Privilege

Talking about privilege is uncomfortable, let's change that.

I spent a great deal of time coming to terms with the fact that I was deemed privileged. I remember the frustration I would feel when someone would suggest it, without knowing anything about me.

A white girl, who went to a Russell Group university, who now works at Microsoft, she is walking, talking privilege, right?

I remember thinking that ‘if only they knew what it was like for me growing up’, I wanted to scream it, these ignorant minds had no clue.

How could I, the girl who grew up here:

In one of the roughest estates in Hull, be privileged?

Me? The girl who didn’t go to school with her hair brushed, or had holes in her shoes/clothes and who smelt a bit funky. The girl who couldn’t walk down her street without fear of being harassed and forced to give the neighbourhood terrorisers her spare change.

It took me a long time to even contemplate that I was. Because, honestly, I did not feel it.

In truth, I spent so much of my life growing up focusing on the things I didn’t have, rather than on what I did. (Can you see how that’s shaped the person I’ve become today?) I often compared myself to my school friends, the ones who were able to afford to go on school trips, or to go shopping for new clothes, or didn’t have to worry about the daily tormenting from the terrorisers in the streets or about the meter running out and the house going cold. I hated it, I felt so stuck and I vowed when I grew up that I would never be in a situation where I was without again.

And this is where you get a little bit silo-minded and ‘hard done to’ as someone living in a first-world country in poverty. You think that you’ve had it harder than others, and sure you probably have had it harder than some, but definitely not others.

You see, when you don’t feel privileged, it doesn’t matter how much you get, you spend your entire being always wanting more, more, more.

You don’t realise that having:

1. Free healthcare

2. A home with food, water and electricity

3. Free primary and secondary education

4. Opportunities to go to university, funded

5. Access to scholarships

6. A country that pays a minimum wage

7. Access to the internet

8. Access to learning and training materials

9. A brain that wants to continuously learn and improve

10. The way you look and the colour of your skin

Is a privilege… that a lot of people do not have. There are so many places around the world that these things just wouldn’t be available for, for people like me growing up. Being able to spend my time studying instead of working was a privilege, being able to go to university was a privilege. Having access to all these opportunities has been a privilege.

Being privileged doesn’t mean that you didn’t work hard for what you have, or that you don’t deserve it, it just means that you had access to things that allowed you to get to where you are today, that other’s didn’t.

Once I started to change my mind set to focus on what I did have…

That’s when I realised how privileged I was.

What will I do next with that privilege? Well, you’ll have to follow along for that…

When you think you’ve had it hard, and you can’t find a way out, focus on the things you do have at your disposal and use them to your advantage as much as you possibly can.