Tag Archives: privilege

Blind spots

I’m dealing with an issue between two students right now and the challenge is that both of their opposing views are valid. The challenge isn’t the points of view, it’s the current climate that makes one view insensitive to the other view. There was no intent to harm, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t harm. Poor communication is another issue, and it might seem like therein lies the problem more so than the stances themselves. However this just amplified the problem.

I can get the students together to eliminate the communication issue, but first I needed to show one of them how their perspective could be perceived differently than intended… I had to show this student how their perspective came from a place of privilege. I shared how I was once blind to my privilege and I think the student understood. Was this student’s statements ‘wrong’? No. Was this student’s statement insensitive? Yes. Could the other student have approached the concern differently? Yes… but here’s the thing, I don’t think it would have been settled any better if the issue was addressed in-person rather than publicly online. When a concern is in your blind spot how are you expected to see it?

Privilege creates blind spots. Politics creates blind spots. Religion creates blind spots. Gender creates blind spots. Anger creates blind spots. Culture creates blind spots. Language creates blind spots. Wealth creates blind spots. Trauma creates blind spots. Power creates blind spots. Ignorance creates blind spots… and the list can go on and on.

We can’t know that we have blind spots until they are shown to us. We don’t see them unless we can be shown things from a different perspective. We need to be empathetic. We need to be open to alternate views. We need to understand that our blind spots don’t inherently make us bad people, but when we are exposed to our blind spots our egos, our sense of right and wrong, need to be tempered.

When we are faced with a perspective that was in our blind spot we need to be open to seeing things from a perspective that’s not our own… and here’s the hard part, not to be judgemental but to be compassionate, empathetic, and willing to see the bias we hold. This is a big ask. But it builds character and helps us grow.

In the student issue I’m dealing with the onus to make things better lies on the person who was blind to their privilege. If that student can’t see the other perspective, if the blind spot remains, well then we have a disagreement that won’t be settled well. But if that student can see the other perspective, then maybe we can come to a satisfactory conclusion. We can focus less on intent and blame, and more on making things better. We can have an honest conversation about how our statements could be seen as insensitive and biased, even though that wasn’t the intent. There was no intention of harm, but harm was done, and if that harm is recognized, well then we can move forward. It becomes a learning experience and not an issue of right versus wrong. That’s one less blind spot, and one more opportunity to help us all get along a little more compassionately.

The free world

The free world isn’t free. It’s not. When a privileged few get to decide what people can and can’t do based on their out-dated beliefs, that’s not free.

More Than 1,500 Books Have Been Banned in Public Schools, and a U.S. House Panel Asks Why

“Most books being targeted for censorship are books that introduce ideas about diversity or our common humanity, books that teach children to recognize and respect humanity in one another,” said the chair of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Rep. Jamie Raskin.

When believers of religious dogma limit the choices of non-believers, that’s not free.

We don’t live in a free world, we live in a world of privileged and unprivileged. A world of bias. A world of inequity.

If I took headlines of today, like the article above, or headlines on abortion laws, or on free speech on college campuses, or on lack of social programs, and I stripped away today’s date, in 25 years you wouldn’t know when the article was written dating back as far as 75 years ago. It’s 2022 but if I told you that the article above was written in the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s, you’d believe me.

Think about that. How much freer have we become? How much more civilized?

Walking in one vs two worlds

I have shared that I’ve been blind to my own privilege. In the post I described how, “Despite my 1/2 Chinese father and my predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish roots, I have a look that Italians mistake for Greek, and Greeks mistake for Italian. I am neither. I’m used to not fitting into any box. In fact, whenever I have to fill out a survey that asked my race, I never check ‘white’. I always choose ‘Other’.“

But I am privileged. I pass as a white person even if I don’t identify as one. I am an immigrant, but that’s not something anyone assumes of me… meanwhile there are many second, third, fourth generation Canadians that might be thought of or assumed to be immigrants because of their appearance. I don’t have to live in 2 worlds. I don’t have to think about how others will perceive me. I don’t have to think about biases that people will judge me on based on my appearance.

This is why privileged people don’t notice their own privilege. When you live in just one world, you don’t know that you are missing another world that others have to deal with. The absence of something you’ve never had to deal with is not something that you know you are missing.

If you have never been hungry because you can’t afford food, you don’t really understand hunger. If your whole life you’ve seen a full spectrum of colours, you don’t know what it’s like to be colourblind. If you don’t have a learning disability, it’s hard to understand why someone with one can’t learn the same way as you.

Now flip it around, if you have gone really hungry, actually starving, and you’ve also seen people not ever face this, you understand there are two worlds. If you are colourblind and you are around people identifying things by colours you can’t see, you know that you are missing out, and likely always will. If you have a learning disability you get to watch others not struggle learning a relatively simple concept, while you do.

When you live in two worlds and you are disadvantaged in some way, it’s easy to see the privilege of not having to live in both worlds. When you live in just one, it’s harder to see the absence of the second world as being privileged. But it is.

The chasm between tolerance and acceptance

I am struggling to express my thoughts about how we have to move from a world of tolerance, to one of acceptance.

When I listen to this reflection by Trevor Noah:

I understand the challenge of living on different sides of a social contract that does not measure the treatment of people equally, while still expecting the social contract to continue.

When I read these words by Barack Obama:

“It’s natural to wish for life “to just get back to normal” as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly “normal” – whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.
This shouldn’t be “normal” in 2020 America. It can’t be “normal.” If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.”

I think about my bias regarding what “normal” looks like. I also think of how easy it is to put everyone’s experiences into dichotomous polarities, and miss the nuances of a spectrum of perspectives, and a spectrum of human experiences.

I learned a long time ago how I can be biased to my own privilege, but that didn’t make my privilege disappear. Actually, it heightened my understanding of just how privileged I am. We tend not to see our privilege, and we tend to misunderstand how privilege breeds tolerance rather than acceptance. Privilege blinds us to how someone else’s experience could be so much different than our own.

In January, I shared a Martin Luther King quote from his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail“. I said,

The last two sentences chill me,

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I think about how few extremists there are in the world, despite how much media coverage they get. Beyond the news, most people are not exposed to extremists. We are all exposed to moderates. So, in the day to day living of most people, hate is not something we see, however shallow understanding is.

In many places there is tolerance masquerading as acceptance. This to me is what slows down progress. It’s not the wing-nuts on the extremes spewing dogmatism… Although their stance plays a role in allowing others to justify their tolerance as acceptance, since that tolerance can be justified as moderate. But it’s the complacent, shallow, (lukewarm) moderates that hinder genuine acceptance… because this population is huge. This population is blind or ignorant to their own prejudice; this population performs daily interactions that infringe on the true acceptance of ‘others’, without knowing it.

As long as the conversation is about tolerance, it will not ever get to acceptance. The chasm between the two isn’t just large, it is impossible to traverse.

First we must accept that the human condition for some is unimaginably different than ours.

Next we must accept that privilege is also a human condition. It is not earned, it is bestowed whether we want it or not.

Then things get nuanced. Privilege is not something to be blamed for having, but it is something that warrants us to recognize, accept, and be humbled by. It carries authority, power, and status, which need to be consciously and intentionally recognized. From here we can accept that others are less privileged than us. I do not worry about where my next meal will come from. I do not worry that I might not be able to afford a hospital visit. I do not worry about someone misunderstanding or judging me because of my accent. I do not think about the colour of my skin when I must face someone with authority over me in a stressful situation.

If I have less privilege, I am sometimes/often forced to be concerned about tolerance. I hope for acceptance, but I come across those that are privileged that expect me to see the world through their eyes, their ‘struggles’, and their willingness to tolerate our differences, while calling it acceptance. What I see is that others have ‘supremacy’. That word carries a powerful charge with it. That word can change the conversation. But that word is no different than what I’ve already said. Just a paragraph ago I said of privilege, “It carries authority, power, and status, which need to be consciously and intentionally recognized.” The very definition of supremacy is ‘the state or condition of being superior to all others in authority, power, or status’.

Again the chasm runs deep and wide.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” ~Martin Luther King

Who are the people of good will? What can they do to go beyond shallow acceptance?

The challenge is that uprisings and protest, while sadly necessary, confuse or even anger many with privilege. The privileged don’t understand the social contract was broken before the unrest (as shared in the Trevor Noah video above). They don’t see that it is only happening because society is not living up to its highest ideals and that ‘we can and must do better’ (as shared by Barack Obama above). They/we do not see that our acceptance is just lukewarm, tolerance masquerading as acceptance. Instead privilege permits us to cringe at terms like ‘white supremacy culture’ and point the finger outwards to more extreme views and say, “That term belongs over there, not with me!” Instead there are conversations of being ‘colorblind’, of ‘not seeing race’, and of denying privilege because ‘I have struggles too’.

Shallow understanding. Shallow acceptance. Shallowness is the enemy of progress. Shallowness prevents us from identifying systemic wrongdoing, identifying underlying injustices, and being positively responsive to cultural differences. Shallowness creates a difference in perception as it relates to authority, power, and status in the eyes of those with and without privilege, such that each are blind to the other.

“I don’t know what your problem is?”

“I don’t know how you can’t see that you are part of the problem?”

Tolerance helps us get along until the contracts are visibly broken (again, again, and again). Acceptance is not about accepting others, it’s about accepting our own privilege. Accepting that we must see justice from the eyes of those that live in an unjust world. We must accept that if we do not venture into the deep, and speak out on injustice, then we shall remain in the shallows of an intolerant world pretending to be tolerant.

Acceptance isn’t someone else’s work, it is ours… all of ours, but especially the work of anyone who was born with, or gifted with, any form of privilege.

Wealth, privilege, and charity

The challenges ahead are easy to understate and misunderstand. Things are still likely to get worse before they get better with respect to covid-19. Even when things open up, the virus will still likely plague us until there is a vaccine. Many jobs will not return, and the prospects for many will include requiring financial assistance, and/or abandoning mortgages that can no longer be afforded.

So when people like Jack Dorsey donate:

“$1 billion, or almost 30% of his net worth, to first fight the coronavirus and then help the causes of girls’ health and education, as well as experiment with universal basic income.” (Source)

This is amazing to see! And he isn’t the only one. Bill Gates is leading the charge to find a vaccine. Athletes are donating to food banks. Oprah, Rihanna, and Bono, three people so well known that they only need one name, have all stepped up to make significant donations to help during this crisis. Beyond that, countless middle class people are supporting their communities in their own way. A local archery club is donating lessons in exchange for food bank donations. People are making masks and hospital caps to donate. Some people are even doing things like paying their hair salon stylist after cutting their own hair. People everywhere are finding ways to be charitable. This is wonderful to see, and rewarding for those that are being charitable as well as those receiving charity.

But I wonder about the ultra wealthy and their total contributions. How many people with more than $100 million in the bank are really doing their part? It’s easy to be blind to your privilege, to not recognize that what you take for granted is what others cannot. I think that many of these wealthy people only see the billionaires ‘ahead’ of them, and not those with less doing more. And as for the billionaires, well they have no excuse.

It saddens me that people who are the most privileged do not have the charitable hearts that so many less privileged people do. The wealth inequity in our world is grotesquely skewed and now more than ever is the time for the privileged wealthy to do their part. Will they?

Blind to My Privilege

Part 1. “You silenced my voice.”

It was the summer of 2006 and I was spending five weeks in Eugene, Oregon, completing my Master’s degree. I was there with a cohort of teachers from Coquitlam, BC, Canada, and we had many classes together. A colleague Christine and I had every class together, including a Statistics class we had where there was also a larger cohort of new Oregon teachers who were much younger than us.

These early to mid-20 year olds were in a program where students did a masters right after their teaching practicum. I think at the time the US ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy demanded teachers have so much additional education within the first few years of teaching, beyond their teaching degree, that moving to your masters level before starting teaching made more sense than starting teaching then adding credentials while you taught.

It was the last week of school, in this Stats class, that I learned a valuable lesson about my privilege. The class was being taught by the Teaching Assistant, who we knew because she was also our program faculty advisor. The lesson centered around research done in a school. The data was tracked by race among other variables. I don’t remember why, almost 14 years later, but the data was interesting and the fact that race mattered was relevant to the lesson.

After the lesson one of us, Christine or I, had a question and since we were living one floor apart in the same complex and walked to and from class together, we waited together to speak to the Teaching Assistant. In front of us, a younger, female, (*I assume) Chinese-descent American student was talking to the Teaching Assistant. This student was saying that she thought it was not appropriate to bring up race in the example given in class. I don’t remember if Christine or I interjected first, but we joined the conversation. We didn’t see things the same way as this student. We couldn’t figure out what we were missing? After that conversation was over we finished up with the Teaching Assistant and headed for the door. Before leaving the class, the Chinese American student came up to us and said, “You silenced my voice.”

We asked for clarification, and she explained that she had an issue around race that she was trying to address with the teaching assistant and we interjected and silenced her. We dismissed her concerns and she felt hurt that we had done this to her.

We apologized.

We insisted it wasn’t intentional. She told us this wasn’t about our intentions, it was about how we made her feel. She had a concern, and we dismissed it, we silenced her.

We apologized again.

The walk home was solemn. Christine and I felt awful. We both shed more than one tear. We tried to rationalize our participation in the conversation, but no matter the reason, we could only see that we caused hurt. Our words had power, and that power usurped the power from someone who felt less privileged than us. Our reasons didn’t matter. We were two older, white people who were dismissing the ideas of a younger minority.

Part 2. Rationalizing my blindness

I will preface this rationale with an important clarification: This is not a justification of any kind, it is in fact evidence of my blindness to my own privilege.

My family: My wife describes me as ‘a Chinese Jew from Barbados’. My grandmother on my dad’s side is full Chinese. I have many cousins and second cousins who are full, half, and quarter Chinese. Those that are mixed have mostly white, but also black, and East Indian parents.

When I described the minority student who we silenced, I described her as “(*I assume) Chinese-descent American student“. It’s an assumption because I didn’t ask. What informed my guess was that she didn’t look like another kind of Asian, she looked like family. She had the look of one of my mixed cousins who are mostly Chinese. She wasn’t ‘other’, she was ‘like me and my family’.

That said, I don’t look a lot like that part of the family. Despite my 1/2 Chinese father and my predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish roots, I have a look that Italians mistake for Greek, and Greeks mistake for Italian. I am neither. I’m used to not fitting into any box. In fact, whenever I have to fill out a survey that asked my race, I never check ‘white’. I always choose ‘Other’.

So when I saw this student, I saw family, someone like me. She didn’t see a likeness. She didn’t even see an ‘other’. She saw a white guy… An older white guy and an older white woman, both taking away her minority voice, on the topic of race in a classroom.

My context: I was in a school of higher learning. I was in the last week of a 2-year program where I was invited on a regular basis to challenge the thinking of others. I was comfortable in this role with the Teaching Assistant, (our program advisor), and with Christine. With Christine the metaphorical gloves were always off. We fully engaged in challenging each other’s ideas.

Many a day leading up to that last week Christine and I, both educational nerds, would continue our classroom conversations all the way home. Often, we would arrive at the complex, where we would head our separate ways, but we would remain there for 10, 15, even 30 minutes continuing the conversation.

We saw discourse and disagreement as learning opportunities. We were comfortable with this. We were comfortable doing this with our advisor. But this other student was not part of our community where this was the norm. Besides that, the topic had a very specific charge for her, and we were totally ignorant to it. We were also blind and ignorant to the very different charge that our discourse had.

Part 3. I silenced her voice

I will reiterate: My rationalization above is not a justification of any kind, it is in fact evidence of my blindness to my own privilege. I lacked awareness of my privilege. I could not see it. But my lack of awareness does not negate my privilege.

It does not matter that I did not see her as a minority. It matters that she was one in her eyes.

It does not matter that I thought I was joining a learning conversation. It matters that by joining the conversation, I took away her ability to address a concern with her teacher.

It does not matter that it was not our intention to silence her. It matters that our interruption led to us diminishing her voice.

I am glad that she spoke up. I’m sorry because an apology didn’t feel like enough. I’m also sorry because I have to wonder, when have I done something similar and the person felt they couldn’t speak up?

I know how hard it is, I’ve heard slurs that impact my heritage, and I’ve had to choose when to and when not to say something. But even there I speak from a place of privilege. Those slurs were not directed at me, a person who looks like an ‘other’ to the slur. I don’t live in a sphere where I have to think about my race, and how others will perceive me on a regular basis.

Even in my years that I lived in Barbados and later in China, where I was an obvious minority, I was still in a privileged minority. I didn’t always feel that way, but my experiences that were positive far exceeded the negative. That is not the case for everyone.

If I’m in a conversation where someone will feel silenced, it likely will be me being the imposer, rather than the silenced. Even now, in my current job, I’m further put into that imposing position as a principal talking to students.

Part 4. Accountability

When I made the mistake of silencing this student’s voice I was blind to my privilege and did not see my error. I apologized. I cried. I learned a valuable lesson. I am more aware now of how my privilege can be unintentionally imposed on others.

This experience made me more aware of race and its impact on minorities. I’m bothered that while my heritage is mixed I don’t need to identify with any race, and other people need to; that my privilege gives me a pass that others don’t get.

But that pass does not excuse me from anything. In fact it makes me more responsible to recognize my privilege and to be aware that it can affect others. Being more aware and responsible doesn’t fix everything. I will still have blind spots. If we could see into our own blind spots, they wouldn’t actually be blind.

I will make mistakes. Some of those mistakes will be shared with me and I need to be accountable for how my words and deeds affect others. When the effect is negative, rationalizations are not what is needed, apologies and reparations are.

To ignore my privilege is to be doubly privileged. This is hurtful and arrogant.

If I am blind to my own privilege, it should not be because I have shut my eyes. It should only be because I was not aware… and when I am made aware, I need to be responsive and hold myself accountable. This can’t happen unless I recognize my own privilege.