Vulnerability Math: A Constant Calculation
Recently I brought this list of oppressions to a white caucus, under the banner “To Counter Oppression, We Need to Know Oppression”:
Each one of these is something a person can be vulnerable to, and experiencing one makes a person more vulnerable to others. Experiencing several at once is intersectionality: what Loretta J. Ross calls "vulnerabilities to oppression". There are -isms and -phobias, -ations, and -ivities, which shows our lack of cohesive language about oppression. I find that not surprising.
Also recently I had appendectomy—that experience + this chart = how I came up with the idea of vulnerability math.
My one night in the hospital, surgery included, came to $35,000. For context, that's a whole year's salary working full-time at $17/hr. I pay $695 a month for this coverage—more than many can afford, for less than what many get in coverage through employers (I'm self-employed). My share of the appendectomy came to $6000.
I felt really pouty about this; outraged, actually, and definitely deserving of financial assistance (sidenote: I believe this entitlement come both from my indoctrination into white superiority, and my grandparents' trauma as immigrants fleeing anti-Semitism). As I filled out the hospital's aid application though, a few minutes of vulnerability math tempered my sense of entitlement. Over 60 + Jewish + a cancer survivor + female = a really low vulnerability to oppression score. Referring to the chart, whatever ageism, sexism or anti-Jewish prejudice I personally have experienced hasn't gotten in the way of me becoming a homeowner, responsible for a household of one, with valuable, sale-able skills, and even a rentable basement apartment. I found my financial aid rejection not surprising.
Before the surgery, before I knew for sure I had appendicitis, I spent two hours in the emergency room. Honestly, there's nothing like an ER to put the whole array of American oppressions on display. The intake questions asked at the registration desk and the answers given by each next person in line were audible around the room. At home, later, I imagined what specific vulnerabilities a $35,000 bill—even adjusted by insurance or financial aid down to $6,000—these folks from the ER with might experience:
Hearing-impaired gentleman (vulnerable to ableism) + elderly (vulnerable to ageism) + monolingual Chinese (vulnerable to nativism/anti-immigrant prejudice) = another year his daughter, who houses and cares for him, won't be able to afford a car, limiting her job prospects & nixing her kid's soccer team dream
Trans (vulnerable to...you do the math) + white + 19 years old + living independently + first in his family to go to college = dropping out for the next semester classes in order to work full-time
Middle-aged + Black + woman + walks slowly with a walker = faces eviction if she takes too much time off work
These calculations might come across as a sorry-fest. Or as me being self-congratulatory that I'm seeing oppression. It's true: the culture of supremacy responsible for socializing me has done a great job training me to see social justice as feeling bad for 'others' or feeling good that I can identify 'them'. So after I acknowledged and accepted that inclination, then proceeded defiantly away from it, comes the ways I'm moved and motivated by doing this vulnerability math. A few examples:
My sense of entitlement for financial aid evaporated once I shifted my focus to how few vulnerabilities to oppression I carry, which I know correlates to how many others carry. I've shut up about the $500/month I'll be paying for a year to clear my medical debt.
I put five $20 bills in my wallet each month to give to houseless folks and those asking for money.
I make sure to regularly contribute an afternoon's labor to a BIPOC-run food justice mutual aid garden group instead of going on (another) hike.
Finally, importantly, I recommit my efforts to finding work as an equity & anti-oppression educator. This is the way I feel I have the most impact in my liberatory aspirations for the world. It's also pretty fraught: as a white woman I'm in a constant process of learning (no matter how skilled I grow); my struggle to meet BIPOC co-facilitators is confounding; and DEI dollars are disappearing in perfect inverse disproportionality to the need for them. But I'm not giving up.
There's a flip side to vulnerability math: evaluating the ways people are spared or shielded from vulnerability to oppression. This focuses on privilege, and is just as important of an exercise. I keep up both, as a way to stay keen to the wily and subtle workings of the systems of supremacy we live in.
As I said, we need to know oppression in order to counter oppression.
July 2024 Back to Blog Home
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