Filled to Be Emptied

The Path to Liberation for Privileged People

Brandan J. Robertson

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780664267247
• eBook ISBN: 9781646982325
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself..." (Philippians 2: 5–7a)

These ancient words offer a guide for modern Christians wrestling with their privileged place in an unequal and unjust world. The Kenosis Hymn (as this passage quoted by the apostle Paul is known) celebrates Jesus for his willingness to forego the divine glory that he is due, instead humbling himself to serve the oppressed and outcast of his society.

Through a combination of in-depth Bible study and social analysis, Filled to Be Emptied invites readers to explore the hymn verse by verse and see Jesus' self-emptying example as a model for privileged people to see their advantages not "as something to be exploited" but as something to be laid aside to seek the good of others. Brandan J. Robertson walks readers through a step-by-step process of identifying their privilege, exploring their privilege, and ultimately leveraging their privilege as a tool for the liberation and redemption of the world. Filled to Be Emptied is an essential book for all followers of Christ who are seeking to live lives of justice.

Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM OF PRIVILEGE

What are we talking about when we talk about privilege? We often hear this word thrown around in conversations related to racism and sexism in particular, but oftentimes many of us do not have a clue what exactly a person means when they use the term. Many of the people who are often described as privileged do not consciously feel the benefits that they are accused of possessing. In a different time, to be described as being privileged was a good thing, wasn’t it? It’s clear that for so many of us the conversation around privilege is anything but clear. And yet this conversation isn’t going to end anytime soon—nor should it. So it is imperative for all people—especially those with privilege—to do the work to understand exactly what this word means for us and why using privilege properly is so vital, as I will claim, to living out the way of Jesus in our world today.

I was raised in a lower-middle- to lower-class community outside of Baltimore, Maryland, yet within one of the wealthiest counties in the country at the time. The disparities of wealth, status, and class were apparent to me every time I went to school. Many of my peers were decked out in name-brand clothing; they always had money to afford lunch at school, or even more enviably, money to have a car and be able to leave school and buy lunch at a nearby fast-food restaurant. Many of my peers could afford special trips, supplies, and opportunities that were offered by our incredible public school system. Many of my peers would go home to large houses every day and would take long family vacations to Mexico or Hawaii in the summer. My experience, on the other hand, was very different, and I was consciously aware of this difference.

I lived in an old mobile home in a large trailer park tucked away, out of sight, from the beautiful homes that surrounded us. My mother worked hard, at times working a part-time job at a retail store in addition to her full-time job at a doctor’s office just to get by. My father worked sometimes, but his addiction to alcohol quickly began to prevent him from being very effective at making any substantial amount of money to support our family. My parents would struggle week by week to keep the bills paid and our family fed, and then to fund whatever other needs might arise. Because of this environment, there wasn’t a huge emphasis on studying hard or excelling in school—my parents had much more pressing things to focus on, like our basic survival. So I was generally a straight C student throughout most of my education, and in middle and high school was doing very poorly in the areas of reading, writing, and math, which severely limited my ability to get into any reputable college. I also never really learned to drive beyond my initial learner’s permit because I knew we could never afford a car for me, or even the driving-school classes that were required by law.

So when someone first spoke to me about my privilege, it was difficult for me to understand what they were talking about. Yes, it is true that I am a white man. But most of my peers growing up were not white—in fact, all my best friends throughout childhood were people of color—and all of them were significantly more well-off than my family was. How could my whiteness be such a source of privilege when it doesn’t seem to have benefited my family all that much in my upbringing?

This is often the first way many respond when they first have their privilege called out, and at some level, it is valid. It’s true that possessing a particular identity alone is not enough to guarantee that someone’s life will necessarily be better off than others. Being white, or male, or straight, doesn’t mean that you and your family will not face hardships, struggle, and even discrimination. Yet often in the dialogue around privilege, this truth is not given a fair hearing. Many sociologists say that this is one of the reasons why the world witnessed such disruptive political upheavals from 2016 through 2020. Much of the political dialogue had rightfully shifted to justice and equity for those who had traditionally been marginalized—people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals—but in that necessary shift, many politicians all but ignored the real, significant struggles of those who were not in those marginalized categories, which led to a political upheaval rooted in their sense of real desperation.

From this perspective, one might ask if the conversation around privilege is even appropriate at all. From the foundation of my upbringing, it’d be hard to make a case that my whiteness or my maleness benefited me in any meaningful way, right? If privilege means that possessing certain basic identities always confers a series of benefits, then I think we could say that claims of privilege are patently false. But what if the idea of privilege is getting at something more nuanced and complex?

The truth is that my upbringing was very difficult, and my parents still struggle to this day to rise above the socioeconomic reality we experienced as I was growing up. My upbringing did cost me some significant opportunities and experiences that many of my peers had. Yet here in your hand you hold my sixth published book. At the time of this writing, I am a semester away from receiving my second master’s degree. I am living in Southern California and my current income has placed me securely in the middle-class category; my starting salary at my job is about the same as my mother’s salary after nearly twenty years in her job. Clearly, my upbringing didn’t affect my attainment of “success” very much. I am doing fairly well, I’d say, despite all of the cards I was dealt growing up.

Some of my “success” may be attributed to my personality or personal fortitude (though I assure you, I am no beacon of psychological strength!), but the truth is that it seems quite obvious that there must have been something else at work to help me rise this far above the circumstances of my birth. Something seems to have been working in my favor to assist me in overcoming the multitude of hurdles that I faced. At least part of my own personal success can rightly be attributed to the concept of privilege.

DEFINING PRIVILEGE

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “privilege” as “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor.”¹ In other words, it’s some form of advantage given to a particular group of people that is not extended to others. In school, I remember being rewarded for good behavior by being allowed to choose from a series of “privileges,” such as sitting at the teacher’s desk for the day or not having to do a homework assignment. The teacher would always remind us as we redeemed our privilege that our reward was not our right and if we started slacking while enjoying it, it could and would be revoked. This picture helps us to understand privilege at its most basic: it’s something we don’t necessarily deserve but is extended to us as a favor. It’s not a permanent reality, but when it is being enjoyed, it does come with a very real sense of advantage over others who do not enjoy the same benefit.

The definition of social privilege differs slightly. Scholar Justin D. García defines this kind of privilege as “certain social advantages, benefits, or degrees of prestige and respect that an individual has by virtue of belonging to certain social identity groups.”² In this sense, one could approximately equate social privilege to being a member of a country club. If you have membership, you get access to the pools, the spa, the fine dining, and the golf green. But if you do not have membership, you will be promptly stopped at the gate and denied entry. Your lack of membership excludes you from this wide array of special amenities (i.e., benefits). The difference on the social side is that most of the time, these “memberships” are granted by nature of birth, are often unconscious to the ones who hold them, and therefore aren’t acknowledged as privileges. They are not easily lost, and they are almost impossible to extend to others who are not born members of this privileged club.

To carry the metaphor a bit further, if you grow up in the confines of the country club, you may never realize that there is a world outside of the gates that is significantly different from the world you experience. If you are conditioned to believe that you deserve to go to college, to pursue a career of your dreams, to make a living wage, or to have even more rudimentary realities such as the right to vote or the right to live freely, then it is entirely possible that you may never realize that others cannot take these possibilities for granted, let alone have a reasonable hope of actually attaining them. In fact, it is one of the express jobs of those who operate the country club to block out the crasser realities of the world outside its walls specifically so those within the club do not have their conscience disturbed by the great disparities that exist just beyond the walls.

The truth is, if you live in North America, Great Britain, or much of Europe, you live in a society that was created by and intended for white, heterosexual, Christian men, and most of these societies were built with a very conscious belief that such people are superior to other kinds of humans, which allowed the colonizing founders of the modern Western world to marginalize, oppress, enslave, and kill all of the people who didn’t look, love, and believe as they did. In America, for instance, the most revered foundational documents that established the nation codified the superiority of white, heterosexual, Christian men, and the inferiority of nonwhites, women, non-Christians, and by inference nonheterosexuals. Today, many of us have been taught to shrug off the words in the Declaration of Independence that refer to the indigenous peoples of the Americas as “Indian Savages” as simply antiquated language, as if those two words did not represent the prevailing mindset that has endured throughout the history of the United States and has continually allowed us to treat indigenous people as less human than white people.

The privileging of certain people was intentionally built into the bedrock of our society. The architects of our society knew what they were doing, and it was justified by deeply held beliefs, many rooted in Christianity, that fueled their hope to create a world where they lived as demigods over the land. Which brings us back to my upbringing. The primary reason that I was able to rise above the circumstances of my upbringing is because the society was set up to give me, as a white man, every opportunity to succeed. Study after study has shown that my poor grades likely posed less of a threat to my ability to get into college than they would have for a person of color. When I walk into a room for an interview at a school or a job, most of the people in that room have been subconsciously conditioned to believe that I am more capable and deserving, despite my flaws, than a person of color or a woman. Even though I grew up relatively poor, my skin color and my accent enable me to easily pass as wealthy, which gains me access and acceptance into social circles of those who truly are wealthy and powerful. I also get the chance to be bolder in my pursuit of things that I want because I live in a society where that’s what white men are supposed to do, whereas women and people of color are not permitted to act in similar ways.

These are not small benefits. They are also not easily recognizable to those of us who are white men, but I guarantee that any person of color or non-male-identified person who reads the paragraph above would nod in agreement and be able to point out many more areas where society privileges my whiteness and my maleness that I have not even thought to mention. Remember, it’s hard to see the reality of one’s benefits if you’ve never taken time to wander beyond the marble walls of the country club.

IMPLICIT BIAS

Hopefully the examples above have helped to clarify what exactly is meant when we talk about privilege in the social context. The natural next question for those who possess such privilege is “Now what do I do?” No one chose to be born with any of the core identities that we possess, nor is it fundamentally wrong to have privilege. At the most basic level, privilege is morally neutral. Receiving an unearned benefit or advantage is usually viewed as a good thing, and no matter what identities one possesses, it would seem foolish to reject such a blessing. One should certainly not feel bad for receiving such a gift. Where privilege crosses firmly into immorality is when the advantage comes at an unfair cost to others, to put it mildly. And when it comes to the privilege of white, heterosexual, Christian men, the cost to everyone else has been astronomical.

To use myself as an example once again, if my college admittance had been based solely on merit, my straight C average in high school would surely have limited my ability to get into most of the private colleges and universities that I applied to. Numerous studies have shown that if a Black student (or anyone with a “Black-sounding” name) had submitted the exact same transcripts with their application, they would have been far less likely to be admitted to a school than I would be.³ I don’t think that most college admissions teams are consciously seeking to be racist in their decisions (though some certainly are), but in a society where whiteness has been set as the ideal in nearly every aspect of the culture, the subconscious assumption is that white people must be smarter or more capable of academic improvement than people of color.

This unconscious discriminatory attitude is known as implicit bias or implicit social cognition and is well documented by social scientists and psychologists. The Kirwan Institute at Ohio State University defines implicit bias as “the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. Activated involuntarily, without awareness or intentional control.”⁴ When it is defined this way, it becomes easy to see that implicit bias exists in every person, in every culture, in every era. It emerges from our cultural conditioning, which includes the media we consume, the religion we practice, the family we come from, the neighborhood we grow up in, the politicians who represent us, the laws we’re held accountable to—just about every aspect of our daily lives. These biases are all pervasive and automatic, and they don’t often reflect what we consciously believe or the ideals we confess to be true for us.

Because implicit bias exists unconsciously within us, if we are to ever address and change them, we must be careful to identify exactly what the dominant biases in our culture are, become aware of them in our own actions and thinking, and then actively work against them. This is precisely why conversations around racism have recently shifted from being about resisting racism to being antiracist,⁵ suggesting that to actually kill the disease of racism in our culture, we must not simply believe that racism is wrong, but we must actively work to oppose racist thinking and action in our own consciousness and in society at large.

If we don’t understand the power of implicit bias, then we may never realize just how pervasive and dangerous our exploitation of social privilege is. I remember lecturing to a primarily white audience at the University of Calgary in Canada on the power of implicit bias. During the talk, I made a statement along the lines of “all of us are racist, and we must work to root out racism within us.” Immediately, a white man spoke up and said, “I am not a racist, and I refuse to accept that all of us are racist.” His reactionary response is understandable if we don’t consider the reality of implicit bias. Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction: A Privilege Pandemic
• 1. The Problem of Privilege
• 2. Paradoxology
• 3. A New Mindset
• 4. Owning our Identity
• 5. Exchanging Roles
• 6. Obedience Unto Death
• 7. A New Kind of Power
• 8. Fear and Trembling
• Conclusion: From Insurrection to Resurrection
• Notes
• Recommended Resources
• Excerpt from If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk, by John Pavlovitz