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Running the Race of Privilege

Amidst my exploration of race in this blog, something I have been thinking a lot about lately is how my own privilege affects my perceptions of and contributions to discussions about diversity and inclusion. I am ashamed to admit that many times in the past, I have shied away or drawn back from conversations because I have felt that as a white person, my limited experience with other cultures has left me ignorant and embarrassed of the things I do not understand. It is at times like these where I have to remind myself that respectfully asking for clarification or explanation is one of the simplest ways humans can demonstrate to each other that they care enough about the other person to try to understand their point of view. Sort of like our classroom deliberations, the goal of the conversation is not for one person to prove that the other is prejudiced or defensive, but rather to come to a baseline level of understanding that everyone’s goal is to feel heard and to improve the situation. To take a deeper look at the ways that privilege shields many of us from accomplishing this, I took a deeper look at a TED Talk called “How to Recognize Privilege — and Uplift those Without It” by Miriam Veiszadeh.

In her TED Talk, Veiszadeh addresses how stereotypes, unconscious bias, and societal privilege work together to create an unequal playing field for minority groups. She likens privilege to being “part of a club” and she compares it to running a race wherein all participants are running at the same speed, but there are a few whose starting lines were farther up than the rest. Those people, even when everyone is running at the same speed and working the same amount, will always be farther ahead because they simply started out the race with the advantage.

As Veiszadeh points out, the scariest thing about privilege is perhaps its ability to camouflage; privilege is relative and subjective, and those who have it aren’t always aware of it.

According to statistics Veiszadeh cited, the human brain takes less than 100 milliseconds to unconsciously assign and categorize the race of another person. This evidence only supports the notion that we cannot be “color blind” because we physically and psychologically are not able to do so. Thus, the more realistic approach to addressing race is to level the playing field itself. While many opponents of pro-minority advantages such as affirmative action argue that these policies or diversity goals are giving minorities a leg up on the rest of the population, in reality, they are simply breaking the glass ceiling and allowing minorities to run the race beginning at the same starting line as the rest of the population. Veiszadeh even references how intersectionality can make this more of a challenge (for more on intersectionality, see my last post), and she refers to her own cultural identity as the “triple whammy” for intersectional insults: she is an Australian woman who’s originally from Afghanistan and a Muslim, and she expresses receiving sexism, racism, and Islamophobia all at the same time. As pessimistic as it may seem to remind ourselves that there is always someone who has it worse than us, this can be an important reminder when it comes to identifying our own privilege and what shape it takes in our daily lives.

For those who may still remain unconvinced by her argument, Veiszadeh also offers statistics about the economic and business benefits of diversity in the workplace. she states that “gender diverse companies are 15 percent more likely to outperform their industry average, while culturally diverse companies are 35 percent more likely to outperform theirs”. She prompts listeners of all backgrounds to consider the benefits of diversity in not only race, but also perspective, thought process, and beliefs. 

Finally, Veiszadeh concludes her talk with an experiment. She asks all audience members to stand, and requests that each time they hear a statement that applies to them, they sit. She asks the following questions:

Did you have a job during high school?

Have you been discriminated against, vilified or abused because of something you cannot change about yourself?

At some point in your life, you have felt like you’ve been one of the few or the only persons of your gender, race, faith, sexual orientation or disability in a room, in an educational or professional setting?

Have you attended a public school for the majority of your education?

After the third question, there are still a relatively high number of individuals standing, but after the final question, all but a few dozen out of 4000 audience members are left on their feet. It’s worth noting that the majority of these standing participants were, in fact, white males.

Veiszadeh does not perform this experiment to shame people about their upbringing, but rather to make people more aware of their own privilege and how it manifests itself in their lives. She even reveals that she herself would still be standing after the public school question. This TED Talk once again emboldened me to keep asking questions about the things I do not understand or have not experienced within the realm of discrimination. I firmly believe that we can all learn something by listening to other people express their emotions, beliefs, and experiences, and this standing/sitting exercise, along with Veiszadeh’s words about the importance of representation and recognizing our own privilege, will stick with me for a long time:

“You can’t aspire to be someone that you can’t see.”