Hi folks, I hope you are doing ok? This week we are meeting at 7.30 in The Brewery https://www.whitleybaybrew.com/our-sites/thebrewary It would be lovely to see you if you are able to come along. This week we are thinking about ‘A question of inequality/privilege’ It’s written by Rachel.
Everything in this blog post I learned – or took directly – from someone else’s work. I especially draw heavily on Chapter 4 of So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo which is called “Why am I always being told to check my privilege?” It is excellent – I highly recommend it.
When I was growing up the word “privilege” was nothing to be ashamed of. If my mum or dad ever said “Wow, what a privilege…” they were talking about a good thing – it meant I was lucky, honoured…like the ‘privilege’ of being allowed to stay up late with the grownups, or the ‘privilege’ of being invited to play a special role at a relative’s wedding.
Now though, if someone points out your “privilege” it might feel like an accusation – and it might trigger feelings of defensiveness, dismissal, awkwardness, shame or guilt. Or, you might be tempted to acknowledge your privilege to show how “woke” or “progressive” you are. But what could we do about inequality if we could get past all of that?
Olua says that ““Privilege, in the social justice context, is an advantage or set of advantages that you have that others do not.” She goes on to explain that even though your hard work might have contributed to some of these advantages, you didn’t 100% earn them. Maybe you were born with these advantages (like your gender, or a paler skin colour than others) or maybe it was easier for you to get some advantages than it was for other people (like a university degree, or your own place to live).
Olua says “It is in these advantages and their coupled disadvantages that the health and wellbeing of large amounts of people are often determined.” Privileges can actually determine the outcome of our lives – this cartoon illustrates it really well.
One of the reasons privileges have such a huge impact, is that they give us benefits that have nothing to do with the privilege. For example, as Olua points out, it makes sense that a college/university degree would give you better access to jobs related to that degree, but “it isn’t deserving of the general reputation that I, as a college graduate, am a smarter, more responsible, and more valuable citizen than those without a degree…” Similarly, your accent has nothing to do with your intelligence, capabilities or work ethic, but regional accents from places like the North of England can be barriers to success in universities and workplaces in the UK (source).
This means there are advantages that help you get certain benefits, and then once you’ve got those benefits, they help you get more advantages, sometimes in totally unrelated things – so privileges compound over time (seriously, if you haven’t done it already, you should check out this cartoon – it says it better than I can!).
All of this is often invisible to us. Meanwhile, our hard work and effort is very visible to us. For example, at work, everyone I have met so far can pronounce my name right and correctly gender me on the first attempt, people understand me well when I present, and none of my colleagues speak loudly or slowly to me thinking that I can’t understand them. I also work very hard at work. All of those factors (and many others) contribute to how well I do at work, but I’m much more likely to notice my late nights on the laptop than I am to notice someone not mocking me for my accent…
I would very quickly notice if they did though. The reality is that privileges are almost always much more visible to people who don’t have them than they are to people who do.
None of this means that if you have lots of privileges your life is easy, or that you’ve never been treated unfairly. It just means, as one -person put it, you might not have noticed that relative to everyone else, you’re playing the video game of life on one of the “lowest difficulty settings.”
We ALL have privileges (even if we also have lots of disadvantages), and those privileges give us advantages over others. We can’t have an advantage without it being someone else’s disadvantage. That is an uncomfortable truth, but it’s only by acknowledging this inequality that we can begin to change things. If we refuse to acknowledge it, we’re implying that we deserve all the advantages we have – that other people don’t have the same benefits we do because they don’t deserve them. By refusing to acknowledge our privilege we can actually perpetuate other people’s struggles and make them even harder.
Olua suggests a few things we can do about privilege:
- List all the advantages you have that you can think of. Don’t be tempted to list disadvantages – this is not the time for that. Do this exercise once a year. (If you’re struggling to get started, you can find lots of ideas to get you started online, by googling “privilege checklist” or “how privileged are you?” Example here – but it is American)
- Try to get used to the pang of discomfort that comes with recognising your privilege, so that you’re less defensive about it when it comes up in a heated moment and also so that you’re more empathetic when you think other people are not checking their privilege.
- If someone points out your privilege, even if they do not do it kindly, thank them. It is a kindness that they are making it visible to you, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
- Seek out work (books, films, social media, podcasts, music, articles etc.) by people who don’t have your same privilege.
- Listen carefully when people who don’t have the same privileges as you are speaking.
- Actively notice when you are getting advantages that others aren’t. Those situations – the ones where you are benefiting – are the ones you can do something about. Speak up and use your advantages (finances, political power, influence, voice) to contribute to others getting those same benefits.
“The possibilities of where you can leverage your privilege to make real, measurable change toward a better world are endless. Every day you are given opportunities to make the world better, by making yourself a little uncomfortable and asking, “who doesn’t have this same freedom or opportunity that I’m enjoying now?” – Ijeoma Olua
Questions:
- Do you remember any fun or special “privileges” from your childhood?
- Olua says ““We don’t want to think that we are harming others, we do not want to believe that we do not deserve everything we have, and we do not want to think of ourselves as ignorant of how our world works…” Is there anything about the discussion of privilege that makes you uncomfortable?
- Individually do the exercise of listing out all the advantages you have that you can think of (don’t be tempted to list your disadvantages!), then as a group discuss any ‘aha’ moments you had. (To get you started, you could think about family and caregivers, race, ethnicity, and culture, nationality and citizenship, physical and mental health, religion, gender, sexuality, linguistics, your finances, your work…)
- Can you think of examples of where someone used a privilege that they have to improve things for people without that privilege? Have you ever tried to do that? How did it go?
- Can you think of one action you could take from the list of suggestions above?
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
Rob Wylie is the founder of BeachcomberFX and guides its leadership team. He has worked in the North East for over 20 years and has vast experience from various roles he has held. He has a passion for Fresh Expressions of Church and Pioneer Ministry as well as beer, beaches and Miniature Schnauzers.