Historical privilege.
Let’s get into it.

Historical privilege is the idea that we (speaking specifically of Modern Westerners who are alive today) are direct beneficiaries of inventions we didn’t create, a democratic republic for which we didn’t fight, concepts of equality and human rights we didn’t pioneer, laws eliminating injustices we didn’t experience, military strength offering protection which benefits all of us (although only .04% of Americans currently serve in the Armed Forces), and technological, scientific, and medical advancements which we had no hand in developing.

As direct beneficiaries of these radical social, political, technological, ideological, and scientific developments, we are in the most privileged place in history that the human race has ever been, hands down.
Hands. Down.

We are also granted what I call a privilege of time: we have unprecedented leisure time (roughly 5 hours per day on average). We have so much time on our hands that we literally RECREATE WARFARE AS ENTERTAINMENT through video games and other media. While warfare (or threat of warfare) plagued our ancestors and millions around the world today, we….play at it.

Second, we forget that the medical, technological, educational (etc) privileges most of us enjoy are brand new in the timeline of human history. Common childhood diseases have been largely eradicated, people are generally living longer, and technology progresses so rapidly that only the oldest living generations remember a time when information wasn’t instant, food wasn’t “fast”, and daily tasks were much more time consuming.

As a result, historical privilege naturally allows for a certain level of criticism by present-day people towards people of the past. This is especially true in the United States, where our collective knowledge of the past is woefully deficient, and (combined with the fact that we tend to be future-minded anyway) many people don’t actually think the past is worth remembering in the first place—unless it can be weaponized against their political foes.

Lastly, our ancestors were products of their place in time, just like we are today. They operated within what was culturally, religiously, socially, politically, and economically expected and normal for their time period and region. Historical privilege seeks to pry them out of their historical context and be scrutinized by modern and Western values and ideas. Historical privilege allows modern people to become the judges and juries for the beliefs, practices, and behaviors of past people: this inevitably leads to their censorship or cancellation.

In summary, we can’t imagine a world which wasn’t as safe, equal, protected, educated, opportunistic, industrialized, and progressive as the one in which we currently reside—-therefore expect people of the past to measure up to those standards.

It’s ludicrous.
And it’s bad history practice.

Historical privilege is an act of cultural ignorance and personal arrogance: it permits the people of the past to be weaponized for social, political, or religious gain rather than understand them in their historical context. It enables us to forget that everything we enjoy today has been built by their blood, toil, and sacrifice.
Everything.
And we wouldn’t be who we are—or have what we have—without them.

The antidote is three-fold:

1. An understanding of chronology and historical context (how people and events fit together and shaped each other over time)
2. Historical empathy (the ability to put yourself in the mindset of someone in the past based on relevant historical information)
3. Humility

To know the world in which our forefathers lived is to know how that world connects to periods and eras before and after:
📚What did they think and why did they think it?
📚Who controlled and distributed information (and who could even read it)?
📚What were their gender and societal norms, and how did these norms impact daily life?
📚Which events triggered new movements?
📚What were the counter movements?
📚What limitations did this particular group of people experience and what challenges did they face?
📚How have these questions changed over time, and how have historians interpreted their answers?
These questions propel us to historical empathy, while also realizing people in the future will see OUR current values, beliefs, and ideologies as archaic or backwards, too: this leads to humility, a crucial component in historical interpretation.

We need to do better about acknowledging the historical privilege of living in the Modern West (yes, even with its flaws) and working to understand the past for its own sake—-devoid of an agenda.

We can do better.