[This piece is posted on 'Ekool Ethiopia' in Amharic.]
Some of my Facebook friends make fun of other Facebook users for not
being stylish enough like them, for not knowing Amharic/English the way the
formers do, for not being ‘Arada’ enough and for being comparatively ‘Fara’.
They ridicule the way the formers pose for a photo and also the captions they
use when they post their photographs on social media. The terms ‘Arada’ and
‘Fara’ are both coined by the city dwellers in Ethiopia and ‘Arada’ is a title
given to the “cool”, “cheer leading”, “stylish” people while ‘Fara’ is a label
against those who are oppositely perceived. However, the term ‘Fara’ is mostly
applied to refer to those people who were raised in rural areas and those who
are desperately struggling to urbanize themselves (or trying to look like one).
The division and categorization gets on Facebook from the ground. ‘The Aradas’
consider themselves as superior to ‘the Faras’ and think they deserve better
treatment (megalothymia, as Fukuyama calls it) than those of ‘the Faras’. Even
worse, they think they earned Arada-being. In this piece, I argue otherwise.
What about your privileges?
It is ironical that it is easier for everyone to understand one's
under-privileges but not privileges. Human societies of our planet are built in
multiple and complex hierarchies where everyone despises being at the bottom
but never minds being on top. As it appears to be, at this time and in the most
commonly agreed standards, whites are more privileged than blacks, men are more
privileged than women, the rich are more privileged than the poor, the urbanite
are more privileged than the rural dwelling, the able-bodied are more
privileged than the disabled, the educated than the illiterate and the list
goes on. Consequently, in our global social system, the able-bodied, educated
rich white men who live in urbanized neighborhoods are most privileged people
while the disabled, illiterate poor black women who live in rural areas are the
most underprivileged. However, failing to understand and/or recognize the role
of privileges in our lives do much more damage than the social hierarchies that
existed among us. It is dangerous because we cannot be working to make
adjustments if we don’t understand it.
