

Remember when some decided that literacy and the existence of the "literati" was elitist? Elitist (from the French) simply means "chosen". Society's always going to make, and disagree about, choices. At present we've chosen a new elite army for the Culture Wars. These are the troops of the culture-cancelati. It looks like this uncivil war will be a long one. The fact that it will soon be fought by out of control Artificial Intelligence will only increase the casualty rate among independent-minded liberal-democratic classically-educated humanitarians.

Non-privileged Non-elite Who Made the Country of Canada

The folks who built Canada -- that amalgam of climatic regions within one parliamentary democracy, having the second largest landmass in the world and the longest coastline (on three oceans), inhabited by over 250 ancestral groups -- were not who many think they were.

They were not privileged and elitist "colonials" but often obscure, non-wealthy, and uncelebrated men and women of variegated cultural backgrounds. Even when they emerged from the obscurity they started with into positions of fame (and recently, of blame and denigration), they often remained non-wealthy.

Like who, you ask? Take David Thompson (1770-1857) who fled England as an impoverished street urchin and crossed the Atlantic to work in a freezing northern Manitoba Hudson Bay post, and turned out to be a cartographic genius. He surveyed and mapped, for the first time ever, an astounding 3.9 square km of the North American continent, travelling over mountain ranges and through bush by canoe and snowshoe with aboriginal assistants he met and befriended.

Thompson's maps are still in use, and his achievements, accomplished without modern transport or comforts, are astonishing, although that doesn't stop them being brushed off as "colonialist" by current history pundits ("pundit" being a Hindu world for "learned person"). The officially learned persons of BC (where the Thompson River was named after David Thompson by explorer Simon Fraser) have learned ideological correctness. Thompson, beginning as an impoverished orphan in London, ended his life as an impoverished senior in Montreal, in 1857. His material and reputational rewards were few; nevertheless his unique role in Canada's history is unalterable.

James Douglas too began life on the low rungs of Hudson Bay employment, without personal wealth behind him, and through sheer ability, strategy and energy became a government appointee, lawmaker, landowner, road-builder and Governor of Vancouver Island and then BC. He established Fort Victoria and later, the first elected assembly of Vancouver Island (which was elected as was customary at the time, from among landowners only).

Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had a similar life trajectory: going to work as a school-leaving teenager, becoming apprenticed to a law firm, becoming a lawyer and in time entering politics, blending warring political factions and regions into one nation through sheer force of character and allegiance-building, and steering a nation-spanning railroad through the thickets of party- and commercial politics.

And the pre-existing "privilege" of these self-impelled nation-builders was …? 

They weren't the only type who built BC and Canada. Do many people know who Sister Mary Providence was? She travelled to Fort Victoria from Quebec in 1858  to become superintendent of the first school, set up by the order of the Sisters of St. Ann. She was 22 years old. (Many current citizens still haven't "aged-out" of youth-care housing at age 22.) Hardly a member of a rich elite, she was a youthful ascetic dropped into a rugged pioneer environment. 

Mary Spencer was another teacher of humble background, who arrived in BC from Ontario in 1898 and then became a professional photographer (then a very new profession) in Kamloops and Vancouver, before becoming, with her sister, a fruit farmer in the Okanagan. Of the same ilk was hardworking boarding-house owner and sometime gold-miner Nellie Cashman, an Irish-American immigrant who famously in 1874 led a rescue team of men mid-winter to save miners snowed under by a blizzard in the wilds of northern BC. 

These are but a few of the often-anonymous professionals, politicians, surveyors, engineers, educators, farmers, shopkeepers and ad-hoc social workers (anonymous women who adopted orphans and fed the poor) who built the two colonies that became the Province of BC. They didn't bring their energy and abilities to Canada thinking "let's go across the ocean in risky boats to find some people to oppress on the other side of the world". Today, over 150 years after the nation of Canada was formed, they are being quite mean-spiritedly denied the recognition conveyed through landmarks named after them. Signs bearing colonial names are being removed, but as George Orwell and others have pointed out, we can cloud the memory of history, but we can't erase history. 

These figures were indeed an "elite", a word of French derivation which simply means "chosen". They were chosen by fate and the circumstances to which they so staunchly rose. It's interesting how our latest pundits wish to knock them down again, along with the signposts of streets named after them -- but to what end? 

It will also be interesting to see how the next elite is chosen.

(Note: this article was rejected by a Canadian History conference "due to subject matter considerations". What do YOU think of the subject? )

Joining the #I-also Movement

Did #youtoo feel insulted by some man, criticized, sexually appraised? Someone failed to appreciate you or flirted with you or, failing to appreciate, didn't flirt with you? Behaved ambiguously?

 

You too felt passed over for a promotion? #metoo, echoed women up and down the land. 

The "war between the sexes" is an ancient trope. When was it not going on? (Where would literature, poetry, novels, opera be without it?) 

Sure, people have a right to rights: to inclusion, non-racialism, non-binary-ism, different-ablism, mental health support, freedom of choice …

#Ialso (speaking from the subject rather the object-pronoun stance) know that freedom is practice, not theory,

that ideological thought-control only takes away rights, never preserves them

that "diversity" can only come from diversity of thought, freedom of opinion, freedom to speak without "correctness"

that mental health means mental hardiness and resilience, not permanent adolescence

that some parts of Canadian society exhibit a phenomenon of sub-adultism, dependency, of privilege-envy, a "that's no fair" whine of endless childhood

that individuals are no longer seen as choice-making agents, but as "people experiencing" things, rather than people choosing them -- as if they are experiencing addiction, poverty or homelessness because these things hunted them down

that these observations are not popular, although (and because) they are part of Canadian nation-building heritage familiar to earlier generations

Saving the Middle Class

So the middle class wants to be saved. Okay, maybe we'll save you, but don't think you can carry on as before. No more of this “middle” stuff. If you want to survive, get out there on the extremes.

You say you're being squeezed by over-taxation, de-platforming and ideological hostility toward moderation, but there's such a thing as too much moderation. You must declare your allegiance: do you support the obscenely wealthy one percent, or the downtrodden impoverished ninety-nine percent? Are you the privileged, or do you have allyship with the de-centred marginalized? With People of Colour, or People of Whiteness? Whiteness is not skin shade, it's attitude. Moderate attitudes are mere fronts for micro-aggression. You professional classes of middle income, with your house-and-garden values, 

private transport, old-fashioned art galleries, interest in wildlife conservation and obsession with grammar are just stealing stuff from Other Races. (What do you mean, “allyship” is not a word? See: that just proves it.)

So, expect macro-aggression in response. The time for the middle class is over. There's no middle way, no “golden mean”. “POC” does not include the colour gold.

We might save you, Middle Class, but not to be as you were: the worst example of colonialist obsessions with taste. You will be saved through re-education camps. Where will these camps be located? Everywhere: in government, civic bureaucracies, schools and universities, unions, professional associations, arts organizations ...

What did you say? These are middle class products of colonial times? Fine, but don't think that you can just turn inward and save them, clinging to old errors based on individual ideas freely expressed in a free press. That's just hiding behind privileged supremacist history. That's just an able-ist way to trigger others. Forget history; it shouldn't happen. Too much historical understanding just gets in the way. Focus on Identity, not history -- but not your identity. Ours. You know the one: the one not in the middle.