Knowing yourself includes knowing your privilege…

Knowing yourself includes knowing your privilege… and being ok with it

Privilege is a hot topic right now in both the business and broader socio-political landscape. It is a space in which I, like many others, have strong feelings. However, this does not mean I am right or my perspective is more valid than others, a good thing to remember as people rush to yell at each other in the street, boardroom or on social media.?

Like many young, straight white men who have and had privilege in their background I at first was not particularly aware of it. I was not na?ve enough to believe that everyone was born or raised in a home like mine and it was more than once that I was reminded to “eat all my food because there are people starving in Africa”, (a useless phrase in my opinion). However, whilst we live in a world obsessed with pretending to be empathetic on LinkedIn the truth for me was I was not particularly good at putting myself in the shoes of others as a kid or young adult and on top of this I didn’t find everything easy. For example when I first joined the corporate workforce after my Master’s Degree I applied for 50-80 jobs before landing one… when you are doing this you don’t tend to spend your time thinking “well, it could be worse if I were someone else with a different gender identity, name, ethnicity or socio-cultural background”. This is not to say I had a particularly hard time, I didn't. It is simply that I had not developed the skills and experience to hold two ideas in my head simultaneously: that I have considerable privilege and that life can still be hard.?

I do believe that a lot of the conversation around privilege is hampered by a failure on both sides to be able to sit with these two ideas and hold them both simultaneously as true. Those who wish to rally against those with privilege often seem to lack the empathy to realise that those with privilege may be having a subjectively and at times objectively difficult time. Whilst those with privilege who become defensive around the conversation often fail to realise that they can have privilege and that does not mean that they have never worked hard, nor that they will be free of suffering. A real sadness of this is that whilst there are infinite numbers of ways to have (or not have) privilege, from obvious factors like skin colour and gender, through to complex factors like inherited psychological or genetic features, we are all much more alike than we believe and we all suffer.?

As a younger man I certainly was inclined to lean more towards the side of becoming defensive around the idea of privilege. However, one of the most valuable experiences I have had in life is shifting from this perspective to one where I now feel capable of holding two ideas as true simultaneously: that in many ways I had and have privilege, and that whilst this is ok and does not invalidate my experiences of hardship or hard work it does imbue certain responsibility also. Moving from one mental model to another took time, specific research and most importantly conversation and connection. I want to give you a glimpse into two of these conversations and the impact that they had.?

The first was with another straight, white man who was about 30 years my senior. This man, like me, had spent a good portion of his younger life dealing with alcohol and drug addiction. As we talked he explained an emotional backstory that mirrored mine with near perfect precision. He described a young man who did not ever feel ok, who did not know what was wrong but knew something was, who was anxious and scared, who disliked people being unkind and violent and yet found themselves in deeply violent situations because the fear of cowardice exceeded the fear of violence itself. He described how alcohol and drugs removed this fear, anxiety, uncertainty and feelings of being fundamentally “wrong and broken”. This man's story mirrored mine in every way… except that while I had grown up on Sydney’s North Shore and Northern Beaches, had two loving parents, had money, had access to good legal representation and had early access and intervention from mental health professionals, he had grown up in the opposite circumstances. The only thing that separated me, at the time an advisor to executives across the world, and this man, who had spent years in prison and outlaw motorcycle gangs, was our circumstances and that if the privileges were reversed it would be quite likely the end result would have been too.?

The second conversation that deeply impacted my realisation of privilege was with a fellow ultra-runner, a woman. The nature of being an ultra-runner, as you may have guessed, is to spend a lot of time running, from city streets after work to long lonely trails on your own. As we talked, this woman highlighted the fear and discomfort that she often had whilst running alone at night, in the forests or in city streets. She detailed cat calls and groups of males yelling profanities. The interesting element in this was not that I had never experienced these things, I have. Whilst I am sure that the volume of incidents she experienced was more than mine the nature had been similar, on the surface. I had been wolf whistled at and cat called (it might be worth mentioning that at this stage I was in decent nick). The not-so-subtle difference here was not the words or actions themselves, it was the context. Where we had both experienced these things happening in a playful manner, only she had experienced them with an undertone of threat, menace and possession. Further, I am over 6 foot and weigh 90-95kg depending on my training cycle and my intake of cakes; I have never felt threatened physically, sexually or emotionally by women making cat calls whilst I run. This is simply not the same thing for someone who weighs just over half that amount… The words and actions may be the same, but the context makes this a completely different and much more scary experience. Many of the defensive arguments around privilege cite experiencing similar things (I’ve had my bum pinched in a bar too), but fail to account for context and non-verbally conveyed intentions.

So, what is the point of this set of stories???

For me it comes down to three things:

Firstly, I believe the more people who can recognise where they have privilege whilst also understanding that their life can still be hard and it does not discount their hard work or suffering will lead to more people being able to have a less polarised and more constructive conversation. Hopefully, leading to better outcomes for all.?

Secondly, I believe that helping to show, without demonising people, the potential to shift a mindset in this area, as new information and new conversation emerges is critical to helping others make progress.?

Thirdly, I think a lot of people are stuck in a defensive mental model regarding this topic because they believe that it will not benefit them to inwardly or outwardly accept that they have been subject to some form of privilege. To my mind this is fundamentally untrue, recognising an area of privilege in your own life allows room for :

• Gratitude which is deeply correlated with contentedness and satisfaction, and?
• Service which, counter-intuitively but almost universally, leads to better quality of life for the person being of service

Feel free to give me a yell in the comments, DM’s or at [email protected] if this resonates with you and you want to start a conversation!!