“Let’s Start the Conversation Workshop”
Oppression and privilege are not exactly easy going topics of conversation, but this exactly what participants attending the “Let’s Start the Conversation Workshop” dived into head first.
Led by queer Muslim activist Sabah Choudrey, “Let’s Start the Conversation” was an active workshop exploring different experiences of oppression and privilege.
After a name and pronouns round, we are asked to define “oppression”. What became clear quite quickly was how different groups experience oppression in different ways, and while sometimes these experiences are overt, often they are not. Racial stereotypes and homophobic slurs can be easy enough to identity and call out, but what about touching a black person’s hair without their permission, expecting Muslims to “represent” a religion with 1.8 billion followers, asking a person of colour “but seriously, where are you really from?”, or calling something “gay” because you don’t like it?
These everyday occurrences are known as micro-aggressions, defined as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual-orientation, religious slights and insults to the target person or group” (Sue, 2012, p.5). For someone of a particular target group, these things happen on a near daily basis — it’s not just a one off.
Though micro-aggressions are not usually violent or intended to cause offence, they do because of the hidden subtext. The oppression of micro-aggressions is hidden, considered benign and often normalised, which is what makes it particularly pernicious and dangerous.
Next we were asked to talk about privilege, arguably the more difficult of the two topics to discuss — we can all get behind listening to the experiences of others and saying something needs to be done, but what about when we are part of the problem? As mentioned above, oppression can be hidden, systemic, and normalised, and so we may be perpetuating it without even realising it.
Some examples of privilege include being wealthy, cis-gendered, heterosexual, male, able, and white skinned. Identity is complex so we may fit into some of these groups but not others. Nonetheless, it is only by recognising the privilege we have that can we then begin to use it to dismantle systems of oppression. It is also important to remember, privilege is not a bad thing.
After this we brought the two discussions together: how can we use our privilege to be an ally and act in solidarity for other marginalised groups. This was as much a personal question (“What can I do?”) as it was an institutional or organisational question (“what can the university/union/council do?”). It goes without saying the world isn’t going to change for the better overnight, but we can all start with ourselves and the relationships we have.
Ultimately, we are all socialised depending on our upbringing which means certain belief systems and ways of thinking are engrained within us. To be an ally means to sometimes unpack and unlearn these systems and this can be an uncomfortable experience precisely because certain beliefs and behaviours are normalised. But, as Sabah said during the workshop, this is where the change happens, and how therefore structural oppression can be eliminated for good.
References:
Derald Wing Sue. 2010. Microaggressions in everyday life: race, gender, and sexual. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley-Blackwell.
