Focusing on a Brighter Future

I have been listening, learning, feeling and reflecting on all that is going on right now in the world.

As a Canadian white woman of European descent, I am sensitive to the role I play in discussions and activities around the concepts of race and privilege. I definitely don’t want to make things worse.

I was born with privilege. I didn’t know it at the time, or in the way that I know it now.

As I look back, I only knew that the world was my oyster and there was nothing stopping my success except for my own doing. It never once crossed my mind that my race had anything to do with it.

I know now that my race had everything to do with it.

In my search for greater understanding, I read a powerful piece by Peggy McIntosh who ended her 1988 essay with this: “What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.” (1)

I personally think the answer to this open question is that if we know we have unearned and arbitrarily awarded power, we need to make a choice on what we do with that power. I personally think it would be in everyone’s best interest if we lifted everyone up in a manner that can be sustained into the future.

It all starts for me with how we treat each other and the empathy we have for one another. I personally love the way the Dalai Lama describes this empathy:

“Whenever I meet people I always approach them from the standpoint of the most basic things we have in common. We have a physical structure, a mind, emotions. We are all born in the same way, and we all die. All of us want happiness and do not want to suffer. Looking at others from this standpoint rather than emphasizing secondary differences such as the fact that I am Tibetan, or a different color, religion or cultural background, allows me to have a feeling that I’m meeting someone just the same as me. I find that relating to others on that level makes it much easier to exchange and communicate with one another.” (2)

If we start from here, then we can be in a place to listen and learn from those around us, without fear or judgement.

We can leverage these stories and the research and statistics that exist to change the power systems that hold people down, like the justice system, other government offices, municipal offices, entertainment, banking, private business, education and research. (3)

I consider this part of an ongoing conversation. There is a lot of work to be done to make our future brighter.

I just know that I want to be part of the solution.

Resources

1. McIntosh. P. 1988. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. (online) Viewed June 15, 2020.

   Note: Peggy McIntosh is a Senior Research Scientist of the Wellesley Centers for Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh. The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.

2. HH Dalai Lama and Cutler, H. C. 1998. The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p. 71.

3. Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo. (2017) What it takes to be racially literate. Retrieved from: Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo: What it takes to be racially literate. Viewed June 15, 2020.

Photo: Tammy Brimner/TLBVelo Photography