An article recently floating around the net really got me thinking about privilege, and what it means to have it. The article was about the introduction of ballet shoes for people of colour. To be honest, until I read the article, the thought of coloured ballerinas having to struggle to pair their ballet shoes to their own skin tone had never even occurred to me: like millions of young girls before and after me, when I did ballet, my mother just went to the shops and bought me a pair of shoes and that was pretty much that. It was a sobering moment when I realised that my privilege had completely narrowed my vision to a point where I believed that my truth was everyone else’s.
In a completely separate article I also read last week, I was reminded again of the notion of privilege, however this time I found myself on the other side of the metaphorical fence. The second article was about an experiment carried out by a woman where she asked other women what they would do if all men had a 9pm curfew. The same simple and sad answer kept coming up again and again: if men had a curfew, then many women would feel safe enough to go out and walk their dogs at night or go for a run.
Go out of your way to try to understand where the other person is coming from
As a woman who has spent most of her life looking over her shoulder when she gets home late, I could completely empathise with this sentiment, and yet surprisingly, when the male comments started coming in I realised that many of them had never even considered this to be an issue. Their whole lives, they have been able to walk wherever they wanted to, at whatever time they wanted, without fear or restriction or society’s dominant voices in their heads. Many of them were aghast that something they took for granted was an issue for so many women around the world.
It was a strange coincidence but a valuable one: it helped me understand something which although I’ve always known, I haven’t really thought about. Privilege is very real. But where does that leave us?
Well, for starters if it is you who is in the state of privilege, you should always make an effort to go out of your way to try to understand where the other person is coming from. While you may take some of the most basic things for granted, it doesn’t mean that everyone can afford to. On the other hand, if you are the one who is suffering, then it makes sense to speak out with a sense of love and understanding.
It would be very easy for a person of colour to get angry about the fact that they felt invisible for not being sartorially provided for, or for women to rally against all male-kind for not realising how differently they see the world, but many times, this behaviour just closes off all possible channels of communication. I will be keeping an eye out for more ballet shoe situations, and if I can lend my voice to such a struggle, I will do so even if it doesn’t affect me directly. It costs nothing to care.