your privilege is your superpower

If you’re reading this, you have privilege. You can read and are educated in English. You can access technology and internet connection through a smart device. You have the time to leisurely browse online. Chances are you’ve probably had a cup of coffee and some food today. This might sound small, but it is not the reality for billions of people around the world right now.

Take a moment to reflect on how being told you’re privileged makes you feel. Does it bring up feelings of defensiveness or guilt? Do you feel it minimizes your struggles, implies that you're immune to hardship? You can’t always help having privilege, it may be something you’re born with (i.e. White, male, straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied, dominant beauty features) or something you’ve acquired (i.e. wealth). No one likes to think of themselves as privileged. It’s easier seeing the privilege of others than our own because we have all also experienced oppression and hardship. While that is true, the areas where we experience our privilege have not been the barriers. We may also compare ourselves to those who have more privilege than us further highlighting our oppression and making us unconscious to our advantages and special rights. Power and privilege go hand in hand; the more compounding areas of privilege, the more power and influence you may have.

So what if we looked at privilege differently? What if we started to acknowledge that our privileges are gifts, that they are our innate superpowers? What if, instead of just pointing fingers at those with power and privilege at the large scale, we first looked within, at our own privileges and asked ourselves how we can utilize our positions and identities to be in service of social change?

The big fights matter; but so do the small ones. It’s powerful to take action where you have access to the tools to act. As of recently, due to increased corporate training on unconscious bias, bias is less of a ‘dirty word’. Just as we know, “if you have a brain you have bias”, I would love to get to a place where we as people recognize that privilege is something most of us have to some degree. Privilege is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to dismantle systems of oppression, even if they benefit you.

“White privilege is me bringing up the murders of Black people to my family and them responding they don’t have time to worry about these things because it’s Christmas time and they need some relaxation. White privilege is being able to ignore issues like this because our life doesn’t depend on it. White privilege is being able to turn off the news and watch a TV show and pretend like nothing is happening.” My friend discloses to me over the phone. I am not White but we share the privilege of not having to discuss certain uncomfortable topics and I can learn about the tragic realities of others without direct lived experience . Like those from the Black community, I too have experienced real barriers and bullying due to racism, something foreign to my White friend. However, I hold privileges that my friend doesn’t by being straight (heterosexual). Privilege can be complex and is highly relative, and our human brains can have a hard time not categorizing people in neat boxes of ‘privileged’ and ‘not privileged’, and that’s the problem with discussions of privilege. We look around the room and either resent those privileged or feel guilt by association to privileged groups. When in most cases we are often both privileged and oppressed simultaneously, and if we stepped into our power of privilege to support those marginalized in that arena, we can start leading change.

journal excerpt: an authentic look at our stories: we are both the antagonist and protagonist

We all say we want love, love, love,
we bookmark Sylvia Plath and Bukowski’s
words about wanting other people more 
than they could ever want us,
we like to paint ourselves as lonely,
unrequited lovers of an indifferent universe,
but the truth is we have all broken hearts 
and we have all uttered the phrase, “I need my space,”
and we are all culprits when it comes to hurting and 
being hurt, and this is not a one-sided argument:
some days you are going to be the kicker and 
some days you are going to be the one being 
kicked,
some days you will feel like you love 
too much and
some days you will feel like 
no one could ever pay you enough to 
care about anyone again,
so I suggest we cut the act, come clean, 
let the cat out of the bag, spill the beans–
because we can all be hypocrites, we are all 
devils of deceit, and we are all angels,
no one said we were innocent,
only that we pass pain around 
like side dishes on Thanksgiving, 
and we all receive our helpings eventually.

So how do we shift the conversation around privilege to make it productive and inclusive, allowing us to use our privilege as a superpower?

• Don’t hold yourself personally responsible for all of human history. Conversations about privilege should not be associated with undertones of shame or guilt. Facilitators that don’t create open spaces won’t achieve honest conversations. Yes we need brave spaces, but we also need psychological safety to learn and talk courageously. Our identities are nuanced and intersectional, no one can/should be reduced to one dimension of their identity.
  If you feel guilt for any privilege you have (being middle/upper class, white, cis, straight, able bodied, male, neurotypical, etc.), the important thing to remember is that you are not the people that came before you. You are not your ancestors, you are not your dad or your mom. You are not the people that raised you or the people that committed wrongs to put you where you are in society. Something I had read recently is that, privilege guilt, is often a form of survivor's guilt. You feel bad that other people suffered/are suffering things which you have escaped. It's not the same as a pang of conscience for personal wrongdoing. You are simply aware that you have been the recipient of great luck where others are not so fortunate. It means you have sympathy and compassion for others. Just do your best to help change the future. Recognize what steps up society is giving you. Use those to help people that don’t have them. Own up to your own mistakes and prejudices. Focus on what’s within your control. Educate yourself. Help your friends. Volunteer. 

• Self-reflect. Recognize where you are privileged (likely the parts of your identity that you think about the least) and consider how you can use your platform to speak up for those who aren’t being heard. For example, in my previous workplace I worked with a colleague who was Indigenous and led reconciliation initiatives and hiring from Indigenous communities. As a Recruiter, I noticed that she was often the only one going above and beyond to advocate for her community and I respectfully made space and followed her lead. However for optimal influence and success, I quickly learned she could not be the only one having a strong voice for these candidates. Given that I was a direct Talent Partner with the business, I used my position to get more involved. I started to join her at corporate Indigenous trainings, build relationships with Indigenous community partners and became a secondary voice and ally. Together we were successfully onboarding Indigenous hires above market availability and were shifting biases of our hiring managers. Once you recognize an area of privilege or power, consider how you can use that platform to promote others who don’t share that privilege.

• Listen and trust. The responsibility of educating you does not fall on those oppressed, but they are the ones you will learn the most from in regards to differing needs and experiences. Avoid unsolicited advice, catch yourself any time you counter others with “but, actually” or “well, in my experience”. When people open up and share their stories with you, they are trusting that you will not pick apart their experiences but honour their perspectives.

• Don’t make it personal, now is not a time to defend yourself. When someone tells you that you’re speaking with privilege they’re not telling you that you’re completely clueless, ignorant and unaware. It’s not an insult, or a comment on your morality. What they’re telling you is that you don’t have the lived experiences of that marginalized group, so you are incapable of knowing what it is truly like. They’re telling you that you have the privilege of not facing this specific type of discrimination daily; that you’ve never been exposed to their experiences, and therefore you’re going to underestimate the problem. Matter fact, systematic privilege ultimately helps no one. Let’s shift the conversation to look beyond ourselves personally once we have done some inner reflection, so that at a macro-scale we understand how equity benefits us all; how it would create more prosperous and healthy communities. More for me, does not mean less for you, instead it fills us both. Historically, conversations about privilege have been polarizing (one group benefits and the other group is at a loss) so we immediately have our guards up, but systems of oppression and privilege hurt us all, so let’s frame it that way and get on the same team.

• Interact and work with people different from you. A great start is to assess how diverse your inner circle or workplace team is by trying this Inside Circle Inventory exercise by Jennifer Brown. This allows you to assess whose experiences you have less of an understanding of simply because they are different from you and others in your circle. Once you figure out what diversity dimensions have the least number of X marks, consider learning more about how to include different people in these dimensions into your circle(s). This can be even more increasingly powerful when tailored to be done with your work team and may give you some clues as to who to source for a new role or opening on your team.