Colonial Privilege and COVID-19

Abstract

Privilege exists because of colonial hierarchy that encourages inequity and supremacy over others. Colonial privilege has proved to be self-defeating for societies, discouraging prosocial behavior and promoting conflict, division, and a narcissistic orientation that significantly hindered pandemic preparation and response-contributing to needless suffering and deaths. Communication privilege during the pandemic was often wielded to manipulate others and promote self-interests. Economic privilege allowed some to prosper when others were suffering. Health care privilege allowed some to access quality pandemic care and vaccines when others could not. Personal privilege allowed some to manipulate and exercise control over others for self-benefit, to bend the truth and extend misinformation to manipulate others, and to exercise liberties without concerns for social responsibility. As an example, racists and white supremacists exercised strong influences on election processes in 2020, eventually contributing to the first attempted coup in US history. Indigenous psychology offers an interdependent and egalitarian perspective on how to challenge hierarchy and therefore retire privilege to reduce the consequences of relational psychopathology. Equitable societies devoid of privilege would be psychologically healthier and better prepared to meet the challenges of the next global crisis. Christian Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr accurately captured a snapshot of colonial privilege when he wrote, "The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged groups are characterized by universal self-deception and hypocrisy" (Niebuhr, 1960, p. 117). Colonialists have been able to convince themselves over time that as the "superior" people and culture in social orders they hold the moral high ground, regardless of what they say and do-not only with deceiving others they deem inferior but also themselves in their fallacious beliefs concerning hierarchy. Niebuhr goes on to suggest in that same paragraph that those of privilege rely upon inventing plausible truths to support their claims that are in fact misinformation. However, those deceptive practices failed miserably because a tiny virus does not respect privilege. The pandemic has exposed that colonial self-deception and hypocrisy are self-defeating for colonial societies in ways that harm the well-being of the whole.