How we all have privileges and not realise it

Privilege is a super sensitive and hard topic to discuss which can also be quite dividing, and talking and hearing about it can be hard to handle and understand.

Firstly, I want to say, I almost believe that the reason we get so stuck in our own views in society is because it's so hard to hear or discuss privilege as it sometimes seems invisible to us. And I've learned that over the last two years, when my journey started by understanding the privilege I have as a white person and my life growing up with pretty and skinny privilege. I’ve started to really unpack what this is and what people around me were saying and how different life can be for different people in this generation. Today we could all be living in the same space, but we will all get treated differently and it seems so simple but this is why privilege seems almost invisible to most people. What I mean by that is I think we can never truly understand what other people are going through as we can never experience life as someone else than us. 

For example, as a white woman, I wouldn't know what life would be like as a black woman.

Similarly, I wouldn’t know what it's like to live as a man either, and a man wouldn’t know what it’s like to live as a woman. In the same principle, as a heterosexual person, I don't know what it's like to live as a gay person, or a bisexual person, or as transgender. None of us would really ever know what it’s like living in someone else’s shoes, unless we are faced with the same circumstances as they are.

So straight away there has to be humility in listening. There’s so much work that needs to be done on all levels, especially in our education as young children, to ensure that we get better at appreciating and respecting our differences with each generation. 

Lack of education about privilege in our society

Reflecting on my experience growing up, I understand that I was raised with privilege that was invisible to me. I didn’t know or understand that I had it but at the same time I was benefiting from it and it was impacting my everyday life experiences. Having grown up in an area with a primarily white population, when I was at school, we were taught that everyone looked the same. That everyone is treated the same. But as a white person who holds invisible privilege, we don’t fully understand the different experiences that other people may be faced with. So when we are just living as we are and people are saying that their existence is different to ours, we don’t understand that, we don’t get it. We revert back to our learned response that ‘we all have hardship’ and ‘we all have problems’. But the meaning of truly opening up is understanding that it’s not so much the day-to-day aspects of racism where people are being discluded based on their differences it is much more ingrained.

For example, back in the 90s we all went into a space where enrollment in jobs, college courses and universities had a quota of a certain number of culturally diverse people. Which made this take the form of a sort of tokenism, where people of colour still didn’t feel like they were being equally represented in these societal structures. Which leads to a feeling as if they are a token to the normal. At the same time, white people don’t understand the nuances of this either, as our privilege is invisible to us so then we falsely feel as if we’re being deprived of our equality. Then we start to wonder why is enrolment not based on performance or qualifications, and others are ‘benefiting’ more because of their differences. This is where the problem is, it all becomes entangled into this awful space where we are trying to relieve the symptoms not the cause.

Challenge yourself to listen and educate yourself about others’ struggles

If all of this resonates with you and you still feel like you really can’t understand this ‘privilege’ thing, firstly it’s ok, I didn’t too not that long ago and well done for being brave to admit that but secondly, I want to challenge you to open up and listen, and move away from our habit of gaslighting. What I mean by that is to really try your hardest when you’re listening to somebody who is talking about their daily struggles, or lived experiences to not turn this around and make this about yourself and your struggles or try and form a cognitive sense of it. Because I think that as white people we sort of try to make sense out of it because we just can’t believe that this is their existence. So when a black, black POV friend of yours shares their experience, don’t make this about yourself, and try to really listen and understand that the problem is in fact with our culture and the faulty society we’ve been brought up in. 

As a white woman, for example, I have never been stopped in my car in my entire life, but I understand from just conversations I have had with my friends in the last two years when I approached them that this could be a fairly often an occurrence in the life of a person of colour. Or the fact that black people quite normally from a very young age have to teach their children to always carry ID on them for the fact that they’ve multiple times been mistaken or have been brought in for something that wasn’t their fault. And this is the sad reality of the society and the culture we’re being brought up with and that is continuing to surround us in our everyday life without us even realising. Highlighting that these are just a couple of examples and when you start reading books you start unpacking so much more that isn’t taught in our current curriculum. 

Understanding the need to take accountability

Again all of this culture and this internal ingrained, and the ground we are placed on when we are put here on earth - it isn’t your fault. It isn’t a white person’s fault but what is your fault is if you don’t take accountability to open up and to learn and listen. As for people that are underprivileged, all they're asking for and all they would love is for you to understand their struggles so they can be seen and heard.

Because at the end of the day, this is what it’s all about. It's not about money problems or relationship problems, we all have these and we all have our personal issues. But if you look back systemically into our generations, back even in the 50s, 60s and 70s in the UK there was still a high level of outward day-to-day racism in television programmes and media that almost feels like a poison. Even in terms of political views and parties, their political taglines and election campaigns, full of discriminative language that is just intolerable. And realistically speaking that wasn’t that long ago, and there are still people in our generation that we are a part of that. 

The power of educating yourself and learning to understand underprivileged people

Nowadays we as white people just act like that is a thing of the past and it should just be forgotten. And we wonder what the problem is as we believe it’s all fine now as it’s been a few decades since these things have happened, but the truth is that this poison feels like it’s diluted and diluted with time but this engrained societal bias is very hard to fully remove. However, without educating ourselves this is the reality we’ll continue to live in so I encourage you to pick up some books and understand this space more, and have humility to open up enough to not project but to purely just listen. Books like ‘White Fragility’ (Robin DiAngelo), ‘Me and My White Supremacy’ (Layla Saad), ‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’ (Reni Eddo-Lodge) are just a small example of all the incredible books out there that aim to educate us and bring us a step closer to understanding people of colour better. That made it all make sense for you and forever I am grateful for sharing their incredible work, pain and lived experiences. 

It’s important to just start to open your mind to privilege. I know I’ve primarily focused on the topic of colour here but it’s a big reason that really made me understand that the soil that we're all planted on is different for all of us. But we just don't get it and we don't understand it because it's not our journey, so how could we? 

From my experience, as a person who grew up in an area with about 90% white population, so it was dominantly projected into a Western culture, as a white culture, dominated by white people. So it’s very unrealistic to believe that POC, black, and brown really felt like they had a safe space to be heard and not gaslit. As an example, imagine a young child asking the teacher in school why when they walked down the street people would cross the road so they are not on the same side. In most cases that teacher will not have been trained to understand how to properly support that child instead of going back to the old narrative or her lived experiences. Trying to convince them that probably wasn’t the case and we are all the same and we are all treated the same, when in reality there are countless cases of this behaviour that prove that they are wrong. But instead of giving them the support they need, and educating themselves to have more humility and understanding, they gaslight them and fail to truly support them and help them in these situations. After this continuously happens to them, eventually they just stop talking about it and accept that this is just ‘how things are’ and stop talking about their lived experiences.

Privilege can be found in different forms in our society

The case is similar when it comes to how women feel about patriarchy and misogyny. Or the way men who feel like they are naturally outwardly feminine are made to feel like society disapproves of their nature and that that’s a weakness. Our society systematically gives men the role of ‘the provider’ and expects them to be masculine, to be at the forefront and a strong decision maker. This is just an example of how privilege can leak anywhere and is embedded into the way our society works. Similar to the situation that is currently happening with Molly Mae right now and the way she’s being shamed and the backlash for claiming “everyone has the same 24 hours in a day.” As a society, all we have done is shame and blame, but if we instead used our spaces to ‘blame but also educate as opposed to shaming, this would have a much more useful impact. 

Because the truth is that when someone is being shamed, they just shut down and get defensive because they simply don’t understand and feel like there is no space to even ask questions about why their actions are insensitive, or ‘tone deaf.’ In our aim to ‘set things right’ we actually create more bullying and a bigger divide. We end up creating more spaces where people don’t feel safe to speak, which is the opposite of what we should be aiming for.

What do we need to do in order to move forward?

I truly believe that if we truly want to move forward and really get rid of these internal biases of judgment and have the humility to listen, more people will feel safe to speak and more people will feel like their voices are actually being heard. But in order to get there, we all need to do our part and do our work. As a white person, I truly believe that if we do that it will be freeing and really beneficial, as you’ll just have a better understanding. You will understand humility and understand how to talk and identify with black, brown and people of color. I have experience of so many white people saying that they are afraid of saying anything because they are afraid of saying something wrong. And that comes from a place of having so much privilege that you don’t really understand, but need to take accountability to take the steps to learn more and educate yourself on how to respond to people. How to respond to your friend who is sharing their day-to-day struggles as a gay person, or as an outwardly feminine man or as a transgender person. Men speak to and truly listen to females about the daily struggles like actually having to forward-think outfits and routes based on their safety and how it’s very common to project a toxic masculine outward energy in a job interview for a senior role. Enabled people understand the struggles and routes and how under-represented a disabled person can often feel.

This is where we hold privilege as to who is accepted more in society and who is being more so neglected. Understanding those divides and having humility to see and honour everything in between and what you have. What you have is okay, you don't owe anyone anything, but you should understand what it is. I truly believe in my message and a part of my life's work will be to understand that systemic ladder and being able to come off of it, and using my privileges to do more for the people that have systematically been placed beneath me. That's where I truly believe that if we change things, we will find a way to just move forward into a much kinder, more understood and less aggressive world filled with more compassion and kindness.

Laura Belcher