Sorry, not sorry — dismantling privilege in the age of overwhelming political correctness
Becoming a change agent, the implications of privilege on design, and the ripple effect of exceptionalism
As I fly over Tennessee, I can’t help but get a bit lost in the events of the last three days.
During those 72 hours, I spent a day getting inspired by women with incredible careers and personal journeys at International Women’s Day (IWD). I joined a host of colleagues from across Accenture to host our biggest installation yet at SXSW and supported our Live Innovation activities. I spoke with loads of young designers, would-be designers, entrepreneurs and the seasoned veterans from the world of digital. I also had the unusual opportunity to have three very public conversations about diversity, inclusion and privilege. None of those topics are new to me, and they are certainly not things I shy away from discussing in public.
This was different.
First, at IWD, I was honored to be able to address a room of more than 500 Accenture colleagues, clients, and partners. I shared my thoughts on inclusion and diversity, lead participants through a brief discussion about the implications of our own behavior, and asked people to declare their actions to create positive change in their own spaces.
Second, and somewhat even more unexpected, I seized an opportunity. Thirty-six hours after IWD, I addressed two crowds attending a Fjord Trends talk, at SXSW, totaling about 300 people. The conversation about Trends naturally led me to address the impact of privilege and our accountability as designers, technologists and, moreover, as humans. I asked the audience to consider the blind spots our privilege creates when we design products, services and, ultimately, businesses.
Standing in front of all of those people, it finally clicked. I had been participating in a kind of exceptionalism. Until now, I had been “acting” the part of change agent when apparent opportunities arose. I had not been truly living as a change agent.
I had been donning the mantle of change agent when it was convenient for me. It was my normal to talk about it, but not to truly live it. I’m pretty sure I’ve been on this journey actively for a while now, but it took these opportunities to be human, totally vulnerable– not the exceptional moments of “swooping in”– to finally make it real.
I’ve been actively wrestling with the notion of privilege and its implications on design for a while now. Looking back, it started with a quilt, almost two years ago. A seemingly innocuous studio project, designed to examine a day in my life and create a representative artifact, led to an exploration of the notion of privilege — as both a designer and an executive — that I had not quite expected. As a black woman in America, I hadn’t often thought of myself as privileged. However, in the interest of honesty, and vulnerability, I have to acknowledge that I am. The quilt helped me see, for the first time, the impact of my privilege on my work, and on who I am as a leader.
Privilege: A right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor.
I chose January 25, 2016, as the day in my life to visualize. It seemed right. It was five days before my 41st birthday. It was, also at that point, the deadliest day on the books in Chicago that year.
Having been tangentially involved in supporting organizations like CureViolence for a few years, I had hit a wall. I wasn’t doing enough to help create change. I needed to exorcise my own demons, and this seemed like a proper way to begin.
I had been reading a book on Quilts and the Underground Railroad — another quest for inspiration in storytelling and symbology — and suddenly, it clicked. I would make a quilt of that day. Insane, because I had never made a quilt before and I had so little time in my days as it was. Time. Time was really the issue. And time became my lens.
On that day, January 25, 2016, 16 men, all Black or Latino, were shot and killed between 9:00 am and 9:00 pm. More than 20 people were shot and wounded as well. What had I been doing while people were dying? While I was purporting to “change the way the world works and lives,” people were dying. In the streets of my city, mere blocks from where I spent my days in meetings, discussing innovation, coaching designers and clients on the creation of new products and services, making cups of tea, and reading books to my daughter. What was happening out there, while I was safe in here?
Stay with me here for a moment, because I know this seems like a crisis of conscience story where someone decides to abandon working in business to full-on NFPO. That’s not where I’m headed.
Where I landed was this: I have the privilege to sit around and discuss the problems of the world, in almost any context — and I need to be much more thoughtful about how I wield that privilege. I need to do this whether I am examining the impact or design of an app, helping a client redesign their ways of working, or exploring opportunities to work with community partners to tackle something like food insecurity or gun violence. This seemingly innocuous exercise served as a catalyst to reframe my entire way of thinking on the subject.
This way of thinking was recently made manifest when a team of designers in the studio decided to put together a month of programming around the topic of privilege and its impact on our work. During a brainstorming session for the program, someone said “Isn’t this just about empathy?” We all nodded, agreeing that yes, to some extent this is about empathy. But through discussions with them, an exploration of this year’s trends, and the talks I had given in the last 72 hours, it had become blindingly clear for me that checking our privilege is an imperative if we are going to truly “change the way the world works and lives.”
Empathy: The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
Five principles
As I continue my journey, there are five principles I’m choosing to live by to acknowledge and confront my privilege and, if I’m honest, yours too. Because, if you’re reading this, chances are you’re privileged, too.
Operate with empathy, always
I know I said it’s about more than empathy, but it certainly starts there. Designers talk about empathy a lot. It’s because we want you to see the human at the other end of a given transaction — that woman wrestling to use your product or service, requesting your support, or navigating your organization to apply for a job. That empathy needs to extend beyond the context of product and service development, to our every day.
Empathy is not a design thing. It’s a human thing. This is especially true if you are in a position of privilege to impact someone’s access to or use of necessary goods, services, education, healthcare or employment.
Sorry, not sorry
It seems these days we are quick to take the easy road and water our messages down so that on the surface, they appear safe, non-threatening, and “politically correct.” I loved Black Panther for how entirely, unapologetically Black it was. It made intelligent, abundant, strong blackness feel … well … normal. At IWD, I watched pioneering women apologize to the men in the room before simply telling the truth about the conditions of women in the workplace, the hardships that we have faced as women, and simply for being women.
We must stop apologizing for telling the truth. If our beliefs are constructed of our experience, then the perception of the world through that lens is our truth.
It may be hard to reconcile that, because it means that if we want to be part of changing the world for the better, then we have to listen to people unapologetically say things that hurt us, and challenge our own beliefs.
Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe that’s the key. There are plenty of other things to apologize for in this world. Telling our truths should not be one of them. In telling our truth, and in hearing others, we can challenge black and white notions of concepts like privilege, and remake our belief structures.
Beliefs are created. Beliefs are constructed, hierarchically, using theories and judgments, which are based on selected facts and personal, subjective experiences.
- Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking
Challenge your beliefs
I recently re-read Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray. I genuinely feel like it holds the key to how you accomplish the not-so-simple dictate of “operate with empathy.”
We must all assume that we are biased and that we lack objectivity. It’s not because we’re terrible people, and it’s not because we necessarily devalue others. It is because most of us have not honed the muscles required to actively challenge our own beliefs.
We live, comfortably, in the rules that we have created from our belief systems. Some beliefs are more tightly held than others. To open up to new ways of approaching the world, Gray recommends the Zen practice of “beginner’s mind.” Empty your mind of what you believe and the rules those beliefs create, and allow yourself to dream of new possibilities and see the world through new perspectives.
When we run workshops and we ask teams to Future Cast — to articulate a possible future that represents the “ideal state” of a product or a service. This is essentially what we’re asking them to do. We can use that same approach to imagine how someone else’s life could be made better by a shift in our application of our privilege. Having seen something differently, we can begin to alter the fabric of our beliefs not only through our thinking, but through our actions, because experiences inform the creation of our beliefs.
Find shared value
When you challenge your beliefs, and see something through someone else’s eyes, it does not mean you’ll instantly become new, and it doesn’t mean you should. But perhaps that’s not the point. I am coming to understand that I don’t have to change the hearts and minds of everyone who sees the world differently. But for those things that are important to me, or to them, perhaps there is a way to find a shared value on which we can build common understanding, and an outcome that serves to lift us both up.
For example, equal pay for equal work is obvious to me. It may be to you. It is not to everyone. I am not excusing that. I would just posit that rather than simply clinging tightly to our stats about pay or changing majority, we find a way to articulate the benefits of something like equality in a way that resonates with the values and beliefs of those whose support we need to make such things a reality.
I know, I know. It’s common sense. It’s obvious.
But, is it?
If it were, then we would not still be having this conversation. Imagine how many things you take for granted as obvious every day. How many outcomes could you change if you worked to find a common value equation?
Be a mirror
I am going to model the change I want to see. I know it’s been said before. Hell, Michael Jackson wrote a song about it.
Looking back at my time on boards, or my recent time as a member of Mother’s Against Senseless Killings (MASK), I realize that I was trying to be a change agent in scheduled moments, and then returning to my life until the next “moment” I could be of use. Much of what I can do to create lasting change isn’t in those moments. Those matter, for sure. But really, I can mirror the change I want to see in the world. I can change the world, at least the world around me, by changing my own behaviors and beliefs. So I will be a mirror. For my daughter. For my team. For those who do not share my beliefs or values. Unapologetically. But not without empathy. And not without a willingness to let them be a mirror for me as well.
These aren’t just principles to adopt if you’re an activist bent on dismantling the negative impacts of privilege, starting with your own. Or a strategist with a passion for building thriving organizations. These are principles that, if we can employ them in our every day, can make our lives, our business, our cities, states, countries, better in service of us all.
So, I’ll pose the same challenge to you that I posed to the IWD audience: How will you ACT to confront your privilege?
An ACT is “a commitment today.” Some said they would be mirrors for others at work. Some said they’d have a meal and a conversation with someone with a different belief system. Others committed to organize discussions or working groups to enact change.
What small thing can you do when you put this magazine down that will create an opportunity for positive change tomorrow?
I’d love to hear about it.
