ARTWORK: Milly Yates
An Open Letter to Those Uncomfortable with Their Privilege By Aditi Dubey
My first instinct is to tell you to shut the fuck up and move to the side so that people with a better understanding of the world can get things done. But I won’t do that. It probably wouldn’t be helpful and it would push you even further away from understanding things that are very important to understand. Instead, I’m just going to try to explain things, as nicely as I can, and hope that you will listen. So, you’ve been told that you have privilege. Maybe you’re a man, or white, or straight, or cis-gender, or all of those things. You staunchly disagree with the people who tell you have privilege. I get it. I understand why you do that. I have an immense amount of privilege. In Australia, I am a woman of colour, not really someone who’s at the top of the pyramid. However, back home in India, everyone is a person of colour so I don’t really face any disadvantages on that front. I’m a woman and we don’t have it great in India, but I am privileged in many other ways. India’s economic divide is very wide. I’m lucky enough to be on the better side of it. Caste discrimination is alive and well and I have the privilege of being
upper caste. I was educated in a school that taught in English. I was able to go to university and get a Bachelor’s degree. I was even able to come to Australia to get a Master’s degree. These are all signs of privilege. My experience might not be a familiar one to those of you who grew up in Australia or other countries. India has its own complex social issues which do not exist in the same way in Australia. Despite the obvious differences, I think my experience is, in fact, quite relevant even to a foreign country. Many deeply rooted inequalities exist in Australia. I am not here to teach you about them– there are many resources through which you can gain a deeper understanding of how those of certain races, genders, sexual orientations and religious backgrounds suffer greatly in this country. I am here to show you how those of us with privilege should deal with it. The instinctual response is to reject it, and to go up in arms against those who point out our privilege. We must do better than that. I hope this article can help you see that.
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