Passport privileged. I am one of those. English-as-native-language privileged. Check. And there are more markers which invite me and those with whom I deal on a daily basis to forget, to take for granted, to assume… which is of course exactly what we do. We practice our polite othering in so many ways and we forget.
With this post you call us out. You see us not seeing you and the indignities you face because kind though we may be, we can also be careless, thoughtless and blind to our distinctive privilege cocktails from which we sip which may not apply to you and your context.
Reversing this tendency is a lifelong project and we’re in it. This is why your work, your voice, your anger, your resilience, your presence are critical to getting us all to interrogate what role we play in holding the status quo in place. Innocence is no longer a claim we can honestly make.