Culturally Adaptive Leadership and Privilege

President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address last night, and Chris Matthews, of MSNBC, said "He is post-racial, by all appearances.  I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.  You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and past so much history, in just a year or two.  I mean, it's something we don't even think about."

Although Chris meant those words as a compliment there has been quite a bit of backlash as a result.

So, let's dissect this statement.  First of all what does it mean to be post-racial?  There is an implied positive connotation in that term, and yet it also has components of privilege.  Post-racial sounds to me like it means post-black.  After all, it is really not post-white.  Therefore, the term implies that when we reach a place that race does not matter, we will all be indviduals of privilege.  Right now, in this society, that means we are individuals who have privileges accorded to whites and specifically white males. 

I am not going to put words in Chris Matthew's mouth nor attempt to be inside of his head, but if in fact, he was trying to say that President Obama is a leader-  Period -  a leader; and is not being described or viewed as a black leader, then I understand what he was trying to say.  In this country, with a history of slavery, not only have we elected a president who is a person of color, but now we have gone beyond defining him by his color and we are defining him by his leadership. 

And yet, we still need to be very much aware of race and racial tensions even with a president who is a person of color.  In fact, I have heard more overt racial comments since President Obama threw his hat in the race for president, than I have in all of my 49 years.  I am not sure we can jump to the conclusion that race relations are healed or even different because a person of color was elected President of the United States.

In fact, President Obama's election has really brought to the surface many racial feelings that were buried for so many years.  I  maintain that we will not ever be able to successfully deal with racial issues (or gender or sexual orientation or any other similar type of situation) until we deal first with privilege.  In this society, white males have more privilege than any other group.  Let me be quick to point out that they did not necessarily ask for this privilege.  Hence, this is a very sensitive issue among white men and with good reason.  Nonetheless, privileges in every domain of their lives are afforded to them and privilege being the quiet, invisible entity that it is; is not recognized by most people. 

I also do not want to single out white men when speaking of privilege.   We have sub-groups within under-privileged groups that have more privilege than others.  This will continue until we all recognize our own privilege AND are willing to give up our privilege for the greater good of humanity.  If you believe we are all created equal, then that equality ends there in this society.  We have the ability to understand our privilege, and we have the ability to act in a more non-privileged way if we choose.  We can lead our lives by recognizing our own privilege and our own humanity.  We can order our lives around the concept of Ubuntu:  I am who I am because of who we all are.  We can commit to equality - true equality. 

Electing a person of color as the President of the United States is not to be negated.  But we cannot make assumptions beyond that fact to race relations or to privilege relations in this country. 

Collectively, we all have a lot of work to do before we achieve equality for all.

It sounds to me as if Chris Matthews may hold that vision.  Electing a person of color as the leader of the United States is a component of that vision.  It is not the end all and be all.  It is up to us to each do our part.

Peggy McIntosh wrote a wonderful piece of work on the Invisible Knapsack of Privilege.  In that article, she asked a number of questions that one could answer to ascertain their level of privilege.  Here is a sampling of them:

"I am never asked to speak for all of the people of my racial group"

"I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the person in charge, I will be facing a person of my race"

"I can choose bandages in "flesh" colour that more or less match my skin"

Others have written about male privilege, heterosexual privilege, and socio-economic privilege.  These works are absolutely eye-opening!  Unfortunately, they are eye-opening because most people have the privilege of not ever having to think about these things.

That is where are work lies.  Let us begin.

Ann

Ann Dinan, Ph.D., M.S.S.A., C.P.C.C.

ann@TheDeeperLeadershipInstitute.com

www.TheDeeperLeadershipInstitute.com