Why Privileged Folks Are Just Starting to Realize They Are Powerful

The privileged know they are good, but believe they are victims. The oppressed know they are powerful, but are told they are villains.

Photo by Kyle Sudu on Unsplash

One would think that the steady dissolution of power hierarchy in society would look like the oppressed coming to understand that they are powerful, and the powerful coming to understand that they are dependent. What I see happening, from micro to macro conversations, is rather different.

As power hierarchies dissolve, the narrative of victim vs. villain is collapsing. A new realization of innocence and agency is bubbling up, for each and all of us, as the shackles of fearful domination begin to unlatch. I choose the word “realization” consciously, because it means both “to understand that something is reality” and “to make something reality.” Counterintuitively, it is the oppressed who are realizing that we are not villains, and the oppressors who are realizing that we are not victims.

Those who are used to being blamed for causing pain are deeply stepping into their own innocence, and out of the perception of villainy. I see this most macroscopically in conversations around racism and gender, specifically in the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. It’s…