Episode 4: Privilege and Intersectionality in Online Business [Mariana]

6:39AM Jun 20, 2024

Speakers:

Danbee Shin

Mariana Peña

Keywords:

feel

privilege

identities

intersectionality

world

business

experience

work

write

thinking

build

intersections

immigrant

people

personal brand

born

language

english

life

impact

Welcome back to our podcast. I am Danbee Shin. I'm a web design mentor and a global inclusion specialist. And with me, I have my co host Mariana.

I'm so happy to be here with you again. Hi, Danbee. I am Mariana Pena, I am a learning designer and an IP consultant for revolutionary experts who wants to change the world one program at a time. And I'm very excited about today's topic.

Today's all about privilege, and intersectionality. Big words.

Very big words. But I think that when whenever we have big words, if we just break them down, they become less scary, they become more manageable. And also, it feels like an invitation to explore them a little bit more. So hopefully, with this episode, you will feel like we feel around these terms, which is just an invitation to have a daily practice, where we look into how are we participating around these terms, it's never our intention to have the one answer to fix it all. It's more, let's just reflect around these topics, and see how we can put a little bit of work into building a better place.

Absolutely. And also just the terminology, I feel like I love how you said it was an invitation. Because these things are going to show up in different ways for people and everyone's experiences are different. But the words give us like common language to talk about similar experiences. And I think that's where it becomes very helpful. With

that in mind, when we say privilege, what comes to mind that when we say privilege to you, for me,

it's all about what it's about advantages and disadvantages for me, like what benefits you have just by being yourself, just not because you've earned a certain right to a privilege, but because of who you are because of the different elements of your identity, the benefits you get in life.

When I think of privilege, I think of like the parents of the meritocracy mess, hmm. Because just like you said, Privilege is that access, that quote unquote, luck that you have, simply by being born, who you are, yeah, there is nothing you did in order to get that luck that goes with you, and allows you to get into places earn things. And of course, in this capitalistic world, we want to believe that what we have is because we have earned it, we have worked, and we have earned our merits through it. And the more we unpack this, we come to terms with the sad realization that it is not like that, most of who we are in this world and how we are able to navigate this world comes down to privilege. Like I said, it might feel a little bit scary to think about. But we all participate in this concept and structure. And the more aware we are the more opportunities we can bring to those who don't enjoy the same luck that we have. It's not absolute,

right? It's not like one person has privilege. And that's all it is. And the other person has no privilege we all have. There are elements of our identities that give us privilege and elements that don't kind of erase us in some ways. And they can feel so

random. I was born in Mexico. I didn't choose that just as

engineered.

You might be shocked. But this isn't that sense that a lot of people have with their nations, their country's super nationalistic, I'm so proud of being Mexican. I'm like, okay, great. That's great, because you live here, but this is not by any means by design, you just happen to be born here. Mexico puts me into the spectrum of what they consider the global south even. There's some discussion there, but a Latin America and that's already a disadvantage. But within Mexico, I was born in the north of the country. So anybody who is part of a country that is laid out in North and South, instead of East and West knows that this idea of Oh, the North is industrial is hard working people, they earn the money, they are honest and earnest, and the South are just lazy, they lay back they enjoy life. And like that's not true. They're hard working people everywhere in Mexico and people that know how to enjoy life everywhere in Mexico. So that's just a little bit of an example of how privilege can be received and also you can find it everywhere, no matter where you were born.

This reminds me of my middle school English teacher and her name was Miss Fernando and also like Hold up a conversation to go into because Fernando is very common Sri Lankan last name, because it's the result of the Portuguese colonial era. Anyway, she taught me a lot of things. But she said, and she's talking to a bunch of middle schoolers, we're like, what, 1112 years old. And she says, people like to tell children that your possibilities are infinite, you can do whatever you want. But the moment you're born, the range of possibilities that are available to you have just been set, right? They're limited at the point in which you're born, you can argue which exact precise moment in time but and I found that so shocking, because I think I had been brought up to think, Oh, you can be anything you want. And I could immediately see I was in middle school, I could immediately see what she meant, right? Like you said, the country are born, the parents you're born into the family, you're born into the school system that like is a direct result of your family situation. And like you said, at the moment in which you're born, like you've done nothing, and, and your set of privileges have been said, and not definitely their privileges that you pick up along the way. But for the most part, it's determined just by being born into the world. And

this is what I find really fascinating that if you look at the social sciences, across the board, there are elements that have been identified, like when when we are looking into health, we have health determinants. And this is exactly like, where you live in in a specific area, work in a specific area being born into specific family, you already have all of these predictors for your health. And the same goes for education, right. So if you are born into a family that lives in a certain region in a certain country, you will have access to a specific level of education. And that is going to impact your opportunities across your life, but also your family if you choose to have a family. This is not to sound catastrophic. I don't want people who are with us right now thinking, Oh, my God, this is a Greek tragedy, Destiny, he said for me, no, that's not it. This is just a way for you to realize one thing that you're experiencing in your life are real, you're not making things, opportunities, make them harder for you than for your white counterparts at your work. So the first thing that I want you to feel and know is that you're not making things up. This is a very real situation. The second one is when you know how the rules are set, you can learn how to move within those rules, right? Because if you don't know how the rules are set for you, you're a little bit disappointed. It feels random. It feels random, it feels unfair, it feels like the gods are against you. But when we know about these things, when when we like you mentioned when we can name them, when we can articulate them and observe them, we can also bend them in our favor. So with privilege comes another term that is crucial to understand in this discussion. And that is intersectionality. And intersectionality literally is one of those words that changed my life. I think I can remember the moment where I heard it. And I understood what it meant. And I failed. This is a moment where in the movies they're like before and after. It was like that for me. could you How could you explain index intersectionality for for someone that has never heard of it, that'd be a

legal scholar called Kimberly Crenshaw coined the term to describe what it's like at the intersection of different identities. And Kimberly Crenshaw is a black woman. So she explained it from her perspective where her experience moving through life is different. It's not the combination of that of a black man or a white woman. It's very unique, the experiences that she goes through because of her intersections. And the way that was explained. That's how it was explained to me when I was doing work in diversity, equity and inclusion. I think back then it was just call it diversity and inclusion. But that was a long time ago. And that just hit me again, like this thing with putting words to things right. I think it was such a, I don't think my experience was as kind of life changing as yours and I want to hear that story so much. But I understood it instinctively when it was laid out for that for me that way. I thought that makes so much sense. And again, it's almost like walking through life, feeling gas lit the whole time because you think about what you're Picking up on is you being overly sensitive or reading into things that don't exist. And then when someone says no, like I've been researching this, and your experiences are unique, because of your unique combination of different identities, I didn't need more explanation. And I didn't need anything more than just that. And this can come from anything from getting opportunities to participate in cool projects at work, or being considered for special programs at school or at university. It affects all aspects of life. So yeah, that that was how I first encountered it, and how I still understand it. But that just has stayed with me this whole time. But tell me how it happened. For you.

I was in university and I've always known that humanities is my area, right? So when I was in college, I had the opportunity and it was an immense privilege to be in a very good school. And we were allowed to shape our curriculum within boundaries. But we could choose amongst like a catalog of courses. And coaches went after anything I could touch that had to do with like culture and anthropology and sociology. And I just felt that I needed words, I needed frameworks of reference, to feel validated of everything that I was observing. And my experience of university was by no means an oppressed experience, the mere fact that I was able to attend that it's a very small percentage of Mexicans who get to do and even less women, and even less women who have dark skin. So I'm not saying that I was an oppressed student, but I was missing words, to explain what I was feeling. And when I was observing the fact that I was the only one who had my skin tone in the classroom, that I had almost nobody that looked like me as a professor. And I had doctorates professors, PhDs, brilliant people, but none of them looked like me. So I was like, What is this, and I think it was urban sociology, the course was like that, or something. And I had this like very young teacher, she was, I thought it was the coolest teacher ever. And she just came back from a period of research in Kenya. And she was telling us about her own journey with lacking the words to express what her experience in Kenya was because she became aware of her own whiteness as a Mexican, the only role that she was playing by being in Kenya and doing research, and it was a shock for her. And so she came back decided to, I just need to spread out this gospel, because we are here thinking we're saving the world. And that's not it. That's not so that was the entryway for me to learn about this framework of thinking. And when she explained intersectionality, and she said, You are not a one dimensional person, we all have different things that together make us unique, but also the same as other communities. So you can think that, for example, I was at that point, very young Mexican woman who was attending a very religious university, there was one identity that I have. And at the same time, I felt like I didn't belong, because nobody looked like me. Because the teachers would mix up my name with the other only dark skin classmate that I had. But baby, they, we look the same to them, I don't know. So that was another identity layer, the fact that my parents didn't have the money for me to participate in this lavish lifestyle that the students were having. So I was there getting education, but not getting the social component. And when she said all of these things intersect into who you are, and make you feel like you don't belong, and that is real, I feel very validated and that you cannot go back and not no, you cannot go back and say, I'm just making things up. It's all in my head. It's good. That teacher didn't mean to confuse me with the other, the only other dark skinned woman in the class. So that was the moment for me. And it definitely came back when I moved to the Netherlands where every day everything that I do, I just run into my privilege of living here. And all of the intersections that are making me living here feel less than the average Dutch citizen.

Thank you for sharing. It's so interesting, where you say you can't go back. Sure you I personally have moments of doubt, of course, but knowing this is a thing helps me trust myself more and trust my gut feelings and My read of the world.

And I know that you work with people from all across the world with very different identities as far as ethnicity, culture, language. And they all have in common that they are building their web design business, and whether or not they consider themselves business owners or freelancers or contractors. They are trying to build something to provide for themselves and their families. How would you say that you being aware of what intersectionality is, and what privilege does to your business? How would you say that impact the work that you do as a mentor for them?

I think, like you said, like, we've been saying that throughout this episode, like, Oh, so much of it is validation. And understanding that this is a thing a lot of my clients also say, I wasn't sure that was a thing. Like, I thought maybe I was the only one who felt that way. Which is, which is wild. But also, I think thinking you're the only one who feels this way is like a universal experience. When you are thinking some really like profound things. It's easy to think but no one else sees the world this way. So I think most people understand that if you have darker skin in our very Eurocentric world, that puts you at a disadvantage. We just have as a whole, we have biases. In Korea, you can go to any environment and South Korea. And it's guaranteed that having white skin will give you an advantage among Korean among Koreans, I'm not talking about something that's very specific to a certain part of the world. I think we understand that. But I think it's easy to overlook elements of religion. Islamophobia is so big in our post 911 world, I know is a thing before that. But I think for us in our era, that was really defining part time in our lives. And the country you're from is such an important part of that intersection that doesn't get talked about a lot. And because I think part of it comes from people not wanting to talk about things they don't know, they don't understand, understandably like what it's like to be from a certain part of the world because they've not lived in that part of the world. But because I have experienced living in Europe, in different parts of Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, I think it's easier for me to connect with and understand the stories that my clients tell me. And when I say, Oh, your experiences are valid. Like I can totally see why you would feel this way why you would experience that enter that interaction with your client, I can see why it might have gone this way. When you had when you were presenting your work in this environment, I can see why it went that way it feels, I think it feels genuine because it is it comes from my own experience, rather than someone just being like, Oh, you're okay, I know that happened. And I believe you. I think the validation you get from someone who truly understands, yeah, where are you coming from is different from someone who just wants to be kind, even if they're coming from a really nice place, even

when you have the best of intentions, if you've never lived something like that you just simply cannot comprehend the impact that it has on every single layer of you as a person, you can feel it in your body when something like that happens. Because all all of these years of you not feeling seen, not feeling validated, having to just push through, or in order to comply and to bend yourself to others, and to the Western expectations of who we need to be in order to succeed. And something that is also important as business owners, especially online, I think is that the idea of running a business that is not face to face gives you this feeling of the whole world is out there for me and at the same time, oh, shit, the the whole world, the eyes of the world. They're going to be on me fixated on me on how I talk on how I look like on where I come from on the currency that I charge. And all of these little things impact, very crucial things that as business owners, we have to be great at like showing up on social media to promote our business networking, to establish referrals and partnerships, how we position our services, how we create our copy, our messaging, and all of these are skills that are required to build a business but when you are building a business offline, you get to hide behind the print of a magazine, the murky outside yours All, but when you are online, you're almost forced to create a personal brand and a personal brand is that is personal. So I think that it is so valuable that your clients and your audience and your community get to find that validation, that genuine validation when working with you. I think more people should get that.

Thank you. Yeah. And this actually leads nicely back into the, what we're talking about in terms of privilege, because you might wonder what it has to do. Like, it's I think it's often easy to see what these ideas mean, in the real world and the offline world. But how does it actually affect you when you're trying to build an online business, because that's what you and I are trying to do. That's what our community is doing and building a personal brand. Like that's a whole thing on its own right. And when you build a personal brand, you are putting so much of yourself out there. The Privilege is when you don't have to worry about putting on a hit job and wondering because that's what you do in your day to day and wondering, is this going to affect my business, my prospects of business negatively? About just speaking as you do, even if English is your first language, which is in itself a privilege? Because we live in a world where English is the dominant language? It's though it's the language of the internet. It's the language of doing business for a lot of us and wondering, how are people going to judge me for the way I speak English? I am very comfortable. There's no other language, I'm more comfortable speaking than English. And still, when I record some courses, I record some bits because I'm like, Oh, by the way, I said that. And for me, if I was a if English really wore my first language, I think I think oh, that's just I just said it weird and move on. But because it's my second language, I think our people are going to think I can't speak English, honestly. And I think if I think that people who are learning English as a third, fourth, fifth languages, probably feel that even more. So yeah, that's how privilege shows up. You

know that for me, it's petrifying. My Spanish is I want to say near to perfect, I was a Spanish teacher, I taught people how to speak, write, read, interpret, that was my job for a very long time. And irony of all, here I am living my life and running her business in a language that I am far from being perfect in. And I just have to remind myself, as long as I am able to communicate effectively, that has to be enough. And I'm very privileged in the sense that I have a partner who is very comfortable with my English, even though his language is Dutch. I have had clients who have never, ever questioned all my grammatical errors, have never said anything other than, Oh my God, my curriculum is amazing. I'm so happy I did this with you. And that is not luck. That in me building a brand intentionally around my intersections, being very upfront about the fact that English is my second language. I've never had formal training in English, but I had a lot of formal training, curriculum design and instructional design and teaching and learning. And that's what I'm here to do with my clients. And because I'm very upfront about that, I'm cost constantly reminding whomever comes into my circle, and it's curious about my work. This is me, right? This is me, I look like this. I speak like this. I sound like this. I'm very energetic sometimes. And I'm very dense sometimes because I don't do shallow things. And that is hard to do. It took me a lot of years. So if you're listening here right now with us and you're feeling like Oh, I could never do that. That's okay. Three years ago, I felt exactly the same six months ago. This podcast with Dan Bay was just like that will be fun to do, but I would never so don't discount yourself. It is perfectly valid to feel like that. And if you choose to move forward and do something in English, you can you absolutely can.

The only reason I know that you don't feel 100% comfortable with English is because you told me literally before you told me I have not given it a second thought and I think that's also a testament to not that we should have to do this work but like you said, You've done so much work around building and communicating your personal brand. And by that I just mean being really authentic about your intersections and I look at you and I really feel like I'm not just hyping you up although I love hyping you up like I feel like that your true role model around that because when we talk about privilege and marginalized identities and the need to look at intersectionality because it creates so much pain and discomfort and disadvantages in my life. I sometimes feel like turning that into something that works for me, it feels so far away. Right? It seems I'm going to have to do so much work to feel like positive thoughts about my marginalized identities, because I'm only used to that being something that brought me down. I'm so used to having to hide my Korean things like, oh, yeah, I'm from South Korea, but I'm not that Korean speaking up in groups so that strangers can hear me speak English, because I know, that's already breaking a lot of biases that people have when they first see me. So I feel like I've always worked against them. And the work I'm doing now it's so much of it is how do I internalize those elements into something that's positive the way you say, these are my intersections. And this is what makes me and my business amazing. I think that's the work for me right now.

And it never ends. Because, first of all, thank you for sharing that I really appreciate your words. And like we said, in the beginning of this episode, knowing these concepts of intersectionality, and privilege and how they interact with everybody on this globe, and how they impact you, your family, the chances and possibilities that you can build for yourself, this is a never ending journey, knowing this concept, unpacking this concept, seeing how they affect you, positively and negatively, is a never ending job. And I like that, because that gives us a sense of we are history in the making, like we are not meant to Oh, okay, so I'm an immigrant Mexican mother, who couldn't get a job in the Netherlands because of her papers. And now she's doomed to chase something online. No, I don't want to see my myself as that I don't want my kids to see me like that. And I get to take the essence of that description, and turn it that into my favorite, creating a personal brand around that. And the beauty of this planet that we live in is that the majority of people that look like us, the majority of people are going through what we're both experiencing, I bet that whomever is listening to this or watching this right now, I like oh yeah, I also have two or three layers there that I've noticed are impacting how my engagement in social media goes. Again, don't feel like we're saying this to create a sense of doom. It's more now your history in the making you you can acknowledge who you are, and make the most of it, even in this capitalistic

world. So I feel like the first thing we need to do is be more aware of our identities and our intersections, because that's what's going to help us build that personal brand and write our own stories. I know that person, the term personal branding has become super icky. Because it's how we participate in this capitalistic world, we need to sell ourselves. But I think we can make it something that is authentic to us, something where we take over that take control of that power to write our own stories. I love how you said that. I love the contrast, like that was such a stark contrast, when you talked about I'm not going to be that immigrant mom of two who couldn't find a job. So now she has to do this thing online. That is, it took me a second to realize you were talking about yourself. That's not how I think of you. And that could very well be how someone else thinks of you. But that's not the story you're writing. And the authenticity part comes from that story being for yourself as well as what you're putting out there for your business. But for that to be possible, we need to understand our own identities and our intersections. And that can be some of the hardest work to do. Where do you think is a good place to start if someone has never thought about their privileged and marginalized identities or their intersections before?

This is a tough question for me because I don't believe like in one answer, always, I feel like the if you imagine if you've ever seen a map of a metro or a train railway, and you imagine like the central station at the center of the map, and you see all these lines of subways or metros or tubes, however you want to call it, they all go in their own way. And eventually they reach the central point. I imagine the journey a little bit like that. Like your entry point is going to be somewhere I don't know where I don't know who you are, I don't know, your lived experiences, I don't know where you are in that journey right now. But I do know that wherever that is, you can always pause and take inventory. I'm gonna use myself as an example. Because I can only speak for my own experience, the inventory exercise has to be today right now, because it's not going to be the same a year ago, and I'm not going to be the same one year from now. So right now, if I take inventory of my identities, I know the easy parts, that means I am an immigrant, that means I'm a Mexican defendant, the Netherlands. So I'm going to write down immigrant. When I'm done with this exercise, I'm going to define what being an immigrant means for me, I am a mother of two. But that doesn't end there. I'm a mother of two biracial kids. I'm a mother of two bicultural kids. So I'm gonna write that down. What does that mean? I am the spouse of a Dutch man, he is white, I am clearly not white. He is European, I am not. And I always joke with him that if we see the cultures and the societies in the world, from a Western lens, like he is at the top of the pyramid, and I am a little bit like, all the way down. So that has an impact. I'm gonna write that down. And those are the easy parts, then I can go ahead and think, Okay, I'm running a business. So that means that I have to engage with other people around the world who don't know my culture, don't speak my first language. So as I am going through who I am right now, in 2024, I can easily write down 10 Things that are part of who I am. And I go back. And now I think, what does being an immigrant means to me, because I grew up thinking of the immigrants, the Mexicans who went to work as seasonal laborers undocumented to the United States. That's the narrative that I have in my head. I didn't come here undocumented, I didn't come here to do seasonal work. And still, I am an immigrant. So what does that mean for me? How does that impact my life here? What type of privilege I have that type of privilege? I don't have? What does it mean for me to be the mother of two biracial kids, I didn't grow up like that. My household was one culture, one language when I was growing up. And I stayed in the same country for the first 30 years of my life, my kids don't have that. So what does that mean? So I go bit by bit, and all of a sudden, I have this huge web of beautiful, wonderful thing that I didn't know, were part of who I was. And like I said, this is me in 2024. If I do this exercise, again, a year from now, things might be different. You relocate, your family grows, or it gets smaller, you learn a language, or you decide to speak in another language, that you already had you pivot careers. So by taking inventory of who you are right now, is like looking at yourself in the mirror. But without the facade of this is who the world forces me to be? No, this is who really I am. I think that's an exercise that everybody can do. It might take you several attempts to go through because it can be confronting, but it's so worth your time to do that.

I'm gonna do that exercise as you're talking. Oh, wow. Because you can go so deep. And I don't know that I've ever taken the time to write these things out. I don't. I was gonna say, I'm the kind of person who, when they write things out, like it really helps me figure out what I think. But it just reminded me of our conversation around how learning styles aren't a thing. Oh, maybe everyone does. Maybe it's helpful for everyone to write things down. But I really do benefit from like writing things down with the pen onto physical paper, and I just saw myself like doing a mind map of my identities. But it's one of those things I have funny feelings around. I'm like, Oh, that would be such a great exercise to do on my own and then I think oh my god, this feels like so much work. Like so much emotional work. I don't know I'm gonna have to find like the right time to do it. But thank you for sharing that. I also love the image of all the different train lines leading to a central station. I know that not everyone's city is designed that way. You can picture a central station where all the lines eventually after like, in their own ways, lead it to that station and the fact that there are multiple entry points that really like I could see that visual

on I feel like we are all called To participate, and reflecting about ourselves, but also how we are operating in this world, if I have one wish for this episode is that anybody that feels invited to reflect around who they are, the roles that they are playing in life, and how all their identities can help them put together a business that they feel proud of, that their communities feel drawn to. And that they, in 10 years from now, I can look back and think this is such a beautiful legacy. Do

you remember what you just said, I couldn't write fast enough that your different identities can come together and help you build your business was the gist of it. And I think that's such a beautiful way to end this conversation. Because it becomes so easy to get bogged down by privilege, we talk about privilege, because we're people who don't have a lot of are, so it feels. But now like all of these identities, whether or not they are marginalized in our in the world that we live in, like we can bring that in, and we can remove our own stories, and we can use them to help grow our businesses. And

if you are already in this journey, and you are familiar with this terms, you have been doing this reflections and you would like to take it a step forward. Danby is an excellent business mentor, I would say yes, she says is for web designers. But I would say that if you are running a business online and you want to work with somebody that takes the time to validate your existence, you should really look into her work. There are very few people who I admire as much as I admire the work that Tammy does.

God, thank you so much. That was totally unsolicited. All right. How would you like to wrap up this conversation? I feel like we're already there. Yes.

So if this conversation brought you anything at all, if it even if it made you feel uncomfortable, there's something there. If you're feeling discomfort, sit in the discomfort, and you would like to continue, please leave a comment. Share with us your thoughts. If you don't feel like sharing publicly, you can connect with us directly. Our socials are here listed. And just feel like we are here for you to continue or to start this journey. And you are not alone in it. Perfect.

Thank you so much for this conversation. Marianna. Thank you everyone who's been listening who made it to the end of this conversation. This is one of my favorites so far. And we'll see you for our next conversation. Bye