Privilege: A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.

0. Imagine you are walking down the street alone at night; suddenly two strong hands emerge from the shadows and drag you off the street. These hands intend to never let you go. In this world of confinement the privileges you had in your old life don’t exist; there are no advantages or immunities, you’re entirely submissive, the only hope for opportunity is escape. This is the life of a Zero.

1. Visualize yourself as a boy in Indian you’re intentionally maimed by your family, and then forced onto the street to beg. Their hopes being your injuries will encourage more charity.
Now think of yourself as a single mother of five in Mogadishu. You spend you days scouring trash piles for recyclable material, and spend you’re nights listening to the frenzied chatter of gun fire, praying the violence doesn’t come any closer. Both images are naturally very unpleasant, but weighing one over the other is simply too subjective. Would you sacrifice your right hand for safety? Or would you risk danger for improved physical freedom? Weighing the pros and cons of two dismal lives is a very dark exercise, but this is precisely the point. There are approximately 7.1 billion people in the world; you’d be hard pressed to find someone that has a life so fraught with hardship that no one in the world would be willing to take their place. Subsequently nobody can be born lower than one.

2. Two hands, two eyes, and two legs, our anatomy consists of doubles. Two on the privilege scale consists of the necessities for survival. Despite common belief we are not all created equal, an individual born with full mental and physical capabilities will have a much easier path through life then someone with cerebral palsy. However this is the extent of natural inequity; all other manifestations of privilege and inequality are consequences of social engineering.

3. I was once on the streets of Siem Reap, when I saw a man with no legs fishing bottle caps out of a storm drain. An entire plastic bottle can be exchanged for a nickel—all I could think was he’ll need a lot of caps.


4. Four is half of eight; someone with a privilege of four would need to work twice as hard as someone with a privilege of eight. A four might work their fingers to the bone with the hopes of providing their progeny with the opportunities of an Eight. Yet even a heavy dose of ambition is a far cry from the opportunities afforded by high privilege. Experiencing the injustices of the privilege scale first hand ambitious Fours might doubt their opportunities, and find themselves wondering if ignorance is bliss.

5. I’d been reading with the 2nd grade class at Thompson Elementary in Washington DC for the past 14 weeks, this was to be my last visit. To commemorate the occasion I brought four books to give to the two girls I’d been reading with for the past 14 weeks. When I met with them on this last day we all settled down at one of the many squat elementary school sized tables in the room. After the girls had excitedly updated me on the day’s elementary school gossip. I placed their new books on the table and said “pick two, they’re yours to keep.” At first the girls looked at me with astonishment, and then they jumped at the books, but without even saying a word the two had equally distributed the books in seconds. I was impressed by their enthusiasm for reading, but even more so by their willingness to share. Then as if on cue one of the girls looked up at me and said “I normal don’t like to share, but with books, they make you smarter—everyone deserves to get smarter.” Needless to say I was speechless. Here was a girl who had never owned a book in her life; yet despite her lack of privilege this girl remained cognizant of how important education is to everyone. Tragically however this lesson in morality remains largely unrecognized and education continues to lend itself more readily to those with higher privilege.

6. Six is a marine officer whose sexual orientation leaves him isolated from the very soldiers he is meant to lead. He returns home with a mind scarred by combat and the remains of his military career in boxes, outside his apartment. For those that lack privilege the prejudice never rest, success for a Six is determined by how much of themselves their willing to hide.

7. Curtis Sittenfeld paints Your Life as a Girl in such a way that even the most financially, physically, and geographically privileged young women experience lives fraught with the most insidious aggressions. On the privilege scale not all privileges are weighted evenly; the XX chromosome puts even the most advantaged women two strikes away from the opportunities of their male counterparts.

8. A boy and his tutor sit side by side in a library. In a hushed tone the boy reads “A Road Not Taken” aloud. He starts, stops, and even makes words up. When he is finished his father waits for him in a BMW across the street. Money can make even the most debilitating struggles obsolete.

9. As a child the words “With great power comes great responsibility” hung above my bed, at the time I just liked it because the quote was from Spiderman. However reflecting upon it now I realize the quote should read “With great privilege comes great responsibility”. Our society has created a system where the few are granted an advantage over the many; subsequently privilege has become synonymous with power. With that Nines must assume the other side of this bargain and become responsible for the destruction of the vary institution that gives them this power.

(Here the privilege scale ends)