Complicity — understanding privilege and confronting the climate crisis.
By Ryan Madden
Disclaimer: This piece may not be particularly insightful for those who have been speaking about and experiencing colonialism and oppression for hundreds of years in this country. My hope is that it will be helpful for people already on (or interested in beginning) their personal journey of understanding privilege and complicity in structural oppression.
My realizations are unique to me, my personal growth and my continuing political education as an activist and organizer in anti-racist and anti-oppressive leftist movement spaces.
This piece is not meant to guilt or shame myself or others — only to contextualize my understanding of inherent complicity in systems of oppression and the need to confront those systems.
My name is Ryan Madden, and I am a settler colonialist. I also spend my life organizing around issues of climate justice, which forces me to come to terms with complicated and conflicting truths.
I am a product of tremendous privilege; privilege I am afforded because of a sordid history of white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism and genocide. While I am not responsible for the sins of the past, I am responsible for understanding how those sins afford me an existence in this life that is not guaranteed to everyone: a life free of racial oppression and violence, of gender discrimination and sexual exploitation, of economic disparity, and of other structural barriers to a full existence with dignity and respect on this Earth.
I am a cisgendered, straight, able-bodied white man from an upper-middle-class family with a strong educational upbringing. And I have lived my entire life benefiting from forces that value my life over others. I have never questioned my safety among police. I have never gone days without eating. I have never been subject to scrutiny, suspicion or hatred because of my physical appearance. These privileges have afforded me the opportunity to pursue my life without fear of retribution from society. There is a spectrum of privilege in this complex world, of course, and I acknowledge how many of mine intersect.
I lived 20 years of my life never understanding this, never having to learn these truths. This is what privilege is in its varied forms: insulation from a reality unavoidable for others — a reality marked by exploitation, discrimination, persecution and violence. It wasn’t until I participated in an anti-oppression training with a youth climate justice organization after college that the veil began to lift.
While I had always considered myself a progressive person, I had never questioned how I conducted myself in public life. Because of my class, race, gender and sexual orientation, I never feared for my safety in public. I never questioned whether my voice would be listened to. I never had to worry that an authority figure would question my intelligence. I never had to concern myself with access to education, employment or housing. I still don’t. Not in a country that values my life over all others.
My path has led me to the climate justice movement: a movement to tackle the climate crisis with equity for communities and workers, for those historically oppressed by an economic and political system that exploits land, labor and people — systems which leave particular communities disproportionately burdened by an extractive economy and the impacts of climate change, while having contributed least to the problem.
Today’s climate crisis is the culmination of centuries of exploitation of people and resources, the result of an inequitable economic system that prioritizes endless growth and accumulation over equity and justice. It is the planetary reaction to a culture of oppression and domination, a symptom of settler colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism — all systems that I personally benefit from and am morally obligated to combat.
I graduated from SUNY Binghamton and did what a lot of millennial recent graduates do: moved to an affordable area in the five boroughs. For me, that was Queens. And although my mother — the daughter of a Jewish refugee who escaped Austria after being expelled by the Nazis — grew up in Jackson Heights and my grandparents spent 30-plus years in Bayside, I am not from Queens. That means I am part of a gentrifying force in the area, given my economic and social upbringing in Westchester, New York.
Unbeknownst to me, until I began my journey in anti-oppression and anti-racist movements, I was contributing to the legacy of colonialism and displacement. I was complicit in centuries of domination over land and people — an insidious process that began with the forced displacement and genocide of indigenous people and has continued in various manifestations up to the present day, from land grabs and racial segregation to redlining and gentrification. All of these processes are part of an inherent inertia in American society that dates back to our endeavors in settler-colonialist expansion.
Gentrification is the new form of colonialism, and a lot of us are complicit in the process.
I want to stop here to remind readers that the intention of this piece is not to shame or guilt (I myself can’t always internalize these realizations without spiraling into paralyzing existential dread) but to give pause and think deeply about the structural forces that shape our existence. It made sense for me to move to Queens.
While I am economically well off, I am not rich. When I got a job in Manhattan a few years ago, it was a logical choice to settle in an affordable borough. But I hadn’t given enough thought to that choice and what it meant in the context of modern-day colonialism. I imagine many of my millennial friends reading this haven’t either.
I think we all need to sit with these truths about ourselves and our roles in perpetuating systems of oppression, so we can then ask ourselves what we are doing about it.
As a climate organizer, I know my path is to continue intentionally building relationships and challenging power structures with those most impacted by the forces that created this crisis. I do this by following the leadership of communities on the frontlines of climate change who have been fighting for decades; by showing up to spaces, forming new relationships and understanding the privileges I enter them with; by constantly questioning my assumptions; and by keeping myself open to new ways of thinking based on others’ experiences.
What forced me to frame my role in settler-colonialism was attending a party a few months ago in Astoria. Of nearly 30 people, there was not a single person of color. In the most linguistically and ethnically diverse area in the country, there was not a single black or brown person to be found. This isn’t surprising when three-quarters of white people in this country don’t have a black friend. But this stark situation really brought the process of gentrification to the forefront of my mind. Having recently read “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” it sunk in that gentrification really is the new form of settler-colonialism, and I was in a room with 30 perpetrators.
As I continue to grow and develop as a white accomplice to indigenous movements, to queer movements, to black liberation movements and more, I think it’s important to share my experience with other folks, especially white folks, who may be at different stages of their learning and, more importantly, unlearning.
Unlearning the baked-in assumptions about our particular worth, about what we are entitled to and about what we should expect from the world and others. Racism, colonialism, sexism, ableism and classism are systems of oppression, and those who are white or non-indigenous or male or able-bodied or wealthy or straight or cisgendered are all participants and beneficiaries. To the extent that we aren’t actively trying to dismantle these forces, we are racists, colonialists, sexists, ableists and classists — myself included.
I am humbled by the education I have been afforded by others patient enough to teach me. I am grateful to be a part of movements that so thoughtfully work toward dissecting power and privilege and what it means for everyone’s lived experience — for those who hold and wield that power and for those who are subject to its oppressive forces.
There are a litany of resources out there for people trying to better understand privilege and power. I hope this article encourages you to start that journey, to further it or to push me further on my own, so that we can all better understand our role in dismantling the layers of oppressive forces that viscerally harm people every day.
For those who do not currently consider themselves part of any movement, ask yourself why.
Know that there are organizers out there prepared to have these conversations with you and orient you to this work: to guide you to an organization that needs volunteers; to point you in the direction of the next canvass, phone bank or direct action; to teach you how to build power in your community. Signing a petition is great, and showing up to a protest is important.But we need more people flyering neighborhoods with those petitions and organizing those protests.
We need more people knocking on doors for electoral campaigns. We need more people lobbying their elected officials. We need more op-eds pushing our narrative into the mainstream.
We need more dedicated activists pushing for change. We need you.
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