The Tribune

Last week we talked about the creation of an underclass of “Bahaitians” who feel anger over their complete isolation from society. This brought up a memory from Shakespeare’s King Lear where Edmund, the outside son of Gloucester rains down his anger and frustration in revenge on the society for his exclusion. He is angered that he is treated as a bastard and that society has done this to him without his ability to respond. His answer is to cause pain and suffering to all those around him. He does not see the privilege of his position, however. He only sees that society has marked him as an outcast, not that Gloucester has publicly accepted him.

In more recent work, black feminist critic Bell Hooks talks about the problems of male privilege. Hooks underscores society’s imperialist, supremacists, patriarchal structure. We choose not to see this when we are in it. Further, she critiques the positions given to non-white males and more so black males in the United States. She further scathingly criticises the young black man’s adoption of a particular privilege that actually kills them.

What I find intriguing about this is the assumed privilege that has been granted youth. Over the last few weeks, the country has witnessed a number of unfortunate events that could only speak to a serious problem with privilege. Though most people consider privilege an element enjoyed by rich tycoons and the aristocracy, it is far more pervasive that that. Privilege is one’s ability to avoid responsibility or accountability in the group where one lives.

This is taking a very myopic approach to the concept though. Privilege can come from being in the upper echelons of society. It can also come from being granted a particular position within one’s group based on one’s strength, ability, intelligence or gender. It is often thought by Bahamians that women run the country and that women have attained complete equality with men; they need for nothing more. This is, though, a mistake. Men are far more powerful in Bahamian society. We often talk about how single-parent homes make young men respect and treat their mothers better and so treat all women better. Ironically, this is far from true. The men internalise their privilege and then act it out in feelings of entitlement.

As Edmund in King Lear destroys those around him, but ultimately, he destroys himself because of his feeling of being excluded and assuming a particular privilege in the society that he feels has been wrongly denied to him. Many youth feel that privilege is theirs by virtue of the way they are brought up at home. They feel entitled to it. They are told they need to do nothing and are given everything for doing nothing.

They don’t have to take out the trash; they don’t have to wash the dishes; they don’t even have to go to school. They can simply stay at home and loaf or sit on the blocks and their mothers and grandmothers will endow them with everything they can, even if it means suffering so that the boys feel special. This is privilege. That is ironically called male privilege and is most often a trend in single-mother-headed households. What happens is they then expect this behaviour to follow them all the years of their lives. When it does not, they react in negative sometimes violent ways. The recent case where a young man killed the woman who gave him everything because she refused to give him something speaks directly to this. What does this tell us about his ability to accept reality? His needs are out of step with his life. His privilege has allowed him to think that he should be given everything he wants. He is entitled. Society must now give him whatever he feels he needs or wants. There has been a collapse in discipline or any idea of reasonableness.

We often talk about sparing the rod and spoiling the child and interpretae that as a way of condoning corporal punishment, beating children. The idea behind this is much more general and is actually about discipline. We are told to inculcate in youngsters the right way of being, the accepted codes of behaviour and how one goes about living within these strictures. There is no sense of privilege which would then lead to entitlement. Most youth do not want to hear about restrictions and many of them are taught that they do not have to observe any of that.

Ultimately, we have failed in our ability to teach them to be reasonable and responsible citizens? Have we allowed them to assume that their privilege will get them through life? Have we allowed them to think that they are simply beyond control? When a thirteen year old male is shot by the police, and his grandmother can say that he was a bad boy, what are we hearing about him? Are we to understand that he was born that way? Privilege causes a great deal of social disorder that cannot be maintained. It ultimately results in entitlement and then violence when everything does not work out how they think it should.They deserve everything for doing nothing. We have allowed them to get to this point. Now what?

• Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, Associate Professor in the School of English Studies at the College of the Bahamas, has written extensively on race and migration in the Bahamas, cultural creolisation and gender issues. Direct questions and comments to iabethellbennett@yahoo.co.uk.