During the height of the Occupy Movement, thousands of individuals submitted pictures of themselves to the We are the 99 Percent tumblr blog. They posed with letters and signs, telling individual stories of what it’s like to be in the 99%.
There’s been a solid critique of how whites, youth, and those with college access have a larger voice on this site, as well as dismissive responses from those on the right, but I’m struck by the rhetoric used. One word stands out to me as particularly jarring: Luck.
[Written for a child] “I am 3 years old and lucky to go to preschool, have a roof over my head and spaghetti-o’s in my belly. I am lucky to have Medicaid while my parents don’t qualify.”
“i am 22, living in a trailer in exchange for labor… We eat 69c mac’n’cheez or ramen; i drive a car illegal with disrepairs. And i’m lucky.”
“I am lucky my husband has a decent job because before I was on his health insurance my coverage denied normal, annual GYN visits because ‘Being a woman is a pre existing condition.’ And we are the lucky ones!!”
“But I am one of the lucky ones. I was finally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder I am properly medicated”
“I’m one of the lucky ones. I enjoy my part-time job… yet… [have a] $65,000 [student] loan. 4 side jobs – not enough for rent. No health insurance. No children, so I don’t qualify for any aid, but I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“I am a lucky one. I have enough money to eat 3 of 4 weeks of the month…”
Luck is a word that comes up incredibly frequently among the 99 percenters, alongside words like debt, crisis, and unemployment. But what kind of luck is this? What does it mean to be “one of the lucky ones?”
In these posts, people struggling to hold multiple jobs call themselves “lucky” for having food most of the month, enough work to survive, or health care for part of their family — even as they report drowning in debt, losing work, and losing hope.
This isn’t our usual meaning for luck, and it only makes sense in comparison — to the “unlucky ones.” But if the “99 percent” is lucky, who exactly is unlucky? And how does this “luck” relate to the accompanying uncertainty, stalled careers, and failure to attain personal and collective dreams?
After sending in an early picture, I was startled to realize I’d also used the rhetoric of luck as a frame for my complaint. Of course I live in relative privilege to others, but why subsume my experience of uncertainty and dislocation beneath that privilege?
On the one hand, the rhetoric of luck acknowledges our relationships to other human beings, including those with greater struggles. To observant readers, it can also point to the structural and economic challenges that even “lucky” people face.
But I’d argue that the same rhetoric turns our lives into happenstance. It moves our stories harmlessly to the side, so that larger — and often deceptive — narratives about luck, hard work, and the American Dream can continue as planned. By prefacing our stories with an admission of luck, we displace our own voices and cast doubt on our experiences as something that just “happened to us.”
Yet the current economic and political situation didn’t just happen to either the “lucky” or the “unlucky” ones. As in other periods of U.S. economic history since the 1700s, the underemployment, debt, financial instability, and lack of affordable life-goods that Americans face are the result of deliberate policies designed to streamline and protect growth for investors, large corporations, and other profiteers — often at the expense of individual citizens, workers and business owners without large amounts of capital or political access.
So rather than slip into the rhetoric of luck, what other frames can we use to talk about our experiences? Framing our experiences in light of multiple takes on economic history may allow us to draw from previous generations in assessing our options for greater involvement in setting the guidelines for our society. Initiating discussion on the civic responsibility of every stakeholder may involve bringing to task those who have instituted policies beneficial only to a small minority of elite Americans. And collective effort from the left and the right could enable us to ensure that economic activity bears appropriate fruit for individuals, households, and families, and that the people actually have a voice in our towns, states, and nation at least equivalent to other sources of power.
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Celia Emmelhainz, M.A., is an economic anthropologist who conducts ongoing research on citizenship, economics, and religion in Central Asia. With a degree in anthropology from Texas A&M University, she currently works as an academic librarian in Kazakhstan.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 43
kdiddy — February 21, 2012
"As in other periods of U.S. economic history since the 1700s, the
underemployment, debt, financial instability, and lack of affordable
life-goods that Americans face are the result of deliberate policies
designed to streamline and protect growth for investors, large
corporations, and other profiteers"
Excellent point. I think I always admit to my instances of "luck" because it feels...disrespectful (?) to point out inequities when I have food in my belly.
Yrro Simyarin — February 21, 2012
The 99 percenters (generalizing, but you point out that they are majority white college grads) describe themselves as lucky because they have been taught that they are privileged. They grew up with parents, in a middle income or above household. They had the opportunity to go to college. Didn't have to fight prejudice, racism, or religious bigotry to be who they were. They were set up, by most social definitions they were raised in, for success.
But they don't have it, and they're unhappy about it. Yet they've been told all their life that people in their situation don't have any room to complain. So they complain anyway (because they're human), but they have to constantly preface it with "but *I* am lucky, because other people are worse off than me, and didn't have my advantages."
If you want to remove that, you have to have a society that acknowledges that it's ok for white middle/upper class people to complain about things. Note, I'm not talking about US society in general - obviously half of the country thinks it's *perfectly* fine for white people to complain about stuff. But in the more progressive society of academia, it's not really the norm, unless you can redirect it through a different group/class identity.
ernesto — February 21, 2012
They might be expressing the belief that the distribution of goods and social benefits doesn't track merit, desert, effort, etc, but rather things like where one happens to have been born, one's gender or race, etc. So I guess those who consider themselves "the lucky ones" realize that they are better off than others who are at least as deserving as they themselves are but happen not to be among the lucky ones who have encountered more favorable circumstances.
That doesn't imply that everything is a matter of luck. Of course what you do with what you get isn't luck, but a good part of it is. For instance, what skills you
have is mostly a matter of luck, and how those skills are valued by the
market is beyond your control.
None of his denies one's agency or voice; it just recognizes the their contigency. They are about how we they where they are, not about where they might go.
Zach BrothaDoom Toliver — February 21, 2012
haha you've got to be kidding me..I'm doing exactly this for a qual methods
Amanda — February 21, 2012
As one of those people who posted something similar on the "I am the 99%" site, I have to agree with kdiddy below...It is hard for me not to feel lucky that I am scraping by when so many are not. For others the use of the word "luck" to describe their situation may be ironic in nature, as in "I'm one of the lucky ones? Isn't that sad in a larger scheme." In another economic and social situation I wouldn't be "lucky to make a living." I'd be doing fantastic (I have a PhD and a part-time job), and in a position to help people who weren't as lucky. Luck is all about perspective and the word has a lot of nuances. It's a very complex rhetorical analysis you're taking on with some serious sociological and economic implications. Kudos!
BFR — February 21, 2012
Thanks for this post -- I also have used the idea of "luck" to describe circumstances in which I have privilege based social systems of race, class, etc. I use "luck" specifically to combat the idea that I have what I have because I worked hard. I believe that story, the "bootstraps myth" as I like to call it, is a major obstacle to people, particularly Americans, understanding how privilege and oppression work in everyday life. I say that I'm "lucky" because I want to subtly suggest to others that they be more critical of their own privilege, hard work, achievements/benefits, and the causal links among those three things.
But the idea of "luck" also obfuscates privilege, too -- it makes it sound like it's a matter of happenstance, rather than the result a system created by people that can be changed by people, too. Maybe just "I'm privileged to ..." would be a better way to put it.
rootlesscosmo — February 21, 2012
At least two plausible motives for self-describing as "lucky:" to manage one's own sense of guilt ("Why am I complaining when others are far worse off?") and to preempt hostile criticism ("Why are you complaining? You're well off!")
Our culture also fosters a belief in "luck" via such things as state-sponsored lotteries, high-profile casinos etc. It wasn't always quite so blatant in this form--I'm old enough to remember when Nevada was the only state with legal casino gambling. But people bet sports and played the numbers--it's not as if gambling were a novelty. If you live at the low end of structural inequality, it's comforting to tell yourself that the better-off are just lucky, because--luck being arbitrary--you might get lucky yourself one day.
Derek Evans — February 21, 2012
Perhaps the use of the word "luck" has more to do with an inability to verbalize and discuss their RELATIVE privilege and less to do with their inability to recognize how structural issues contributes to their being both in the 99% and among those who are struggling with debt, foreclosure, etc. Either way...great article. Something I hadn't noticed or thought about.
Gilbert Pinfold — February 21, 2012
To be able to live in material comfort without insecurity about the future is a state so rare as to almost unnattainble. This is situation normal in all cultures at all times of history. Golden eras such as 1950s America are rightly seen as special.
As to the recurring theme about the 'contingency' of one's birth, I am at a loss to understand what scientists mean by this. I could no more have been born a mexican policeman's daughter than the other woman could be a Scots farmer's son. There is no accident in who anyone is aside from a limited amount of genetic mutation. John Rawls' 'veil of ignorance' was only a thought experiment. It sometimes seems as though social scientists believe in fairy stories even during working hours; imagining some kind of content-free soul or 'essence' that flits in and out of corporeal forms upon conception and death. I get that Bhuddists and other religious people actually believe in transsubstantiation, but I wouldn't expect Sociologists to take it literally.
There's only one extreme case I can think of where someone went for the ultimate in blank slate social policy. He abolished property and the usual things, then he abolished History and declared Year Zero. I suppose everything really did seem accidental for a while in Pol Pot's regime.
red black — February 21, 2012
"By prefacing our stories with an admission of luck, we displace our own
voices and cast doubt on our experiences as something that just
“happened to us.” "
I disagree. To be lucky is compatible with having worked and planned hard for some outcome. I'm lucky that I got a certain outcome that others who worked as hard or even harder, maybe from worse starting conditions, didn't get. I'm lucky that all kinds of bad and dangerous things didn't happen in my life when there was a significant risk for that and when others similarly situated was struck by it.
So it is not do doubt once agency. It is to set it into proportion to circumstance and to the agency of ones fellow humans.
Staring Blue — February 21, 2012
I really think, as some people have said here, that "lucky" primarily functions as shorthand for acknowledging privilege, with out getting into the nitty-gritty of different privileged and marginalized identities and intersections thereof.
Anne — February 21, 2012
I know we're focusing on America, but I see Kazakhstan (I'm a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from there) and I immediately think of all the interesting comparisons and contrasts available with that information. My host family thought I was INCREDIBLY fortunate because I had money saved for times of crisis. When the bank called for them to pay a portion of their home loan early, literally no one in the vast extended family network had enough money to cover the costs. It was 'pay, or lose it.' Most families in Kazakhstan are living hand-to-mouth. I felt lucky! There is the real impact of being in a good spot thanks to the efforts of my family and scholarships and my government sometimes looking out for me.
Jason — February 21, 2012
The talk of luck in the signs you posted seems designed to do two things: 1) to register the extent to which our lives are subject to contingencies, such as that of health, social class and background, and 2) to point out that for those living on the edge of debt in the current U.S., even a bit of misfortune, such as a ill health or a broken car, can have spiraling repercussions. This is a perfectly valid message, and just the one that the 99% project should be making. I have trouble seeing the issue here.
Open Thread for Night Owls: Luck among the 99% | Hotspyer – Breaking News from around the web — February 21, 2012
[...] The Society Pages, Celia Emmelhainz writes: During the height of the Occupy Movement, thousands of individuals submitted pictures of [...]
William Reading — February 22, 2012
Glad to see someone from my Alma Mater that doesn't make us all look bad :)
Janae Smith — February 22, 2012
"lucky" = not wanting to seem entitled
Mssnvrnchtngsmttl — February 22, 2012
I always got the sense that "I'm one of the lucky ones" is (in addition to all the other meanings other commenters have suggested) a short hand answer to nay-sayers who will accuse a person of having brought their troubles on themselves, or failing that, to be just whining. I think it's a good strategy, because whenever I see OWS-themed posts on Facebook for example (not a great source I realize, but arguably a source of considerable anecdotal data since so many people are on it and so many people love to comment on everything they see) I see as many hostile comments about the movement and its aims as I do positive ones. On the other hand when I see people re-posting those tumblr pictures on Facebook, I see fewer comments in general. There seems to be no snide answer to give to someone who says "I feel fortunate to be just scraping by in a trailer with only a few meals per week, but you'll pardon me if I'd like to do better, and you'll further pardon me if the game looks rigged to me from here." It also seems, from the silence in the comment threads of these re-posts on Facebook that in a sense people indifferent to or hostile to the movement were in some cases unaware of just how bad things were for a lot of Americans. On the other hand, since you can hide things you don't like on Facebook so easily, perhaps it's naive to assume nay-sayers have even seen them. I'm interested if anyone else has any thoughts about my Facebook tangent, and I really liked this post, though I disagree that the rhetoric of luck necessarily undercuts any implication of agency or talent.
Open Thread for Night Owls: Luck among the 99% | FavStocks — February 22, 2012
[...] The Society Pages, Celia Emmelhainz writes: During the height of the Occupy Movement, thousands of individuals submitted pictures of [...]
Open Thread for Night Owls: Luck among the 99% | Occupy Portland News — February 22, 2012
[...] The Society Pages, Celia Emmelhainz writes: During the height of the Occupy Movement, thousands of individuals submitted pictures of [...]
Celia — February 22, 2012
These are great comments and I think you guys are right on that lucky is often a shorthand for talking about privilege, or being glad that things aren't worse, or our relative place in life. And crucially, a way to deflect criticism.
BFR points out that "luck" has some benefits over a word like "privilege," but also makes other things more invisible, and that's what I'm pushing at. We've had what seems like a brief flourishing of online postings in which people highlight the (personally-felt) negative impacts of our society's system and path to success -- in spite of the privilege we know that we also experience. And we've let these posts collectively grow at first, and then fade out.
Part of that is how internet interest waves seem to work, but I wonder if words like "luck" -- and the 99 percent blog itself -- can work in one sense but truncate the conversation in another. Then the real question becomes, not just "what's going on with luck?" but also asking you guys to look at the 99 percent tumblr and other discussions. How are we framing our experiences, and how else could we do so (within current social constraints) that would effectively challenge current ways of thinking?
Thanks for reading, guys! My first guest post, and I really appreciate it.
QX — February 22, 2012
Why is it that even people with advanced degrees cannot write a few sentences by hand without misspelling something?
Guest — February 22, 2012
Just wanted to point out an error in the translation of the Spanish-speaker on strike. In the handwritten English translation, the second sentence reads "I've been on strike 8 years and 4 months where a a millionaire stole my pay and benefits and those of my coworkers. We are the 99%" This is a mistranslation, and I think it is important enough in meaning to point out the error.
A more accurate translation would be, "Being for 8 years and 4 months where a millionaire stole my wages and my benefits and those of my companions', we are the 99%" The mistranslation makes it sound like this person has been on strike (i.e., not working but demanding wages or possibly receiving them from a union) for 8 years and 4 months; I think the person's meaning was that he worked for 8 years and 4 months for a millionaire who did not pay him his full and fair wages/benefits.
Darcifoto — February 22, 2012
At least a subset of these 99% tumblr posters might be using "luck" and "lucky" ironically, juxtaposing concepts of justice and fairness with the injustice of arbitrary favoritism. If I feel 'lucky' to enjoy basic human necessities and rights, isn't there something fundamentally off-balance in our society?
I heartily agree with your point that this use of luck might obscure the power structures that lead to some people/races/classes being privileged and others being underprivileged. Yet, I think most of the 99% posters are either a) using luck ironically or b) using luck as a way to express the idea that they do not believe others are less deserving than them or that they have some special "right" to the privileges they enjoy. Being grateful for what you have is part of Judeo-Christian American culture (Thanksgiving is a national holiday!), so may also be part of it. The opposite would be a person who says: "I worked hard for everything I got, never asked for favors, and now I'm living the American Dream because of everything I did--all by myself." This would leave privilege unacknowledged altogether and imply that those who were underprivileged did not work/believe/try hard enough. We're all familiar with THAT rhetoric; it permeates the Tea Party and other Right-wing "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophies that have been used to gut the welfare state with the illusion of fair play and self-determination.
guest — February 22, 2012
Bad luck is getting blindsided by a bus. Bad luck should not mean losing your health insurance because your employer dropped coverage or because you switched jobs or because you were laid off. Health insurance should not be a matter of luck-- of the capriciousness of employers, markets, insurance companies, and for-profit private sector corporate greed. Unfortunately, for a person who cannot find a job with adequate affordable health benefits, finding insurance can seem like getting "lucky."
Frog Doctress — February 23, 2012
A BA and Master's and can't spell "privileged". Wow- wish I had money for college... or a place to live... :/
I’m one of the lucky ones: Hope, Despair, and the Rhetoric of Luck among the 99 Percent | The Dumpling Cart — February 24, 2012
[...] Update: This was published! [...]
Sunday Reading « zunguzungu — February 25, 2012
[...] THE RHETORIC OF LUCK AMONG THE 99 PERCENT [...]
Dianna Fielding — March 5, 2012
I recently conducted an interview over at my blog about someone who participated in the 99% movement by submitting a picture. It's interesting to get the story from the horse's mouth, as it were.
You can check it out: http://www.sociologyfornerds.com/2012/03/interview-with-david-davies-professor.html
He specifically does not use the "luck" rhetoric in his post, though he also takes on a slightly different point of view. He is a college professor who is technically part of the 99%, but is speaking about his students and their debt.
sodium11 — March 10, 2012
One's success and economic privilege can be attributed to intrinsic causes (individual hard work and talent), or extrinsic causes (which can include pure luck, but can also include structural privileges in society along race/class/demographic lines, and specific government policies that deliberately privilege certain people).
I can see why a 1-percenter would focus entirely on the intrinsic causes: they want you to think that it's all hard work, with no external assistance, and that if you're not successful, that means you're just not working hard enough.
Then you have people who are part of the 99% who are getting screwed in many ways, but who still feel a need to acknowledge that there are others who are worse off than they are. For them, especially if they are educated white people, it might be tough to say "I'm getting screwed by the 1%, but I still benefit from white privilege and other institutional advantages that others in the 99% don't have" — either because they are oblivious to white privilege or because they feel it muddies the message and interferes with a superficial feeling of solidarity among the 99%. So, they default to the "luck" explanation for why they have what they have.
Christina Starr — April 12, 2012
luck is part of it, and a whole lot of praying even if you don't believe specifically in any particular God, it's not privilege being broke hurts psychologically, mentally, physically it drains you... and over a long period of time that kind of drain can take more than just a temporary pain, it's a soul killer, I should know, at the same time I'm working, paying off my student loans, hoping to not get sick until I'm out of the "red" and thinking about the future, actually wanted to include my little blog on here for us 99er's, it's recipes for good CHEAP food options and it's been a help for me to research for it and write it, hope it's a help for you as well :)
http://povertynutrition.blogspot.com/
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