Privilege in Green

Designated Sidekick has a really nice post up here where he talks about his privilege (especially in terms of race) and he uses the example of Hal and Ollie in the O'Neal/Adams years to illustrate a bit.

Go read it. It's a good read!

I do have to disagree with him on one thing though. DS says that he wishes he could be Green Arrow, even though he's more of a Green Lantern, with regards to his privilege and lack of perspective.

I've been thinking about it myself and honestly, of the two of them, I'd rather be Hal Jordan.

This is not to say that I agree with him politically (I'm a staunch liberal, thank you) or that I'm trying to excuse his privilege and ignorance. But the biggest difference for me is that Hal is open to change. He'll say/do something dumb, insensitive, or even downright offensive, get called on it or otherwise have it thrown back in his face, and in the end, he'll come out having learned something.

Ollie, in contrast, spends most of those issues either screetching his politics, making personal attacks against anyone who disagrees (Godwin's Law before it was popular!) or being impossibly smug. And I say that as someone who largely shares Ollie's politics! While Hal is making his usual unconsciously racist or sexist fumbles, Ollie gets to remain secure in his own assumptions and privilege. Because he's the Enlightened Liberal.

And honestly. No. It doesn't work that way. Politics don't make you perfect. And being aware of privilege doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to become free of it. And Ollie may not be as guilty as often as Hal, but he's still guilty.

Hal's changed a lot since those road trip days. He might still be conservative, and he still has his moments of abject insensitivity/stupidity, but in general he's wiser than he was then and it shows. In contrast, it really doesn't seem like Ollie's learned much since those days. Ollie today, for all his good points and growth in other areas, is still the screetching judgemental ranting liberal secure in the belief that he's right beyond anyone else. I don't want to be that. (Though to be fair, Ollie gets called on things a LOT more now than he did way back then.)

Hal does still make the same mistakes over again sometimes, for all his growth, but honestly? So do I. I might think I've learned a lot, but privilege doesn't go away just because I know it's there, and sometimes, I do backslide. Like Hal does. That's part of being human. But I'm also very lucky, because, like Hal in the comics, I have people around who'll call me on it. People who like me enough to forgive my lapses but not accept them. They're wonderful and I owe them so much.

I guess I'm not sure that this HAS a point except that in the end when it comes to awareness and politics, neither of them are particularly admirable to me. But if I have to be one, I'd rather be the guy who gets called on it than the guy that's too smugly secure in his own enlightenment to see the problem. I'd rather be the moron than the hypocrite.