I will begin with my usual caveats.
First, yes, I’m about to talk about what we might call Upper
Middle Class Problems (or Upper Middle Income, but most don’t think about the
difference between wealth and income, so I’m trying to keep it simple). This
might seem ridiculous in the face of the reality that the vast majority of the
world’s population will never see the inside of a plane. But I’m talking
specifically here about a small portion of the world’s population: those who
travel for work. A whole lot of us live in the U.S. Probably a quarter of my
friends are like me: business travelers. Upgrade-hunting, frequent flyer
mile-hoarding, million-miler, spending real money on high-quality luggage,
hotel point-collecting business travelers. Now that I work at one of the six
agencies of a mainline denomination. While I travel a lot, my travel schedule
is paltry compared to the travel of many of my colleagues. I have many
colleagues who fly to all corners of the world, not just the U.S.
Second, the travel thing. There is travel
Yay! I’m going to see my niece! All
I need are a few pairs of jeans and some t-shirts!
Or
Yay! I’m going to see some grad
school classmates, and we are going to learn a little bit and then go to the
beach/drink/go on a cruise!
And then there is travel
I will be in four hotel rooms in
nine days, work 12-15 hours most of those days, and pass through three airports!
Bring the business cards!
In my life, I do plenty of the first category of travel.
That’s because I have been moving further and further away from my family, and
my friends are spread all over the country. I move for work. I live in the
peachy state of Georgia, and am moving to Kentucky. Most of my family members
(on my side) live in California, Oregon, and Washington. Name a major
metropolitan area somewhere in the U.S. and I could name friends I could visit,
or great colleagues I’d like to see. Travel is a fact of life for me.
In my work, I do lots of the last category of travel. That
is how I spend most of my time, actually. I love it. I love meeting people,
finding new-to-me locally-owned restaurants, visiting churches all over the
country (world), and figuring out how to take public transportation in Chicago,
or Philadelphia, or New York, or San Francisco. But it does mean I spend a
whole lot of time considering how to be a better traveler. In terms of
lifestyle, I have more in common with frequent flyers than with a parish
pastor.
Third, the “like a Christian” thing. I am aware that carbon
emissions from flights are a major contributor to climate change. In fact, air
travel is one of the worst things I could be doing for the environment (see NY Times article "Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel" here), not necessarily outweighed by living in a reasonably-sized
townhouse with shared walls (cutting down on electricity needed to heat/cool
said townhouse), or all the recycling I do (my HOA board told me to take photos
of the worst recycling offenses in our complex for circulation, because I’m
that person), or that the two grownups in my household share one car, or that
we grow our own herbs and a few vegetables. In fact, my heavy travel may be one
of the least Christian actions I take, along with my strongly judge-y
tendencies, the fact that I like to wear leather without knowing where it comes
from or if it was ethically sourced (Boots, people! Boots!), and that I get
really, really mad at slow drivers in the far left-hand lane on the freeway.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
What can Christians do? We can ignore what we’re doing. We
could also consider building travel carbon off-sets into our budgets. Yes, what
if the budgets of every non-profit and religious organization included a line
for carbon off-sets? That would be amazing! It wouldn’t solve the problem, but
could go a long way to acknowledging our Christian responsibility to caring for
the whole creation.
(We could also cut back on travel, but just an FYI, anyone
who works in a sector in the U.S. that isn’t exactly booming has already done
that, and now is more discerning about travel versus some other kind of
electronic interaction.)
Fourth, on privilege. Let’s be clear that those of us who
have jobs that require travel have privilege. I have the creds to get the jobs
I have held, which are all thanks to privilege. Education? Check (thanks,
privilege!). Fluent in English? Check (only in the U.S. is English-only a
privilege, but that’s another blog post). Appropriate work experience? Check
(thanks, privilege!). When I travel for work, thanks to the privilege that gets
me into these jobs, I get more privilege! Yep. Privilege begets more privilege.
I get status on the airline I fly most, so now I get to board earlier than occasional
travelers. I get free checked bags, whether I travel for work or for vacation.
I get the seat I want, without paying extra. In a former job, I had the credit
card that got me into the airline club. I didn’t have to pay for coffee or
breakfast or snacks or internet access, because the club had all that. I saved
money because my office paid for the credit card.
Privilege is relative. Travel is really hard on the body,
and it can become a grind, especially when you realize you haven’t had time to
do more than dump the last two trips’ worth of clothes on the floor, refill
your little travel bottles of shampoo and moisturizer, and take off again.
There are also those moments when you’re me (a 30-something woman of color), and
you have to choose your lodging carefully, because violence is a fact of life.
Or you’re me (30-something woman of color who stands at 5’4”) and people
line-jump you because they DON’T EVEN REALIZE YOU EXIST. Or you’re me and
you’re standing in a line of white middle-aged men in suits boarding a plane,
and you realize how many of them get that airline status, and how few of you
get that status. Privilege is still relative. I might have it, but I’m always
clear how unique that is. When I could get into the airline club, I used to silently congratulate myself for being its integration, whether by
age, gender, or racial background. My individual relative privilege, let’s be
clear, doesn’t change the fact that the group I belong to (people of color),
does not hold institutional power and privilege equivalent to that of white
people.
There are exceptions, but by and large my experience (and
most data show) is that white and male power and privilege are real. If you
feel tempted to argue with this, just look at the composition of the first
class cabin in your next flight. Those (mostly) white (mostly) men got there
because they either bought those first class tickets (hello, class privilege),
but on many flights, often because they are more likely than any other group to
work in positions for for-profit companies that purchase full-price refundable
tickets, allowing them to accrue airline rewards much more quickly than the
average non-profit worker or one who travels infrequently due to family
responsibilities or the particular job sector or position. These (mostly) white
(mostly) men also have the family structure that allows them to travel a lot.
If they have kids, that means they aren’t the primary care-giver. And that’s a
whole other blog post.
Enough for this edition.
Next Edition: How to Travel Like a Christian, SecondEdition: Respecting People, Also Known As God’s Creation
Resources to help Christians think through what to do about
the environment, economic justice, and other contemporary social issues. Oh,
and on white privilege.
Air Pollution: Inside & Out
Adult Downloadable Study by Megan Pillow Davis
Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community,
and World
By Pamela K. Brubaker, Rebecca Todd Peters, Laura A. Stivers
To Do Justice: A Guide for Progressive Christians
By Rebecca Todd Peters & Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty
White Privilege
Adult Downloadable Study by David V. Esterline
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