An invitation to normalize understanding and acknowledging our privileges
This post is part of my 3DR newsletter where I share what I’m (un)learning to build just futures. It centres around my 3DR approach to equity: Decolonize. Disrupt. Dismantle. Rebuild. If you approach the world with curiosity and you’re looking for courageous and compassionate conversations around social justice and collective liberation, subscribe to my newsletter.
If you follow me on social, you’ll know that it’s been a busy few months on my end as my partner and I have recently bought and moved into a new home. We’ve been joking about taking a “death pledge” together because we learned that the root words of mortgage come from the French word mort, which means “dead”, and gage from Old English, which means “pledge”. Incredibly fitting, isn’t it?
It’s been an exciting time as we take our relationship into a new chapter and move into a bigger home in the heart of the city that we both love so much.
Throughout this experience, I’ve been having a lot of feelings about the privilege of having a home to call my own in the midst of a housing crisis in this city (and beyond). I often feel uncomfortable and straight-up ashamed to say I bought a place. It feels arrogant and audacious at a time when so many can’t afford what is, but should not be, this luxury of a home.
On the flip side of that though is an intense pride I feel for my parents for taking the risk of moving from the Philippines to this frigid country to build a better life for themselves and their children. Do you know the kind of fierce imagination that takes? Do you know the kind of hard work and tenacity it must have taken to move from their parents’ mode of survival to our family’s thriving? That is something that I am so unbelievably proud of and grateful to my parents for.
How do I hold this discomfort and pride all at once? How do I hold the privileges that I am now afforded while honouring the hard work and struggle of my parents (and my own)? How do I understand the ways in which we are advantaged and disadvantaged, the ways in which we are in power and oppressed – all at once, all the time? How do I situate myself in the spectrum of power?
Taking A Decolonizing Stance: Acknowledging My Privilege
The first “D” in the 3DR approach to creating equitable futures is to decolonize and do the internal work of looking inwards at ourselves. It is about locating ourselves in the spectrum of power and really understanding how the different intersections of our identity and our experiences afford us certain advantages or disadvantages.
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Need a more thorough refresher on intersectionality and what it means to locate ourselves on the spectrum of power? Read this.
While there are so many intersections of my identity that impact how I move through the world, the one I want to focus on here as it relates to my home ownership experience is really class.
I want to be clear that owning a home is not by my own doing. I’ve worked hard throughout my life to build a career for myself and to generate a stable income, but that has not been enough to generate the kind of wealth now needed to buy property.
After selling our family home in the mid-2010s, my dad took his share of the money made from that sale to help me buy my first home. He contributed significantly to the down payment of my condo in downtown Toronto. As a woman in her mid-20s at the time, that set me up for security and stability that many of my peers did not and still do not have.
Even before that though, my parents paid for my post-secondary education making me debt-free. I lived with them and was fed by them for 26 years. This meant that all the money I earned was mine. On top of that, my parents taught me how to invest that earned income to generate more of it because they, in their own privilege, had access to this knowledge. Financial literacy is a huge privilege!
Even just the mental security of knowing that I have a safety net to fall back on with my family is a privilege we don’t acknowledge often enough.
And now, I live with my partner in a dual-income household with expenses cut in half, but double the purchasing power. More privilege!
Moving From The Individual To The Systemic
What if often disconcerting about all of this is seeing just how these privileges all compound on top of each other. And I tell you all of this not to gloat, but because I want to normalize understanding our privileges and acknowledging how we got to where we are.
I tell you this because I want you to see privilege. I want you to consider all the advantages that give some a leg up and how that compounds over time so greatly that it = wealth + success + power. And then consider the systemic barriers that so severely disadvantage others and how that compounds over time so greatly that it makes upward mobility near impossible.
“If we ignore history or history’s impact on our present identities and imagine that we are individuals freed from the past, we simply replay a colonial gesture. If, by contrast, we share our experiences of how the connections between past and present affect…how we are situated within systems of opportunity and adversity, we begin to reflect a decolonizing stance. ”
This is just a small slice of how I got to where I am today. There is so much more complexity to peel back and I hope that by beginning to hold a more nuanced understanding of myself and my family’s journey, I can begin to take a decolonizing stance and fight against perpetuating systems of oppression. I hope that by sharing my experience and understanding of myself with you that you can begin to locate yourself in this spectrum of power too (if you haven’t already!)
The more we open our eyes to how these systems work and how we fit into them, the harder it is to unsee the inequities and injustices that exist in this world…and the harder it is not to work towards more equitable futures.
Our privilege in and of itself is neither good nor bad. What matters really is how we choose to wield its power.
Additional resources on understanding power and privilege
Check out Kimberlé Crenshaw’s podcast called Intersectionality Matters!
Lead from the Outside by Stacey Abrams is an illuminating and actionable book that shows how we can lead from the outside and create a path to power that simultaneously lifts up other marginalized communities.
Dr. Anu Taranath’s book, Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, has been highly influential in shaping how I talk about and teach intersectionality. I had the privilege of co-teaching a course with her at the Rise Travel Institute this past summer on this very subject, but specifically as it relates to how we travel. Check out the course here.
Read White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack by Peggy McIntosh.