Privilege with Bronwyn, Lindsey, and Mike

Background: We’re having a house breakfast. It starts off with Ashar and Nyjah getting stuck while crawling under the couch. We’re talking about our white privilege and some of our resistances to our white privilege, particularly in comparison to disadvantages we might feel because of our gender and/or sexuality. Throughout the conversation you also get to hear us parenting our kids squabbles and requests. Around the 30-minute mark, I stop the audio and then when not recording Bronwyn launches into this great speech about what we should do with our privilege. So I start recording again but we don’t come anywhere near what she said. So it ends again… for now. Reflective Questions: * What opportunities do you hoard? * How do you check your privilege? * What do you do about your privilege? * Are people allowed to connect over shared experiences of disadvantages? * Do you feel like people with privilege are being silenced now? Or that they feel silenced? And if so, is it good for people to start to feel a bit uncomfortable as they learn how to navigate this new territory of equality? Resources: * This is the privilege video I was talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0kUlBvPhg but I don’t like it because it’s run by a white guy. * But I like this one better, because it’s actually run by young black women and describes the process of debriefing it after rather than just having a white guy explain it to the kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzubW6e4P6g * Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In Book: https://leanin.org/book/ * Man names to lead Canadian women’s advisory board: https://www.thestar.com/business/2017/09/14/man-named-to-lead-canadian-womens-advisory-board--again.html. And a critique: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/09/15/womens-empowerment-organization-catalyst-canada-believes-in-strength-of-male-leaders_a_23211090/ Post-Conversation Reflections: I keep thinking later on about my point about feeling like I want to do something with my privilege and not just "check it". I realized I said that I really felt uneasy about just being told I have privilege and not being able to do anything. But upon reflection, I realized that this feeling itself and my desire to take action, itself comes from a place of privilege because I am generally empowered in my life. So to feel helpless is uncomfortable and unfamiliar for me. And I have the luxury in life, generally speaking, to do something about that. Others aren’t as fortunate.