“That we both still had a lot to learn,” Caroline said. “And that we made a good team. And that we won.”
“Barely,” I said.
“Anton Bolingbroke is in jail,” Caroline said. “The crisis is over. Thousands of lives have been saved. The guilty will be punished. Even if they somehow escape, or get away with it, Magus Court knows what they tried to do. You know what? I’d count that as a win.”
She squeezed my hand. “And if it wasn’t for you, it would never have happened,” she said. “How many people owe you their lives? We won.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I suppose I’d count it as a win too.”
I stopped outside the shop. Thankfully, it hadn’t been damaged. “Are you ready to meet my family?”
“Yes,” Caroline said. “I’m ready.”
“Then let’s go.” I pushed the door open. “I’m sure they’ll love you.”
The End
The Zero Enigma Will Continue In:
The Lady Heiress
Afterword I
I have a bit of a confession to make.
I wrote an afterword on Class Privilege before I actually started writing The King’s Men. It drew some interesting comments from my readers, not all of whom agreed with it (of course) and not all thought it fitted with the book. It is a little more adult (and controversial) than the story itself. And so I went backwards and forwards on including it before finally deciding to put it after this afterword (as well as hosting it on my site, where I could include the links).
It’s hard to exaggerate how much a role class plays, both in a fictional city like Shallot and the real world. Adam and Louise have good reasons to resent the system, which forces them to either submit themselves to the aristocracy (by accepting their patronage) or work twice as hard to achieve half as much. Their shared prejudice against the Great Houses is rooted in their early lives - and the simple fact that the system really is rigged. And if you cannot win, why not flip the table? Why not try to tear the system down?
Your mileage may vary, of course.
And now you’ve read the book, I have a favour to ask.
It’s getting harder to earn a living through indie writing these days, for a number of reasons (my health is one of them, unfortunately). If you liked this book, please post a review wherever you bought it; the more reviews a book gets, the more promotion.
CGN.
Afterword II
I’m going to start with a question many people will find, for all sorts of reasons, highly controversial. Bear with me a little.
Does ‘white privilege’ even exist?
It seems to, based on the sheer number of think pieces published in a vast number of reputable (and not so reputable) journals and suchlike arguing that it does. There is no shortage of people telling other people that they have privilege, then offering to run courses training them to acknowledge they have privilege and then ... and then what? There is no clear answer to that question, largely because the people who run such courses don’t want to put themselves out of business.
First, let me try to answer my original question. Does ‘white privilege’ even exist?
My answer is rather nuanced. I have indeed experienced a degree of ‘white privilege.’ But I had that experience in Malaysia, which is not - by any reasonable measure - a white-majority country. Whites make up a very small percentage of the overall population, smaller still outside the bigger cities. (When I lived in Kota Kinabalu, I was the only white person in the apartment block.) This ‘white privilege’ came with a price, literally. When I shopped alone, in places where there were no price tags, the price was generally higher than when my (Malay) wife and I shopped together. Whites are generally assumed to be wealthy in Malaysia, which is one of the reasons the whole ‘beg-packing’ phenomenon is regarded with a mixture of bemusement and annoyance. It’s also true that I got more respect from the local police than other immigrants, who seemed to believe it was unlikely that any white person in Malaysia would be anything other than a perfectly legal immigrant. I was allowed to walk through a checkpoint for illegal immigrants even though I do not look remotely Malaysian.
In Britain and America, however, the question of ‘white privilege’ is a great deal more thorny. By definition, a racial (or sexual or religious or whatever) privilege must apply to the vast majority of people who fit the bill. White privilege can only exist if the vast majority of white people have it (in the same sense, perhaps, as men can be said to have ‘penis privilege’ and women can be said to have ‘vagina privilege’). And it is by no means apparent that the vast majority of white people possess privilege. It certainly doesn’t seem to provide them with any real advantages. Indeed, in some ways, it provides quite the opposite.
The ‘privilege-checkers’ are fond of citing Peggy McIntosh’s famous 1989 essay, ‘White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.’ McIntosh lists 26 of what she calls the daily effects of white privilege in her life, putting race ahead of any other factor. However, the list is deeply flawed. Not, perhaps, because it is inaccurate in her case, but because it is inaccurate for so many others. We might break down her 26 effects as follows:
True (of the vast majority of white people): 6, 9, 17, 20
False (based on non-racial factors): 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 15, 21, 23, 25
Dubious: 5, 7, 12, 14, 18, 22, 26
Flatly Untrue: 10, 16, 19, 24
Many of her effects - the false or dubious effects - are oddly slanted, drawn from her personal experience rather than more generalist experiences. #8 - “if I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege” is laughable from almost any other point of view. Finding a publisher is not easy and only someone who’d spent most of her life in academia would argue otherwise. #19 - “if a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race” - is odd because it is quite difficult to see who is driving a car or written the tax return until the drunkenly-driving car is pulled over or the auditor checks to see if the person claiming a million-dollar income is really drawing in so much money. In both cases, there can be ample grounds for suspicion long before the person’s race is clearly recognised.
Others are flatly untrue, depending on personal conditions. There is no way #1 fits me unless I cut my wife, my mixed-race children and all my in-laws out of my life. The only way someone could fit #2 is through having vast amounts of money and a certain amount of social clout. And really, one doesn’t need to be a different race to have neighbours who are not friendly or even neutral (#3).
It is fairly easy to believe, therefore, that McIntosh was simply wrong.
John Scalzi, the well-known science-fiction author, had a different way of looking at it. He put forward an essay entitled ‘Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is,’ in which he compared growing up a ‘straight white male’ to playing a computer game on a very easy setting. This is a more solid argument than the invisible knapsack, as it is less tightly bound to specific advantages, but it suffers from a number of flaws. Most notably, the obvious response is something that boils down to “I’m a straight white male and my life has been anything but easy and therefore Scalzi is wrong.” This isn’t really helped by the simple fact that most ‘easy’ settings are really easy. I tend to agree with this: my life wasn’t easy, even though - yes - I am a straight white male.
It might be better to say that the advantages of being a straight white male are negated by being a friendless nerd with poor social skills, no gift of the gab and a shortage of money. Indeed, one can even argue that ‘friendless nerd’ is right at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Scalzi’s argument is better, as he’s talking in general terms, rather than specifics, but it still has problems. People don’t think in generalities when they’re suffering and react badly to people who say they should.
In a sense, both McIntosh and Scalzi are talking from a position of privilege. They recognise th
eir own privilege, their own advantages, but they don’t realise that other white people - straight or not - don’t share their advantages. (Scalzi did address this point in his ‘Double Bubble Trouble’ essay.) This lack of empathy leads to problems when they both fail to realise that other white people face other problems and don’t, in any real sense, have privilege. It’s quite easy to reap the benefits of certain issues - immigration, globalisation, etc - without realising that others, the people you don’t see, are suffering the disadvantages. It is easy, for example, to push eco-friendly power plants if you’re rich enough to pay the increased bills. If you’re poor, if you’re already spending money you don’t have just to stay alive, why would you support anything that raised your costs?
And, when activists ask white people why they deny their privilege, could it be that they don’t have any privilege?
It is true enough that most power and wealth in the Western World rests in the hands of white men. They make up the majority of political leaders, corporate directors, etc. However, it is also true that the political-financial elite is a very tiny fraction of the whole. The wealth and power they hold is not shared amongst the remainder of the straight white male population, let alone the entire population. One may argue that wealth and power can be averaged out and so there is an even distribution of such things, but this doesn’t work in practice. It is true, to use a simple analogy, that some writers make fortunes (JK Rowling, George Martin), and this suggests that all writers make fortunes, yet this isn’t actually correct. The vast majority of writers cannot sustain themselves by their writing alone.
From the outside, looking in, this may not be obvious. But from the inside, it is so painfully obvious that any practically any writer who heard a suggestion he’s one of the super-rich would laugh hysterically ... and then dismiss the speaker, on the grounds the speaker is too ignorant to be taken seriously. And he’d be right.
It is this lack of perspective that gives rise to identity politics and the problems they bring in their wake. A broke white guy, suffering the sort of poverty and deprivation that is commonly associated with the Third World, is not going to accept the suggestion he’s privileged. And why should he, when he isn’t? A writer struggling to enter the field and make a career for himself is not going to like suggestions that writers should be published on any other basis than writing skill. Why should he, when it works against him (even if he appears to be given an unfair advantage)? Indeed, one of the most ignorant statements I had to deal with was a suggestion that I was privileged for attending boarding school. The school in question was deeply deprived, lacked the facilities to offer more than very basic classes (to the point that certain career options were foreclosed before I knew I wanted them), and was infested with bullies. If being beaten up and/or insulted just about every day is privilege ... I can’t take anyone who makes that argument seriously. And why should I?
This leads to bitter resentment. People who don’t have any privilege, in any real sense, resent it when they’re told they do. People struggling to survive and build a career for themselves hate it when they’re told they have to work harder than others, as compensation for crimes they didn’t commit (and weren’t, in many cases, committed by their ancestors). The idea that victimhood justifies further rounds of victimisation is bad enough, but when it’s aimed at people who didn’t commit the original victimisation it is considerably worse. Why shouldn’t it be resented?
Perversely - but unsurprisingly - the growing awareness of ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’ fuels racism. The more people are aware of different groups within society, the more they draw lines between themselves and other groups. The more people see other groups as having an unfair advantage, one that comes at their expense, the more they hate and resent it. And the more inclined they are to believe that other groups bring their misfortunes on themselves, rather than being the victims of forces outside their control. People who feel they’re being nagged and pressured into making endless concessions resent it. Of course they do. And when they feel they’re being treated unfairly, they want to push back.
And they do, by arguing that other groups have privilege too. Male privilege is countered by female privilege. White privilege is countered by black privilege. Christian privilege is countered by Muslim privilege. Etc, etc ... it’s all a terrible mess that promotes tribalism and encourages a cold war between groups that ensures old wounds will never close, with an endless series of ‘atrocities’ to keep the cycle going.
Or, as someone more cynical than myself put it, divide and conquer.
***
But there is, it should be noted, a very real form of privilege. Class privilege.
Indeed, pretty much all of the time, the person discussing ‘white privilege’ is actually talking about ‘class privilege.’ A person born into a higher class has more privilege than a person born into a lower class, regardless of the colour of their skin. Obama’s daughters will have more privilege, for the rest of their lives, than a random white guy born in flyover country. If you look back at the Invisible Knapsack essay, you’ll note that most of the effects credited to ‘white privilege’ are actually due to ‘class privilege.’ They would actually be true for someone born to wealth and power, who would be - in the West - almost entirely white.
A person with ‘class privilege’ has more than just money. He has connections. He grew up knowing the movers and shakers - and the next generation, who would become movers and shakers in their own right. He probably met hundreds of celebrities, media personalities and many more, people who are either important or think they’re important. The upper classes are a de facto aristocracy. They marry amongst themselves; they rarely interact with people who are lower than themselves. People like George W. Bush would probably not have risen so high if they hadn’t been able to draw on their family’s connections. They can also count on the unspoken support of their fellows, even those who are technically on the other side, as long as they’re not too poisonous. Class protects itself.
One of the few things I will agree with the privilege-checkers on is this: the person at the top, however defined, often doesn't realise what it’s like for the people at the bottom. It is easier, from one’s lofty vantage, to divide people into subsets (race, gender, etc) than recognise that each and every person is an individual in his or her own right. However, this also has the massive downside that the people at the top are often unaware of their own ignorance (like the person who insisted that going to boarding school was a sign of privilege) or how their well-intentioned words and deeds come across to others.
The point is that, if you’re on the top, it is easy to do a great deal of damage to the people at the bottom even if you have the best of intentions. If you are well aware of your own ‘white privilege’ - which is actually ‘class privilege’ - and not a particularly deep thinker, you might assume that everyone who happens to share your skin colour also shares your privilege. A moment’s rational thought would be enough to put the lie to this, but such people are rarely deep thinkers. They grow up in an environment that does not encourage it.
Imagine, for the sake of argument, that a wealthy - and liberal-ruled - suburb wants to embrace renewable energy. The environment will be protected, but the costs of electric power will go up. This is not a issue for the wealthy, who don’t mind paying an extra £100 per month, but a serious problem for the poor. They don’t have the money to pay for power, leaving them powerless ... collateral damage of a well-meaning, yet seriously misguided attempt to help. If you lack the experience to realise that other people are different from you - and not just poorer than you - you will wind up accidentally hurting them.
Percy: Oh, come now, Baldrick. A piffling thousand? Pay the fellow, Edmund, and damn his impudence.
Edmund: I haven’t got a thousand, dung-head! I’ve got 85 quid in the whole world!
If you live in a bubble, and most people with ‘class privilege’ do tend to live in a bubble, it’s easy to fall into the trap of
seeing people by their group, rather than as individuals. It requires close contact to separate the members of a different ‘tribe,’ for what of a better term, into separate people. If you don’t have that contact, it’s easy to start thinking that ‘all X are Z’ and other fallacies that are strikingly hard to lose. It’s also easy to start hurting the people who lack your ‘class privilege’ - and to feel, when they object, that they’re in the wrong.
The average senior politician, for example, has a great deal of ‘class privilege.’ He or she also has a great deal of protection. So do the very wealthy. People like Bill Gates can afford to live in giant gated communities, places where they never have to come into contact with the great unwashed. They enjoy a degree of safety that someone living in a poor and deprived community does not share. A member of the protected class, as Peggy Noonan put it, is protected from the reality of the world he/she helped create. They can argue that a serial killer shouldn’t be executed, on the grounds that the death penalty is immoral, but they’re not the ones at risk. The ones who are at risk - the unprotected; the poor, the people who cannot afford private security - feel otherwise. And then they’re insulted by the protected, who cannot understand their point of view.
This tends to lead to amusing moments of naked hypocrisy. The wealthy are all in favour of immigration, diversity and suchlike as long as they don’t have to endure the downsides. If they do - if there’s even a chance they might have to endure the downsides - they change their minds very quickly and shout “NIMBY!” This hypocrisy rapidly becomes sickening, which is at least part of the reason Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2016. The three main candidates for the Democratic nomination for 2020 - Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden - all live in areas that cannot, by any reasonable sense of the word, be termed ‘diverse.’ Indeed, they’re pretty much majority-white ... and expensive enough to preclude the average Trump voter from moving there.
The King's Man Page 38