85 16.4: Practices for Engaging Difference, Privilege, and Power

Understanding the pattern of why those in power continue to stay in power is critical to our ability to intervene and create something different. While there are many cases of intentional oppression and minimization of differences, there are also many situations where individuals in the mainstream group are unaware of their own privilege and are unconsciously supporting and reinforcing the status quo.

Part of the practice of engaging difference differently, involves honing our tracking and observational skills; learning to recognize the patterns associated with systems that minimize and oppress differences. In addition to improving our awareness and analysis skills, it is also critical that we develop skills, capacity, and courage to interrupt the dominant system archetype; using the privilege and power we have to find places in systems where we can leverage change to make the system healthier. This might involve changing our own behaviors, illuminating and influencing system dynamics, or tending to the impacts of marginalization and oppression.

In many conversations about diversity, the terms power and privilege have taken on a negative connotation. And while power is often used to reinforce the status quo, minimize and oppress difference, and create norms/structures that confer unearned privilege and power to a select few, it can also be used to interrupt those cycles and create healthier systems.

As an example, we discovered the following story about a white woman who entered a popular women’s clothing store. After wandering around the store, she realized that all of the models in the big glossy photos on the walls were white. After some deliberation, she approached the store manager and pointed out this pattern and suggested that the photos be changed to include women of color. She said that she wouldn’t shop at a store that wasn’t making an effort to break the often unconscious patterns of white privilege. The store manager responded defensively, offering all of the reasons that the photos on the wall were out of her control. The customer pressed on, asking to file a formal complaint with the corporate headquarters. Upon leaving the store, the customer was stopped by an employee of color who told the customer that she had been waiting years for a white person to finally point out that pattern and use her white privilege and power to make a change. She explained that as a woman of color, any critique that she might offer about the racial identities depicted in the photos could too easily be explained away by “oversensitivity” or a “chip-on-the-shoulder.”

This story of solidarity illustrates a different practice for engaging difference, privilege and power. Rather than using the unearned privilege and power associated with her whiteness to reinforce the status quo (or simply ignore the issue completely), the customer in this example used her power to attempt to interrupt the cycle of oppression. ^[264]