Chapter Four

Check your privilege (and your ego)

There would be no bias if there were no differences. You can’t overcome bias if you can’t acknowledge that other people see the world differently than you do. And in order to do that, you must recognize that your perspective is not the only one, and that you are highly unlikely to be right all the time. That means checking your ego, and also acknowledging your privilege. Unchecked bias can look like privilege, so it’s important to take the time to differentiate the two.

It doesn’t matter who you are: if you are reading this book, you are privileged in some way. Privilege, in this context, simply means an advantage available to one group that isn’t available to everyone. You, for example, can read. According to UNESCO, that alone puts you ahead of 10 to 20 percent of people over age 15 worldwide. Why the 10 percent disparity? If you are a man, you are more likely to be literate.

Generally speaking, privilege blinds you to the challenges that others face. Suffering through a challenge helps you build empathy for others in a similar situation. So, for example, if you or a loved one has suffered through a chronic illness, you’re more likely to identify with the pain of another in a similar situation. The privilege of relative health doesn’t make you a bad person, but it makes it harder (but not impossible!) to understand the daily complexities and challenges of navigating life with a chronic condition. And so it is with identity-based privilege. If you’ve never feared being mistreated by the police because of the color of your skin, it can be challenging to fully understand the constant fear that haunts many people of color in their interactions with law enforcement. If we are to build authentic relationships across difference, we must do the hard work of recognizing our privilege so we can navigate the resulting blind spots more thoughtfully. The starting point is, once again, self-awareness.

Know your advantages or risk tripping all over them.

When it comes to overcoming bias, your ego is not your friend. Your ego needs to feel better than others. Tell it to shut up. Practically, this means suspending judgment and expanding curiosity. If a coworker tells you about a situation where she felt she was treated differently as a woman, there are (at least) two possible responses: (1) “I’m sure that wasn’t it. Our manager is on the diversity team, he’s not sexist!” Or (2) “I’m sorry you experienced that. Tell me more about what happened.” In the end, building relationships across differences requires more responses like number two, where you leave aside, at least temporarily, your own interpretations of the world in order to really understand other interpretations.

So obviously, the conversation about privilege is fraught with tension. First of all, don’t freak out if you are a white male. People have hijacked the privilege discussion and used it as a weapon to blame and shame white people, especially white men. If you are feeling a sense of guilt, shame, and fear about bias conversations, especially about race, it is not necessary. We are sorry that the United States in particular has made it scary and dangerous for people to express, own, or explore their bias and the world’s bias. That is a shame. But just as we have told countless white people we have worked with, by the power vested in us (by virtue of Tiffany’s negritude and our combined dedication to racial reconciliation), we hereby absolve you of your white guilt. Now don’t get all excited and start throwing around slurs and crazy talk. We are just saying that we are fully aware that you did not personally create racism. As far as we know, no one alive on the planet today did. So if that’s your deal, let it go.

White guilt is paralyzing. If you have it, let it go. You are absolved!

Here is the catch: You are still responsible for owning your part in society’s contemporary issues. You are not completely off the hook. But then again, neither are we.

Tiffany explains privilege from her perspective.

Even as a black woman, I have a great deal of privilege. Privilege is not and never has been the exclusive territory of one race, gender, or other group of people. Privilege is relative. Now please don’t hear what I am not saying. I am not saying that white, male, Christian, US citizens, like my coauthor Matthew, are not privileged. I am just stating that they are not alone in their privilege and therefore should not be made to feel an exclusive sense of guilt for what their ancestors did 400 years ago. Yes, it was horrible. Yes, the legacy of slavery and misogyny persists today. So rather than blame the folks who didn’t start the mess, why don’t we all work together toward clear, mutually beneficial solutions? I say mutually beneficial solutions because addressing bias on an interpersonal level, when done on a large scale, can actually begin to affect larger systems. When people get all bent out of shape about privilege and who does and does not have it, it’s usually the larger systems that are the source of the frustration.

Privilege is relative. Anyone can have it, and most everyone has some.

Intuitively, most people understand that our societal biases did not begin last week. People are upset because women are still paid less than men in the United States on average even though we all know that it’s wrong and unfair. So why is this obviously unfounded bias still allowed to affect real people in really unfortunate ways? Because the systems that support it were built on bias, and that has been very deeply embedded into everything. Unraveling racism, sexism, xenophobia, ableism, and other pernicious biases will require the collective effort of very thoughtful and deliberate people. So if you aspire to be among those change makers and want to help your friends, associates, and family members join our ranks, get ready to own your privilege and use it for good.

Identify your privilege and use it for good wherever you see bias.

The good news is that mutually beneficial solutions are possible because everyone ultimately wins when inclusion is realized. We like to think that our work of bringing people together across differences will be done when race is no longer predictive of outcome, when the fallacy of the hierarchy of human value is as well understood as the fact that the earth is round. We look forward to the day when kids will read about how we used to think some people were inherently better than others and they will think, “That’s so silly!”

The other challenge with the privilege conversation is that the mention of it puts people on the defensive. You definitely want to avoid pain and oppression Olympics. Pain Olympics refers to the human tendency to deny privilege and focus on all the ways you and/or your people’s pain is worse than someone else’s. That is a no-win proposition. Instead, try applying the control/conquer/prevail framework to your perspective on your own privilege.

1. Neutralize your privilege by acknowledging it. You need not be ashamed nor apologize for the advantages you have, whether they are earned, unearned, inherited, blessed, or otherwise. They are yours and have helped you arrive where you are. Own it. No one can use it against you if you are aware of it, own it, and, perhaps, use it to further more than just your own agenda. (More on that later in the next activity.)

2. Conquer the power privilege has over you by shifting the accusatory/defensive tone to one of questioning, understanding, and empathy. People who point fingers and accuse are often in pain and want to be heard. So try listening. Put your perspective and privilege aside and spend as much time as possible listening and learning without being defensive. Take in someone else’s pain and perspective. We promise you, it will not negate your pain, your privilege, your identity, or your experience. It will bring you closer to people, and isn’t human connection something we are ultimately seeking?

3. Now this is the hard part—prevailing. Prevailing over privilege requires that we move ourselves aside and listen, learn, and work in service of others. We don’t mean to go all Mother Teresa on you, but that is indeed what a person who moves all of their privilege aside and uses it in favor of others looks like. The masters of prevailing over privilege are self-sacrificial and they are the people who instigate world-changing movements. They are the Gandhis, Martin Luther Kings, and every saint ever. So that’s a ridiculously high bar, but the point is, this is a scalable concept. Interpersonally, if you apply these ideas, you will wind up with a fabulously diverse network of friends and associates. At its highest level, you will instigate a change in the way your company, industry, or nation handles bias. That is no small proposition. Don’t believe us? Here’s a more realistic case study for anyone who isn’t ready for sainthood just yet . . . .

Once upon a time, Bart Houlahan led an athletics apparel company with a social mission. The company was AND1, and when you bought a pair of athletic shoes, the company donated a pair to a child who needed a pair of shoes. Sound familiar? Yeah, Bart did that way before TOMS became known for that business model. Bart is a white man, and most of the kids who benefitted from his company’s social mission came from low-income families. Bart saw a need within a group that he considered an in-group, so he used his privilege to affect a positive change. Bart worked tirelessly to build a better kind of business, and although it was a for-profit, it was also socially responsible and making a difference in too many ways to name here.

Before long, AND1 had celebrity endorsements and was purchased by a top athletic apparel brand. One of the first things the new owner did was abandon the social mission and stop giving away product. After all, free shoes don’t maximize shareholder value. Needless to say, Bart was devastated. He was essentially punished for being successful, so he set out to do something radically different. Bart teamed up with Jay Coen Gilbert and Andrew Kassoy to start a nonprofit called B Lab. B Lab allows social enterprises to take advantage of a new legal form, the benefit corporation, and makes it possible for them to balance shareholder value with social benefit. It supports those businesses and promotes their success through B Corp certification and enhancing their access to capital. By the time this book is published, there will be almost 2,000 certified B Corps worldwide. One man’s experience and three friendships forged between Stanford University roommates ignited a global movement that is quantifiably making the world a better place.

Privilege does not make anyone better than anyone else. We truly are equals.

So how do we get there? How do we build so many bridges between people that we finally become one human race? Building authentic relationships requires the individual to purposefully seek out diverse relationships. Being open to relationships is an act of vulnerability and not a welcome setting for egos. Overcoming bias requires becoming a cultural ally—someone who deliberately deepens her or his understanding of others through cultural fluency and cultural competence. Casual, superficial acquaintances are no longer enough.

Consider the most inclusive people you know; the ones whose social circles look like the United Nations. Those people have often allowed themselves the privilege of authentic connection across differences. Sometimes it’s a life-altering experience, like participation in the Peace Corps. Connections are often forged when our own privilege is put in perspective if we can put ego aside.

Our friend Myra Goodman Smith has one of the most diverse networks of friends and associates that we have ever seen. Her relationships do not feel false or forced. She has a calm, casual demeanor and she interacts with equal enthusiasm with all the people we have seen who trust and respect her as a leader and a friend. Here is what she has to say about her experiences building authentic relationships across difference.

I can truly say that I have more diverse relationships than anyone I know. I am president and CEO of Leadership Metro Richmond, our region’s community leadership development and engagement organization. LMR began in 1980 as an innovative program to improve racial, gender, and socioeconomic divides in our area’s community leadership.

In response, a group of visionary leaders were recruited to participate in a new program designed to connect diverse groups of emerging leaders for greater understanding and cooperation. The group employed thoughtful examination of the challenges within the community and gathered multiple perspectives on these challenges while creating a safe environment of understanding and respect for the viewpoints of others. Those 42 community leaders became the first Leadership Metro Richmond class. Thirty-five years later, LMR has evolved into a galvanized network of over 1,900 diverse leaders/members, with 1,400 still residing in our region.

My role is to serve and lead LMR members who represent various demographic cohorts: race, ethnicity, gender, age, wealth, religion, political party, educational levels, and residence. Many of our members come to me for coaching, advising, and guidance on issues of community leadership, personal growth, and just tackling the day-to-day issues of life. They all have their own uniqueness and differences, yet their desires and concerns are very similar. I show them respect (my core value) and recognize their uniqueness.

When asked what significant moments in her life journey brought Myra to her current position, she responded:

I love leadership. As a child, I read every biography on the bookmobile . . . books on leaders and history makers from all backgrounds. I learned about their struggles and accomplishments, which provided clarity in why they acted, interacted, and made decisions the way they did. Understanding more about people than what I see has been a lifelong driver for me.

I truly believe in relationships across differences, which was not and still is not embraced by all. A year after the integration of schools, one of my new best friends was white. The youthful verbal hate I received only made me more resolved to have relationships with individuals different than me. Today, I tell folks that I have the most diverse network of friends ever. . . . I say it with a huge smile. I have learned so much from them and realize even more that they see me and not the difference.

Some people become cultural allies after prolonged exposure to someone they care about who is a member of a marginalized demographic—a homosexual sister, a close friend who relies on a wheelchair. Experiencing profoundly personal situations, whether directly or indirectly, has a way of opening minds and hearts. Again, when we have close relationships with people who experience privilege differently, our perspective changes. We propose that you don’t wait for diversity to smack you in the face. It’s everywhere. Seek it out, check your ego, get out of your comfort zone, and get to know people who are different from you.

As a white, male, heterosexual, business-owning American citizen, Matthew has enjoyed societal advantages based on his identities. It can be challenging for people with privilege like Matthew to see it and acknowledge it. Conversations about privilege often make those who have some feel morally responsible for the inequalities in the world, or seem to call into question their accomplishments in life, attributing them to unchosen identities instead of hard work. Learning to see the privilege you have is an essential step in building relationships across difference, particularly where one person belongs to a socially marginalized group. Here’s how Matthew thinks about his own privilege:

I have a lot of privilege. How did I get it? It wasn’t from some pre-birth privilege shopping spree where I chose the identities I wanted off a celestial shelf. Privilege, or the lack of it, is about what is done to you by society—it’s about which societal in-groups are valued and appreciated, and whose experiences are considered mainstream and normal.

I once guest-lectured in a high school friend’s college classroom. Bryan was, at the time, a professor in a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania and asked me to come and talk about, among other things, privilege. So I asked the students to brainstorm a list of groups that are, in some way, marginalized in American society. Here’s what they generated:

I then asked the students to think about, if these folks were on the margins of society, who were the corresponding groups that we might think of as being in the “center.” Their list:

I then asked a question that took some courage on my part given how emotionally and politically fraught conversations about privilege are, even though its answer is fairly obvious. I asked the students to think about me, their guest lecturer, and point out which categories I fell into in the marginalized groups vs. the center. Visually obvious to them was that I was a white, able-bodied man who did not appear to be in poverty by virtue of my clothing and appearance as a guest lecturer visiting from another state. Obvious from my stories was that I was born in the United States, into a Christian family, and that I was married to a woman. There was not a single one of these examples in which I fell into a category that is marginalized in twenty-first-century America. I asked the students if my privilege was my choice. Looking at these categories, their answers were “of course not.”

From this list, there are arguably only two categories that might be considered some kind of choice. One is religion, the other, wealth. It is worth pointing out, however, that both religion and socioeconomic status are not a choice when you are a child. These early influences are dictated by the choices and circumstances of whoever raised you. Nevertheless, I used this exercise as a launchpad to talk about my experiments in choosing voluntary poverty, in part as an attempt to make the choice to give up some privilege and live in solidarity with people who are often marginalized and ignored.

But can you actually give up privilege? Well, you can’t change your skin color, but you can change your socioeconomic status and choose poverty. Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, once said, “I condemn poverty and I advocate it; poverty is simple and complex at once; it is a social phenomenon and a personal matter.”¹ Voluntary poverty is very different from involuntary poverty, and the two should not be confused. For centuries, Buddhist monks, Catholic nuns, and utopian communalists have embraced voluntary poverty as a way to free themselves from the demands of material society to pursue enlightenment. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers inspired by her embrace voluntary poverty for an additional reason: as a means to bridge the divide in experience between those who are poor and those who are not. Day said voluntary poverty “means nonparticipation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others . . . while our brothers [and sisters] suffer from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts.”² Matthew was so intrigued by this notion, and inspired by Day’s example, he decided to try living in voluntary poverty.

It was, in some ways, another in my series of small steps. I was working at a nonprofit and already not making much money. I was living in a racially mixed lower-middle-class neighborhood, and all I was doing was moving across town to a neighborhood that was more homogeneous—black and mostly poor—and committing to maintaining my low income.

I created my own Catholic Worker community house a few blocks from the Fairfield Court public housing community in Richmond, Virginia. The three founders, myself included, worked part-time jobs, enough to pay for housing and utilities, but not much else. We sought to be good friends and neighbors, we hosted three meals a week open to anyone in the neighborhood—not as a feeding program but rather as a community gathering space—and we kept a bedroom open for hospitality for anyone in short-term need.

In this house, I learned what it was like to live in an old (nineteenth century) home that had not been maintained, had poor electrical wiring, no working fireplaces, and no insulation. Inside, it was over 100 degrees in the summer, and drafty and cold in the winter. Pipes froze and sometimes burst. I spent many mornings clearing out dead animals from the crawl space so I could use a hairdryer to thaw pipes under the one working bathroom. We couldn’t afford contractors, so we bartered with friends who had more skills than we did, tried to learn how to make repairs ourselves, and learned to swallow our pride and accept help from friends and neighbors. I started to see how much I had taken for granted before—running water, comfortable interior temperatures, a house that was a safe space and not full of potential hazards. Neighbors told stories about people they knew who figured out how to steal water or electricity when they couldn’t afford the bills.

Taking a step to intentionally set aside some of your privilege can yield a wealth of unexpected insights. We all know the experience of being grateful for electricity after a prolonged power outage. Similarly, choosing to place yourself physically in a space where everyone does not have the same background as you creates shared experiences that lead to an easier path to building authentic relationships.

Depending on how far outside of your comfort zone you step, the experiences can become quite harrowing. Stories from international aid workers and journalists regularly drive this point home, with the reality of kidnappings or violence as an unfortunately common threat. You don’t have to leave the United States, however, to experience dangerous situations. Matthew continues:

One night, the police stopped me while I was walking down my street. I looked out of place as a white person in a black neighborhood. Most white people who ventured into this neighborhood were there to buy drugs or sex, and I found myself fitting a criminal profile for the first time in my life. I wish I could say I used the interaction to engage the officer in a conversation on bias, assumptions, profiling, and the difficulties of police work, but instead I succumbed to my fear of an authority figure with power to arrest me, or worse, and showed my ID and only answered questions I was asked.

Despite constant police presence, gunshots rang out nightly. One evening I pulled into the gas station a few blocks from home and noticed a young white man with South Carolina license plates and his car hood propped open. I decided to caution him about the neighborhood, that he was clearly not from here and should therefore keep his wits about him. He said, “Oh I figured that out from the drive-by shooting that just happened.” I turned to look where he was pointing, at the gas pumps 100 feet away, just as four cop cars came pulling in lights and sirens blazing.

Another time, the unusual midday gunshots I heard from my bedroom were from a running gun battle that killed an innocent bystander, an elementary school child on his way home from school. My 16-year-old next-door neighbor was a great student who eventually went to college, but in high school he couldn’t walk the five blocks to his local school because fights and violence were too likely.

It was, geographically, a short 10 miles from the house I grew up in. But experientially, it’s hard to imagine a much different environment. To most of us, these stories sound sadly familiar from the news. But I can tell you, it’s one thing to know in your mind that American cities are plagued by gun violence, but it’s a far different thing to have to drop and hit the ground on your own front porch when you hear nearby gunfire, or to receive a phone call that your mentee from the local high school was killed before he could graduate. Living in the midst of poverty and violence damages your soul, and as recent neurological research shows, it damages the brains of children as well.³

Nevertheless, while living in this neighborhood, I forged closer and more meaningful relationships than I had for the other 10 years I’d lived in Richmond as an adult. I was invited to Super Bowl parties, Thanksgiving dinners, backyard cookouts. My friend Nate taught me to patch and hang drywall. I learned to garden from a neighbor creating a community garden down the block. We helped our neighbors and were helped by them.

One concrete lesson I learned was that not having money to buy solutions to all of life’s problems makes you rely on other people—for better and for worse. I also learned how expensive it is to be poor—to be unable to afford routine maintenance on houses or cars and still have to fix the ensuing expensive disasters somehow. Or the friend who couldn’t afford to pay the fines necessary to get his driver’s license back, and therefore couldn’t find steady work in a city that lacks decent public transit, therefore rendering him unable to pay off the fines, trapping him in a vicious cycle.

So back to our earlier invitations: take yourself out of your comfort zone; make yourself the minority. My stint living in a community house in an impoverished Richmond neighborhood was a radical version of that, one I do not recommend to everyone. For me, however, it was the culmination of a series of much smaller steps to engage with people whose lives were different from my own. And it would fill several books to chronicle what I learned from the experience, and how much my own biased assumptions about people in poverty were obliterated by living alongside them.

Your small steps don’t need to be so extreme, but if you really want to see how privilege blinds you to the reality of others, you have to take at least one step to, momentarily, set it aside, make yourself uncomfortable, and go someplace where your experience is not the norm.

As a final note, and an attempt to answer the earlier question about whether you can truly give up your privilege, the answer is of course complicated. Did Matthew have less privilege living in substandard housing amidst gun violence than when living in affluent suburbia? Absolutely. Did he have the connections and privilege to be able to make more money and leave the neighborhood at will? Yes, and when personal tragedy visited his life he did just that. No one can erase his or her privilege entirely and honestly, and you shouldn’t try.

What you can do, and what we all must do, regardless of how much privilege we have, is seek to expand our empathy and understanding of people whose lives are different from our own. And we absolutely must use whatever privilege we have to try to create a world where students can no longer easily generate a long list of marginalized people.

CALL TO ACTION

Don’t try to deny or ignore your privilege. Just use it for others.