Move The Crowd Part 3 : Privilege & Culture
Move The Crowd’s mastermind event shook me up. In the first and second segments about the event, I talked about some of the speakers they had, the alumni who presented, and the conversations that had brought me into some new consciousness even before the event had begun. But the day continued forward, and so did I. More inspiration, more reflection… embracing our collective MORE.Reshma Saujani took the stage. She didn’t want to, but she said that when Rha Goddess asks, sometimes you just do. She is one of Forbses 40 under 40, and just lost her election campaign. As an ethnically Indian woman who was born in Uganda, whose campaign focused on women, it was a hard race. But she shared what she learned. And what she has gone through. And how some people look poorly on having aspirations. And about gender, and race…Let me say this. I realized at True+Paid+Good how profoundly white I am. I was surrounded by bodacious beings who were rocking their respective worlds: artists, musicians, lawyers, investment bankers, dancers, activists, educators, coaches, media mavens. And I became truly aware of how entrenched in privilege I am.A while back, Mollena wrote about the issues in Portland around black face and leather community. I understood it. But here, I felt it.Phakiso “Kiki” Collins took the stage and shared her project helping black women, young and old, talk about their sexual and juicy selves called Breakin’ Out!. Recounting the shame she felt in the bathroom, that her body didn’t look right. I flashed to Zahava and I discussing how most medical texts nowadays show thin white women with a specific visual of what vulvas should look like. Talking with a friend a few months ago about a doctor calling her to ask if a baby looked right, that it was almost blue… with the doctor not being aware of what a healthy child of ebony-skinned parents should look like.She shared that there is a lot of silence about bodied amongst black women, having deemed overly sexual under media stereotypes, with stories of slavery, disempowerment, and shame clouding the discussion as well. Her project works on creating shared space to make art, talk, share, and get up to dance. To build self-esteem, at all ages. Her words hit home:“Before someone enters your body, you need to know your body first.” – Phakiso “Kiki” CollinsMy mind blinks over to a recent conversation with a friend. Their child is a teen, and recently had sex for the first time. They didn’t have an issue with that. They had an issue with the fact that the child did it with someone who was using them, that it was not done in love, that the child hurt about it. That the child was unable to talk about it afterwards for some time. Their rule with the child had always been “don’t do it until you have the capacity to talk about it, whatever it is.”The folks in the room urged the presenter to consider the true costs of an event. Too often as event producers doing the “good work,” we worry about how much a venue costs, how much the food costs. But there is more. We need to look at plates, silverware, printing… and gosh, our time? Our gas money. Stop, pause, what is coming out of your pockets? Just because you have the sodas at your house already does not mean the soda did not cost anything.Oh, and she had chocolate truffles for each of us hidden under our chairs pre-presentation, in red boxes. To practice an exercise she does in the parties. She brought us into the experience. She bought us into the experience.But it hits me as the music between presenters comes on. All day, the music. I knew so little of it. Everyone bumping, grinding, laughing, between segments. That the room was as ethnically diverse as the actual population. And I had gotten so used to be in white culture. That the bulk of folks who were not white interacting within white culture.I was not in a space of white culture. I was in a space where the slang was not the slang of my core culture. Where passionately articulate powerful and well-off people spoke using statements like “he be doin’ it.” That I was racist, because a part of my mind had conflict with a specific type of language and music and cultural framework being paired with these clearly successful and creative individuals.In that I realized myself more fully. That I wanted to apologize to Mollena. To each person I unintentionally alienated.But instead of apologies, I work to make it better, moment at a time. But heck, I’ll probably be apologizing too.Then, the next presenter hits me again.I call it hitting, but it had zero to do with me. My white shame is speaking. My white shame is not helpful. I pause, and really listen. Try, even if it isn’t perfect.Anurag Gupta is truly brilliant. On top of being a legal scholar, he has a project called BE:MORE (Beyond Equality: Movement of Opportunities Rising for Everyone) that is here to inform, empower, and change the landscape of racial awareness in America. Race is not chromosomally real, but the effects of it have significant consequences. That our culture has created structures around it that perpetuate narratives that are harming people. Truly harming them.The challenge is that though there have been swaths of research done on the issue of the issue, it is far too often inaccessible. Inaccessible to people, as well as to grant-writers and smaller institutions in need of it. It has been published in academic journals… which makes it inaccessible on two levels.Firstly, it is written in a language of academia, which so few can actually read. How many of us can truly grok/comprehend/core-understand academic texts? It is dense, and references other equally dense work. It needs re-written to be made understood by the masses. So that the young men at barber shops can actually have conversations about what is going on with them. To help them process it themselves, rather than the fact that, as Anarag said, “it’s being processed *on* them.” The second way it is inaccessible. It is in academic journals. Which require access financially to read.People on the ground need to see the information. To be able to understand it. And, to add insult to injury, how much is our current work based on a framework of internet access?My privilege hits me again. Later, I end up sitting in on a conversation with two amazing beings, where they are discussing a project. When the issue of taking forms online, one mentions that it will be tricky for folks to do if they only have 30 minutes at a time to do so online at a public library, assuming they have a library card. My financial privilege combines with the racial privilege I’d been sitting with (they were discussing inner-city young black women at the time). The same person points out that most of these kids nowadays could upload something via their phones though. Creative technology, using the tools available to the audience we want to reach. But as someone who has become so ‘net-centric, I am reminded how much I am in a feedback loop. I am a white person in white culture amongst a financial bracket of people who can afford internet access. We speak in circles, and the cross-overs come in easy packages.We live in many Americas. American culture and white culture are not one and the same. KKK members march on Gettysburg. Young black men learn to fear cops at the age of 4. Appalachian families dig up abandoned railroad tracks to sell for scrap metal money. 9 million new iPhones get sold in one weekend.And there are people like Gupta and Collins, affecting change on a large scale level, and a personal one.