Privilege & Performance
reflection of Tatiana Mac’s talk at #PerfMatters 2019, for the course “Digital Publication Platforms”, Content Strategy, FH JOANNEUM.
Is privilege binary? Some people are privileged, some are not? Is there nothing in between? Am I using my privilege without knowing? Am I treating people differently because of their missing privilege? Knowing, or unknowingly?
These and many more questions arised during and long after I listened to Tatiana Mac’s talk. In this reflection, I want to dig deeper, get uncomfortable and find out — with all of you readers.
Designer Tatiana Mac begins her presentation with telling her own story: She grew up under difficult circumstances but taking every opportunity to make the best out of it and finding her destiny. She quickly realized that she loved design, loved the power of it. And found out that she didn’t want to use this power to increase major companies’ profits anymore. She plans to use it to help people, use it for good.
Everything she does, she wants to contextualize ethically. So being able to present a tool at #PerfMatters conference, she decided to create a special one:
Privilege Plugin 2.0
In her talk, Mac describes the different steps of the installation. From reading the terms & conditions — aka getting prepared for talking about stuff, that makes you uncomfortable — to step one:
- Confront your own privilege.
Mac starts with herself: She’s able-bodied, American, wealthy and neurotypical, which makes her privileged in modern society. Then comes the “but”: She’s able-bodied but petite. She’s moderately healthy but raised poor. She’s American but First-Gen Asian-American. She’s neurotypical but suffers from suicidaly thoughts and depression.
Now it’s my turn: The fact that I’m white, European and hetero is definitively a privilige. There are no buts to find here. I am healthy, but I used to have bone cancer and struggle with pain. I am wealthy, I never had money problems, but I am not rich. I’m a CIS woman, but I am getting less respect because of my gender, and was sexualized as a child because of my body. I am neurotypical but suffered from depression.
2. Admit your bias
“Privilege gains us power; ignorance hides our bias.”
Mac states that we, as a society but also as marketing/tech people, center the able-bodied, neurotypical experience. She underlines this by showing the results of a study concerning web accessibility of the 1 milion most popular sites. 80% of sites fail on basic aspects like contrast.
Thinking of my own work as a social media manager, I have to say that I never checked my content for accessibility. I did follow Facebook’s and LinkedIn’d guidelines and used their tools for better performance, but never even put in a thought about accessibility, and neither did my colleagues. This has to change.
3. Lessen your ignorance
Mac further explains that we have to be aware that we’re focused above the fold. We — as the privileged ones — should understand that not everything is made for our understanding.
We — and that’s myself included — always center our own experience. So, on social media for example, if something is clearly not produced for me and my target group, I get upset that I’m even seeing this. Especially since I know all the targetting possibilities Meta has to offer. But this is exactly the behaviour that enforced bubbles and the splitting of our society into groups, that I criticize so often. Maybe if we would all be more open for content that doesn’t fit our individual and mostly privileged needs, everyone would understand each other’s needs much better.
4. Share your power
Mac encourages her listeners to dismantle the wall of privilege. We can be here and hand over privilege temporarily, but this is not a long-term solution. We have to tear down the wall.
How do we do this? Not by inviting people to come to the party, but by letting someone else throw it completely.
As a woman, I gotta say that this might be hard. I feel like, if I ever get into a position of power, I have worked extra hard for it and giving something of that away for the greater good, even if the person deserves it, might not be easy. But I’m grateful for Mac’s calling me out on that and thinking about my behaviour.
5. Make a choice
Mac let’s the listeners decide between two options, a red and a blue pill:
The red pill might be messier, more difficult. But you’ll contribute to a world where everyone is included. The blue pill on the other hand, is quite easy: By taking it you just live with your privilege, and ignore everything that gives you advantage.
Intuitively I would just take the red pill, try my best and be done with it. But this is not how this works. This choise is not something we do once. We take one of those pills everyday and with every action or conversation. But Mac’s advice is a pretty motivating one:
You will mess up. Some days you’ll take the wrong pill. But then, apologize and move on. And I hope, hope, hope, hope that you all decide to do the right f*cking thing.
