When the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn was dismissed on Tuesday, it occurred to me that what we had in front of us was a good metaphor for one of the tawdry underbellies of American life.
Call it the power of privilege — the unacknowledged advantages that permeate so many layers of our public, and not so public, lives.
I’m not here to argue the merits of the case, or to rant about the legal system. We are, in fact, a family that is lousy with attorneys. On any given day, you can’t walk down the hall without bumping elbows with one. On Thanksgiving, we joke about replacing the kids’ table with a lawyers’ table.
But this is essentially a case of he-said, she-said, right? Of parties whose closets apparently hold more than a couple of skeletons. So our thought question for today is this: Why is Strauss-Kahn, a powerful white male, who asserts that the sex was consensual, more believable than Nafissatou Diallo, a hotel maid who fled her native Guinea for asylum in the U.S., who says she was raped?
And why has Diallo’s background cast doubt on her story when our erstwhile defendant’s past is equally checkered? As Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman wrote on Tuesday:
A woman who gets intoxicated can be raped. Prostitutes can be raped. And a poor woman who has told lies can be raped. In fact, it is often the women who “don’t make good victims” who are most at risk because they are the most vulnerable, and it is these women who are least likely to be listened to.
I confess I know no more about the case itself than do any of you, and I am willing to admit that it’s possible that there was no criminal case to be made. But – evidence notwithstanding apologies to the attorneys in the family– I still wonder about the larger issue, which is this: All things being equal, why is it that the scales always tend to tip in favor of privilege?
One of the worst aspects of privilege, whether in the courtroom or the workplace, is that those who have it tend not to notice. What’s second-worst is that, because of the above, privilege tends to perpetuate itself.
Back in 1989, Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D., associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women, wrote a pivotal paper entitled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In the paper, she listed the contents of that knapsack, a collection of invisible “privileges” she enjoyed by virtue of her race – from being able to buy or rent a home wherever she wanted to being assured that when she’s pulled over for a traffic stop, it’s not because of the color of her skin.
Her point, derived from her work in women’s studies, was this. While those with privilege may be willing to admit that those without it are indeed disadvantaged, what they don’t seem to notice is the other side of the coin: doors automatically open for some folks simply because of their skin color – or their gender.
As McIntosh noted, it’s a source of power and advantage that is largely unearned. And it automatically puts many of us on the other side of the power divide. That includes women, even when we enjoy the privileges of race. Need a refresher? We make less money than our male counterparts. We’re often stymied on our way up the corporate ladder simply because of something related specifically to our gender: motherhood – or in some cases, lack of same. And then there’s the workplace itself, which is still structured around the outdated concept of the ideal employee, who can put in the 52 hour workweek, secure in the knowledge that there is someone at home to take care of business.
We’ll stop there.
My point, at least today, is not to vent about the inherent inequities – but to suggest that we start paying attention to the power that some folks hold through no fault of their own. Which brings us back to the case at hand.
Diallo has filed a civil suit against Strauss-Kahn, whose attorney has announced that Strauss-Kahn is considering a lawsuit of his own because he has suffered “enormous damages.”
Should both lawsuits see their day in court, let’s lay some odds, shall we? Who do you think is likely to prevail?
Barbara Kelley
Shannon Kelley
Great column. Something you said about the workplace being shaped around the “outdated concept of an ideal employee who can put in the 52 hour work week” made me curious. I understand your point: that men could work whatever hours they needed to to advance their careers because they had their wives at home to do the childcare, but it seems to me that the idea that workers should be putting in 52-hour work weeks is not an “outdated concept” but rather a more recent one. First wages stagnated in 1970 and, though productivity continued to rise in the ensuing decades, wages have remained level for the last 4 decades. Families needed to have more than one wage-earner to make ends meet under such conditions and women moved into the workplace in greater and greater numbers. Then many workers in many professions began to experience the equivalent of speedups: more work for the same pay. (Thus the growing gap in wealth between average folks and those at the top who are absorbing more profits by paying folks the same wages to produce more goods or services.) It seems to me that this situation has led to the notion that the ideal worker is always available to work longer hours. So this seems rather recent. It hasn’t exactly been a choice: rather, if you are not available to work longer hours the boss will replace you with someone who is able to do so. By the 1990s and certainly today, everyone who is working seems to be working more hours with less benefits than ever before.
So what I’m saying is that when you say it is an “outdated concept” to work 52 hour work weeks, I’m not sure it’s outdated. I’m also not sure it is a “concept” since that implies it is something like a mindset that can be changed. Rather, it seems built in to capitalism and its drive to maximize profits even at the expense of workers. It seems structural to me and as such won’t change until the structure of economics in this country changes. What do you think?
Strikingly well written article!