3. Privilege and marginality
Dear Leaders,
More than 20 years ago, I was once asked, “Are you from the Poon-Jaab?”. In common with most ethnic minorities in the UK, I have endured many variations of this tired question. But when it was the future King Charles III asking, the words were especially memorable[1].
“Where are you really from?”. “Where were you born?”. “But where were your parents born?”.
My responses are, “I grew up in West Bromwich, I was born in Cuckfield and both my parents were born in India; where were your 32 Great Great Great Grandparents born?”[2] Once I got over the frustration of being asked to justify my Britishness yet again, I was left pondering, ‘why do so many intelligent and caring people ask such daft and insensitive questions?’
The answer is that our privileges make us blind: we cannot see what is in front of our eyes, because our privileges filter out data which doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of reality – such as the possibility of someone brown-skinned being from the UK. Privilege is sometimes understood to refer to the presence of rights or resources which are not available to others. Privilege is more often the absence – and complete ignorance – of challenges which are routinely experienced by others.
Most people of white ethnicities in the UK have no experience of being asked to justify their Britishness[3]. Until recent years, most men didn’t understand the challenge of juggling work meetings around school drop off and pick up times. Most heterosexuals don’t have to re-confirm their booking of a double bedroom for a holiday with their partner.
Early in my career, my own Male privilege hit me in the face when a friend shared her experiences of sexism in her workplace. I was shocked and angry. I expressed my relief that my employer was so much more enlightened. And then I started noticing similar incidents happening in my own workplace. Why hadn’t I noticed them before? Because I hadn’t been paying attention. The best the privileged can hope for is to become partially sighted.
There is a pervasive and incorrect belief in the UK that education and travel eliminate racism and other forms of prejudice. While education, travel and any other contact with diversity may indeed reduce Explicit Prejudice and Simple Ignorance, they have little impact on Implicit and Systemic prejudices (see letter 6).
I haven’t experienced explicit prejudice in my UK workplaces. What I have experienced is plenty of implicit prejudice. Early in my career, I was invited to a working lunch at a hotel in Mayfair. A senior white male colleague with sterling upper class credentials told me, “It must be nice for someone from your background to have lunch here.” My younger self was too timid to clarify whether he was referring to my race or my class. I resolved to change my Brummie accent and learn to ‘speak posh’. I don’t regret doing so: my conscious change of accent has served me well by reducing my marginality discounts (see letter 4).
I also had some confusing experiences during my early career. One colleague, I’ll call her Sally, regaled her stories from an arduous holiday in India. There were reservation errors by hotel staff who couldn’t get their dates right, chefs who failed to comprehend how to make food without coriander and a lack of proper toilets. There was a Fawlty Towers moment when Sally and a porter both held on to a handle of her suitcase at a hotel entrance: Sally didn’t wish to pay the extortionate porter tips (which were about 50 pence). I confess: I didn’t like Sally, because I found her to be mean-spirited. But what confused me is that Sally, who had studied at two top universities and had lived and worked on 4 continents, could be so lacking in intercultural awareness and tolerance. My experience with Sally challenged my belief that education and travel eliminate prejudice and helped me to understand that our privileges make us disregard the very valid reasons that others may behave differently to what we consider as normal. Wherever we travel, our privileges go with us and make us ignorant to what is really going on.
Another colleague, I’ll call him Jason, sought to relate to me after I had shared some of my childhood experiences of racism in West Bromwich. Jason shared his own experience of being a minority when working at an educational charity in rural India during a gap year between university and work. He laughed at his own ineptitude in coping with squat toilets, eating watery lentils and rice with his fingers, and the many a cultural faux pax he made, including when he approached women in the same way he approached men. In contrast to my feelings about Sally, I liked Jason: he had the humility to understand that the challenges he experienced were due to his own unfamiliarity with the culture and ways of doing things. I laughed with him during the conversation and Jason hugged me at the end of our chat. But something strange happened afterwards: I felt angry. I couldn’t understand why. I had had a pleasant, fun conversation with Jason. Was I angry with Jason? Why? The only conclusion I could draw is that I was being homophobic because Jason is gay and he had hugged me! I felt awful about myself. It took me years to understand that the anger I was feeling with Jason was legitimate and it wasn’t due to homophobia; the next letter on Status Dynamics explains more.
Marginality is more than the absence of Privilege. Being Marginalised means being discounted for an aspect of your identity which has no impact on your abilities. An absence of Privilege (e.g. access to a Golf Club membership) feels annoying and unfair; being Marginalised (e.g. forced to live somewhere devoid of green spaces) feels soul-destroying and induces indignant rage.
Most of us like to think we have earned every ounce of our success – and much of our success is earned and well deserved. Few people are born with proverbial ‘silver spoons in their mouths’. But most people have benefitted from some privilege, in the form of not having to overcome obstacles routinely faced by people with other identity characteristics. What are the privileges from which you have benefited, and what portion of your success might be due to these privileges which you didn’t earn?
Yours faithfully,
Alok Singh
[1] The then Prince Charles was visiting the offices of The Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum for which he was the patron and where I was an employee. Along with my colleagues, I lined up in a large meeting room to meet HRH. He shook my hand and asked this question. I replied that I grew up in West Bromwich and my parents were immigrants from India. Later, a colleague explained that HRH had gotten confused between me and an international intern who was standing next to me.
[2] Being ‘from the UK’ is purely a matter of ‘how many generations’ we count. Lest we forget, the British Royal Family has significant German ancestry.
[3] There are notable exceptions e.g. many people born in Northern Ireland experience similar questions.