SUMMARY KEYWORDS

privilege, people, conversations, hosiery, equity, guilty, dei, feel, podcast, relationships, colorism, ally, extend, opportunity, life, empathy, recognize, interview, inclusion, pick

SPEAKERS

Amber Cabral

Amber Cabral 00:00

Three. Privilege is all around you. It shows up in your clothes, where you live, the places you frequent, your network capital, and even how you spend your money. It’s useless until you recognize it. So it’s time to stop feeling guilty and figure out how to use your privilege to make an impact. Welcome to guilty privilege. Hey there. My name is Amber Cabral and welcome to guilty privilege. And we’re about midway through the season, so I thought it would be a good time to have a little bit of conversation about why this podcast is important, and what I hope you’re getting from it, and also to just level set some of your expectations going forward and set you up for success in terms of being prepared for the conversations that are to come, because some are really juicy, and I hope you enjoy them. So let’s get started. So the purpose of guilty privilege is really to just showcase leaders and regular everyday folks living their everyday lives, being awesome, using the privilege that they have to be impactful. Very often we hear privilege and we automatically think that it’s something that is bad, or people are ashamed of it, or people are jealous that they don’t have it, or people feel like they have it and want to hide it. And what we’re really trying to get away from through these episodes is to show that we all have some kind of privilege. It looks different for each of us, and if we use it in just the right way, we have an opportunity to really have an impact on the way other folks experience equity. Our privilege gives us the opportunity to be allies, and that’s really what this show’s about. It’s showing how everyday people are doing the DEI thing that we often think only happens in our workplaces, from the conversations that are being had in guilty privilege, my hope is that you’re able to see how people are using the skills that they have in their day to day lives with their regular jobs to actually have an impact on what equity feels like for someone else. So whether that is a dei leader who is helping to shape the way an organization thinks about policies, or whether that is a teacher who has the opportunity to influence the way students are learning in the classroom, I want people to recognize that like your experience of diversity, equity inclusion is happening all around you all the time. It’s not this really stereotypical definitions based thing that we tend to think about. I think most people experience Diversity Equity and Inclusion by either the news or in their workplaces. So if you’re experiencing it in the news, then you’re hearing a lot of really extreme ideas like this, wokeism or liberalism or things that are kind of negative terms at this point. And that’s not a real representation of what diversity, equity, inclusion really are. It’s not really what they really mean in our day to day lives. When we think about equity in our day to day lives. What really that means is, how much am I able to experience the fullness of life here? How equitable is my experience? How much access Am I getting? How much am I able to be able to showcase the skill set that I have? How am I able to potentially use the skills that I have to help someone else when we really think about Dei, it’s often in these very static, stereotypical formats. It’s our leader talking about how an organization wants to bring inclusion to life, or it is, you know, our team being deliberate about celebrating some kind of Heritage Month, and those things matter, but that’s not all of it. Equity is something as simple as am I able to have a meaningful conversation with the person at my local grocery store and they actually understand me, because that’s something that everyone doesn’t have, and it is also a privilege, like our privileges create equity for us, and it is through identifying our privileges that we are able to create equity for others. I hope you’re enjoying today’s episode, and if you happen to also be looking for tools to help you navigate tough conversations, to be able to show up as a more impactful ally, or just to have resources about how to navigate equity in your world. I’ve written two books. My first book is called allies and advocates, and this book is really focused on helping you show up as a more impactful ally. It has actual tactics and tips and things that you can practice to help you get there, both for yourself and for others. My second book is called say more about that now. Say more about that is more about helping you to speak up, to push back, to challenge, to be able to have those conversations that sometimes get a little bit difficult. And in fact, I’ve given you actual scripts to help you to be able to do that. So if you’re interested in just having a few extra resources in your pocket to be able to help you to navigate any of those things, you can go pick up those books anywhere where you buy books, or you can pop down into the show notes and click the links and buy them there. Back to the episode. It. I decided to call this podcast guilty privilege, because people feel guilty about their privilege, and I wanted to have conversations where people understood privilege was not a reason to feel guilty. And honestly, guilty privilege is a little catchy. So I felt like if I put those words together, it would capture enough attention to get people to maybe tune in and maybe get a chance to understand how really the guilty part isn’t helpful for any of us. We really want to focus on being able to recognize, identify and ideally extend our privileges. So that starts with us being able to be really honest about the privilege that we have and get over whatever guilt we have associated with it. So my hope through this podcast is that in the conversations that are happening with regular people, in the discussions that are occurring in the things that I share as we are, you know, having these episodes, that people are getting the opportunity to ask themselves the question, hmm, what privileges do I have? What privileges do I have that I don’t want to feel guilty about? That may take a little bit of work, but I feel like if we can at least start by thinking about what privileges we have, how they show up in our day to day, then we can start to think about who doesn’t have those privileges, and how we can perhaps have an impact on the way someone else experiences it. It doesn’t have to be a big, grand thing. No one’s asking you to go out and win a Nobel Peace Prize, although if you do that, that’d be fantastic. I think it’s really in your everyday actions. It’s recognizing the skill set, the uniqueness, the value that you bring, and that that’s important and that that creates access and privilege for you that someone else doesn’t have, and being intentional about sharing, that is really the point I know very often people wonder why privilege? One of the reasons I like to zoom in on privilege is because it’s one of those things that we all have, but people don’t realize we all have it. So I will ask people really simple questions like, do you speak the language in your community, or do you have the ability to have hot running clean water in your home? Most people that are watching this podcast, the answer is going to be yes. Most people that I ask those questions to when I’m facilitating, the answer is going to be yes. But people don’t recognize that those are privileges. We tend to think of privilege as something like, I have a lot of money, which that is a privilege, but it’s not the only privilege. Or we tend to think of privilege as I have a lot of education, or I have a great job, and those are also privileges, but there are also privileges that are a lot smaller, that are part of our everyday, day to day, that can be super helpful, if we just pay attention to them. Having the opportunity to stroll into your local CVS and pick up bandages that match your skin tone is a privilege that should bring awareness to you about Wow, skin tone privilege. How might that show up? How might it play out? I can remember hearing a story a few years ago about a woman, dark skinned, black woman applying to a job that required them to wear hosiery. Every job isn’t this formal, this particular job very formal, required hosiery. She had gone through two layers of interviews. She got the call really late. You know, hey, we’d like to interview you as a third round. It’s you and one other candidate. Can we fly you to DC to interview for this role? She agreed. She flew to DC. She landed late. She realized she did not have hosiery. She had a really hard time finding hosiery for an interview the next morning, she had to get up the next morning, go to a specific neighborhood to be able to find hosiery that matched her skin color so that she could go to the interview and present herself the way she wanted. That’s not something that feels like something anyone else would even think about. But if you have the privilege of just strolling into any grocery store or CVS or pharmacy and picking up hosiery, then it’s easy for you, it’s a privilege, which then can start the conversation about colorism and the impacts it has. What I think happens with a lot of dei conversations is that we try to start with the hard word, which is, let’s start talking about privilege. Let’s start talking about colorism. Let’s start talking about racism. What my goal is with this podcast is to help you see that all of these concepts are showing up in your day to day in very simple ways. And if we can just wrap our minds around the simplicity, then it gets a lot easier for us to connect to the idea that this could be difficult for someone, when we can connect to something as simple as hosiery being an obstacle to someone maybe getting a job. Now, all of a sudden, it’s a little easier for us to think about colorism. So my goal with this podcast is really to just get folks to really consider what privilege really is, not feel guilty about it, be intentional about figuring out what our privileges are and thinking about how we can extend our privileges so that we can create equity. For other people, I recognize that I have the privilege of being able to pop in front of this camera and talk to you every other week, so I try to take advantage of that and bring you conversations and ideas that I think will be impactful and help you show up in your day to day life. Hey, there. I hope you’re enjoying the episode, and in fact, if you are, you can bring me to your organization or event to help you bring conversations like this to life in your workspaces. This is something I do for a living. I do coaching, I do training, I do executive consulting, whatever it is that you might need as it relates to trying to figure out how to activate allyship or equity in your space. It’s probably something I can support. So if you’re interested in how we can work together, you can reach out to me@cabraco.com or pop down into the show notes and click the link book a discovery call, and we will chat with you soon. Back to the show. Since privilege is the focus, I’d like to give a couple ways that you can figure out what your own privilege might be, because it isn’t always obvious. We’re walking around steeped in our privilege all the time. So one of the first questions that you can ask yourself is, what’s regular to me? What don’t I even think about? And this can be really, really simple, like, do you think twice about where you’re going to sleep at night? Do you have to wonder where your next meal is coming from? Do you have to wonder where your next paycheck is coming from. Really think about the things that you don’t really have to worry about that are very easy for you. It could be safety in your family. It can be the relationships that you’ve built with friends. What feels really, really normal. It could be your education. There’s a lot of options here, but ask yourself what parts of your life feel really normal, really regular, really every day, and just kind of make a list. As you start to make that list, you’ll start to identify some things that are regular for you that may not be regular for the folks around you. So that’s the first thing you can do. The second thing that you can do to help you kind of have awareness of your privilege is be intentional about building relationships with folks who are not like you, and this could be not like you in a number of ways, not like you in terms of gender, not like you in terms of age, not like you in terms of race or ethnicity, not like you in terms of where they are from in the world, when we build relationships with People that are different than we are. We have an opportunity to see what they see as valuable. We have an opportunity to see what they see as pretty normal or regular. We also get the opportunity to see what they’re looking at in our lives as, Oh wow. You have the opportunity and access to do that, right? And sometimes that shows up as joking or teasing like, oh my gosh, that’s such a Bougie thing to do, right? And sometimes it shows up as, you know, someone saying, Oh, wow. I didn’t even know that was a thing that was available. But us building relationships with people that are different than we are, and that doesn’t have to be a deep relationship. We just want it to be a relationship that actually has some connection. It gives us visibility into so much more so that we are able to figure out how we can apply our privilege and support others as an ally. Once you figure out what your privileges are, then the question becomes, what do you do with them? So my recommendation is to think about the ways that you can extend your privilege, but you want to be very careful about this. We have to build relationships with folks. We have to have a sense of empathy. So showing up as an ally, extending your privilege to others is also a reason to build relationships with folks. So then you get insight into the ways people really need support. And the other thing that’s great about building a relationship and you being able to extend empathy is that you get a chance to really give visibility into what people want. Sometimes we think someone wants money and what they really want is a thoughtful gift, right? So we want to be very intentional about how we extend our privilege, and that takes a bit of labor too, starting with building relationships and having empathy. So my goal with guilty privilege is to get you to essentially, have some tools and be able to do the work. That’s the basics. I want you to have some tools and be able to do the work. But I don’t want it to sound like, oh, diversity is a group of people with unique belief, styles, perspectives. I don’t need it to sound that way. I’m not asking you to be able to rattle off the definition of privilege as you know, this very formal collection of words, but I do want you to understand conceptually what privilege means for you, how it shows up in your life and when you see it in someone else. I want you to be interested enough to help them to potentially see it and see how they can extend it in their lives, and if we all just did a little bit of that, equity would be much better. Allyship would improve. Inclusion would be something we’d experience without having to have these very formal, sort of stiff and ridiculous conversations in our workplaces. We’d instead have. People that have a vested interest in being impactful with something they already have an abundance of, whether that’s power, whether that’s money, whether that’s time or experience, or, who knows, once we get to the point where we feel like I’ve got plenty of this, let me think about how I can give it away, we’re creating opportunities for others to grow. So with that, hopefully this mid season, reminder of the goal for this podcast is helpful for you. I just want to give you a little backbone, a little bit of power and support, a little bit of reason for why this podcast is important and that I hope you are listening and sharing. Hopefully you also hop out there and rate and subscribe and please, review, review, review, review, it matters. It helps podcast stay on the air and lets me know if I’m doing a good job or not, so that I can adjust episodes in the future. So thanks for listening to this latest episode of guilty privilege. You.