Leveraging Privilege
(or How I realised my experience of marginalisation combined with my privilege, can help make me a better advocate)
In my first job, right out of high school, I worked for an organisation that supported youth in care in various ways. From advocacy training to just hanging out, our focus was providing support to young people in the child welfare system, or who had recently left it.
As the first staff ever hired there who wasn’t from care, I was an anomaly. I had no experience with the welfare system, either child or adult, but had been given the job thanks to my time as a volunteer with a related group. While I could do most of the job really well, I often took a back seat during training workshops we did for people working with the youth we supported. It was best to have former youth-in-care explaining their experience — the stigma they faced, and what navigating a complicated and often ineffective system is like when you’re a kid.
One day, however, I was the perfect person to speak up, specifically to speak from my experience as the child of a middle/working-class family.
But first, a bit of background: The provincial government had put aside a large chunk of money to help young adults in the child welfare system gain access to a post-secondary education. This was a genuine attempt on the part of the government to address the perpetuation of poverty due to a lack of opportunity and resources. It was about giving these kids access to an education they couldn’t otherwise afford. It was really simple: If you were in care for at least three years in the province of Alberta, and applying for university or college, you were eligible for a grant to help cover a significant portion of the costs of going to school.
Our job was to assist kids with the rather arduous and bureaucratic process of applying, as well as to spread the word so eligible youth knew about the grant. We would give talks to group home staff and social workers, explaining the grant, and invite them to tell the youth they worked with to get in touch with us.
At one such workshop, a woman put her hand up and asked why, exactly, youth-in-care were getting a ‘free ride’ for their education. She stated that she wasn’t from care, and she’d had to pay for her education herself. That she’d managed to pay rent, go to school and work. That she had earned her education, and it wasn’t fair that these kids should get ‘special treatment’.
My co-worker, who was doing the presentation, didn’t know how to begin to explain why this grant was so important, beyond what she had already presented — which was along the lines of my explanation above.
But I had an idea of how to get it across to her.
I asked the woman if she had a good relationship with her parents and she said she did. I asked her if they were still married and she told me they were. I asked her about her upbringing and if, when she was paying her way through school, she felt supported by her family. I asked her if she ever went to her parent’s house for meals or took home food from their fridge. I asked if they taught her how to manage her time so she could balance school and work. She answered affirmatively to all this, even laughing a bit about the fridge. Then I asked her if they taught her how to budget.
She looked a bit sheepish as she conceded that yes, her family was a huge support to her while she was earning her education, paying her “own” way and covering rent.
I saw so much of myself in that woman, who saw what was a rare opportunity for someone else as unfair. Before getting that job, I’d been just as naive about what it was like to be in the child welfare system. Until I started working there, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know how lucky I was to have the stability I had growing up, nor the unearned privileges granted to me as a white person living in a white supremacist society. I didn’t know what the benefits of that really were. I didn’t see the incredible security it gave me. But I also knew how my co-worker felt. I knew that flabbergasted moment when someone we encounter is utterly clueless about how clueless they are to experiences that differ from their own.
This was back in 2004. The Internet looked very different, and the waves of social justice movements we’re seeing right now weren’t happening then. A lot has changed in the conversations we are having and how we have them. Privilege is a buzzword these days, and synonymous with being a ‘bad’ person, unfortunately. The phrase ‘Check your privilege’ can be used as an insult that shuts down conversations and creates greater barriers. It makes a lot of assumptions about the person it’s directed towards, while simultaneously being something more folks really ought to be doing.
When weaponized, it can come across as saying: ‘You have no place in this conversation’. This is a real problem because if the conversation is about human rights — about addressing social inequalities and educating people to reduce misinformation that leads to fear and ultimately hate — then everyone has a place in it.
Racism is everyone’s problem.
Sexism is everyone’s problem.
Homophobia is everyone’s problem.
Ableism is everyone’s problem.
And so on…
Saying ‘Check your privilege’ can blame an individual for a larger social construct and also disregard where someone doesn’t have social power. It assumes that people are either privileged or not, oppressed or not, and couldn’t have privilege in some areas and face discrimination in others. It assumes that those who face discrimination never perpetuate it or benefit from it. It doesn’t invite any kind of self-reflection or change, and just puts people on the defensive.
This is a shame because where we have privilege we have power to be heard where someone else may not. We can use our privilege to question the system. When a man speaks out against sexism, it’s often given more weight because of his privilege. When a white person speaks out against racism, the same thing happens. In my case, as someone from a middle-class upbringing, I was met with less skepticism than my colleague when I spoke from my experience of relative financial security thanks to my social circle.
As a woman, as someone who identifies as queer, as someone who doesn’t fit or conform to strict gender expression, I know how it feels to be voiceless. So, when a situation presents itself in which my voice will be given more clout because of a social construct that somehow recognises it as more valuable, I speak up. I speak up because marginalisation hurts everyone, and any steps to address it for any group who experiences it, benefits everyone.
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Originally published on Medium.
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