A social media post once featured a Brahminy kite perched on a branch inside the Loyola Campus. It was seen soaring into the canopy as if to recollect our old on-campus days. A rare and glorious scene.
Like a few others, this bird of prey is predisposed to stay in the mountaintops, swooping down and back only to hunt. The sight of an eagle comes at yet another descent from that fabled hill for the blue denizens shrouded by the ominous clouds of pandemic and national elections.
“Down from the hill” evokes a dialectic between peaks and bases. It suggests societal imbalance where those on the ground are overlooked as an indispensable part of the whole. As the Ateneo remains a gatekeeper of admitting the economic and intellectual elite, the Atenean mantra only lays bare the subtle recognition of that privilege. How do we reckon with the responsibility of privilege as we leap from our aerie isolation?
It has been almost two years since coronavirus upended our lives. Now, we leave a system that still grapples with undifferentiated grading standards and redacted courseloads, lack of viable internships, and indecisiveness in confronting sexual harassment and mental health issues.
It is easy to say that empathy is key—although that too is central to the solution. But first, we must ask the right question. In her article Why It’s Important to Think About Privilege—and Why It’s Hard, Kathleen Ebbitt encourages the importance of framing the discussion of “privilege with actions.” She said the conversation should not be, “Check your privilege, stupid!” but rather, “How can we work to make sure that we are understanding and undermining the system of oppression and privilege that hurts all of us?”
We need to acknowledge this starting point, lest we legitimize oppressive regimes that are already in place. The author then invites us to discern the relativity of privilege and consider ways in which to equalize power. How do we concretize all this? Allyship.
Allyship is not a messianic default we activate whenever we need it. Instead, it is a lifelong commitment to the causes we espouse for the underprivileged. According to Sheree Atcheson, writing for Forbes in Allyship – The Key to Unlocking the Power of Diversity, it is rooted in consistency. As it builds “confidence” and promotes “accountability,” it enables the receiver and ennobles the doer.
The process of becoming an ally is fraught with multiple attitudes. Zachary Kincaid Tuggle describes authentic allyship in his master’s thesis, Towards a Moral Conception of Allyship as a “collective attitude that motivates individuals of dominant social communities to act on behalf of oppressed communities to overturn oppressive systems.”
Attitudes are ways of thinking that manifest in our actions. We see them in school-mandated immersions that evolved from being purely academic to a deeper personal engagement. Another example would be the uptick of volunteer organizations amid COVID-19. These groups fought against discrimination, or organized community food banks because of their internal beliefs about the best interest of those affected by the quarantine. As Tuggle argues, allyship is a “moral endeavor to create a world in which power is not unduly used to oppress people.”
Over the weekend, a new breed will march into what could be one of the toughest job markets in a long time. No matter how we avoid it, we will descend into a world of anthropocentric climate change, cancel culture, gender and digital divides, and more still. The challenge is not so much to meet the moment as to transcend it. If we succeed, that will yet be another form of privilege, but perhaps of a distinct and genuinely distinguishable kind.
We are not the bald eagles of the north that survey the rivers only as they please. We are meant to break free from our remoteness and rediscover our rightful allies in these lost years.
Lorenzo is a member of the Class of 2021, finishing a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a Minor in History.
